Packet Radio

ok so i just upgraded to general last month and im trying to figure out where i can actually transmit on 40 meters. i know there are the fcc allocations and then theres also like... the ARRL band plan? and theyre not the same thing? i was listening around 7.150 and heard a bunch of phone traffic and jumped in but then someone told me that frequency is kind of reserved for something or im too close to the band edge or something idk. i really dont want to cause interference or step on anything i shouldnt be on. is there like one definitive place to look this up or do i just have to memorize it

just got my technician last month and i dont really understand what an Es opening is yet, can someone explain? like is that just when the band is more active than usual or is it a specific weather thing? im trying to learn all this propagation stuff and it feels like theres a lot to take in at once lol

so i finally did my first ever POTA activation yesterday at a state park about 45 minutes from my house. been meaning to do it for like six months and just kept putting it off. anyway i packed up my KX2 and a 40m end fed halfwave, threw my camp chair in the car and headed out. got there and realized i had forgotten the counterpoise wire at home. just... left it sitting on my workbench. spent like 20 minutes trying to figure out if i could make something work with what i had, ended up stripping some wire from my jump kit in the car which was probably not ideal but hey. SWR was ugly but the internal tuner in the KX2 dealt with it well enough. made 12 contacts in about an hour on 40m SSB, mostly guys who spotted me on the POTA app. activation counts so technically a success but man i need a better pre-departure checklist or something. anyone else have a disaster first activation story

congrats on the first one, 12 contacts is solid especially if you were running QRP. on the pileup thing, yeah thats just part of it honestly, you dont need to go back and chase down callers you missed. if they really want the contact theyll call again. most chasers know the deal and wont take it personally, they do this every weekend. the early spotting thing is pretty much just courtesy so chasers can plan ahead, especially the ones chasing from home who might need to swap antennas or whatever. i usually try to spot about 10 minutes before i expect to actually be on the air but honestly 5 minutes is fine. some guys spot way too early and then end up late and people are sitting there waiting on a dead frequency, thats more annoying than anything. on the missed callsign situation, you did the right thing. if you cant copy after a couple tries just move on, the log integrity matters more than making everyone happy. the /QRP suffix doesnt mean anything for your log anyway, its just for their own S2S or activator bonus tracking on their end.

yeah the latency thing is real and it never fully goes away but you do adapt, at least i did. im running a remote setup thats been going about two years now, not RemoteHams specifically — i built mine around a Raspberry Pi with hamlib and a separate audio stream, kind of janky but it works. the trick for me was getting a wired ethernet connection on both ends, wifi on either side makes it noticeably worse. also QoS on the router to prioritize the audio packets, that helped a lot more than i expected. on the RemoteHams direct vs relay question, i believe you can request a direct connection if both ends support it but youre right that it depends on the NAT situation at the remote end. if hes behind a typical ISP router it might fall back to relay anyway. the SDR integration is genuinely one of the nicer parts of that software though, being able to see whats happening on the band without waiting for the rig to sweep is underrated for remote use. for SSB DX its still awkward but for contests where youre search and pounce it actually kind of works once you get used to the rhythm of it.

maybe its just me but ive been spinning the dial on 40m most evenings this week and its like a ghost town compared to even a few months ago. used to be i could always find somebody ragchewing around 7.250 or so but lately nothing. caught a few guys working some dx around 7.1 but thats about it. wondering if its band conditions or just people drifting off to ft8 or whatever. not complaining about digital modes but i do miss just hearing people talk. anyway if anyones on 40 in the evenings around 8 or 9 eastern give a shout

so i finally stopped putting it off and drove up to a local summit last weekend, nothing crazy just a 2 point hill about 45 min from the house. threw the kx2 in a pack with a 49:1 unun and about 30 feet of wire and just kind of winged it. set up the wire as a sloper off a tree branch and honestly it worked way better than i expected. got my 4 contacts in like 20 minutes on 20m and then just kept going for another hour because why not. ended up with 14 qsos total which felt pretty good for a random tuesday morning. the hardest part was finding a decent spot to set up where i wasnt in the middle of the hiking trail. think im hooked now, already looking at the next closest summit

I've run vertical dipoles for years at my QTH. Yes, vertical 1/2 wave dipoles are always better than a 1/4-wave ground-plane, even with an excellent ground radial system. The key is getting that center point up high - at least 1/4 wave if possible. It's because the lower element is also a radiator (doubling the signal aperture), whereas any 1/4-wave ground-plane is just simulating the missing lower element for matching purposes.

the LM386 is notorious for this honestly. it wants to oscillate at the drop of a hat especially when you have any gain set on pins 1 and 8. what value do you have across those pins right now? if youre running the full 200x gain thats almost certainly your problem with the motorboating. try pulling whatever is between pins 1 and 8 and just leave them floating for the 20dB gain setting, itll be quieter even if a bit low on volume. the hum though, in my experience with direct conversion builds, is almost always either the VFO leaking or just plain power supply noise. the 78L05 is fine in theory but whats upstream of it? if youre running off a wall wart without much filtering that hum is going to get in everywhere. ive had luck putting a big electrolytic like 1000uf right at the power input and then another 100uf after any regulators. also make sure your ground returns are all going back to one point rather than daisy chaining across the board, ground loops on perfboard builds will kill you.

so ive been trying to get back into cw after like 15 years away and got this new keyer from a hamfest but something weird is happening. when i squeeze the paddle for a dah it keeps sending dits instead. tried swapping the leads but that just makes the dit side send dahs. the keyer is some generic thing, no markings on it really. anybody run into this before? im using it with my ic-7300 if that matters. getting frustrated because i can barely remember the code as it is without this thing fighting me

so ive been trying to figure out the best setup for when i do portable/sota style stuff on 2m and 70cm and i keep going back and forth on this. right now i have a decent 5 element yagi for 2m that i built from a design i found a few years back, works great, but obviously nothing for 70cm except my rubber duck which is basically useless above like a mile or two. been looking at those dual band yagis where they interleave the elements for both bands on the same boom. the M2 LEO pack comes up a lot and ive seen the cheap chinese knockoffs on ebay too. my question is whether the compromise you make on both bands by doing the dual band thing is actually noticeable in practice or if its one of those things that only matters on paper. i mostly do satellite work and some local rag chews when im up on a summit, not contesting or anything super serious. also debating whether i should just pack both antennas and deal with the extra weight/setup time. theyre not that heavy individually but when youre hiking a few miles it starts to add up. anyone actually use one of these dual band yagis regularly and have thoughts?