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.

i run a 7300 and love it but fair warning the direct sampling architecture does mean you want a decent bandpass filter if you're anywhere near AM broadcast. took me a while to figure out why i was getting weird artifacts on 160 and it turned out a local AM station was basically walking all over everything. slapped a filter in line and it cleared right up. might not be an issue for you depending on where you are but worth keeping in mind.

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.

FO-29 has been pretty unreliable for a while now, the transponder only gets turned on periodically by JARL so unless you're checking their announcements you might just be hitting it during a dead window. AO-73 (funcube-1) is more predictable but the linear transponder mode is also scheduled, it defaults to its beacon/telemetry mode a lot of the time. AMSAT-UK posts the schedule but it still feels like a guessing game sometimes.
for the doppler workflow without automation — what works for me is to basically set the uplink and forget it mostly, and just chase the downlink. your own signal coming back will drift but as long as you keep tuning to hear yourself you're roughly in the right place. the trick is not trying to correct both VFOs simultaneously, pick one to chase and stick with it. took me an embarassingly long time to figure that out. also gpredict can drive a rig directly if you set up hamlib, even without motors on the antenna that half of the automation is huge.

CQ WW is honestly pretty intense for a first contest just because of the sheer volume of activity and trying to figure out mults on the fly. what i usually tell newer folks is to try the ARRL Sweepstakes first — its just the 48 states plus Canadian provinces as your multipliers so its a bit more manageable mentally. or even just pick a slower contest like a state QSO party to get your feet wet with logging software before you're trying to copy calls at 30wpm in a pileup.
for N1MM just watch a few youtube videos on the basic setup, its not as scary as it looks once you get the exchange fields configured right. the F-key macros are what save your sanity during a real run.
and yeah SOTA is its own thing, more of an awards program than a contest really but it does get competitive especially on the leaderboards. the event youre probably thinking of is the International SOTA Day or maybe the SOTA Winter Activation period, both happen around that time of year. check the sotadata.org.uk site, all the activations log there and the calendar should have upcoming events listed.

Had an eye-opening experience this weekend during our local ARES exercise. We're supposed to conduct regular drills to practice setting up our go-kits, but I realized I hadn't touched mine in about 6 months. Big mistake!
Half my coax connectors had corrosion, one of my battery packs was completely dead, and I couldn't find my printed frequency list - had to fumble around trying to remember which repeater was which. Regular training and participation in emergency drills are essential for maintaining readiness and honing skills. The EC wasn't too impressed with my 15-minute setup time either.
So my question: how often do you all practice with your kits? Monthly? Quarterly? And what's your checklist for maintenance?

so ive been licensed for about 8 months now and been using a mag mount on the car and a little rubber duck on my handheld but i want to actually get on HF properly. i dont have a lot of money and honestly i kind of enjoy building stuff so i figured a wire dipole was the obvious starting point. i've been reading the ARRL antenna book (borrowed it from a guy at the club) and i get the basic math, 468 divided by frequency in MHz gives you total length in feet, cut each leg half that. seems simple enough.
but here's where i get confused — every source i read says something slightly different about the feedpoint. some say i need a 1:1 balun, some say just feed it directly with coax and not worry about it, some say i need a current balun specifically not a voltage balun. for a basic 40m dipole in my backyard at maybe 25-30 feet up, does it actually matter in practice? like will i notice a real difference or is this one of those things that only matters in a contest station setup
also the wire question — i have some leftover 14 gauge solid copper from some house wiring. is that going to be mechanically annoying to work with for an antenna? i've heard stranded is better for outdoor stuff because it flexes more but i have like 80 feet of this 14 gauge just sitting there