Rachel Garcia

so i finally got up to W6/CT-068 last weekend after talking about doing an activation for like two years. packed the KX2, a 40m EFHW, and way too much food honestly. the hike was only like 2.5 miles but i forgot how much the antenna stuff weighs when you add the mast sections and the reel and everything. anyway got to the summit and the wind was absolutely brutal, kept knocking my mast over before i could get the wire deployed. ended up just draping it over some rocks at a pretty ugly angle but whatever it resonated okay after some tuner fiddling. made 4 contacts on 40 and then 2 on 20 before a storm rolled in and i had to pack out fast. so i got my 4 QSOs and it counts as an activation right? felt kind of anticlimactic but also really fun at the same time if that makes sense

so after about two years of doing this wrong i think i finally have a setup that actually works for extended field ops. been doing a lot of ARES stuff lately and we had a deployment exercise last month that really exposed some gaps in what i was doing before. the big thing was power. i was running a cheap 2000w inverter generator and it was causing all kinds of noise on HF, like S7-S8 on some bands even with the generator 30 feet away. switched to a Honda EU2200i and the difference was night and day. yeah its twice the price but the inverter topology just plays nicer with radio gear. also finally got around to properly bonding everything to a common ground point instead of just daisy chaining the grounds and that helped too. for the antenna i gave up on trying to use my home station yagi on a tilt-over mast because that thing is a nightmare to set up alone. now running a Chameleon MPAS 2.0 on a 20ft jackite pole and i can have it up in maybe 15 minutes by myself. its not going to win any contests but for actual emergency communications its totally adequate and the NVIS pattern works really well for the distances we're usually talking about. one thing i still havent fully figured out is battery backup for when the genny needs to go down for refueling. running a 100ah lifepo4 through a dc-dc charger off the genny while its running, then switching over to battery only. the switchover is a bit clunky and i dropped comms for like 45 seconds last time. anyone dealt with this, is there a cleaner way to handle the transition?

nets can definitely be hit or miss, especially the smaller local ones that dont always update their listings anywhere. the ARRL directory is a decent start but yeah its not always current. your best bet honestly is to just find your local club and ask around, somebody will know what actually meets regularly in your area. for Ohio specifically i know theres the Ohio Single Sideband Net on 3972 that runs most evenings and thats pretty active. for checking in its pretty simple once you hear how its done a couple times. net control will open the net and ask for check-ins, you just give your callsign once and wait to be acknowledged. dont call over anyone else and dont give a long winded intro the first time, just your call and maybe say new or short time if you only have a few minutes. some nets want your name and location too so listen to what others are saying before you jump in your first time. for special events the best resource ive found is the ARRL special event station page, they post them a week or two out usually. also QRZ sometimes has them listed. once you work a few youll get a feel for it, some of them will even send you a certificate or QSL if you log the contact which is a nice little bonus

the baofeng debate is pretty much eternal on every ham forum so dont stress too much about it. here's the thing — for hitting local repeaters and doing simplex in a relatively flat area, a uv5r or one of the newer uv-k5 variants will work fine. the radio itself isnt the problem, its usually the programming that trips people up. grab chirp (free software) and it makes loading repeaters way less painful. the stock antenna that comes with most baofengs is pretty mediocre though, a nagoya na-771 is like 15 bucks and makes a noticeable difference that said if you want to spend a little more and get something with better build quality and a much friendlier menu system, the yaesu ft-65 sits right at the edge of your budget and is hard to beat for a first radio. i gave one to my nephew when he got licensed and he had zero issues figuring it out. either way youre not making a life decision here, most of us end up with a drawer full of these things eventually

yeah the accidental touchscreen thing got me too when i first set mine up, i eventually just got in the habit of kind of hovering my hand when im doing anything near the rig. you can also lock the panel with a long press on the power button area i think, or at least lock certain functions — honestly i dont remember exactly, worth digging into the menu. on the twin PBT, i actually came around to it after a while. being able to shift both passband edges independently is more useful on a crowded 40m evening than i thought it would be. but yeah muscle memory from older rigs takes time to unlearn. my old 706 had a single IF shift and i reached for that phantom knob for like the first month.

