Mike Rodriguez

yeah the INA219 i2c address thing gets everyone the first time, you have to pull the A0/A1 pins to set alternate addresses and the datasheet buries that info like they dont want you to find it for rigctld and the IC-7300 its honestly not bad once you get it going. make sure you have hamlib installed and then just run rigctld with the right model number, i think the 7300 is model 3085 but double check that. then from python you can just open a socket to localhost 4532 and send commands as plain text which is kinda weird but it works fine. theres a hamlib python wrapper too but i always just use raw sockets because i understand whats happening that way the split between arduino and pi is something i do too — i use an arduino nano as basically a dumb i/o expander over serial, pi handles all the logic and networking, nano just toggles relays and reads sensors. keeps the timing stuff reliable and you dont have to worry about linux doing something stupid at the wrong moment

yeah Part 97 can be a bit dense when you first dig into it, totally get that. the music thing your buddy mentioned is pretty much right — 97.113 is the section that lists prohibited transmissions and music is specifically called out there. there are some narrow exceptions like if its incidental to an authorized retransmission of a space shuttle communication or something like that, but for everyday use on the air you basically just dont play music, period. the ARRL has a pretty readable breakdown of the rules on their website if the raw FCC text is killing you. its not perfect but its way more approachable. honestly the big things to internalize early on are the prohibited transmissions section, the ID requirements (97.119), and understanding your band privileges as a tech. once those click the rest starts to make more sense over time. your elmer sounds like a good resource too, dont be shy about asking them dumb questions, thats literally what theyre there for.

yeah im kind of in the same boat as you actually, been licensed about a year and i just do LoTW for most stuff. eQSL i signed up for but honestly forget to upload half the time lol. havent really done the bureau at all yet, seems like the cards sit there for months before anyone processes them which just sounds painful when youre impatient like me. one thing i will say is some of the older DX operators really love getting a physical card and will send you one back no matter what, so if you work someone interesting its kinda worth sending direct with a SAE and some green stamps if its a foreign station. got a really cool card back from a guy in the azores that way, has it on the wall now

oh man i went through this same exact confusion like 8 months ago when i got my ticket. the ae7q site the other guy mentioned is seriously the move, i spent like an hour on there just browsing available calls before i filed. ended up getting my second choice which had my initials in it so pretty happy with how it turned out. the whole thing took maybe 2 weeks from when i applied to when the new call showed up in the database i think, somewhere around there anyway

im kind of in the same boat as you, been watching EME from the sidelines for a couple years. one thing that helped me understand the realistic expectations was just spending time on the 144.110 area on JT65B during a good moon window and watching the dx spots on the EME logger. you can see what stations are working who and get a feel for what kind of setup is actually making contacts vs just calling into the void. also the DUBUS EME conference proceedings are worth tracking down if you havent already, some of the technical papers in there are really detailed about system noise temp calculations and how antenna gain trades off against everything else. i spent a weekend just with paper and pen going through the link budget math and it actually made the whole thing click for me in a way that reading forum posts didnt quite do

Yeah the separated control head design is interesting but im a little skeptical it'll be as clean as they're making it look in the renders. Kenwood did something similar ages ago and it was fine but not exactly plug and play. that said Icom's build quality on recent stuff has been pretty solid so maybe they've thought it through better this time. as for 10m yeah its been wild. im up in the northeast and ive been hearing European stations come in at s9 in the mornings which is something i honestly didnt expect when i got back into the hobby a couple years ago right at the bottom of the cycle. good timing i guess. makes me want to finally put up a yagi but the wife has opinions about towers so that conversation hasnt gone great

the noise thing with verticals is real, especially in a suburban neighborhood. i put up a hustler 5-btv a couple years ago thinking id get all this great dx and yeah the dx was there but so was every switching power supply and LED driver within 300 feet of my house lol. ended up going back to a dipole just because i could actually hear the weak ones without the noise floor being a complete mess. if you do go vertical look into the elevated radial designs, some guys swear by just 4 elevated radials at like 6-8 feet off the ground vs a huge buried field and the numbers are apparently pretty close. might be easier to deal with in a smaller yard too.

so ive been trying to learn morse code for about 4 months now and im completely stuck at 5wpm. i can copy pretty reliably at that speed if i sit down and really concentrate but the moment i try to push it even a little bit everything falls apart. i know the characters, i can recognize all of them, but at 7 or 8wpm my brain just kind of freezes up and i start falling behind and then i panic and miss the next character and it just snowballs. ive been using the lcwo website and doing the Koch method but i feel like im just going in circles. somebody at my club mentioned farnsworth timing which i sort of understand but not really sure if im doing it right. been at this for months and honestly starting to wonder if im just not cut out for this. anybody go through something similar and actually come out the other side at like 20wpm?

