Packet Radio

the battery thing gets everyone at least once, dont feel bad. i've been doing ARES stuff for probably 12 years now and I still remind newer folks constantly - whatever you think your runtime is, cut it in half if you're running any kind of power above the minimum. and that's before you factor in cold weather, older cells, all that. a lot of guys in our group now carry at least two spare packs and one of those USB charging banks that can top off an HT in a pinch. the waiting is real too. i always tell people at our training nets that emcomm is 90% logistics and patience and maybe 10% actual radio operating. the folks who struggle most are the ones who showed up wanting to feel like they're in a movie. the job is to be a reliable, calm presence when served agencies need you. sometimes that means a lot of sitting with a radio on your hip doing nothing, and that's actually a success if nothing went wrong. glad your first one went well. did your EC do a debrief afterward? ours always does and that's honestly where I've learned the most over the years, hearing what the served agencies actually thought of our support.

so ive been wanting to get into satellite work for a while and finally had a free weekend to give it a shot. been using gpredict for tracking and it seems solid enough, got my ft-847 set up with the rig control and everything seemed like it was talking to each other okay. pass was AO-73 i think, came over around 70 degrees elevation so should have been a good one. the problem is i could hear the linear transponder fine on the downlink, people were actually making contacts and it sounded pretty normal. but when i tried to transmit i either couldnt hear myself in the passband or i was way off and stepped on someone. i was using a fixed yagi for both uplink and downlink which i know isnt ideal but its what i have right now. my question is basically about the doppler correction - is gpredict supposed to be moving both VFOs simultaneously or do i need to set something up differently for a linear transponder vs a FM bird? i feel like i read somewhere that you have to keep your downlink frequency fixed and let the uplink chase but i might be misremembering that. any help appreciated, dont want to be that guy wrecking contacts on the bird

storm cut it short for me on my second activation too, it happens. i actually think those rushed ones are more memorable than when everything goes perfectly. also 40m EFHW in the field is kinda my go-to now, what length wire are you running? im trying to figure out if i should go 53ft or just do the full 66

so i finally got around to building a dipole for 40m after years of just using a random wire thrown over a tree. cut it to the standard 468/f formula which put me at about 66 feet total, using some 14 gauge stranded wire i had lying around from an old extension cord project (stripped it obviously). fed it with 50 ohm coax at the center with a SO-239 chassis connector i had in my junk box. anyway the swr at 7.150 is pretty good, like 1.4:1 which i can live with. but down at 7.025 it climbs to almost 2.8:1 and my tuner handles it fine but i wanted to understand why. the antenna is about 25 feet up, inverted v configuration, legs drooping down at maybe 120 degree angle between them. i read somewhere the inverted v affects things but wasnt sure how much. should i just trim or lengthen from here or is there something else going on

the Extra segments are worth it more than you'd think even if you're not a big contester. 40 meters especially, that extra slice at the bottom of the band is way less crowded during a pileup or even just on a random weekday evening. i notice the difference. as for the test i wont lie some of the op-amp and oscillator questions tripped me up the first time through but i passed on second attempt. just keep at it

so ive been running FT8 for about a year now and i get the appeal, weak signal propagation is genuinely impressive and watching spots pop up on pskreporter is kind of addicting. but i keep feeling like its not really a conversation, just an exchange and done. started poking around JS8Call because i heard it was designed more for actual back and forth communication and i set it up last weekend. my question is more about the practical side of it — like is JS8Call significantly slower for making contacts across the band or is it close to FT8 in terms of what you can work. i tried it for a few hours on 40m and heard some activity but it felt pretty sparse compared to FT8. also still not totally sure what the heartbeat thing does exactly, i read the documentation and it kind of went over my head. using a IC-7300 into a dipole up about 30 feet if that matters. also curious if anyone still runs PSK31 regularly because i fired up fldigi and found a tiny bit of activity on 20m around 14.070 but it was pretty slow going. feels like everything migrated to FT8 and left the other modes kind of empty

the veroboard layout can cause you a lot of grief too, ground loops and stuff. i built something similar a while back and spent ages chasing hum before i realized i had the audio ground return running all the way back across the board through like three other sections. star grounding made a big difference. anyway good on you for actually building it, most people just talk about it

