The DXer

for what its worth i ran almost exactly that setup at a SET last fall, eu2200i plus a 7300, efhw up in a tree with a 64:1 unun. had no real complaints on the generator noise front but i was only on 20 and 15 so maybe wouldnt have noticed on 40. the sloped field thing might actually help you with the EFHW, those things love a bit of elevation at the feedpoint end if you can manage it.

yeah what he said about the PTT, thats almost always the problem when i see people having this issue. also worth checking — some gateways that show up in the channel selector are actually offline or the sysop hasnt been running it lately. the map on winlink.org shows last heard times i think, might be worth looking at that before you spend hours debugging on a dead gateway. try a couple different ones if you can hit them on simplex. one thing that helped me when i was learning this stuff was just joining a local ARES net that uses winlink, because then you have people who can actually tell you if they received your test message or not. kinda hard to know if its working otherwise unless you're emailing yourself through a different path

so ive been licensed for about 6 years now and done a fair bit of HF stuff, some VHF contesting here and there, but EME has always been this thing in the back of my mind that seemed way out of reach. lately ive been going down the rabbit hole of reading about it and watching some videos and i think i actually want to give it a serious shot on 2m. my main confusion right now is the antenna requirements. i keep seeing people say you can do it with a single yagi and JT65 these days which sounds almost too good to be true, but then other posts im reading from like 2010 say you need a big array. is the single yagi thing actually viable or are you just going to hear nothing and work nothing. i have room for maybe a 10-12 element yagi on an az-el mount which i could probably build or source, and my current radio is an IC-9700 which ive seen mentioned a lot for this. also the low noise preamp situation confuses me a bit, i understand the concept but im not sure where to put it exactly, like is it at the feedpoint or in the shack, and does it need to be relay switched for transmit or what. sorry if this is a basic question im just trying to figure out if this is realistic before i sink a lot of time into it.

yeah the difference is pretty real honestly, especially on HF. with the RTL-SDR and an upconverter you're fighting the noise floor the whole time and any strong broadcast station nearby just trashes everything around it. the RSP1A has actual preselection and the ADC is a huge step up — 12 bit vs the 8 bit in the RTL dongle. on paper that sounds like just a number but when you actually try to copy a weak signal while some 500kW AM station is sitting two MHz away you'll feel the difference. i ran both side by side for a while with the same antenna and the RSP1A just pulled things out of the noise that were totally invisible on the dongle. WSPR decoding specifically got noticeably better for me. SDRuno is their own software and its a bit clunky to learn but it works, and it does run in SDR# too with the plugin so you dont have to change your whole workflow. for pure receive with no TX plans the RSP1A is probably the sweet spot. HackRF is cool but the receive performance is actually not as good as the RSP1A in most comparisons ive seen, its better known as a learning tool and for TX experiments.

so ive been a General for about two years now and i keep going back and forth on whether to bother with the Amateur Extra exam. like i get that you get the full HF privileges and all that but honestly im not sure how much of the theory stuff i'd actually use day to day. i mean i already work 40m pretty regularly and cant really tell what bands im missing out on except maybe some of the 75m phone segments and a tiny slice of 20m near the bottom. the math on the Extra exam looks pretty rough from what ive seen, like filter design and transmission line stuff and some of the RF propagation equations. is that the kind of thing you actually have to understand or can you just memorize enough to pass and move on. not trying to be lazy about it just wondering if people who have the Extra actually use any of that knowledge or if it just sits there also does the exam cost the same as the others or is it different now with the FCC fees and the VE session fees on top

Ham Radio Deluxe worked great for our county fair special event, but make sure you set up the networking properly beforehand. We had three stations running simultaneously with zero issues once configured correctly.

LoTW confirmations absolutely count for DXCC, thats been the case for years now and honestly most serious DXers have moved almost entirely to LoTW. if both you and the other station uploaded the contact and it matched, thats a valid confirmation for credit purposes — no paper card needed. the ARRL actually prefers LoTW submissions now when you apply. for WAS and WAZ it works similarly in that LoTW handles confirmations for those too, but they are separate award programs with their own rules. WAZ is through CQ magazine not ARRL so thats a whole different submission process — you still need to deal with CQ directly and last i checked they accept LoTW confirmations but you have to request the credits through their system specifically. WAZ also has different zone requirements obviously so dont mix up your entity counts with zone counts, ive seen newer guys get confused about that. short answer: stop sending paper cards to stations who upload to LoTW, youre wasting stamps. save the paper card hustle for stations that dont use LoTW at all, which is still a fair number of DX ops unfortunately.

yeah gpredict with hamlib to the 818 is basically the standard setup so thats not your issue. one thing i'll mention is that the 818 split mode behavior can be a little weird when hamlib is driving it depending on which version you're running, i had an issue a while back where the vfo tracking wasnt doing what i thought it was doing and i spent like two whole passes confused. might be worth confirming with a known signal on the downlink that your rx doppler is actually tracking right before blaming everything else.

