Mike74

for casual FM simplex from a hilltop the X50 is honestly hard to beat just because of the convenience factor. you're already getting a big advantage from the elevation itself and a collinear with its omnidirectional pattern means you dont have to think about aiming. i used to do the same thing with a 5el yagi and eventually just stopped bringing it because i was spending more time fussing with the mast than actually operating. now if you start getting into weak signal SSB or you're trying to hit a specific distant repeater then yeah the yagi starts making more sense. but for what you're describing i think youre right that its overkill. the gain numbers look impressive on paper but a lot of that advantage disappears when you factor in the overhead of actually using the thing in field conditions. stick with the collinear and save the yagi for when you actually need the directionality not just the gain

congrats on your first activation man, 10 contacts at QRP is nothing to sneeze at, especially if conditions weren't great. the pile management thing gets easier with practice, what helped me early on was just slowing down and really committing to one call at a time instead of panicking and trying to grab whoever i could hear. a lot of activators do the tail-end technique where you just listen for the last bit of a callsign and work from there. for the P2P thing yeah it counts as a qualifying contact on both ends so its worth keeping an eye on the spots page while youre out if you can manage it. i usually have the POTA website open on my phone on one side and my logging app on the other. hamrs or fast log entry work pretty well for field logging if you want to ditch the paper, saved me a lot of headache on uploads. dont stress too much about the errors on the first one, the system is pretty forgiving and you can always add a note when you submit.

I use both Morse Trainer from Wolphi and Koch Morse Trainer Pro from Bit Ninja - both offer variable character speed, word speed, Farnsworth spacing, and custom character sets. Morse Trainer's ability to read user-generated text files is invaluable - you can practice with comma-separated word lists played randomly.

Check your CI-V settings in the radio - make sure CI-V Transceive is ON and baud rate matches DM780 (usually 19200). Also verify the FSK keying is set to RTTY-R in the RTTY menu. The 7300 can be finicky about FSK timing with some software.

so ive been trying to get Winlink working for a few weeks now and i think im close but something isnt clicking with the gateway side of things. been running Vara FM on my 2m setup and can connect to a local RMS gateway just fine, messages go out, great. but now i want to run my own RMS gateway for our ARES group and i cant figure out if i need to be running RMS Relay or just Winlink Express configured as a gateway — the docs are kind of all over the place depending on which version theyre talking about. my setup is a kenwood TM-V71A into a signalink, running on a pi 4 at the club station. i got VARA FM licensed. the gateway would mostly be for local traffic and passing messages during exercises when internet is sketchy. do i need a separate callsign for the gateway or can it just be my call with a -10 or whatever? and how does the message store-and-forward actually work if the gateway itself doesnt have internet — does it just hold traffic until a connected node picks it up or what any help appreciated, been lurking here long enough i figured id just ask

so ive been chasing SOTA for about 8 months now and finally decided to actually get off my butt and do an activation. picked a W6 summit thats only rated P1 so i figured it cant be too bad for a first time. done the hike before without radio gear so i know the terrain but obviously now im lugging stuff up there and its a different story. my plan is to bring the KX2 with a 40m link dipole, maybe 20m too depending on conditions. lithium battery pack, the whole deal. i know you need 4 QSOs to qualify but im not sure how realistic that is if i cant get spotted on SOTAwatch. do you just call CQ blind and hope someone hears you or is there a way to self spot without cell service up there? the summit im doing is kinda in a dead zone for AT&T at least. i have a friend who said he could spot me if i text him my freq but thats kind of a pain. anyway just wanted to see if anyone had tips or experience with low-cell-service summits

Honda EU2200i is the gold standard for ham radio applications. Yes, it's expensive, but the RFI is minimal compared to cheaper units. Run your radio through a deep cycle marine battery and use the generator to charge the battery if you must use a noisy generator.

yeah what he said about the activation zone, i got burned on that my second time out because i just assumed the whole top of the hill counted. also dont forget to actually log the time in UTC not local, i submitted my first log and had to go back and fix all the times which was annoying. other than that just enjoy it, the chasers are super friendly and a lot of them will give you a signal report and a little encouragement if they know its your first one. just mention it on air

so ive been chasing DX pretty seriously for the last couple years and i keep running into the same frustrations with pileups. figured id share some stuff thats actually worked for me and maybe get some other opinions because honestly a lot of what gets repeated on forums seems like it either doesnt help or actively makes things worse for everyone. the biggest thing i noticed is that timing matters way more than power. i run about 500w into a 4el yagi on 15m and theres plenty of guys with legal limit amps who are invisible to the DX station while im getting through. you gotta listen to how the DX op is working the pile — are they going by call areas, by suffix, listening up 5, split across a range — and then just be in the right place at the right time instead of just hammering away constantly. the other thing that kills me is guys who clearly havent listened to find out where the dx is listening and just transmit right on the dx stations frequency. like i watched a 3B9 operation get absolutely wrecked on 40m last month because of that. the op eventually had to QSY and even then people followed him onto the wrong vfo. anyone else have techniques that actually work? partial calls, tail-ending, specific split strategies? curious what works in actual practice not just theory