i was in basically the exact same spot like 8 months ago lol. ended up getting the baofeng just to have something and honestly it does the job fine for repeater stuff. the chirp programming thing is kind of a pain to figure out at first but once you get it set up its fine. only thing i'd say is the stock antenna on those things isnt great, i picked up a nagoya na-771 for like 12 bucks on amazon and it made a noticeable difference on receive. eventually i want to upgrade to something better but for a first radio i dont regret it

yeah i chased you actually i think, saw a W4T spot on 40m and worked a few activators that morning. the alert thing is huge from a chaser perspective, i have an app that notifies me and if i see a summit i need for my chaser points ill make sure im near a radio. without an alert its more luck than anything. also side note — have you looked at what other summits are near you? once you do one its kind of addictive, i started doing two or three in a day sometimes if the weather cooperates and the summits are close enough to link into a single hike

yeah what he said about the daytime 40m path, thats probably a big part of it. 40 miles on 40m in the afternoon is kind of a dead zone honestly, you're too close for skip and the ground wave at that distance can be pretty weak depending on your antenna. try it again around dusk or after dark and see if that changes anything. or honestly just use winlink via telnet through the internet first just to make sure your pat install and config is good, then worry about the RF path separately. eliminates half the variables right away.

congrats on getting it done, the 857 is a great little radio for mobile. i had one in my jeep for a couple years. re the sliding mag mount -- if the roof curves at all or theres a lip near where you put it, that'll cause it to drift. some people put a thin rubber mat under the magnet to help it grip better but honestly for a permanent install just do the NMO, youll thank yourself later. the coax pinch is a real thing btw, dont ignore that

yeah i was totally lost on this same stuff when i first got my ticket. what helped me was just downloading the technician question pool and rereading the reg questions even after i passed, because some of that stuff clicks better once you actually have a radio in front of you and youre thinking about using it for real instead of just memorizing for a test lol also worth joining a local club if you havent, a lot of elmers there will just tell you straight up what you can and cant do without making you read through a wall of legal text

so ive been trying to get back into CW after a long break, probably 15 years off, and something is just not clicking. im using an old Bencher paddle into a Winkeyer USB and the dits and dahs just sound... off? like mushy or uneven. i know my fist was never great but this feels mechanical, not like a me problem. i've messed with the weight setting in the Winkeyer software a little but honestly i dont fully understand what that does. like does increasing weight make the dits longer or does it affect the spaces, i genuinely cant tell by ear. ive been practicing at around 15 wpm but maybe i should slow way down and rebuild from scratch. anyone else come back to CW after a long break and had to basically relearn everything?

this makes me a little nervous because our group is talking about doing something similar and i keep wondering if we're even ready. like how do you even start putting together a scenario? did your EC write the whole thing or did you get help from the county EOC people?

yeah JS8Call is definitely more conversational but you're right about the latency, each frame is like 15 seconds so a back and forth exchange takes a while to get going. the thing i like about it is the store and forward stuff — messages can get relayed through other stations even if you cant hear the original sender. thats actually really useful for EMCOMM scenarios or just passing traffic through a marginal path. i run it on 40 and sometimes 80 at night and activity isnt huge but its not dead either, you just have to leave it running and check back. try the JS8Call activity page online before you key up, sometimes you can see who's been spotted recently in your region. as for PSK31 honestly it still has a small but loyal following. ran into a guy on 20m doing PSK63 a few months back and we had a solid 20 minute ragchew which you just cant do with FT8. the sensitivity difference is real though, FT8 is something like 10-12dB better than PSK31 so if conditions are rough there's no contest. but when the band is open PSK31 is genuinely fun, feels more like operating than watching a grid square counter tick up.

ok so i finally passed my tech exam last month and ive been listening to the local 2m repeater for a few weeks now trying to get a feel for it before i jump in. i understand the basic concept of the offset and all that but im confused about the CTCSS tone thing. like i programmed what i thought was right into my baofeng but sometimes it sounds like im hearing people fine but when i key up nobody responds and im not sure if its because my tone is wrong or im just doing something wrong with timing or what. also i noticed sometimes people just start talking after a kerchunk and sometimes they wait for a specific beep or something. is there like a standard way people are supposed to do this or does every repeater have its own rules? i dont want to be that guy who does something annoying without knowing it.