okay so ive been interested in ham radio for a while now, like years actually, but i kept putting it off because i thought it was gonna be this huge complicated thing. my neighbor has like a tower in his backyard and we got to talking and he made it sound way more approachable than i expected. anyway im finally doing it but i dont really know where to begin. like do i need to take a class or can i just study on my own? and how hard is the technician exam actually? i took a practice test online and got maybe 60% which i know is not great but i just found it randomly and didnt study at all before clicking. also how long does it take most people to feel ready?

oh wow i didnt know about the POTA national parks thing, im pretty new to all that -- only activated two parks so far but i really love it. do you have a link or do i just check the parks on the air dot com website? also what frequencies do people usually hang around for that kind of event, is it just whatever or are there suggested spots. sorry for all the questions just trying to figure it all out still

ok so i passed my technician like 6 weeks ago and ive been lurking on the local 2m repeater mostly, jumping in on the tuesday night net here and there. but i keep second-guessing myself on the ID rules and i dont want to embarrass myself by doing it wrong on air. like i know you have to give your callsign every 10 minutes and at the end of a transmission but what counts as the end? if im having a back and forth conversation with someone do i have to ID every single exchange or just every 10 minutes? and at nets specifically the net control usually says your call when they pass it to you, do you still have to give yours at the start of your reply or is that redundant? also a little off topic but i noticed some guys on the repeater say their call phonetically every single time and others just say it straight, is there like a preference or is that just personal style? i dont want to come off weird either way

so ive been licensed for about 14 months now (general class) and ive been mostly just doing random QSOs and a little bit of SOTA stuff with my HT when i go hiking. but honestly ive been watching people talk about CQ WW and ARRL Field Day and i feel like im missing out on something. like field day looked absolutely chaotic in a fun way from the videos i saw. my question is i guess — for someone who has never done a contest before, whats a reasonable first one to try? i dont have a huge station, just a modest wire dipole up about 30 feet and a used IC-7300 i picked up last spring. i can work SSB fine and ive been slowly learning CW but im not fast enough to do anything serious with it yet. CQ WW looks massive and intimidating, the exchange seems simple enough but theres so many stations all at once. and ARRL sweepstakes keeps coming up in conversations but the exchange for that one looks really complicated honestly. also is there anything good coming up before end of year that i would be recomend for a first timer? i dont even care about winning obviously just want to get the experience and make a bunch of contacts without embarrassing myself too much lol

the end height is probably killing you more than anything else. 8 feet at the ends with an inverted-v means those tips are really coupling into the ground and pulling the resonant point down lower than expected, which would explain why your dip is shifted up toward 7.3 instead of where you want it. the 468 formula is kind of a starting point in free space and real-world installations almost always need tweaking. what I'd do is try raising the ends if you can, even getting them up to 12-15 feet makes a noticeable difference on 40m. also double check your center insulator and make sure you've got a decent strain relief on the coax so the braid isn't taking mechanical load and creating a weird impedance situation at the feedpoint. 65 feet of RG-8X at 40m isn't gonna be your problem, that's fine. also the inverted-v feedpoint impedance is gonna be lower than a flat-top anyway, more like 35-45 ohms depending on the apex angle, so 2.8:1 into 50 ohm coax actually makes some sense depending on your angle.

I got my start in Field Day through a GOTA station five years ago - now I'm an Extra and compete in contests regularly. It's a great chance to introduce youth to the thrill of ham radio and remind ourselves that the future rests in getting young people pumped up about this hobby. Make it welcoming and educational!

so ive been a tech for about a year and a half now and honestly the HF thing is starting to bug me, i hear guys on 40m and 20m and just want to get in there. my buddy said the general exam isnt that much harder than the technician one but i dunno, looking at the question pool it seems like theres a lot more about like propagation and electrical theory that i dont remember from tech. i mostly been using the hamstudy.org site to practice and im getting like 75-80% on the practice tests but im not sure if thats good enough. the actual pass score is 74% right? so i guess im borderline. anyone been through this recently and have tips on what areas to actually focus on? the electrical stuff is what keeps tripping me up, like the LC circuit questions and some of the impedance stuff. also once i actually pass, whats the process for getting on HF right away, does the FCC update your license automatically or do i have to wait for a new physical card or something

51 countries in 8 years of serious DXing actually puts you in good shape! Some entities are frustrated by geopolitics like North Korea and safety concerns with certain islands. Focus on the workable ones and don't get discouraged - Honor Roll is definitely achievable with patience.

so this has been driving me crazy for the better part of two weeks now. my IC-7300 will key up fine, ALC meter moves, the PA temp reading looks normal, everything looks like its transmitting but the wattmeter on my dummy load is flatline. doesnt matter what band, doesnt matter what mode. i swapped the coax thinking maybe i had a bad connector somewhere and that wasnt it. i pulled the top cover off and poked around a bit with the scope. drive signal looks like its making it to the driver stage okay as far as i can tell but im not super confident reading that board — icom doesnt exactly hand out the schematics for free. i did notice one of the small electrolytics near the PA section looks a little domed on top but im not sure if thats actually the culprit or just normal aging. radio is maybe 6 years old and lived most of its life in a pretty humid shack. has anyone dug into one of these for a similar symptom? wondering if this is a known failure point or if im chasing something weirder. happy to desolder and test components i just want to have some idea what im actually looking for before i start pulling things.

