CW Whisperer

so i finally stopped saying i was gonna do it and just did it. drove out to the state park about 45 min from me, threw my end fed up in a pine tree, and ran 20w with the KX2 for about 2 hours. ended up with 32 contacts which i know isnt a lot but for my first time trying to do this for real i was pretty happy. 40m was kind of slow at first but then it just opened up and the pile was actually fun to work through. had one guy call me like 6 times even after i confirmed him, not sure what that was about. anyway my antenna situation was kind of a mess, i need a better throw line system cause i spent probably 20 minutes just trying to get the wire up in the tree

Great job jumping in! Your experience with the power issue is exactly why we do these exercises. Consider getting a proper deep-cycle marine battery and a small solar panel for next year. I've been doing SET for over 20 years and still learn something new each time.

ok so i just got my technician ticket a few months ago and ive been making contacts slowly, mostly on 2m but recently got on HF with a borrowed rig at a club meeting and made a few real DX contacts which was kind of mind blowing honestly. anyway everyone keeps talking about confirming contacts and i'm drowning in acronyms. LoTW, eQSL, paper QSLs through the bureau... i dont really understand how any of it works or which ones i actually need to bother with.
from what i can tell LoTW is run by ARRL and is like the gold standard for awards but eQSL is easier to set up? and paper cards are apparently still a thing people actually mail to each other which seems kind of wild but also kind of cool. do i need all three or can i just pick one. also i heard you need some kind of certificate thing for LoTW which confused me even more.
sorry if this is a dumb question i just dont want to miss out on confirming contacts i've already made

so i was just spinning the dial on 10 meters around 2pm local time yesterday and all of a sudden the band just lit up out of nowhere. was working stations in South America like they were next door, S9 signals, just incredible. havnt seen 10m like that in a while honestly. solar flux has been climbing and i think we're really starting to see what solar cycle 25 can do. if you havent been checking 10m lately you might want to start poking around up there more often.
also saw some chatter on a couple of the usual sites that Icom is apparently getting ready to release something new in the mid-range HF market, something to compete with the 7300 but with some upgrades. nobody has confirmed specs yet and i dont want to spread rumors but it sounds like it might have a built in tuner improvement and better filtering. take that with a grain of salt obviously. anyone else heard anything about this or have more details?

so ive been at this morse code thing for about 3 months now and im stuck around 7-8wpm which is better than when i started but honestly feels like im running into a wall. i can copy most letters fine if the guy is sending slow but the moment anything speeds up my brain just locks up and i start missing everything and then i panic and miss more stuff.
been using the lcwo website which is pretty good i think, and ive heard about the koch method but im not sure if i should switch or just keep grinding with what im doing. also someone at my club said to listen to fast code even if you cant copy it yet, like just have it on in the background? does that actually work or is that just something people say
anyway just curious how long it took people to get from 5wpm beginner stuff up to actually being able to have a real qso at like 20wpm. feels like forever away right now

dude same boat here, got my ticket about 3 months ago and just started getting on HF after i passed general. its a whole different world down there. good luck and dont stress the callsign thing everyone fumbles it at first

Great job jumping in! Your experience with the power issue is exactly why we do these exercises. Consider getting a proper deep-cycle marine battery and a small solar panel for next year. I've been doing SET for over 20 years and still learn something new each time.

had an RSP1A for a couple years and honestly for receive-only work its hard to beat at that price point. the dynamic range is noticeably better than the dongle and HF coverage is real coverage not the direct sampling workaround. SDR++ works fine with it now, the sdrplay api driver thing was a pain maybe 2 years ago but its pretty sorted out at this point, at least on ubuntu it just works for me.
the HackRF is a different animal though. yes it transmits but the receive performance is actually worse than the RSP1A in a lot of situations, higher noise figure and only 8 bit ADC vs the RSP's 14 bit. if you genuinely dont care about transmitting i'd skip it. the one time it makes more sense is if you want to experiment with things like replay attacks or portapack stuff but thats a whole different rabbit hole. for just listening and doing ham stuff the RSP1A is the move imo

Great job jumping in! Your experience with the power issue is exactly why we do these exercises. Consider getting a proper deep-cycle marine battery and a small solar panel for next year. I've been doing SET for over 20 years and still learn something new each time.

congrats on the first activation, that runner situation sounds like it went exactly right. i remember my first one was a bike race and i stood in a field for 6 hours and literally nothing happened but i was completely exhausted afterward just from the mental alertness of waiting, which surprised me. the logging tip above is good, i do the same thing now. also making sure your battery situation is solid before a long event helps a lot, nothing worse than watching your HT drain and not having a spare when youre 4 miles from anyone.