yeah what he said about the band edge is the main thing honestly. i made that mistake early on, was operating right at 7.300 and someone on the air politely told me i was probably splattering above the edge. felt bad but it was a good lesson. now i just mentally subtract 3 kHz from whatever the edge is and call it good enough.

been thinking about this mod for my own 7300 but honestly for the casual operating i do im not sure i'd notice. does it affect anything on receive side or is it purely a transmit/frequency reference thing? i get confused about where the TCXO actually sits in the signal chain

so ive been licensed for about 3 weeks now (Tech) and everyone keeps telling me to just get a baofeng to start out and thats fine i guess but then other people are like no get a yaesu ft-60 or a wouxun and im just completely overwhelmed. my budget is probably around $60-80 maybe a little more if it makes a real difference. mostly going to be hitting local repeaters and maybe some simplex stuff with a friend whos been a ham for years. dont really need anything crazy. does the audio quality actually matter that much between the cheap ones and the mid range stuff? and whats the deal with chirp, is that something i have to use or can i just program it manually without wanting to throw it out a window

the honda to top-off approach is exactly what our group settled on after a few painful exercises. we run a 200ah LiFePO4 as primary and the generator only kicks on if we drop below like 50%. keeps the noise down 90% of the time and you still have the safety net. only thing is make sure your charger is actually putting out meaningful amps — some of the cheaper ones will run the genny for an hour and barely move the needle. we use a Victron IP65 25a charger and it's solid, actually moves the battery pretty quick. on the antenna, if it's a parking lot i'd go EFHW on the mast every time. buddipole is great but you'll be messing with it all day if conditions shift and people start asking you to change bands. EFHW just sits there and works, throw a counterpoise on the ground and you're done. only real pain is the initial setup like you said but once it's up it's up.

so i finally did my first WWFF activation last weekend, been wanting to try it for a while after doing a handful of POTA activations and someone in our club mentioned WWFF as sort of the international version with nature reserves and protected areas. ended up going out to a state wildlife management area near me that's registered as a nature reference in the database. overall it was great, got my 44 contacts which i understand is the threshold to actually count as a valid activation, mostly 40m with a few on 20m when propagation opened up a bit. ran about 25 watts with my KX2 and a wire dipole i just strung between two trees, nothing fancy. spotted myself on the WWFF spotter network which definitely helped bring in the pileup faster than i expected for a weekday afternoon. my questions are kind of dumb but i cant find a super clear answer -- when i submit the log do i go through the WWFF central log system or is it country-specific like WWFF-USA or whatever? also is there any difference in how hunters get credit, like is it similar to how POTA works where they just upload their log and the system matches contacts? and one more thing, does the reference have to be currently listed in the WWFF database before you activate or can you submit a new one? there's another wildlife area near me that i dont think is in the system yet.

i literally just did this like two months ago, went from tech to General. the exam wasnt as bad as i thought it would be. the hardest part for me was the operating procedures and some of the propagation stuff, like understanding why certain bands are better at different times of day. that part felt kind of abstract when just reading about it but it makes a lot more sense once you actually get on the air one thing i will say is dont sleep on just finding an exam session and signing up, sometimes that deadline pressure actually helps you buckle down and study lol. thats what i did and it worked out

the short version is as a general you get 7.175 to 7.300 for phone on 40m, that's your chunk. the reason people say avoid the very edge of the band — like right at 7.300 — is because your signal has sidebands that extend beyond your carrier frequency and if youre too close to the edge those sidebands can spill outside the amateur allocation entirely which is a no-no with the FCC. so most people just stay a few khz inside to be safe, like dont call cq on 7.299 basically. and yeah the stuff below 7.175 down to 7.125 is extra class only for phone so your club guy was right about that. the arrl band plan and the actual FCC regs are two different things by the way — the band plan is kind of a gentlemans agreement on top of the actual legal limits, so sometimes they dont match up perfectly and that causes confusion

haha yeah the first one is always kind of a disaster, i showed up to my first activation with no way to support the antenna and ended up just leaning a fishing pole against a rock and praying. 4 contacts is a valid activation though, a summit is a summit. get a battery pack for the phone situation, i use one of those cheap anker ones and it lasts forever in the field

