Microwave Guy

honestly just having a kit at all puts you ahead of a lot of people who keep saying theyre gonna do it. ive seen guys show up to activations with stuff in a grocery bag so pelican case is already winning. the thing nobody told me when i built mine was to actually deploy it at home first and time yourself. like set it up in the backyard and see how long it takes to get on the air from scratch. i was really humbled the first time i did that, took me like 45 minutes to get everything sorted and i thought i knew what i was doing. now i do a practice setup every few months and have it down to under 15 minutes which feels a lot better for a real emergency situation.

general is definitely harder than tech but not crazy hard if you put in a couple weeks of actual study. i'd say dont just memorize the answers without understanding at least a little of the why, especially the band plans and the operating rules stuff because those questions can get tricky if you're just pattern matching. the electrical formulas you really do just need to know, ohms law, reactance, that kind of thing. nothing too wild. on the privileges thing - yeah once you pass and the examiner session gets uploaded to the FCC you can technically operate under your new privileges before the paper license even shows up. you just need your name to appear in the ULS database, which usually takes a day or two after the VE session. some people check obsessively after their session lol. as a general you get most of HF, big chunks of 40m 20m 15m 10m for phone, and you still cant use the Extra-only subands obviously but thats not a huge deal starting out. 40m SSB is super active especially evenings, that would be my first stop.

so ive been licensed for about 8 months now and i still feel awkward about when to use the NATO phonetics vs just saying the letter. like on a clear repeater contact where everyones coming in 5x5 do you really need to say "Kilo Foxtrot Seven Sierra Sierra" or is it fine to just say your callsign normally? i see guys on the club net who just rattle off their call letters and nobody seems to have a problem. but then on HF or when things are noisy i get why you'd spell it out. is there like an unwritten rule about this or does it just depend on conditions? i dont want to sound like im overdoing it on a local 2m net but also dont want to sound sloppy on HF

so ive been messing around with remote station control for a few months now and finally got to a point where i want to try doing this more seriously. my shack is about 45 miles from where i live now and driving out there every weekend is getting old. ive got a decent internet connection at the shack end, something like 25 down and 10 up from a fixed wireless provider, not fiber or anything but stable enough i think. been looking at RemoteHams as the software side of this because a buddy of mine runs it and says its pretty solid. my question is mainly about the SDR remote piece — like how does that actually integrate with a regular transceiver? im running an IC-7300 so i can pull the IQ data out over USB but im not totally clear on how RemoteHams handles that versus just doing straight audio relay. does it send the full SDR waterfall to the client side or is that too much bandwidth? also the internet linking part confuses me a bit. is that just for EchoLink type stuff or can you link the remote control sessions together somehow, like have multiple clients or chain it? i read the wiki but honestly it wasnt super clear on that piece. any real world experience with this setup appreciated

yeah FO-29 is tricky and its definitely not the most forgiving bird to start on, transponder has been flakey for years honestly. but the inverted thing you mentioned — yes thats right, USB in on the uplink shows up as USB on the downlink but the sense of doppler is flipped so as the sat comes toward you the downlink frequency is rising while your uplink needs to go DOWN to stay in the passband. a lot of guys get burned by that at first. 5 watts into an Arrow at low elevation is probably borderline, i usually run closer to 10-15 on the uplink for FO-29, it can take it. the AGC thing is real but youre not gonna hurt it with 15w from a handheld yagi, you'd need like 50+ probably to start causing problems. the bigger issue is probably your doppler correction if your not actually hearing yourself — are you manually tuning the downlink in real time or did you set it and forget it? because at a 10 degree pass the doppler on 2m alone can be like 3-4 khz across the whole pass, enough to wander out of the passband if you're not chasing it. also what software are you using for tracking? gpredict is solid if you havent tried it, it'll at least tell you exactly where the sat is and some rigs can do the doppler correction automatically if you set it up right.

the 7300 at 100w is pulling somewhere around 20-22 amps on transmit, but if your duty cycle is reasonable like you're doing a lot of net check-ins and passing traffic rather than contesting, your average draw ends up way lower. I run a similar rig on a 100ah LiFePO4 for EMCOMM exercises and typically come home with 40-50% left after 5-6 hours. the laptop is probably your sneaky power hog depending on what you're running it on - some of those things pull 3-4 amps through an inverter and that adds up. if you drop to 50w you probably wont notice a difference for most field work and it helps a lot. id leave the genny in the truck as backup and see how the battery does. worst case you go get it, but most likely you wont need it. also worth sticking a watt meter inline just so you can keep an eye on things rather than guessing.