New Extra class here looking to dip my toes into QRP kit building and CW operation. I've been reading about the QMX, CFT1, and various QRPGuys kits but honestly feeling overwhelmed by all the options. What would you recommend for a complete kit building beginner? I have basic soldering skills and want something that will actually get me on the air making contacts, not just blinking LEDs in my shack. Budget is flexible but under $200 would be nice.

so ive been noticing something over the past few weeks and wanted to see if others are picking up on the same thing. 10 and 12 meters have been doing some really interesting stuff, had a solid opening to europe last tuesday afternoon that i wasnt expecting at all. just had the radio on in the background while i was doing other stuff and suddenly heard a pile of EU stations coming through like gangbusters. worked a few before it faded out maybe 30-40 minutes later. checked the solar flux index and it was sitting around 180 or so which honestly isnt even that exceptional for where we are in the cycle but the propagation felt better than numbers like that usually give me. k-index was low which probably helped. anyway im wondering if were maybe hitting a little peak or if this is just normal cycle 25 behavior. for context im running about 100 watts into a 3 element yagi up about 35 feet, nothing crazy but usually enough to tell whats going on. anyone else been seeing good DX openings lately, especially on the higher HF bands? curious what parts of the world youre getting into

so ive been wanting to get into ham radio for a while now and finally decided to just go for it and take the technician exam. problem is i have no idea where to start. i downloaded something called the ARRL handbook from a link someone posted somewhere but it seems like way too much for just passing the test? like thats a massive book and im not sure all of it is even relevant to what theyre actually going to ask me. someone at work mentioned there are apps you can use to just drill the actual question pool but i cant remember what it was called. is that a good way to study or do i actually need to understand all the theory behind everything. i dont have a ton of free time so im trying to figure out the most efficient way to do this without spending months on it

so i passed my technician exam last thursday and honestly didnt think id pass because i blanked on like half the electrical questions but somehow scraped through. anyway i borrowed my buddys baofeng to try and hit the local 2m repeater and man i had no idea what i was doing. keyed up and forgot to say anything for like 3 seconds and then just said my callsign wrong, like i transposed two letters. the guy on the other end was super patient though and we actually had a decent little chat for about 10 minutes. he told me i was getting out fine and signal was good so that was something at least. now ive been lurking on the repeater every evening just listening and trying to get the hang of how people actually talk on there because its way different than i imagined. anyone else remember their first QSO being kind of a trainwreck

Paper logging is honestly fine and I'd argue more reliable for actual emergency use — laptop batteries die, software crashes, you're golden with a waterproof notebook and a couple sharpies. Just make sure whoever you're handing logs to can read your handwriting lol. For battery state I've been using a cheap coulomb counter inline, one of those little blue display things you see on amazon, like ten bucks and it's been way more useful than just watching voltage. Voltage alone is misleading especially with LiFePO4 since it stays so flat until you're basically empty. Also I'd throw a headlamp in there if you haven't, sounds obvious but I forgot mine the first time I deployed and it was embarrassing. One other thing — do you have a way to charge that battery from solar or just the car? If you're out more than a day without a generator you'll want options. I carry a 50 watt panel rolled up in the back of the case, adds some bulk but I've been glad to have it.

the HF2200 type inverter gennys are generally pretty decent for radio work, i ran one behind my go-kit table at a public service event last summer with an FT-991A and honestly the noise floor was fine. key thing is keep the generator physically as far from the antenna and the rig as you can manage, like at least 30-40 feet of separation, and run a good quality extension cord. also bond the generator frame to your station ground, some guys skip that and then wonder why theyre hearing hash on 40. that said for 18 hours at moderate power levels i'd probably go hybrid — run the genny in bursts to top off a battery bank and operate off the battery directly. you get cleaner receive and you're not burning fuel the whole time. two 100ah AGMs in parallel plus your solar should be solid with that kind of recharge strategy. the jackite and linked dipole combo sounds like the right call, keep it simple for an exercise.

9 contacts on your first activation is solid man dont sweat it. i remember my first one i only got 4 and one of those was a guy who felt sorry for me i think. the weight thing hits everybody hard the first time, you'll end up cutting your kit down to almost nothing after a few trips. i run a 20m link dipole now and leave the 40m stuff at home unless the summit warrants it. KX2 is a great choice by the way, same radio i use

the tracking and messaging paths arent quite the same thing, thats probably your problem. when you beacon your position it just goes out and gets digipeated and picked up by an igate and thats kind of the end of it. but for messaging to actually reach someone, the message has to flow from rf through an igate, then across the APRS-IS network, then back down through another igate near your buddy and out over rf to him -- and that last hop is where it usually breaks. not every igate is configured to gate traffic back down to rf, a lot of them are receive only. so your buddy might be on an igate that just listens but doesnt transmit back out. check if the igate near him is listed as a bidirectional gate on aprs.fi, you can click on the igate symbol and it should say. if its rx only thats your issue right there. also make sure his SSID is right when you address the message, that trips people up constantly.