RG8X at 55 feet on 70cm is going to run you somewhere around 3.5 to maybe 4dB of loss depending on connectors. that's not nothing but if you're going from a yagi to a vertical it's probably still a net gain. the question is whether your feedline loss is eating into the advantage the directional antenna is giving you, and at 22 miles to a repeater, the link is probably fine either way unless you're running low power. LMR400 would cut that loss roughly in half, closer to 1.8dB for that run. honestly if the wall is already done i'd just try the RG8X first. worst case you figure out its not enough and then you deal with the cable run later. people make that swap a bigger deal than it is sometimes.

so i finally did my first SET with the local ARES group and honestly i thought i was more prepared than i was. been a ham for about 3 years, got my general last year, figured i knew enough to be useful in a real activation. the simulation was a scenario where a tornado had knocked out the county EOC's primary comms and we were supposed to relay health and welfare traffic between two shelters and the EOC. first thing that bit me was i had no idea where my ICS forms were. like i knew what ICS-213 was, i had done the online courses, but when someone handed me a message to log i was digging around in my go bag for like 2 minutes and that felt really embarrassing in the moment. also my HT battery was at about 60% when i showed up which the net control guy pointed out pretty quickly, he was nice about it but noted that 60% is basically 0% in a long activation. the other thing i didnt expect was how much dead air makes you second guess yourself. when traffic slows down you start wondering if you missed a check-in or if something happened. the experienced guys seemed totally comfortable with the silence but i kept wanting to key up just to confirm i was still in the net. anyway curious if others have stories from their first SET or any drills where something caught them off guard. feels like you cant really learn this stuff from a book.

yeah 10m has been surprising a lot of people lately, cycle 25 has really been outperforming the predictions which is nice. the flux hitting 180+ is definitely enough to get some solid F2 propagation going on that band, especially in the afternoon when the path to europe and south america tends to open up. honestly the best thing i ever did was just start leaving a radio on 10m in the background while i was doing other stuff around the shack — you start to get a feel for when it comes alive. for dxmaps specifically, you want to look at the cluster spots for 28 MHz and also check the grey line tool because a lot of those long path openings line up right around sunrise/sunset. pskreporter is great too but its more useful after the fact to see where your signals were actually getting heard. if you havent already, check out the DX world website or even just follow some of the solar weather twitter accounts, they'll often post when there's a big flux jump or a geomagnetic storm coming that'll kill conditions.

congrats on the first contact, that ohio path on 40m is totally doable at 3w especially if conditions are halfway decent. the hiss you're hearing is probably just the receiver doing its thing — the MTR series isnt exactly known for having a super quiet front end, its a very stripped down design and that's kind of the tradeoff. if the noise goes away when you antenna is disconnected then its just band noise and you're fine. if its there regardless then maybe check your solder joints around the audio section, cold joints there can add some noise. on the lipo question yeah people run them all the time, just keep an eye on the voltage and dont let it drop below about 3.5v per cell under load or you'll be stressing the cells. a simple cell checker you can get for a few bucks is worth having in your kit. 3s gives you around 11-12v fully charged which is fine for that radio. for spotting without internet look into RBN — the reverse beacon network will spot you automatically when you call CQ on CW if anyone with a skimmer hears you. so you dont actually have to do anything except get on the air and call. thats how most SOTA folks get spotted when they're out of cell range.

