Digital Mode

congrats on the first one, 47 QSOs is a solid activation especially if you werent fully set up for the pileup situation. the 44 contact minimum is correct for a valid activation so you cleared it fine. on the dual reference question yeah that comes up a lot. if the area genuinely has two separate program references you can absolutely log and submit for both, you just submit to each program separately with the same log. the hunters do get credit in both programs as long as whoever runs the other program accepts cross-submissions, most of the big ones do. worth double checking with the specific state program though since some of them have their own quirks about what counts. for the portal i just export an ADIF from my logging software and upload it, never really tried to enter things manually which seems like it would be a pain. if youre using something like Log4OM or even HAMRS it should be pretty straightforward to get a clean ADIF out of it

yeah what he said. one thing i'd add is that LoTW can be a little annoying to set up the first time because you have to request a certificate and there's some back and forth with the ARRL but once its running it pretty much works in the background. TQSL is the software you use to sign and upload your logs, its not the prettiest program in the world but it works. i personally use all three systems just because why not, some contacts only confirm on eQSL and some guys still send beautiful paper cards and honestly getting a QSL card in the mail from somewhere like Kazakhstan or whatever never gets old. took me a while to appreciate the paper card thing but now i actually have a little album going

ok so ive been running my remotehams box for about 6 months now and everything was working pretty good until last week. now im getting this strange latency where the audio is like 2-3 seconds behind what im seeing on the waterfall. makes it really hard to work any digital modes or even cw for that matter my internet connection at the remote site is supposed to be 50/10 and at home im on gigabit fiber so bandwidth shouldnt be the issue. anyone else run into this kind of thing? wondering if its something on their server side or if i messed up a setting somewhere running the latest client software on windows 11 if that matters

this is actually something I've been trying to understand better myself so thanks for posting. I only got my general like 8 months ago and the propagation stuff still kind of confuses me. I downloaded the VOACAP app somebody on here recommended and its helping a little but honestly half the time the predictions dont match what i actually hear on the radio so i just get on and see what happens lol one thing i did notice is that pskreporter is really good for seeing where your signal is reaching even when you dont hear anything back, gave me a better feel for when the band is actually open vs when i just wasnt hearing the other station

I passed mine last spring and was in the exact same boat. The electrical theory questions are probably like 10% of the exam so dont let them slow you down too much. What helped me was reading the ARRL Tech manual alongside doing practice questions, not the whole book, just the sections where i kept getting stuff wrong. Some of the band plan and operating procedure stuff is actually pretty interesting once you get into it. Good luck, the test really isnt that bad once you start getting comfortable with the question formats.

yeah what he said about audio levels, that bites people all the time. also just wanna mention — aprs.fi has like a 20-30 minute delay sometimes, or it used to anyway. so dont panic if you dont see yourself immediately. but if its been weeks then thats definitely a real problem not a website lag thing. is your ptt actually keying? sounds dumb but direwolf can decode all day without ever transmitting if something in the serial/gpio setup isnt right. worth confirming the radio is actually keying when direwolf thinks its transmitting

Used Ham Study online and their app - they were both early in getting the new 2024-2028 materials available. Take several practice exams beyond just studying questions - you get a good idea on what sections make up the bulk of the exam. Good luck!

done almost exactly this on a green rotor, not the G-800 but similar enough. the IBT-2 is the right call over the L298N, that thing gets warm just looking at it and rotator motors can spike pretty high when they first start turning, especially if its cold outside and the mast is stiff. GS-232A is the way to go for hamlib, took me maybe an hour to get it talking to WSJT-X for FT8 beaming. the pot feedback is fine but just make sure you filter the ADC reads, i was getting twitchy behavior because RF was getting into the analog line and the arduino kept overcorrecting. a small cap right at the wiper pin helped a lot. arduino mega is fine for this, pi would definitely be overkill unless you want to run a web interface or something. i did eventually move mine to an esp32 just so i could check the heading from my phone on the other side of the house but thats maybe a later problem

