Patricia Garcia

Kenwood is hands down the APRS leader. My D74 catches more packets than my FTM400XDR using a diamond 7900 super gainer roof mounted. The D74 is using a rubber duck. The TH-D75A should be even better with improved firmware.

so ive been working on this DC receiver for a few weeks now, its based loosely on the Norcal design but ive been modifying it a fair bit. got it on the air last night and was actually picking up some SSB signals which was pretty exciting for a first attempt. the audio quality isnt great but its there. my main issue right now is im getting a lot of LO leakage out the antenna port. i measured it at about -20 dBm which seems way too high. ive got a simple diplexer on the RF input but i dont think its doing much at the LO frequency. should i be looking at a better balanced mixer or is there a filtering approach thats more practical for a homebrew build like this. the mixer im using is just a pair of 1N4148 diodes in a ring config with a hand wound toroid, nothing fancy. also the audio is picking up some hum that i cant track down, tried shielding the AF stage but it didnt really help. could be the wall wart power supply, im not sure yet.

For serious contesting, stick with N1MM - nothing beats it for contest features and real-time scoring. But grab a mobile logger like Ham Radio Logger for POTA work. Ham Radio Logger is purpose-built for field operations with full POTA, Field Day, and SOTA support. Two different tools for two different jobs!

went through basically the same thing a couple years ago. the honest answer is yes, the RSPdx is noticeably better on HF, but how much that matters totally depends on your antenna situation. i was running both side by side into a 40m dipole and the dynamic range difference was real — had a big AM broadcaster about 8 miles away and the RTL would just smear garbage all over the adjacent frequencies, the RSPdx handled it way cleaner. the HDR mode on the RSPdx below 2MHz is genuinely useful for MW DX too, not just a marketing thing. that said if you're on a random wire or a small loop the RTL-SDR with a good preselector/filter can close the gap quite a bit. and SDRuno has gotten better but it's still a bit clunky compared to SDR# or even HDSDR in my opinion. if you're serious about HF and you're going to stick with this hobby i'd say the RSPdx is worth it, if you're still in the 'poking around' phase maybe grab a Nooelec NESDR or something and wait.

I've been comparing my RTL-SDR Blog V3 and HackRF One setups, particularly focusing on CPU utilization during wideband operations. Running GQRX with both devices on identical Ubuntu 22.04 systems, the RTL-SDR at 2.4 MSPS consistently uses 15-20% less CPU than the HackRF at similar sample rates. This becomes critical during contest weekends when I'm running multiple instances. Has anyone else noticed significant processing differences between these platforms? I'm particularly interested in experiences with GNU Radio applications beyond basic reception. Both dongles are using identical antenna systems (Diamond D-130J discone), so hardware frontend shouldn't be the variable here.

Been using the Bioenno BLF-1220A for two seasons. Excellent performance, built-in protection circuits work flawlessly. However, at continuous 20A draw (100W SSB), you'll get maybe 45 minutes runtime. Consider paralleling two smaller packs for redundancy - if one fails, you're not completely down. Also enables charging one while using the other.

i just did this like 4 months ago so pretty fresh for me. i used hamstudy and also the ARRL technician manual which i got used off ebay for like 6 bucks. honestly the manual was overkill for just passing the test but i liked having the extra context for why things are the way they are. took me about 3 weeks studying maybe 20 mins a night and passed first try with a few to spare one thing nobody told me — when you pass you have to wait for the FCC to actually grant your license before you can transmit anything, usually a few days but sometimes longer so dont freak out if you dont see it in their database right away. also get the GQRP or just search for hamstudyorg they have an app too which made it easy to study on my lunch break

so ive been running a 40m half wave dipole at about 30 feet for the past couple years, fed with coax through a 1:1 balun, nothing fancy. works ok, maybe 3-4 S units above the noise on most contacts. last month i put up a vertical — a trap vertical that covers 40 through 10 — just to see what the difference would be like because i kept reading about how verticals are supposedly better for DX due to the lower takeoff angle and all that. honestly? the vertical is noisier on receive and i feel like im giving up signal on most paths i actually use. tried running a decent radial field, like 16 radials cut to roughly quarter wave, not perfect but not bad either. the dipole just seems to punch better on nearby stuff and honestly holds its own even on some of the longer haul contacts into europe. im in the midwest so maybe thats part of it, i dunno. is there something wrong with my setup or is this a normal experience? i see so many people swearing by verticals for HF and im just not seeing it on 40. would love to hear if anyone has actually done a real comparison side by side.