so ive been running a standard quarter wave mag mount on the roof of my truck for 2m for like 3 years now and it works fine for local repeater stuff but i got into some weak signal work recently and started wondering if a small 3 or 4 element yagi would actually make a noticeable difference for a portable/field setup. not talking about a full contest station or anything, just occasionally taking gear out to a hilltop and trying to work some DX on SSB. the thing is i dont really want to deal with a massive antenna when im already hauling a radio and battery out somewhere. i was looking at the Arrow 3 element and also just random homebrew stuff on QRZ. does the gain difference actually translate in the real world or is it one of those things that sounds good on paper but you end up fighting with the antenna mount the whole time and wishing you just brought the whip

the TX mod on those rigs is pretty common, most service shops around here wont even blink at it. as long as youre not actually keying up out of band on air i wouldnt worry about it. mostly useful if youre doing MARS or SHARES work anyway. i havent touched my 7300 internally yet but ive been eyeing the CAT interface tweaks and some of the clock reference mods where people swap in a TCXO for better frequency stability. supposedly makes a real difference if you do any weak signal digital stuff like FT8 or JT65 where your frequency accuracy actually matters. not sure if its worth it on a rig thats already pretty stable but its on the list.

so ive had my IC-7300 for about two years now and its been rock solid, no complaints really. but ive been reading about the extended receive modification where you basically just move a couple diodes on the board and open up the receive coverage way below and above the normal ham bands. some guys on another group were saying it lets you pull in the AM broadcast band really cleanly and even some stuff up around 74 MHz which honestly sounds kinda cool for monitoring purposes. my question is whether anyone has actually done this on a 7300 specifically. i know the mod exists for a bunch of rigs but ive seen a few posts saying the 7300's front end gets kinda overloaded on the broadcast band anyway so maybe theres not much point. also wondering if it affects the warranty situation — mine is still under the extended warranty i bought from the dealer so im a little gun shy about cracking the case open. if you have done it, how hard is the disassembly? the board access looks pretty involved from the photos ive seen, not sure i want to get into that rabbit hole right now but just trying to figure out if its worth the trouble.

so ive been at this for about 4 months now and im stuck somewhere around 10-12wpm depending on the day. started with the Koch method using the G4FON trainer and it worked great getting me up to 5wpm pretty fast but now it feels like im just spinning my wheels. i can copy familiar words no problem but anything unexpected just falls apart and i end up missing whole chunks while my brain is still processing the last letter. the frustrating part is i can SEND at about 15wpm pretty comfortably, receiving is just way harder for me. been doing about 20-30 minutes a day which i know probably isnt enough but thats about all i have time for. wondering if anyone else hit this wall around the 10wpm mark and what actually helped break through it. did you just grind more hours or change what you were practicing

I switched to mostly digital last year and don't regret it. LoTW counts for ARRL awards and is much cheaper than mailing cards. Still send paper for first-time contacts with rare DX though - some ops only QSL on paper.

oh man i went through this exact thing like six months ago. the ae7q site the other guy mentioned is seriously the best tool for this, i spent way too long on the FCC site trying to figure out whats available before someone told me about it. one thing that tripped me up — i didnt realize you can only apply for calls in your own district or calls that have no district number (the ones with the zero prefix or whatever). well actually thats not totally right either, i think you can apply for any district as an extra but as a general there are more restrictions. honestly just double check that part before you get your heart set on a specific call becuase i almost applied for one i wasnt even eligible for

The AO-109 beacon has been intermittent lately. I logged it successfully at 435.651 MHz (not exactly on the published frequency) during a 78-degree pass last weekend. Try listening around ±5 kHz from the published beacon frequency.

Neither method is wrong - it's preference. Farnsworth may be easier to learn characters initially but could hamper copying at higher speeds later. Learning CW is like learning a new language - requires consistent, disciplined approach.

yeah what the other guy said is pretty much it. i'll just add that i learned this the hard way early on, i was operating right at 7.175 thinking i was fine and somebody came on and told me my signal was splashing below. wasnt intentional but still embarrassing. now i just dont go below 7.180 on phone, gives me enough cushion and i dont have to think about it. also worth downloading the ARRL band plan as a PDF and just keeping it near your radio for a while, i did that for maybe the first year i was a general and it helped a lot