HF Hunter

the N1MM keying config matters a lot more than people think for SO2R. make sure your focus follows PTT is set correctly otherwise you get that weird half-second lag where the software doesnt know which radio is active and you get the wrong audio in your ear at the wrong moment. drove me nuts for two contests before i figured that out. also if you arent using headphone audio switching so each radio goes to a different ear that alone will help massively. running mono audio on SO2R is kind of brutal for your brain because you cant spatially separate what youre hearing

yeah what he said about ssb and the edge is important, took me forever to understand that the dial frequency isnt where all your signal energy is. on USB you're transmitting above the carrier so 7.300 on the dial means youre already tickling the edge or past it. i usually dont go above like 7.297 or so just to give myself room. also just be aware 40m is a shared band so below 7.200 you'll run into foreign broadcast stations at night, not much you can do about it but dont be surprised

the JT65 thing is real, not overhyped. i made my first EME QSO with a single 9el M2 yagi and about 200w into it, IC-910H at the time. it works but you are definitely at the weak end of things - you'll be calling the big guns and not the other way around, and youll miss a lot of contacts just because the geometry doesnt line up right when the moon is at a bad elevation angle with a 9700 you should be fine radio wise, that thing has a solid receiver and the built in SDR functionality helps. i'd say shoot for at least a 17 or 19 element yagi if you can, the difference in gain between say a 13el and a 19el is enough to matter when youre already link-budget limited. and yes absolutely do the mast mounted preamp, that's probably the single most important thing you can do besides the antenna itself, every tenth of a dB of feedline loss between the antenna and first amplifier hurts you on receive for tracking honestly most people i know running modest setups use a yaesu G-5500 with one of the various PC control interfaces. not perfect mechanically but it gets the job done and the software side is well supported. there's also the EA4TX stuff which i've heard good things about. full EME tracking software like MoonSked or just using WSJT-X which has tracking built in now sort of

Don't worry about it, first drill is always a bit overwhelming but everyone's super helpful. Usually we do some message traffic practice, maybe a net, sometimes they throw in a scenario like simulating power outage or something. Bring a pen and paper for logging, maybe a snack if its a long one. Our group goes for about 2 hours. The main thing is just listen and learn, nobody expects you to be perfect right away.

I went the HackRF route instead of SDRplay and kind of regret it for pure receive work. the HackRF is great if you need to transmit or do wideband stuff but the receive sensitivity is mediocre compared to a dedicated rx-only SDR. for just monitoring HF the SDRplay or even an Airspy HF+ would eat it alive. just something to consider if you see the HackRF pop up used and think its a good deal for the money, depends what you want to do with it.

honestly you probably are overthinking it a little but thats fine, we all do it. here's my take after running both setups over the years — at 35 feet an inverted V on 40m is not a bad antenna at all. yeah the takeoff angle is higher than a vertical but for 40m that actually works pretty well for regional contacts and even decent dx once the band opens up. the practical difference between a low vertical and a low inverted V is often smaller than the theory makes it sound, especially if your radial system isnt great. and thats the thing about the vertical — the radials really do matter a lot. a quarter wave vertical with only 8 or 10 short radials can actually perform worse than your inverted V depending on soil conditions. 16 is a reasonable starting point but theyre most effective if theyre close to a quarter wave long themselves. if you dont have room for decent radials the dipole is probably the safer bet to just get on the air and start making contacts. if i were in your situation id just throw up the inverted V first, its cheap and fast, and see how it plays. you can always add a vertical later and do a real world comparison. all the modeling in the world doesnt beat actually listening to the difference from your own location.

so i finally passed my technician exam after studying for like 3 weeks and honestly i was terrified to key up for the first time. my uncle is W5 something and he lent me his old Yaesu FT-60 handheld and just told me to find a local repeater and go for it. i sat there for probably 20 minutes just listening before i finally worked up the nerve to say my callsign and ask if the frequency was in use some guy came back to me right away, a retired teacher from like 40 miles away, and we talked for maybe 10 minutes about how i got into the hobby and he gave me a bunch of advice about getting an HF rig eventually. it was honestly way less scary than i thought it would be. anyway just wanted to share because ive been lurking here for months and everyone seemed really welcoming so figured id finally post

nice work. paper logging in the field is underrated honestly, i still do it sometimes even though i have the app. easier to just write fast when the pile is moving. did you find 40m stayed open the whole time or did you have to hop bands at all? i usually bring a simple 20m setup too just in case propagation is doing weird things

yeah messaging in APRS is a bit different from just beaconing, the path stuff matters a lot more. one thing to check — are you connecting through an igate that has two-way capability? a lot of igates are receive-only, meaning they'll pull your position off RF and push it to the internet but they wont pass messages back down to RF from APRS-IS. you need a two-way or tx-igate near you for that return path to work. go to aprs.fi and search for igates in your area, the ones with a little different icon or you can dig into the raw data to see if they're tx enabled. if theres no two-way igate within range of the station youre trying to reach thats probably your problem right there. the tracking working fine makes sense because thats just RF -> internet, one direction is easy.

Don't set up VARA FM on a popular packet channel! Traditional KISS drivers have timing issues with RMS Packet default settings causing collisions, while AGWPE driver works better despite more complex setup. Run dual-mode if you want both protocols.

so ive been licensed for about 8 months now and i keep seeing people talk about CQ WW and Field Day and SOTA and honestly it all kind of blurs together for me. like i know Field Day is a big deal, my local club did one and i showed up for a few hours but mostly just watched because i didnt really know what i was doing. and then someone mentioned CQ WW is coming up and said i should try it but i dont even know if my station is good enough or if theres like a minimum skill level you need. im running a Kenwood TS-590SG into a 40m dipole in my attic which i know isnt ideal but its what i got. would i just be embarrassing myself trying to jump into something like CQ WW or is it actually okay for newer folks to just get on and try? also whats the difference between the SSB and CW weekends, do i need to be able to copy CW to participate in the CW one or can i just listen around also SOTA looks really fun but thats a whole different thing right, not really a contest per se more like an award program? anyway if anyone has advice on which of these i should actually try first id appreciate it

Made the switch to Bioenno 40Ah LiFePO4 last year after decades with AGM. You'll get about 90% usable capacity vs 50% with AGM, so a 30Ah LiFePO4 actually gives you more runtime than your 35Ah AGM. Plus voltage stays rock solid until nearly empty - no more power drops during transmit peaks.