this drives me nuts. i was trying to work that same station i think and couldnt figure out their pattern either. seemed like they were just randomly picking calls from anywhere in the window compare that to something like VP8 a few years back where you could actually predict where they'd tune next based on propagation and their established routine. made it possible for us little pistols to compete with the big guns by being smart about positioning instead of just cranking up the power

haha my wife does the exact same thing. congrats on the ticket, whats your radio setup if you dont mind me asking? i started on a baofeng which probably everyone says dont do that but honestly it got me on the air and thats what matters

had something similar on my old 746 pro, turned out to be a relay. the rx/tx switching relay was intermittently not returning to rx position fully after transmitting. your situation sounds a bit different since you said it happens without transmitting but worth keeping relays in mind as a suspect. they're cheap and easy to overlook.

so we ran a simulated emergency exercise this past saturday, countywide thing coordinated with the local ARES group and a few served agencies. i've been licensed about 12 years now and done maybe a dozen of these but this one hit different for some reason. the scenario was a prolonged power outage combined with a hospital needing health-and-welfare traffic routed because their normal comms were down. sounds straightforward right? well we had three net control operators rotate through and by hour two the logs were a mess. people were using inconsistent message formats, someone was sending ICS-213s but filling them out slightly differently than what our served agency expected, and we had one operator who kept jumping frequency without announcing it which caused a lot of confusion. the thing that really got me was how fast things degraded when we threw in the curveball — we simulated a repeater going down and had to go simplex. half the team either didnt know the backup simplex frequency or their radios weren't programmed for it. we'd talked about this in meetings but clearly talking about it and actually doing it are two different things. anyway i guess my question or maybe just the conversation starter is — what lessons have you guys pulled from your own exercises or real events? especially around message handling and keeping nets organized when things go sideways. feels like this is an area where most groups still have a lot of room to grow including mine.

welcome to one of the more confusing parts of the hobby haha. so the short version is: LoTW is the one you want if you're going for ARRL awards, DXCC being the big one. most serious DX operators upload to LoTW pretty regularly so your match rate for those contacts tends to be decent. eQSL is kind of its own world, some people swear by it and some ignore it entirely, and it does have its own awards system but they're not the same prestige as DXCC if that matters to you. physical cards are genuinely fun and a lot of DX stations still send them, especially if you go through the bureau system which is cheap but slow — like months slow sometimes. if you work a rare entity and want a card for the wall it's worth it. i'd say just get yourself set up on LoTW first since that takes a bit of paperwork to verify your callsign, then worry about the rest later. log4om should handle the ADIF export fine for uploading.

so i finally did my first SOTA activation last weekend up on a local summit here in the midwest, nothing crazy just a 4 pointer but i was honestly nervous about the whole thing. packed my ft-891 and a random wire end fed tuned with a little manual tuner, took forever to find a decent spot to throw the wire up but eventually got it slung over a branch maybe 20 feet up and it actually worked pretty well. made like 14 contacts in about 40 minutes on 40m which i was happy with, a couple chasers were already waiting which surprised me, didnt realize people actually watch the spots that closely. had one guy come back to me like 3 times trying to give me a state multiplier or something idk, he was very patient with my fumbling around. whole thing was exhausting but in the best way, already looking at the map for the next one. anyone else find that first activation kind of addictive?

oh man i remember this exact feeling, it does get better i promise. the business card gap thing is a starting point but everyones hand is different so dont treat it as gospel. i ended up with my contacts way closer than that, like almost touching. what helped me was slowing WAY down, like embarrassingly slow, maybe 10 or even 8 wpm and just drilling individual characters until my hand knew them without thinking. 15 wpm sounds manageable for copying but your hand needs more muscle memory than your brain does if that makes sense. also check that your keyer is set to iambic mode A or B and figure out which one feels better to you. some people have strong opinions about this. i personally run mode A and never looked back but theres guys who swear by B. the 991A keyer is decent enough that its probably not the equipment, its almost certainly just rep time. get on one of the CW practice nets, they're super patient with slow senders and nobody is going to laugh at you.