Diploe Dan

so ive been messing around with an arduino mega for the past few weeks trying to get it to control my 4-port coax switch automatically based on what band the radio is on. the idea is to pull the band data off the CI-V bus from my IC-7300 and then have the arduino decode that and fire the right relay. in theory its pretty simple but im running into some weirdness with the serial parsing and im not sure if its a timing issue or if im just reading the CI-V packets wrong. the relay board im using is one of those cheap 8-channel ones from amazon, 5v coils, and it seems to work fine when i just hardcode which relay to trigger. the issue is specifically with the CI-V reading part. ive got it pulling data over a MAX3232 level shifter but every so often it seems to drop bytes and then the band decode goes completely wrong and it tries to switch to the wrong antenna. anyone done something similar? or honestly any CI-V over arduino project would be helpful to look at. ive been at this for like 3 weekends and its starting to get frustrating. also wondering if a raspberry pi would have been a better choice for this kind of thing but i feel like the arduino should be able to handle it, its not that complicated

so ive been at this for about four months now and im kind of stuck. started learning CW back in the spring mostly because i wanted to get on 40m during the evening and it just seemed like the thing to do. got up to about 5wpm pretty quick using the koch method with the G4FON trainer but now im just... stalled. im at maybe 8-9wpm on a good day and it feels like the gap between where i am and actually being able to ragchew at 20 is just enormous. i know the usual advice is just keep at it, practice every day, dont count dits and dahs, etc. and im doing all that. been listening to W1AW code practice bulletins in the morning which helps a little. just wondering if anyone who went through this can tell me roughly how long it took them to go from beginner to actually comfortable on air. like was there a moment where it clicked or did it just slowly get easier. i feel like im missing something

the nervous feeling is completely normal and honestly a good sign that you're taking it seriously. ive seen people show up to activations totally overconfident and those are usually the ones who freeze or go off procedure. the folks who are a little anxious tend to listen better and follow net discipline which is honestly most of what the job is anyway. one thing nobody told me before my first activation was to eat something before you go and bring water and snacks because you might be out there longer than you think and it's really hard to copy traffic when your blood sugar is tanking. super unglamorous advice but seriously. good luck this weekend, sounds like your EC has set you up well.

i went through this same thing about a year ago. the fee thing caught me off guard too, i think i paid like 35 bucks when i applied. the AE7Q website that the other guy mentioned is seriously the best resource, it'll tell you the exact date a callsign enters the sequential pool or becomes available for vanity apps which is super helpful so you know when to actually submit. one thing i'll add — dont get too attached to one specific call because if somebody else applies in the same window its basically a coin flip. i applied for two different calls at the same time just to hedge my bets and ended up getting my second choice which i actually like just as much now. the whole thing took maybe two or three weeks from application to the new call showing up in ULS for me

the mult vs rate tradeoff is something i argued about with my club guys for years and honestly i dont think there's one answer, it depends so much on where you are in the contest. early on id say chase the mult almost always, especially if its one of those that wont show up again — a rare DXCC on 10m at the start of CQWW when the band is open, you go get it even if you break a decent run. late in the contest when youve already worked most of the mults and youre just grinding rate, i get a lot more reluctant to stop a good run for a single point mult. the thing that actually helped me most wasnt a rule of thumb, it was logging software mult alerts with band-specific tracking. when i can see that a mult only shows up once on 40 every 2 hours in my history, that changes my calculus. N1MM+ has tools for this if you dig into it. and yeah for state QSO parties i mostly single radio it, the SO2R overhead genuinely doesnt pencil out unless the exchange is fast and the rate gets high enough to justify managing two pileups.

I went to one of these a few years back before I even had my ticket, kind of what got me interested honestly. Haven't been back since I got licensed but maybe this is the year. Do they usually have stuff for newer guys or is it mostly old timers selling boat anchors lol

i use MacDoppler on mac, works fine but its not free. if youre on windows or linux gpredict is probably the better call anyway. one thing that helped me a ton was just recording a few passes with audacity first before actually trying to make contacts, that way you can hear how fast the doppler shifts and kind of internalize it before youre also trying to key up and talk to someone

congrats on the first one, it kind of hooks you doesnt it. to answer your questions: yes QSOs with other activators count the same as hunters for your 10 contact minimum, no difference there. and yeah the park HAS to be in the POTA reference database, you cant just activate any green space. the list is on the POTA website under the references section and they do add new parks periodically so its worth checking. county parks can definitely be in there but some smaller ones arent. if the park youre thinking of isnt listed there used to be a way to request additions but i think the process changed, you'd have to look at the current guidelines on the site. also for the phone spotting situation -- a lot of activators use a small tablet or just a dedicated old smartphone that stays on the spots page. some guys set up the spot before they even start calling CQ so they dont have to fumble with it mid-operation. once you get a few under your belt it all gets easier, the first one is always a bit chaotic

so ive been running a mag mount dual bander on my truck for about two years now and honestly its fine but i keep reading that NMO is the way to go if you actually care about performance. my issue is im a little nervous about drilling into the roof of a relatively new truck, its a 2021 f150 and i dont want to make a mess of it or have water getting in later. the mag mount sits on the roof right now and i get into the local repeaters fine, occasionally have issues on the 70cm side when im further out but i dont know if thats the antenna, the radio, or just the repeater being finicky. someone at the club told me the ground plane on a mag mount is never as good as a proper NMO through the roof and that explains the UHF dropouts. makes sense to me in theory but i havent actually measured anything. has anyone gone through the drilling process on a newer truck and regretted it or is it basically a non issue if you do it right? also wondering if a lip mount on the door or trunk edge would be a reasonable middle ground or if those things introduce their own problems with the antenna being off center and all that.

