Robert Miller

so ive been going back and forth on this for a while now and figured id just ask here because the repeater group i'm in cant seem to agree on anything. we've got a link site about 8 miles from the main repeater, sits on a pretty decent hilltop, maybe 200ft above average terrain in that direction. right now theres a vertical collinear up there — think its an old comet GP-9 or something close to it, been there for years — and the link is marginal at best. drops out when the weather gets weird and honestly even on good days the audio isnt great. someone in the group wants to put up a yagi pointed at the main site and be done with it, which honestly makes sense to me since its a fixed point to point path. but someone else is saying we lose the ability to hit the repeater from mobile units in the area if we go directional. my thought is that's not really what the link antenna is supposed to do anyway, that's the repeater's job. am i wrong here? the path isnt super long so i dont think we need massive gain, maybe a 5 or 6 element on 2m would be more than enough. just wondering if anyone has done something similar and whether its actually worth climbing the tower twice to swap things out or if theres some middle ground antenna im not thinking of.

so im not sure if its just me but 20m has been all over the place the last few days. worked a couple of stations in europe yesterday morning which was nice but then by like 11am it just died completely. tried 17 and 15 for a while but nothing really stuck. been doing this long enough to know the bands do what they want but something just feels off lately, maybe solar flux is doing something weird idk. anyway just curious if others are noticing the same or if its something on my end

yeah the chaos feeling is real, i remember my first few passes were basically just me frantically spinning around and missing everything. it gets better. one thing that helped me was just practicing the antenna movement during passes without even keying up, just get the muscle memory down for where the satellite is going to be. gpredict is pretty much the go-to for tracking software if you havent already got it set up, and if you have a radio that supports CAT control it can handle the doppler automatically which is huge. changes the experience completely tbh

honestly i tried Log4OM for about six months and went back to just using N1MM for everything, the contest stuff is obvoiusly better in N1MM but i also just got used to the interface and stopped noticing how clunky it was, you kind of adapt to it the LoTW sync in N1MM is fine for me, i just run it manually after a big operating session, not sure i need it to happen automatically, if you're the type who forgets to do that kind of thing then yeah Log4OM probably has an advantage there one thing i will say is if you do any digital modes beyond FT8, like JS8Call or Winlink, Log4OM handles the logging for all of that way more gracefully, N1MM just feels out of its depth outside of HF contesting and DX, it wasnt built for the modern digital landscape i guess

alternator whine is super common and yeah bonding straps are usually the fix but you gotta figure out where the noise is actually getting in first. could be the coax shield not grounded well at the antenna mount, could be the radio chassis ground, could be the power lead picking it up. the filter on the power line helps sometimes but if the noise is coming in through the coax or a bad ground its not gonna do anything. what i usually do is try a direct chassis ground for the radio first, like a short fat wire from the radio chassis to a bare metal spot on the body as close as possible. not the fuse box, actual metal. then check your antenna mount and make sure the coax braid has a solid connection to the vehicle body there. lip mounts can be hit or miss depending on how clean the contact is. if its still there after that then yeah start thinking about bonding straps between the hood and firewall, and maybe the cab corners. most of the time though its just a grounding issue closer to the radio itself.

so ive had the 7300 for about three weeks now and figured id write up some thoughts since i spent forever reading threads like this before buying. background: i was running an old FT-450D for like 6 years and it did the job but the panadapter situation was always annoying with the external stuff i had bolted on. first thing — the waterfall on the 7300 is just stupid good for the price point. i know everyone says this but until you actually sit there at 0200 watching signals pop up on 40m you dont really appreciate it. tuning is so much faster now, i can actually see what bands are doing without just spinning the dial hoping. the built in ATU is decent, handles my end-fed reasonably well on most bands though it does struggle a bit on 160 which i knew going in. audio quality on receive is noticeably better than the 450D too, less listening fatigue on long sessions. one thing that caught me off guard is how much i ended up digging into the menus. theres a lot in there and the defaults arent always what you want. spent a whole evening just on the AGC settings and filter configs. not complaining really, just wasnt expecting that kind of depth. anybody else running one of these as their main HF rig? curious what your go-to filter settings are for SSB, im still not totally happy with where i landed

i was in the same boat not that long ago, just kind of stumbled into having a bunch of lotw confirmations without really trying. one thing i'd add — double check that all your old contacts actually have the right callsign district and station info attached in lotw because i had a few that were messed up from when i first set up the account and they werent crediting right. cost me some headache later. also dont sleep on FT8 if you havent already, i know some people have opinions about it but for actually filling in harder entities with a modest station it's honestly really effective. got a bunch of pacific and african entities i probably wouldnt have worked otherwise. anyway sounds like youre off to a good start with 60 already confirmed without even trying

