Amanda Jackson

so anyway i finally got it working after about three weekends of messing around and thought id share what tripped me up in case anyone else is going through the same thing. i put a Yaesu FTM-300DR in my truck and it sounds great now but getting there was kind of a pain. the biggest thing that got me was the power connection. i ran the power leads straight to the battery like everyone says to do and the radio worked fine but i kept getting this weird buzzing noise that changed with engine RPM. turns out one of my ground leads wasnt making great contact under the seat where i had it bolted. spent two hours chasing RFI and it was just a bad ground the whole time. once i cleaned that connection and used a star washer it went completely quiet. the other thing was antenna placement. first i had a mag mount on the trunk lid kind of off to one side and the pattern was all weird, uneven signal reports depending on which direction i was driving. moved it to the roof dead center and it made a noticeable difference. probably obvious to most people but i didnt think about it much at first. anyway if anyone is just starting out with a mobile install, take your time with the grounding, it really is as important as everyone says. whats everyone else running for mobile antennas these days?

oh man the 10-12wpm plateau is SO real, i spent like 3 months stuck right there and almost quit honestly. what finally broke it for me was two things — first i bumped my character speed way up on lcwo, like to 18 or even 20wpm, but dropped the overall word speed way down so there was more space between characters. the idea being you train your ear to hear the letters as sounds not dots and dashes. second thing was i started just listening to actual on-air CW even when i couldnt copy it, just having it on in the background while doing other stuff. not sure if that really did anything scientifically but it felt like it helped me get used to the rhythm. as for how long to 20wpm... i wont lie to you, for me it was probably close to 18 months of pretty regular practice before i felt genuinely comfortable in a real QSO at that speed. some guys do it faster. i know one guy who went from zero to 20 in like 8 months but he was practicing an hour a day minimum so thats just a different commitment level. the X and Q thing you mentioned goes away, just takes repetition, those letters start sounding like whole sounds eventually instead of a puzzle you have to decode.

i was in the same boat not that long ago, the Q codes felt really overwhelming at first but honestly you only really need maybe 10-15 of them for everyday operating. the rest are pretty obscure and even experienced operators have to look them up sometimes. dont stress too much about memorizing the whole list before you transmit, you'll pick them up naturally as you go

wait there are people who dont use NATO phonetics? i kind of just assumed everyone used them all the time lol. i guess that makes sense on a repeater though. i still say them every time because im paranoid about my call being logged wrong in someone's logbook but maybe im overdoing it on the local stuff

I made almost exactly this jump about two years ago. Had the RTL-SDR v3, was doing the same thing with direct sampling, and yeah the HF experience is just kind of tolerable at best. The RSP1A is a noticeable step up for receive, no question. The dynamic range difference is real, especially if you're anywhere near AM broadcast stations — with the RTL the front end just gets hammered and you get all kinds of crud bleeding into adjacent frequencies. The RSP1A handles that a lot better with the built-in preselectors. SDRuno is fine but I actually ended up running the RSP1A through SDR# with the SDRplay plugin and that worked really well for a while before I switched to SDR Console. If you're not planning to transmit then the HackRF doesn't really make sense for this use case — it's a 8-bit ADC and the noise figure is worse than the RSP1A for pure receive work. the HackRF is more of a do-everything device and it compromises some on receiver quality to get there. spend the money on the RSP1A before the antenna honestly. a better receiver shows you what your current antenna is actually doing and then you can make a smarter decision about the antenna after.

i had the same confusion when i was studying. one thing that tripped me up is that part 97 doesn't just cover what frequencies you can use, theres also stuff in there about things like station identification every 10 minutes, not doing business communications, all that. so even when you ARE allowed on a frequency there are still operating rules to follow on top of it. just something to be aware of as you dig into it more.

yeah the RF getting into the arduino is super common with these setups, had the exact same thing happen with a band decoder i built last year. the relay modules usually have optoisolators but the input lines to the arduino itself are wide open and basically act like little antennas. what helped me was putting ferrite beads on every wire going into the thing, like literally every single one including the power leads, and then adding a 100nf cap to ground right at each input pin. also make sure your ground braid is actually a proper RF ground and not just a long wire because that can make things worse actually. the other thing i found was the cheap relay boards sometimes have really noisy coils that backfeed into the 5v line when they switch, worth throwing a snubber diode across each relay coil if they dont already have them. most of the amazon ones do but you never know what youre actually getting.