jump into cq ww, seriously. i remember being terrified my first time and just kind of tuning around for an hour before finally calling somebody. worst that happens is nobody comes back to you and you try again. the attic dipole might limit you a bit on 40 and 80 but 20 meters should be hopping that weekend and youll find stations. just have your logging software ready to go, n1mm is free and works great, and look up your cq zone beforehand so you dont have to think about it mid-qso.

so i heard through the club email list that theres a hamfest up in Millbrook on saturday, the one the Tri-County ARC puts on every year. ive never gone to this one before, always end up missing it for one reason or another. anybody been to it recently, is it worth the drive? im about 90 minutes out and not sure if the swap tables are any good or if its mostly just a flea market with a couple of radios thrown in. looking to maybe find a decent HF rig or at least some coax and connectors cheap

so ive been running my IC-7300 for about two years now and always kind of lived with the stock oscillator drift issue, especially on digital modes like FT8 where you really notice it after the rig warms up. been reading about the TCXO-15 upgrade for a while and finally pulled the trigger last month. installation was pretty straightforward honestly, took maybe 45 minutes including the time i spent second-guessing myself before touching anything. the board layout is pretty accessible once you get the top cover off and you can see exactly where it drops in. no soldering required which is nice. the difference on JS8Call and WSPR is noticeable to me — drift on WSPR went from like +-2 or 3 Hz over a 2 minute transmission down to basically nothing. but my buddy who hasnt done the mod keeps saying his stock radio does fine and i'm overthinking it. maybe i had a particularly bad unit to start with? curious if others have done this and actually measured before and after rather than just going by feel

the Baofeng menu thing is real, i spent like an hour on mine before i figured out the T-CTCS vs R-CTCS difference lol. one thing that helped me was just downloading CHIRP and programming it from the computer, way easier to see everything laid out. you can double check that the tone is set on the transmit side that way. also dont stress too much about repeater etiquette at first — most people are pretty forgiving with new hams. just leave a little pause before you respond to someone so you dont step on them, and if youre not sure if the repeater is in use just listen for a minute before keying up. some clubs also have a specific courtesy tone that plays after someone finishes transmitting so you know its safe to go.

so ive been messing around with remote station stuff for about 6 months now and i finally got a pretty stable setup going with a raspberry pi and some VPN tunneling but its a pain to maintain honestly. a buddy at the club mentioned RemoteHams and specifically the RCForb software and i looked into it a bit but im not totally clear on how the SDR integration actually works in practice. like i get the basic concept — you run the server software at your station, clients connect over the internet, rig control goes through CAT or whatever, and audio is streamed back and forth. thats pretty standard stuff. but what i cant figure out is whether the SDR remote piece is a separate thing or if its baked into the same client. and does it work with like an RTL-SDR or are we talking more serious hardware like an Airspy or RSP1A type thing. also curious if anyone has used this for linking purposes — ive got a local repeater that occasionally does some internet linking through Echolink but im wondering if a proper SDR remote setup would be a better approach for monitoring purposes. not trying to replace the repeater linking just kind of thinking out loud about using a wideband SDR remotely to keep an eye on a few frequencies at once. anyway if anyones actually running RemoteHams day to day id love to hear how reliable it actually is over a typical home ISP connection, the latency thing is what worries me most for CW ops

so i finally decided to actually sit down and do a real contest this year instead of just listening to all the pile-ups and wondering what's going on. picked CQ WW SSB because it falls on a weekend i have off and my antenna situation is decent enough i think — got a dipole up about 30 feet for 40m and a vertical for 20/15 that i threw together last spring. my main question is just... where do you even start? like do i just pick a frequency and start calling CQ or do i tune around and answer other peoples calls? ive heard people talk about running vs SandP but honestly i dont fully understand when you'd do one vs the other. also how does the exchange work exactly, i know its signal report and zone but im not sure how to figure out my own zone number. any advice welcome, even the basic stuff. i know its probably obvious to most of you but i've been licensed about 8 months and this would be my first real contest attempt

