David Kim

this is really interesting to read, im still fairly new and just joined our local ARES group a few months ago so i havent been through a full exercise yet. my first one is coming up in the spring i think. kind of nervous about the message handling stuff because i've been reading about it but haven't actually done it for real under any kind of pressure. is there a good way to practice that on your own or does it really just have to be with the group? i've been on the local traffic net a few times but those feel pretty low stakes compared to what you're describing.

so i've been wanting to get my tech license for a while now and i finally downloaded the question pool pdf from the arrl website but honestly i'm just kind of staring at it and dont know where to start. there's like 400+ questions and some of the electrical stuff i haven't thought about since high school which was... a long time ago lol. a friend told me to just memorize the answers without really understanding them but that feels wrong? like i want to actually know what im doing when i get on the air eventually. is there a study guide that actually explains the why behind things or should i just grind through hamstudy or whatever. also how long did it take most of you to feel ready, i dont want to schedule the exam and embarrass myself

congrats on taking the leap, activating is so much more fun than just chasing. to answer your questions - posting an alert the night before or morning of is really good practice because chasers actually plan their day around alerts, some of them have like 20 countries on their list and they're watching sotawatch constantly. you dont HAVE to alert but you'll get way more contacts if you do, especially on a weekday when band activity is lower. for the reference you only need to note it once in your log, not every single QSO. just make sure your sotadata submission has the right reference when you upload. the site will sort it out. and yeah spot yourself as soon as you get a frequency, a lot of activators use the SOTA Spotter app which makes it pretty easy from your phone if you have any signal up there. some summits have terrible cell coverage so download the offline version or have a backup plan. W4T/SU area is nice, done a couple up there. have fun and dont stress too much, even if something goes wrong you'll learn a ton and want to do another one the next week

honestly i gave up trying to do it manually after like three passes of chasing my own tail. got gpredict connected to the radio over CAT and it was like a completely different experience. the doppler tracking isnt perfect but its close enough that you can actually have a qso instead of just tuning around the whole time. the arrow handheld setup is totally workable btw, ive made plenty of contacts with one, just gotta nail the elevation angles and not block yourself with your own body which sounds obvious but yeah.

the lip mount route is probably your best bet if you dont want to drill. ive got one on my corolla using a trunk lip mount from Comet and it works pretty well. the ground plane isnt perfect compared to a true roof mount but for everyday repeater work and local simplex you really wont notice much difference. the main thing is making sure the mount itself has solid contact with the body and that your coax routing doesnt have any sharp bends near the connector. what antenna are you running on that mag mount? if its one of those cheap little stubby ones that came packaged with something that might actually be more of your problem than the location. switching to a decent 5/8 wave like a Diamond NR770H or similar made a noticeable difference for me even before i sorted out my mount situation.

yeah what he said about LoTW is spot on. one thing i'll add — dont sleep on 40m for WAS especially in the evenings, the continental states come in really well and even with an end-fed you should be able to work most of them without too much hassle. Alaska and Hawaii are the ones people always get stuck on for WAS, just gotta be patient and check the DX clusters when there's activity. also just a heads up the ARRL DXCC list and the entity count has some quirks — like some places you'd think are the same country count as separate entities for historical reasons. it gets kinda nerdy but in a good way once you start getting into it

congrats on the first activation, 47 QSOs is a solid start especially if you were mostly on 40m. the unactivated status thing can take a while to update, i think WWFF Logsearch processes things in batches and sometimes it takes up to a week or even a bit longer depending on who's doing the admin for your national program. did you get a confirmation email after the upload? if you did you're probably fine and just need to wait it out. the one thing i'd double check is whether the WWFF reference number is correctly embedded in your ADIF file. HAMRS should handle it but i've heard of cases where the SIG and SIG_INFO fields dont get populated properly which means the system doesnt know which reference to credit the activation to. if you open the ADIF in a text editor you should see something like SIG:WWFF and SIG_INFO:your reference number on each QSO record. if those are missing that might be why its not showing up.

congrats on the ticket. okay so the UV-5R thing is complicated -- its not that theyre bad radios exactly, its more that the stock ones can be a little out of spec on TX and the firmware is clunky, and if youre just starting out programming it without CHIRP can be a real headache. that said plenty of people run them fine for years. if budget is tight its hard to argue with 25 bucks. but if you can hit that 100-150 range honestly look hard at the Yaesu FT-65R, its basically a refreshed version of the FT-60 your club guy mentioned and its built like a tank. i dropped mine off a tailgate onto asphalt last summer and it still works fine. the receive audio is noticeably better than the chinese radios ive tried and it programs pretty easily. the dual band coverage is solid for hitting most repeaters you'll find. the FT-60R is older yeah but theyre still making the 65R and parts support from Yaesu is way better if something goes wrong down the road. at your stage i wouldnt overthink it too much, almost any of these will get you on the air and thats the main thing

so ive been trying to work some of the pacific stations that have been coming through lately but man these pileups are just crazy. im running 100w to a dipole and i can hear the dx fine but they never seem to hear me back. tried calling on their frequency and also split but no luck. any tricks you guys use? maybe im just not being patient enough but after 45 minutes of calling the same station i start to wonder if im doing something wrong