yeah this hits close to home. we did a SKYWARN integration drill back in the spring and i had almost the exact same battery situation except mine was a handheld i grabbed out of a drawer and the charge indicator was lying to me lol. showed full, lasted maybe 45 minutes. the ICS forms thing is real too. theres a reason some of our more experienced guys say you should run through a 213 at least once every few months just to keep the muscle memory. its not hard but when youre also trying to copy a frequency list and log traffic at the same time it gets sloppy fast. one thing our EC started doing is requiring everyone to submit at least one piece of formal traffic during our monthly nets, just to keep people from going totally rusty between activations. has helped a lot honestly. the frequency list thing is just good practice to review every january or something, tie it to something you already do so it doesn't slip.

so ive been sitting on this TCXO-15 unit for like three months now and finally got around to installing it last weekend. took me longer than it should have because i was being overly cautious with the ribbon cables but overall not a bad job if you've done any surface work before. the thing is i'm not totally sure i can hear a difference in normal operation but on WSPR overnight the drift is noticeably better — like the signal just sits there instead of wandering around the edges. before the mod i was seeing maybe 2-3 Hz of drift over a few hours and now its basically flat. running a GPS disciplined reference on my other rig so i have something to compare against. not sure it matters for most operating honestly. if you're doing FT8 or voice work probably not worth pulling the rig apart. but if you're into weak signal stuff or trying to run any kind of precision frequency work its a pretty clean mod and icom actually sells the part so its not like you're voiding warranty with some frankenboard situation. anyone else done this or any other internal mods on the 7300 thats actually made a real difference to them?

22 miles on 2m for packet is usually fine as long as theres decent path, but check your RF output too. some rigs default to low power for packet stuff depending on how PTT is wired up. i had a similar issue with a different rig and it was putting out like 5 watts instead of 50 because of some squelch/VOX thing i had set wrong on the Signalink.

so our ARES group has a county-level exercise coming up in about 6 weeks and i've been tasked with figuring out the power situation for our primary station. we're setting up at a fairgrounds site, no shore power available except one outlet in a building that's maybe 300 feet from where we want to actually operate, which is basically useless. right now the plan is to run an IC-7300 plus a 2m/70cm setup, maybe a laptop for logging, and some odds and ends. not running a linear so total draw shouldn't be crazy but i'm trying to figure out if a generator is overkill or if we should just go deep cycle batteries and a decent solar panel or two since the forecast looks pretty good for that weekend. the antenna situation i have mostly figured out — setting up a linked dipole for HF that i can adjust between 40 and 20 depending on what nets we're assigned to, and a jpole up on a mast for the vhf stuff. the jpole is just a roll-up copper one ive had for years, works fine. the dipole is the one i built last winter, havent had any problems with it but also havent really stress tested it in a field environment with people walking around and bumping into things. main question is really around the power. anyone done extended field setups like 8+ hours without a genny? what are you actually pulling in amp hours when you're doing like moderate tx duty cycle? i know the math but i always feel like real world is different than what i calculate on paper.

yeah what he said about LoTW being the main one for awards is right. i went through this same thing when i started chasing DXCC and wasted a bunch of time uploading to eQSL thinking it counted lol. it does count for their own awards system which some people care about but its not the same thing. one thing i'd add is just make sure your TQSL certificate is set up with the right callsign and the dates are correct, that tripped me up early on where i had the wrong QTH info in the certificate and some contacts werent matching up right. the ARRL has a pretty decent setup guide on their site if you dig around for it

so ive been using WSJT-X for FT8 stuff for about a year now and it logs to an ADIF file which i then import into Log4OM and that's been working fine for casual operating. but i'm starting to get into contesting a bit more and everyone seems to say N1MM is the thing to use for that. my question is do people actually run both or do you just pick one and stick with it the thing that confuses me is the workflow. like if i'm doing a contest in N1MM but then i also want to work some FT8 on the side during the same weekend do i have to manually merge the logs after or is there a cleaner way to do it. i tried reading the N1MM documentation and it's honestly a lot to take in all at once also Log4OM has that built in integration with WSJT-X through UDP which is pretty seamless, does N1MM do something similar or is it more of a manual import situation. genuinely not sure which direction to make the default logger at this point