honestly the two-logger setup is just kind of the accepted reality for a lot of people. N1MM is basically the standard for contesting and theres a reason it stays that way — the rate display, the dupe checking, the way it handles multipliers in real time, nothing else really touches it for that stuff. Log4OM is genuinely better for the everyday DX hunting and awards tracking side of things though so i get why you'd want both. for WSJT-X during contests what i do is have WSJT-X log to N1MM directly via the UDP port, N1MM listens on 2237 by default and WSJT-X has the setting right there under reporting. works pretty reliably in my experience, occasionally it misses one if youre running fast but not often enough to stress about. after the contest i just export the N1MM log as ADIF and import it into Log4OM to update the master log. takes maybe ten minutes and its not as painful as it sounds once youve done it a few times. the Log4OM contest module is fine for casual stuff but if youre doing anything serious i wouldnt try to run CQWW through it, you'll spend more time troubleshooting than operating

so ive been messing around with AMSAT stuff for a few months now and i finally got a decent pass with AO-73 yesterday using my Arrow antenna and an IC-9700. got audio out of it which was exciting but i could not figure out how to stay on frequency to save my life. i read about doppler shift being like 10khz total across the pass but when i actually tried to tune for it manually i kept losing my own downlink signal. my question is basically — do most people just let the tracking software handle the VFO correction automatically or is there some trick to doing it by ear? i was running gpredict linked to the radio via hamlib and it was doing something but honestly i couldnt tell if it was actually moving the frequency or if i had the port config wrong. the pass was only like 8 minutes and i spent the first 4 fumbling with everything. also the inverting transponder thing caught me off guard. i knew about it intellectually but then in the moment i went the wrong direction tuning and that cost me another minute. any advice from people who have actually done this consistently would be really helpful

yeah you're right about the tuner, the internal one on the 7300 is only rated for like a 3:1 SWR range which is fine for a resonant antenna with coax but its not gonna do anything useful with ladder line into a balanced tuner situation. keep your external tuner in the chain, i'd actually just run the radio straight into the tuner and skip the internal one entirely, less stuff in the path. as for the scope i use mine constantly, mostly for finding signals before i even touch the VFO. on 40m at night when things get crowded its actually really handy to see where the activity is bunched up. took me maybe a week to stop ignoring it and now i'd miss it. the waterfall persistence setting makes a big difference, default is kind of aggressive i think, play with it.

Good list so far! One thing that gets overlooked is comfort items for long deployments. Folding chair, small table or clipboard for logging, good headlamp with extra batteries. Your back will thank you after sitting on the ground for 8 hours trying to copy weak signals. And definitely agree on the power redundancy - I carry 3 different battery packs now after getting caught short once.

i was in the exact same spot about a year ago and ended up going with a yaesu ft-4xr because someone here recommended it and im glad i did. its not fancy at all but it just works. battery lasts forever compared to what i expected, fits in my pocket, and i havent had any issues with it on the local repeaters. only thing i'll say is read the manual before you try to program it by hand because the menu system is a little weird at first but once you get it its fine.

Just had to share this with someone who'd understand. Made my first HF contact today! I'm still just a Tech but found some CW activity on 40m that I could legally use. Fired up my old Kenwood TS-430S that I bought used and threw up a random wire antenna. Called CQ and got an answer from W5ABC in Texas - I'm in Vermont! He gave me a 559 report and we exchanged names and locations. Used 25 wattsWire antenna in the atticPropagation was decent around 1400Z Still shaking from the excitement. This hobby is incredible!

yeah i remeber my first time keying up on a repeater i sat there for like ten minutes with my thumb hovering over the ptt button just kind of psyching myself up. its dumb but it felt like a big deal at the time. congrats on the ticket, stick with it

the pi idea is not overkill imo, really depends on how much you want to tinker. i run a pi 4 in my shack doing like 5 different things at once — flrig for CAT control, a little flask app for logging, and i have node-red running which is honestly amazing for this kind of automation stuff. you can do the antenna logic visually in node-red without writing much code at all and the dashboard gives you a browser interface automatically. that said if you've never touched a pi before and you just want the antenna switching to work, yeah maybe get the arduino version stable first and add the pi later if you feel like it. no reason you cant have both, the pi can just talk to the arduino over serial and send override commands or whatever.

congrats on the ticket first of all. honestly the baofeng debate never ends and probably never will. heres my take after using a bunch of different HTs over the years — the uv-5r works but the receiver is pretty mediocre and the build quality is kind of hit or miss. its fine for learning the ropes but you might end up frustrated if you're near a busy RF environment because it can get splatted pretty easily. for under $100 the ft-65 is genuinely a solid step up. yaesu's been making radios for decades and it shows — better receiver, actually built to last, the menu isnt as annoying. i gave one to my daughter when she got her license and she hasnt had a single problem with it. theres also the wouxun kg-uv9d if you want dual band and more features but it's a bit more to learn. if i were starting over id probably just get the ft-65 and call it done honestly.

yeah what he said about audio levels is probably it. i went through the same thing last year with a different TNC setup and drove myself crazy for like three weeks. turned out my mic gain on the radio was cranked up and everything i sent was way overdeviated, sounded fine to me on the radio but the digis just werent decoding it. one other thing — are you sure your comment field doesnt have any weird characters in it? i dont think thats your problem but ive read of edge cases where malformed packets dont get igated. probably a long shot. honestly just hook up a cheap rtl-sdr and listen to yourself transmit, youll hear pretty quick if the audio sounds right or if its all distorted.