that pattern — full power cold, dropping after warmup, worse on digital — that screams bias drift to me. the 7300 uses a temperature compensated bias circuit for the finals but if one of those compensation components is getting flaky it wont track properly and the transistors end up running out of their linear region as things heat up. ALC going weird is consistent with that too because the radio is trying to compensate for something upstream. before you go digging into the PA board id check if icom has any service bulletins on this, i vaguely remember something about a batch of units having issues around the bias network but dont quote me on that. if you do get into it, the thing to measure is quiescent current on the finals when cold vs after it starts acting up. if theres a big swing thats your smoking gun. the service manual should have a table for what those values should be, the alignment procedure walks you through it even if the language is a bit dense. its not as scary as it looks once you have a DMM in there.

Nice, jealous of the clean install honestly. I still have my radio kind of just sitting on the passenger seat which has been "temporary" for about a year now lol. I did a lip mount on my last car and it worked okay for hitting local repeaters but i always felt like i was getting out better in some directions than others, maybe that was just in my head though. Anyway good luck with the 70cm side, curious what SWR you get there.

I rotate between DXwatch and DXSummit depending on what I'm looking for. DX Summit by OH8X has been a reliable source of current and historical DX activity for many years, which is great for researching propagation patterns. DXwatch's filtering is more modern though.

so ive been kicking around getting a vanity call since i got my general about 6 months ago. my current call is ok i guess but not really memorable and kinda long. been looking at the uls and seeing what might be available but man there's so many options i dont even know where to start. plus i heard the wait times are pretty long right now? anyone gone through this recently and can share what the process was like. also do you actually use your vanity call or do people still just use your original sometimes

so ive been a tech for about two years now and mostly been doing 2m/70cm stuff, some APRS, helped out with a couple public service events. its been fun but honestly i feel like im kind of hitting a ceiling with what i can do locally and ive been wanting to get on HF for a while now. my buddy keeps telling me to just go take the general exam already. my question is kind of all over the place so bear with me. the general pool feels like a big jump from the tech stuff, especially all the electrical stuff and the propagation questions. im using hamstudy.org which seems decent but some of the questions i feel like im just memorizing the answer without really understanding why its the answer, like some of the impedance matching stuff and the formula questions. is that okay or is it gonna bite me later when im actually operating. also what actually opens up when you pass, like i know its HF but can someone give me a real world sense of what changes. and do i need new gear right away or can i do anything with what i have

so ive been doing contests pretty seriously for the past couple years, mostly single op on 40 and 20, running a K3 into a hexbeam and a verticals for the low bands. been placing pretty well in my category but i keep hitting this wall around the 800-900 QSO mark in a 24 hour contest and watching guys with similar antennas posting 1200+ and i'm pretty sure a lot of them are doing SO2R. i get the basic concept, you're listening on one radio while transmitting on another, hunting mults or S&P while you run a frequency. but the actual implementation seems like kind of a nightmare. ive read about needing good antenna isolation, separate antennas ideally, bandpass filters, the whole thing. i currently only have one radio but i could pick up a used K2 or maybe an IC-7300 as a second rig without breaking the bank. my actual question is whether the SO2R setup is even worth the effort and cost if you're not going to put in the time to really drill the technique. i feel like there's probably still a lot of optimization i could do on pure single radio operation before going down that rabbit hole. like my S&P to run ratio is probably not great and i know my logging macros could be tighter. does anyone have a sense of where the real rate gains come from for someone at my level

Absolutely jump in! Even a few hours on the air will teach you something, and this is how the next generation learns what makes contesting special. Your IC-7300 and dipole will work great - start on 20M during the day and try 40M at night.

so ive been licensed for about 8 years now and mostly do HF but ive always had this thing about EME in the back of my head. started reading about it more seriously last month and honestly the rabbit hole goes way deeper than i expected. im on 2m right now with a pretty decent station, running about 400w to a 9el yagi which i know is nowhere near enough for traditional EME but ive been reading about the JT65B stuff and people saying you can work it with modest setups now. my main question is really about antennas. i keep seeing people running 4x17el arrays or bigger and then others saying they got their first EME contact with a single long yagi. is the single yagi route actually realistic or is that just people being optimistic online. i have a decent sized yard but my neighbor situation is complicated so a big array might be a problem. also curious what kind of LNA people are actually running at the feedpoint, ive seen the Kuhne stuff mentioned a lot.