the HT alone is gonna feel limiting real quick if you end up doing anything beyond just checking in on a local repeater. not saying ditch it, it absolutely belongs in the kit, but having that 891 available in some kind of portable config would give you way more flexibility especially on HF if you need to reach somewhere when local infrastructure is down. one thing i see people overlook is power. like everyone thinks about the radio but then they plug it into a random jump starter from autozone and wonder why it browns out under transmit. know your radio's current draw and size your battery accordingly with some headroom. my go-to for most portable stuff is a 20Ah lithium battery with an anderson powerpole distribution block so i can run the radio, a small lamp, and charge a phone if i need to. dont overthink the antenna situation starting out either, a simple roll-up jpole for 2m or a linked dipole kit covers a lot of ground and packs small.

ok so ive been licensed for about 4 months now (technician, just got my general last week actually) and i still get a little confused about when its appropriate to just call CQ on a frequency versus like finding an active net and checking in. like are these totally separate things or is there overlap? i mostly operate HF now since i got my general and ive been listening a lot but havent transmitted much because i dont want to step on someone or do something wrong. also related question — on 40m in the evenings there always seems to be nets running, like pretty much any frequency i land on has something going on. is it bad form to try to call CQ in between nets or do you just kind of have to find a gap somewhere? i listened to one net last week that seemed to go on for almost 2 hours which, fair enough, but it made me wonder if there's some kind of unwritten schedule people follow. anyway any advice for someone just trying to get their feet wet on HF without being that guy would be appreciated

Nice work getting it sorted out. The power run is always the part people underestimate — I've seen guys spend 10 minutes on the radio and 6 hours just chasing a good path for the cable. Totally worth doing it right though, you really dont want to be dealing with alternator whine or ground loops after the fact. On the antenna situation, lip mounts are a bit of a compromise but honestly for hitting local repeaters on 2m and 70cm you'll barely notice. If you ever start doing weak signal work or SSB stuff on 2m it might matter more but for everyday FM use you're fine. What feedline did you use?

so ive been sitting on doing the mars/cap mod on my FT-857D for probably two years now, always chickened out because i didnt want to brick a radio i actually depend on for portable ops. finally just did it last weekend and honestly it was way less scary than i built it up to be in my head. two diodes, about 20 minutes, done. what i actually wanted to post about though is that while i had it open i also went ahead and did the ref oscillator mod with the TCXO unit. and that part i do think made a noticeable difference, especially on digital modes. the frequency stability was always a little annoying on FT8 when the radio was cold, like it would drift for the first 10-15 minutes until everything warmed up. that seems basically gone now. i know some people say you cant really tell the difference but i can at least on this radio. anyone else done both at the same time, curious if your experience was similar or if maybe i just got lucky with a particularly drift-prone unit before

I went for the first time last year and honestly didnt know what to expect. ended up buying a power supply I didnt really need but it was cheap so whatever. the flea market part was cool, talked to a lot of people. definitely going again if I can get the weekend off work

yeah what he said about LoTW is right. i was in the same boat when i started and honestly i just do all three now because its not that much extra work once everything is set up. i use WSJT-X for FT8 and it logs everything automatically and i can batch upload to LoTW every few weeks, takes maybe 5 minutes. eQSL i mostly forget about but i check it every couple months and upload my log then too. the paper card thing is kind of personal preference territory. i actually really enjoy getting them and i try to send back when i can, there's something cool about having a physical thing from a contact you made. but yeah the bureau is the way to go for keeping costs manageable, direct mail to rare DX stations gets expensive fast. your section manager can tell you how the outgoing bureau works if you havent looked into it yet

the continent filter on DXwatch is filtering by where the spotter is located, not the DX station. so if you pick North America you're seeing spots that were submitted by North American stations. the idea being those guys heard the signal and it gives you a rough idea of propagation from your part of the world. took me a while to wrap my head around that too honestly. for what its worth i just keep a browser tab open to dxwatch and use the audio alert feature when something i actually care about shows up. i have it filtered to 20 and 17 meters most of the time and set a region filter for Europe and Asia since thats what im usually chasing. the cluster inside HRD is fine but i always felt like the standalone web tools gave me a cleaner picture without having to have the whole logging suite running. if youre just getting started i wouldnt overthink the software side of it, the bands will humble you way before the tools do lol

New to SDR and tried both - SDR++ is much easier to get running initially, but GQRX seems to have better documentation and community support. Which would you recommend for someone just getting started with RTL-SDR monitoring?

i was in almost the exact same spot about two years ago lol. what helped me was just jumping into a contest with zero expectations and treating it like practice. i sat down for like 3 hours during CQ WW last october just searching and pouncing, didnt try to run a frequency or anything, and it clicked pretty fast. yeah i only made like 40 contacts but i got the hang of the exchange and logging and now i actually look forward to it. Field Day is still my favorite though honestly. theres something about the whole setup, operating outside, the group energy. if your club does it next june i'd push to actually get on the air even if its just for an hour or two. most clubs are happy to have extra ops especially if you can handle some of the lower activity periods like 4am when everyone wants to sleep