Robert Chen

Gpredict user here with IC-9700. Multi-platform implementation works great, and being free software under GPL is a huge plus. The Hamlib integration has improved significantly in recent versions. Haven't had any issues with Doppler accuracy on AO-7 or FO-29.

yeah the net schedule thing is genuinely kind of a mess to navigate at first. the ARRL has a net directory but honestly the most reliable thing ive found is just asking at your local club because somebody there will know whats actually active versus whats been dead for two years but still listed somewhere. a lot of the old net schedule pages just never get updated.
for special event stations, the best place i know is the ARRL special event station page, they list upcoming ones and it gets updated pretty regularly. also W1AW operates on a published schedule if you havent tried working them yet, thats kind of a rite of passage thing. once you check in to a few nets you start hearing about others through the net control operators, they usually announce stuff at the end of the session. just takes a bit to get plugged in but you'll get there.

honestly the one time phonetics really matter and people dont think about it enough is when conditions are bad or you're working someone with a heavy accent. had a contact on 20m last winter and the guy kept saying a letter that sounded exactly like another letter to me, couldnt figure out if his suffix was DF or TV or what, and if he had just gone full phonetic from the start we wouldve saved like 5 minutes of back and forth. so i guess my take is dont overthink it on local VHF but on HF especially when the band is rough just use them, your signal report and callsign at minimum

oh man this is timely, i literally just posted on another forum asking about 10m because ive had my tribander up for two years and barely used the 10m element lol. gonna have to spend some time up there this week if the flux stays up. what time of day were you hearing europe, was it morning or more like late afternoon your time?

so ive been licensed for about 3 months now and i keep hearing people say things like QSL and QTH and QRM and honestly i have no idea what half of them mean. i got a general class and my elmer told me i'd pick it up as i go but its been a few weeks and i still feel lost when people rattle them off fast on the repeater. is there like a standard list somewhere or do people just kind of know them from memory after a while? also are there ones that are more important to know than others, like the ones i'll hear the most? some of the guys at my club use abbreviations i've never even seen in any Q code list so im not sure if those are official or just slang people made up over the years

Saw another article claiming amateur radio is a "dying hobby" because of aging demographics. But then I look at FT8 activity, POTA activations, and YouTube channels like Ham Radio 2.0 bringing in younger folks. While ham radio has historically attracted older demographics, that's changing rapidly. The hobby appeals to tech-savvy millennials and Gen Z who appreciate its DIY ethos and emergency communication value. Online communities, YouTube channels, and podcast hosts are bringing more young people into the hobby every day. Maybe we're not dying, just evolving?

that sounds like it could be a corrupt packet getting through without triggering a checksum failure, or possibly a different station's packet getting attributed to your callsign somehow. does aprs.fi show the path info on those bad position reports? if you click on the packet detail it'll show you which digipeaters touched it and that might give you a clue. also worth checking if your SSID is unique, ive seen cases where someone nearby is running the same callsign-SSID combo which causes all kinds of weirdness on the network.
the 12 miles off thing is suspicious though, that's too consistent to be pure noise. could be a NMEA sentence getting parsed wrong, like if the GPS occasionally spits out a position from before it had a solid fix and the radio is just blindly forwarding it. some of those cheaper pucks will output a technically valid NMEA sentence with old coordinates right after powerup before they reacquire. might be worth looking at what time of day the bad beacons happen and see if it correlates with when you start the car.

SOTA is kind of the opposite end of the spectrum from CQ WW and i love both for totally different reasons haha. CQ WW is just chaos in the best way, i usually do a few hours here and there rather than the full 48 because my family would never forgive me otherwise. as for field day yeah our club starts the location debate basically every january, last year we almost ended up in a parking lot which would have been rough. good luck in CQ WW, just have fun with it

Finally upgrading from my Technician and need to get comfortable with CW again after getting 5WPM decades ago. I keep hearing about the Koch method versus traditional slow-speed building. Those of you who made the jump from 5WPM to 20WPM - which approach actually worked? The G4FON software looks promising but I'm curious about real-world experiences.
Also wondering about practice time - how many hours per week did it take you to build solid copy speed?

i ran a vertical on a small lot for two years with only 16 radials and it worked fine tbh, never felt like i was missing huge amounts compared to what i hear from guys with full elevated systems. but the noise thing the other guy mentioned is real — my S-meter was always a couple points higher on the vertical vs my dipole on the same band. for just chatting around and some contesting the dipole is probably less headache overall

so i passed my technician exam last thursday and honestly wasnt expecting to pass on the first try, studied for about 3 weeks using hamstudyorg and a couple youtube videos. got my callsign in the system like 4 days later which i heard used to take way longer so that was cool.
anyway i borrowed a baofeng uv5r from my buddy who got me into this whole thing and managed to get into a local repeater last night. some guy came back to me and we talked for maybe 10 minutes about nothing in particular, i was so nervous i forgot to give my callsign at the end and had to key up again real quick. pretty sure i sounded like an idiot but he was really patient about it.
just wanted to introduce myself i guess. im in the midwest if that matters, planning to get a proper radio eventually but for now the baofeng is doing the job

yeah i basically do exactly what youre describing, Log4OM for the regular stuff and N1MM when theres a contest worth entering. the sync thing is not that bad honestly, i just export ADIF out of N1MM after the contest and import it into Log4OM. takes maybe five minutes and ive never had a major issue with it. the duplicate checker in Log4OM catches most of the overlapping stuff if theres any.
as for WSJT-X, Log4OM does have a UDP connection so it can log directly from WSJT-X without any manual importing. you set up the multicast or just point WSJT-X at Log4OM's port and it just receives the QSOs as they happen. way cleaner than the ADIF import route. took me a bit to figure out the port settings the first time but once its set up you kinda forget its even there.
honestly the only thing i miss in Log4OM during a contest is how fast N1MM is with the keyboard shortcuts and the dupe checking in real time. Log4OM is fine for general use but it doesnt feel as snappy when youre trying to run a pile at 100 QSOs an hour or whatever

Just got my General license and want to explore CW, but I'm completely lost. Since CW is no longer required for licensing, I have zero experience, but I keep hearing about the advantages like better signal penetration and QRP effectiveness. What's the absolute best way to start from scratch?
I've seen mentions of Koch method, Farnsworth timing, and various apps. Should I join a structured program like CW Academy (which is free) or Long Island CW Club? Or can I self-teach with apps first?
Looking for:
Best beginner learning method/resource Realistic timeline to first QSO Equipment recommendations for practice