i asked myself the same thing last year honestly. ended up just accepting FT8 for what it is — a propagation tool more than a communication mode — and then kept PSK31 around for when i actually want to type at someone. the JS8Call idea is cool and i respect what KN4CRD built but you hit the nail on the head about activity, its kind of a ghost town except for certain times. one thing i'll say though is if weak signal stuff is what draws you to these modes, have you tried FT4 at all? its basically FT8 but faster and more suited for contest-style operating, some people find the faster exchange more satisfying even if its still just a quick contact. not really a solution to the conversation problem but just throwing it out there.

so i've been listening to LEO passes for a while now just with an arrow antenna and an old ft-817 but i finally tried actually working through AO-73 last weekend and wow that was a different experience than i expected. managed to get a few contacts but i feel like im doing something fundamentally wrong with the doppler correction stuff what i was doing was manually tuning to compensate as the pass went on but keeping my uplink fixed and adjusting the downlink — is that right? i read somewhere you're supposed to do it the other way around or maybe both? honestly it got confusing fast and by the time i thought i had it sorted out the pass was already going below the horizon. also the signal inversion thing caught me off guard, i knew about it in theory but forgot in the moment and was trying to tune the wrong direction for a bit im using gpredict for tracking on the laptop which is great but i havent figured out how to get it talking to the radio automatically yet. anyone running rigctl or hamlib with an 817 that actually works reliably? the docs for that stuff feel like theyre written for people who already know how to do it

im still pretty new to it myself but one thing i wish someone told me earlier is to actually read through ICS 100 and 200 online before you get deep into it. FEMA has free courses and your EC will probably love you for it. also the ARRL has an EC-001 course or something like that which our group actually requires now i think. the paperwork side of it felt weird to me at first coming from just doing regular ham stuff but it makes a lot more sense once youre in a real situation and theres chaos everywhere and someone needs to know whos doing what.

so ive been licensed about 8 months now (general) and i finally started getting into DX chasing a little bit. someone in my local club mentioned cluster spotting and i kind of went down a rabbit hole. i set up an account on QRZ and found the logbook stuff which is great but then someone else mentioned DXwatch and i guess there's also DX summit and a bunch of others and now im not sure which ones people actually use day to day. right now i have a tab open with DXwatch and im refreshing it manually which feels dumb, is there a way to get alerts or does everyone just use like a dedicated app? i downloaded Ham Radio Deluxe trial but its a lot to take in all at once. also not sure if the spots i'm seeing are actually current or if there's some delay built in. one spot showed a ZL station on 17m and by the time i found the frequency he was completely gone, so either i was too slow or the spot was old. any advice on workflow here would be appreciated, im sure im overcomplicating this

yeah this is basically the eternal problem with contest logging vs general logging, they really are two different use cases and no single program does both perfectly. N1MM is without question the best contest logger out there, the CW macros, the bandmap, SO2R support if you ever go there, nothing touches it for contesting. but youre right that for day to day it feels like overkill and the interface isnt exactly friendly when youre just casually working DX on a tuesday night. what i do is keep Log4OM as my master log and just accept that N1MM is a contest-only tool. after each contest i export the Cabrillo and also an ADIF from N1MM and import the ADIF into Log4OM. its not seamless but it only takes a few minutes and i havent had a real problem with dupes in the general log because i dont really care about dupes there, only in the contest itself. the WSJT-X UDP feed going into Log4OM is solid in my experience too, just make sure youre on a recent version of both because there were some issues a while back with the packet format.

so ive been licensed about 8 months now and i keep hearing people talk about chasing DXCC and WAS and WAZ and honestly it all kind of blurs together for me. like i understand the basic concept — you work a certain number of countries or states or zones and then you apply for a certificate or whatever — but im confused about how it actually works in practice. like do you just keep a log and then submit it at some point? does every QSO count or do they have to be confirmed somehow? i've been using WSJT-X for FT8 mostly and i can see my contacts in the log but i dont really know if those are being tracked anywhere for awards purposes. someone at my local club mentioned Logbook of the World but i havent set that up yet because honestly it looked kind of complicated when i tried to read through it. also whats the actual difference between the three? like is one harder than the other? i worked a station in Japan last week and i was pretty stoked about that, wondering if that counts toward anything

CQ zones, not ITU — you'll want to look up your zone before the contest starts, most of North America is zone 3, 4, or 5 depending where you are. The exchange is just 59 and your zone number, so like 59 05 if you're in zone 5. Pretty simple once you do it a few times. And honestly dont let the modest station thing stop you. I ran my first CQ WW with a G5RV and a 100 watt radio and still worked like 40 countries over the weekend. The thing is conditions on 15m and 10m can be really wild during the contest since so many stations are active, so even a simple antenna picks up stuff you'd never hear on a random Tuesday. Just search and pounce for your first one — dont try to run a frequency, just scroll around and answer people. Way less stressful and you still get a decent score. Field Day is a good sign that you enjoy the pace of it. CQ WW is more intense but same basic idea. Go for it.