oh man i went through this exact same thing maybe a year ago. for me it turned out i was gripping the paddle way too hard when i was nervous which threw everything off. try to let your fingers just rest on the paddles and dont death grip the thing lol. also honestly the best thing i did was use an online CW trainer to just listen to clean code at my speed for like 20 minutes a day — after a while your ear gets calibrated and you hear your own mistakes better when you record yourself. dont get discouraged, 8 months in and youre already on the air which is more than a lot of people can say

so ive been sitting on this idea for a while and finally pulled the trigger on a few mods for the 7300. first thing i did was the rx filter swap, put in a tighter 500hz filter for CW work and honestly the difference is noticeable, less garbage getting through on a crowded band. also did the standard fan mod where you replace the stock fan with a quieter noctua one, which sounds like a minor thing but when youre doing digital modes for hours the constant whirring was driving me nuts. the audio mod is what im most curious about getting feedback on. i pulled the internal speaker and replaced it with a small aftermarket one, added a tiny bit of capacitance to smooth out the low end. it actually sounds warmer now? hard to describe but received audio is less tinny. not sure if thats placebo or real but my ears say its better. has anyone else gone down this rabbit hole with the 7300 or any other radio. wondering if theres mods i havent thought of yet, particularly around the PA section or the front end for better dynamic range on crowded bands.

yeah its definitely more of a feel thing than a hard rule, at least outside of certain contexts. no regulation says you have to phonetize every transmission, its just good practice when conditions are rough or theres QRM or the other station is clearly struggling to copy you. on a quiet local net with good signal reports nobody cares. but the moment propagation starts doing weird things or someones in a pile-up situation, phonetics save a ton of back and forth. the mixing up thing goes away on its own honestly. i still occasionally blurt out "november november" when i mean something else if im tired. just drill them when youre driving or something, say your callsign out loud with phonetics ten times and it starts to feel automatic. the ITU/NATO set is what everyone expects so stick to that and dont improvise, some guys think theyre being funny with "whiskey tango foxtrot" type stuff and it just confuses newer ops or non-english speakers on dx contacts

i was in the exact same spot about 8 months ago lol. ended up getting a baofeng uv-5r because it was like $25 and figured worst case i lose $25. honestly it worked fine for hitting repeaters, the audio is a little tinny but it gets the job done. i did eventually get a yaesu ft-4xr a few months later and yeah the difference in quality is pretty noticable but the baofeng taught me the basics without stressing about an expensive radio. just my two cents, dont overthink it too much.

im kind of in the same boat as you, been at it since spring and copying is way easier than sending for me too. one thing that helped my sending was slowing way down and really focusing on making clean dits and dahs instead of rushing. like i was trying to send at the speed i could copy and it just came out garbled. havent made my first CW qso yet but getting close i think

so ive been trying to figure out if its worth making the drive this year, last time i went was like 3 years ago and i had a blast but also spent way too much money on stuff i didnt need lol. anybody else planning on heading out that way? would be cool to maybe meet up if theres enough of us going from this area also not sure if our local club is doing a group carpool thing again, havent seen anything on the email list about it yet

dont give up on it yet. the rate thing going backwards at first is completely normal and pretty much everyone i know who does SO2R seriously had that exact same experience. the cognitive load is just really high until the mechanics become automatic. one thing i'd say though is make sure your bandpass filters are actually doing their job before you blame the operating strategy. i had a situation where my 40m signal was getting into the 15m receiver and i thought i was just bad at SO2R but it turned out i had a filter seated wrong and was basically desensing myself every time i transmitted. worth checking with a dummy load on one radio and seeing what the other one hears.

one thing i'll add — i made this mistake early on where i was looking at a band plan chart someone posted in a facebook group and it was for ITU region 1 which is europe. the allocations are genuinely different over there so if youre reading something that doesnt quite match what youre hearing on the air in the US thats probably why. always double check youre looking at region 2 stuff for north america