yeah the 7760 thing is exciting but im trying not to get too hyped until we see actual pricing and availability. Icom has a way of announcing stuff and then you wait like 18 months before it shows up in the US market at a price that makes your eyes water. the remote head concept isnt totally new for them obviously the 7100 kind of did that but this looks way more refined from what ive seen in the photos the 10 meter opening thing is real though, ive been monitoring 28.400 and the beacon freqs and its been pretty consistent. worked a ZL last Thursday on 10 with my little dipole in the attic which i did not expect at all. cycle 25 has been surprising a lot of people who were predicting it would be a dud, seems like the solar scientists were being conservative

had almost the exact same thing on mine a few years back, turned out to be a cold solder joint on one of the toroids in the 40m bandpass filter section, not the relay. scope showed the waveform was clean just low amplitude. took forever to find visually because it looked fine but there was basically no connection under load. if you've got a scope just probe around that section while you're keyed up into a dummy load and see if anything looks wrong upstream of the finals.

so ive been a technician for about 8 months now and i keep seeing people talk about CW and how great it is and i kinda want to learn but i have absolutely no idea where to start. like do you just memorize all the letters first or do you listen to it or what. i tried looking up some youtube videos and there was one where a guy was just sending at like a million words per minute and i obviously couldnt understand any of it. i downloaded some app but i dont really know if im using it right or in the right order or whatever. just wondering what method actually worked for people because there seems to be like a hundred different opinions on this and i dont know whos right

this is making me want to actually join my local ARES group, ive been putting it off for like a year now. do you need a lot of experience before they let you participate in the drills or is it ok to show up as a newer ham? i only got my tech about 8 months ago and i dont want to be the person who makes the chaos worse lol

yeah what he said about the audio. the signalink is also kinda fussy with the IC-7300 specifically, theres a known thing where the DIP switches on the signalink need to be set a specific way for the 7300 otherwise you get weird behavior. i think its in the signalink manual somewhere in the back, took me forever to find it. one other thing — are you running any other software that might be grabbing the audio device at the same time? had a friend who had his soundcard getting grabbed by windows audio enhancements randomly and it would cause mid-session drops. just worth checking in device manager that exclusive mode is enabled for the signalink and that windows enhancements are turned off for that device.

im pretty much in the same boat as you, just started building mine out a few months ago. one thing that helped me was actually going through an ICS-100 scenario in my head like pretending i got a call right now, what would i grab and what would i wish i had. thats when i realized i had no way to log contacts on paper if my laptop died, so now i keep a waterproof notepad and a couple pencils in there. pencils not pens because pens die in the cold. the 817 is actually a solid go-kit radio imo, plenty of people use them for exactly this. maybe look at a small tuner if you want to get more out of that random wire on different bands.

oh man Virginia from Ohio on 4 watts is pretty solid, 40m can be weird during the day but when it's working it really works. i built a KX1 years ago as my first kit and had almost the exact same feeling when it worked the first time, like wait thats it? im curious what paddle you're using with it if you're doing CW, that always seems to be the thing people underestimate when going portable — the paddle setup matters way more than i thought it would

so i basically let my license lapse back in like 2015 or so and just never bothered renewing. life got busy, moved a few times, antennas came down and never went back up. but something clicked a few weeks ago and i studied for the tech exam again and passed it last saturday. feels weird being back honestly, a lot has changed and a lot hasnt. already ordered a baofeng just to have something to listen on while i figure out what im actually doing again. curious if anyone else has done the returning ham thing and what it was like getting back into the swing of it

so ive been meaning to do this for like two years and after the storm last month kind of lit a fire under me. we lost power for about 36 hours and my shack was useless because everything is plugged into the wall like an idiot. so now im actually putting together a proper go-kit. got a pelican case, a Yaesu FT-891 im planning to use as the main rig, and im pulling together some coax and a roll of wire for a quick end-fed. also have a 20ah lifepo4 battery that should be enough for a few hours of operating at reasonable power. have a small solar panel too but havent actually tested how well it charges under real conditions yet. my question is kind of open ended — what are the things people always forget until they actually need them and then kick themselves. im not asking for the obvious stuff like a radio and a battery. more like the little things. already have a notebook and pens in there, Anderson powerpoles on everything. what else

i had the exact same confusion when i started lol. took me forever to figure out the baofeng menu. just so you know the T-CTCS is transmit tone and R-CTCS is receive tone and like the other guy said you really only need transmit for most repeaters. once i got that set i could suddenly get into like 4 repeaters in my area i didnt even know were there. also some repeaters around here are linked to like a whole network — there's one nearby thats on some kind of IRLP or Echolink node and when you key up youre actually talking to people potentially way far away so its worth knowing if the repeater youre using is linked before you just start chatting casually. nothing bad exactly but its just nice to know. the repeater book listing usually mentions it.