congrats on getting out there, park activations are addictive once you start. to your question about efficiency — yeah it actually does matter, not just in a hand-wavy way. a dedicated QRP rig like the KX2 is designed from the ground up to be efficient at low power, the PA stage is tuned for that range so you're not losing a bunch of energy as heat trying to throttle down a 100w final that wants to run hot. when you turn a big rig down to 5w you're still running current through components sized for way more power, so the efficiency at that level is genuinely worse. not catastrophically worse but if you're on battery power it adds up fast over a few hours. as for the antenna question, the physics dont really change with power level — a resonant antenna is a resonant antenna. but practically speaking with QRP every single dB matters way more, so a bad SWR situation that youd barely notice at 100w can really hurt you at 5w. i'd put most of your effort into antenna placement and getting it as resonant as possible rather than worrying about any QRP-specific matching tricks. a good random wire with an ATU works fine but a resonant half wave for your target band is noticeably better in my experience.

yeah what he said about the 1x2 calls being Extra class only — thats the thing that got me too. I upgraded specifically partly because I wanted a shorter call, not gonna lie. went through the whole process last year and ended up with a 1x2 that I really like. totally worth it if you're planning to upgrade anyway. one thing i'll add is theres a site called AE7Q.com or something like that, maybe slightly different url, but it has this really good vanity call availability tracker and you can see which calls are available, which ones are in a cooldown period after the previous holder went silent key, all that stuff. way easier than trying to parse the FCC database directly. I spent like an hour on there just browsing before I decided what to apply for

I've been considering upgrading to an IC-7300 for my base station, but I keep reading about the overshoot issue when paired with amplifiers. The only problem with the 7300 is the overshoot issue, and unless you're using it with an amp, it really doesn't matter. Since I plan to add an Acom 1000 in the future, I'm wondering if any of you have practical experience with this combination. Has anyone found effective workarounds? I've seen mention of sequencers and modified keying circuits, but would appreciate hearing from operators who've actually dealt with this in their shacks.

so ive been licensed for about 6 years now, mostly HF stuff, some weak signal VHF when conditions are good, but ive always been kind of fascinated by EME. watched a bunch of videos, read a few articles, and i think i want to at least try it seriously. problem is every time i start digging into the requirements i end up more confused than when i started. from what i understand you basically need a big antenna, a low noise preamp right at the feedpoint, and a decent amount of power. running JT65 seems like the way most people do it these days on 2m which makes sense given the path loss is something insane like 250+ dB. but ive seen people say you can do it with a single yagi which seems hard to believe and also seen guys with 4 or 8 yagi arrays who still have trouble making contacts. so whats the realistic minimum setup here? im on a suburban lot, have room for maybe a 12-15 element yagi if i can convince my wife the mast isnt going to fall on the house. running about 500w at the feedline. is that even worth trying or am i just going to be decoding signals i can never work? also curious what the activity windows look like, i know moon position matters but how often are there actually other stations on, is there kind of a schedule people follow or is it more random than HF

oh man yes, 13wpm was my wall for like four or five months and i almost gave up on CW entirely. what finally worked for me was stopping the LCWO random character drills for a while and switching to actually copying real QSOs off the air, just listening even if i couldnt get everything. your brain starts learning the rhythm of how people actually send instead of perfectly timed computer characters. W1AW slow speed practice is good for this, they post the text ahead of time so you can check yourself after. also someone told me to bump my character speed way up, like set characters to 20wpm but keep the farnsworth spacing slower so your ear learns what fast characters actually sound like. when you eventually close the gap it feels more natural. took me a few weeks of that before 15wpm started clicking. you'll get there, the plateau is super normal from what ive seen

Don't worry about being perfect on your first try! Always listen before transmitting and ask if the repeater is in use first. Keep a notepad handy to jot down callsigns as they check in - it saves scrambling later.

almost certainly your wall wart. those switching supplies are terrible for sensitive receiver front ends, even the regulated ones. the NE602 is actually pretty sensitive to supply noise and a cheap wall wart is going to dump ripple right into the audio. try a battery, just clip a fresh 9v on there and see if the hum disappears. if it does, you know exactly where to look. you can build a simple LC filter on the supply rail if you want to stick with the wall wart eventually, or even just a 78L08 regulator with good bypass caps will clean things up a lot. also worth checking if the hum changes when you pick up the board or move it around — sometimes its just a ground loop between the audio stage and the input side and rearranging the layout helps. direct conversion receivers are notoriously picky about layout.

so ive been running a end-fed halfwave on 40 for about a year now and its fine i guess but i keep reading that a proper dipole is supposed to be noticeably better and i cant tell if thats actually true or if its just the usual antenna religion stuff you see online. my situation is i have a pretty small suburban lot, maybe 60 feet of usable horizontal space if i angle it a bit so a full size 40m dipole would need to be bent into an inverted-v or something which i've done before on other bands but never 40. the alternative i've been kicking around is a vertical with some radials, i've got room to put one in the back corner of the yard and lay out maybe 8-10 radials without my wife noticing too much. i know verticals have a lower angle of radiation which is supposed to be good for dx but i'm mainly working stateside so i'm not sure that even matters for my use case. anybody run both and actually compared them? not looking for theoretical stuff just real world impressions. does the vertical on 40 actually sound as noisy as people say or is that overblown