yeah i had the same confusion when i started checking into nets. what helped me was just listening to how the more experienced guys handled it for a few weeks before i started participating. most of the time on a typical club net the whole thing is short enough that IDing at check-in and then again if you make any transmissions after that keeps you covered. one thing i'll add is dont stress too much about it on a casual local net, net control usually knows everyones voice and call anyway. now if you're ever doing formal traffic handling with NTS or something like that the procedures get a bit more specific but for a weekly 2m ragchew net you're probably fine just using common sense and keeping your call in there when it makes sense.

so ive been running an old FT-450D for probably 4 years now and always kinda wondered what i was missing. shack buddy kept telling me to upgrade but i was never really convinced the juice was worth the squeeze, you know? anyway i picked up a used IC-7300 off a guy in the club for a pretty decent price, he was moving up to an IC-7610 so the timing worked out. first thing i noticed honestly was just how much better the waterfall is. i know everyone says that but i didnt really get it until i sat down during a pileup on 17m and could literally see who was transmitting and where they were sitting in the passband. made s&p way more efficient than i was used to. the built in ATU is fine, nothing special, but it gets the job done on my 40m dipole which is a bit short. the real difference for me was weak signal work on 40 and 80. the noise floor just feels lower, or maybe its the filtering, im not totally sure which one is doing the heavy lifting there. i had a decent QSO with a station in Slovenia running maybe 50 watts on his end and it wasnt even a struggle, just comfortable copy the whole way through. anybody else made a similar jump from an older mid-range rig? curious if the improvement was as noticeable for others or if i just got lucky with conditions that week.

yeah what he said about ALC is spot on, that tripped me up for a long time too. one thing i'll add is try getting somebody to actually record your signal off the air if you can, like have a friend with SDR or whatever record a clip and play it back. makes a huge difference because what sounds good monitoring yourself is not always what people are actually hearing. i thought i sounded fine for months and then heard a recording and was like oh no

yeah the coupling issue is real and kind of annoying the first time you run into it. what i did when i built mine was start with just the 40m dipole, get it resonant, then add 20m and retrim, then 15m last. basically build it up one band at a time instead of cutting everything to the textbook formula and hoping for the best. saved me a lot of going up and down the ladder. on adding 10m — i tried it once and the interaction with the 15m elements was enough to mess both of them up a bit. ended up just leaving 10m off and using the tuner when i want to operate there. your mileage may vary depending on how much separation you can get between the elements physically but for me it wasnt worth the hassle. the three band version is pretty much a set it and forget it antenna which is kind of the whole point for me.

so ive been chasing summits for about 8 months now and finally decided to just do it and activate one myself. going up W4T/SU-017 tomorrow morning, planning to take my FT-818 and a random wire antenna i made from a kit, along with a 4ah lipo and my phone for the SOTA spotter app. signed up on SOTAwatch3 and posted an alert for around 10am local on 40m ssb and maybe 2m fm if anyone local is around. my main worry is honestly just whether i'll get my 4 contacts. i know thats the minimum but what if nobody hears me or the band is dead? also not sure if i should call CQ on a clear frequency or if there's like an agreed calling freq people check. i did read the general summit to summit stuff but it all still feels a little overwhelming when you're actually about to do it for the first time. anyway any advice from people who've done a bunch of these would be great, leaving at 6am so i have time before the activation window opens

congrats on making the jump from chasing to activating, honestly its way more fun once you get up there. the self spotting thing -- yeah post to SOTAwatch before or right when you arrive, most people do it on the walk up if they have signal or right when they set up. you can also do an alert the night before which is even better because the chasers will be watching for you. RBNhole is pretty neat, basically if youre doing CW the Reverse Beacon Network picks up your CQ and then automatically posts a spot to SOTAwatch for you so you dont have to worry about it at all. for phone ops it doesnt help but yeah for CW its a lifesaver when you have no cell up top. asking chasers to spot you is totally fine, just give your callsign and summit reference and most of them will throw it up immediately. the community is really good about that. W6/NC refs get decent activity, youll be fine with your KX2 setup, 40m in the afternoon should get you the 4 contacts no problem. have a great time up there