oh man the freeze thing is so real, i had that for probably the first six months of actually getting on 40m CW. what helped me was just jumping into the shallow end and calling CQ myself at like 13 wpm and letting whoever responds set the pace from there. most people will qrs if you ask and experienced CW ops are almost always patient with newer folks. on the paddle question — honestly you dont need to spend a lot to start. i used a cheap chinese iambic paddle for over a year before i upgraded and it was fine once i adjusted the tension and the gap. the MFJ-564 or similar clones are not pretty but they work. when you do know what feel you like then maybe look at something nicer but dont let gear be the thing that slows you down from actually getting on the air. the keyer built into most modern rigs is totally adequate too, you dont need a standalone keyer unless your radio doesnt have one. the expensive paddles are mostly about feel and longevity and yeah the machining, some guys just love how a good Begali or Schurr feels and thats valid but its not a requirement at all

Q65 is particularly effective for EME on VHF and higher bands and is becoming the preferred mode. Q65 may replace JT65 for EME use over time. Your setup should work fine - I've made contacts with similar power levels using Q65-60C on 144.170. The key is finding a big station to work with initially.

congrats on the first one, 44 in two hours on a slow day with a dipole is solid. the ADIF fields you mentioned are exactly right - SIG should be WWFF and SIG_INFO is where the reference goes like KFF-2847. if those are populated correctly you should be fine. the validation can take a little while depending on the national coordinator, sometimes a few days sometimes a week or two, it's all volunteer run so it varies. you'll usually get an email but you can also just check the WWFF logbook website directly and search your callsign to see if the activation shows as valid. one thing to double check is that your park reference is actually in the WWFF database and not just a local designation - most are but occasionally people find out their spot isn't registered yet and have to submit it which is a whole other process.

I've been doing WWFF for about two years now and honestly the submission process still feels a bit clunky to me compared to POTA's website. But it works. I export ADIF from Log4OM and upload directly, never had a rejection yet. The main thing is making sure your callsign, reference number, and dates all match exactly or it kicks it back. Also worth joining the WWFF facebook group if you havent already, theres usually someone who can help troubleshoot and people post activation reports which are fun to read through

Check your crystal filter termination impedances too. Mismatched impedances can cause instability in the IF chain. What's your measured filter bandwidth and insertion loss?

the wall around 10-12 is super common, almost everybody hits it. what helped me break through was switching from copying individual characters to trying to recognize whole words at a glance, like your brain stops hearing dah-dit-dit and starts hearing the whole word "land" as one sound. took me maybe another 3 months of daily practice to get comfortable at 20 but i was only doing like 15-20 min a day so your mileage may vary. also dont be scared to get on the air, honestly most operators are really patient with slower stations and the CW Ops guys run practice nets specifically for people learning, theres one called CWT i think but also just look up beginner CW nets in your region. getting on air is what really accelerated my speed more than any trainer software, something about the pressure of a real qso makes your brain lock in differently

i just did my first Field Day back in june with our club and it kind of scratched that contesting itch for me a little bit, though i hear CQ WW is way more intense. for SOTA i finally did my first activation a few weeks ago up a local peak and it was honestly one of the best days ive had with this hobby so far, just you and a little radio and a wire antenna and suddenly people are calling you from all over. totally recommend getting out there before winter if you're in the northeast, some of the summits get real sketchy once theres ice and snow.

so i passed my technician exam last thursday and literally the same night i was on 2m with a cheap baofeng i borrowed from my buddy. i had no idea what i was doing, forgot to say my callsign at the end of the transmission like three times and the guy on the other end had to remind me. super embarrassing but he was really cool about it and we talked for like 20 minutes about antennas and stuff. i didnt understand half of what he said but i was just happy to be on the air for real finally. anyway i just wanted to say hi to everyone here, ive been lurking this forum for a few months while i was studying and you all helped me a lot without even knowing it. now i gotta figure out what radio to actually buy because i cant borrow my friends forever