the PTT tail thing is a known annoyance with RCForb and a lot of people just live with it or switch to CW/digital where it doesnt matter as much. but there is actually a VOX tail setting buried in the server config on the remote end, not the client side, which i think trips people up. if you look in the server settings under audio there should be something like a hang time or tail delay value. default is usually way too conservative because they set it for bad internet connections. also 180ms is on the edge for comfortable phone work in my experience. i have a similar setup to a mountain top site and i found anything over 150ms starts feeling wrong on phone even if technically the audio is fine. the brain just gets confused. for what its worth i ended up using a separate cheap VPS to relay the control data and shaved about 30ms off which actually made a noticeable difference. might be worth looking at where your routing is going geographically because sometimes the path is just dumb and adding hops locally is counterintuitive but faster

14 contacts and you learned a ton, that's honestly a successful trip even if the log doesn't count officially. Don't sweat the 10 contact minimum too much, it clicks once you've done a few of these. For spotting yourself without cell service — yeah that's a real issue at a lot of parks. What a lot of people do is set up their spot before they leave the parking lot while they still have signal, just put in an approximate time and your frequency, then head in. You can also use APRS to self-spot if your radio supports it or you have a TH-D74 or something like that. Some guys bring a cheap prepaid data SIM on a different carrier just for spotting, Verizon vs ATT coverage varies so much park to park. On the 40m thing — if a frequency gets busy dont abandon it right away, try going up or down 5 kHz and calling again. And honestly just calling CQ POTA consistently for 10-15 minutes without stopping is way more effective than most new activators expect. The hunters are out there, they just need to find you.

so ive been using a cheap RTL-SDR v3 dongle for about a year now mostly for VHF/UHF scanning and some ADS-B stuff and honestly its been great for what it is. but ive been wanting to get more into HF and the direct sampling mode on the rtl-sdr is... fine i guess but it really shows its limits once you start getting into crowded bands. dynamic range just falls apart. been looking at the SDRplay RSPdx and it seems like the obvious next step but its like 8-9x the price depending where you find it. ive also seen people mention the HackRF but from what i understand thats more of a transmit capable thing and the receive performance isnt actually as good as the SDRplay? someone correct me if im wrong on that. mostly want to use it with SDR# or maybe HDSDR, and i do run a modest noise floor at home (semi-rural, not terrible). is the SDRplay actually worth jumping to or am i better off just getting a better antenna setup first before spending money on the radio itself. genuinely not sure which is the bigger bottleneck right now

okay so this is something i feel pretty strongly about because i wasted like 6 months doing it the wrong way before someone set me straight. the biggest mistake beginners make is learning the characters too slow, like starting at 5 wpm and trying to memorize the dit-dah patterns consciously. that just trains your brain to count instead of hear. look up the Koch method, thats what finally worked for me. you start with only 2 characters but you learn them at full speed, something like 20 wpm, and you slowly add characters as you nail each one. LCWO dot net is free and does exactly this, ive sent probably a dozen new hams there over the years. its slow going at first because youre starting from nothing but the stuff actually sticks. also just get used to the idea that it takes months, not weeks. dont rush it and dont give up after the first week when your brain feels like mush

this is pretty much exactly what i needed to read right now honestly. im kind of new to chasing DX seriously, been licensed a couple years but only started really working the DXpeditions this year. i got completely obliterated trying to work a recent one and i was just calling calling calling and never once thought to actually study what the guy was doing. gonna try your approach next time. how long do you usually listen before you start calling, like is 15 min always enough or does it depend?

that mixed feeling you described is pretty much exactly how my first one went too lol. i was convinced i was doing everything wrong even though technically it worked. the slow CQ advice is good, i still forget that sometimes and wonder why nobody's coming back to me and then i realize im just blasting through calls way too fast for anyone to even copy my callsign.