cutting board center insulator is actually pretty solid, i did the same thing with some HDPE sheet i had. holds up fine in rain. just make sure you drill the wire holes and seal them somehow if you're worried about moisture wicking in over time, though honestly its probably fine. the warm coax thing is definitely the common mode current and a choke will fix it. i wouldnt stress about winding a fancy balun just yet, even just coiling up maybe 10 feet of the feedline into a loose coil right below the feedpoint can help knock it down enough to get you on the air cleanly while you figure out something more permanent. its not a great long term fix but it at least confirms whether the balun is whats causing your issue before you go building stuff.

just passed my General like two months ago coming from Tech same as you, the thing that helped me most was watching some youtube videos on the stuff i didnt get from the book. like when i read about reactance and inductance in the ARRL book my eyes kind of glazed over but theres a few guys on youtube who explain it way better with visuals and it just made more sense. took me maybe 6 weeks of studying on and off and i passed with a few wrong, cant remember exactly how many. one thing nobody told me is that after you pass and your call updates in the FCC database it takes a day or two sometimes so dont panic if you pass the exam and try to check your license online and its still showing Technician

Fellow hams, we're experiencing some incredible propagation conditions right now! Today's HF propagation is looking solid with a solar flux of 158 and sunspot numbers holding at 125, giving us excellent higher band conditions with low geomagnetic activity (K-index at 1) meaning stable propagation and minimal disruptions. Expect excellent opportunities on 20m–15m throughout the day, with 12m and 10m also open for longer periods. Focus on 20m, 17m, and 15m for the best DX and intercontinental contacts. Just worked JA on 15m with my barefoot IC-7300 - fantastic signals both ways! If you've been thinking about getting back on the air or trying some DX, now's the time. These conditions won't last forever as we're past solar maximum.

oh man the QCX Mini is such a great first build, good choice. i built the full size QCX+ a couple years back and it was the kit that really got me into homebrewing seriously. Hans does really good work with those designs. for a portable antenna on SOTA i've been using an end fed half wave with a small 49:1 unun that i wound myself, the whole thing rolls up into a stuff sack and weighs next to nothing. you can cut it for 40 or 20 and just trim from there, or go the linked dipole route like you said which is more flexible if you want to work multiple bands. i've also seen people do really well with just a simple wire dipole and a short collapsible fiberglass mast, that combo is hard to beat for the weight to performance ratio. the key for QRP portable is really just getting the antenna up as high as you can manage, that extra height makes more difference than most people realize when you're only running a few watts

I know from experience when trying to work a pileup on HF that I've had better luck using the DX Phonetics than the NATO ones. It's subjective, but it's worked well for me in the past. Once you start talking DX that are non-english speakers they usually are self trained to use the international recognized phonetic alphabet, but sometimes the DX phonetics actually cut through better.

so ive been messing around with a cheap RTL-SDR v3 dongle for a few months now, mostly just listening to aircraft on 1090 MHz and poking around the 2m band to see whats happening locally. its been fun and honestly way more capable than i expected for like $30 but i keep seeing people mention the SDRplay and the RSP1A specifically and im wondering if its actually worth the jump in price my main thing is i want to get better HF coverage, like actually decent HF not just the direct sampling hack on the rtl-sdr which works but honestly feels kinda janky. also i notice a lot of intermod garbage when theres strong FM broadcast stations nearby, the rtl dongle just gets hammered. does the RSP1A handle that better with its preselection filters or whatever they call them not super interested in the HackRF right now because i dont really need to transmit and the price is higher than i want to spend. just trying to figure out if the SDRplay is a meaningful step up for receive only use or if im just gonna spend $120 and notice basically the same thing

New to this - how difficult is the WSJT-X modification for automated operation? I'd love to set up something similar but haven't done much Pi programming. Is there a GitHub repo or documentation available?

so ive been using a borrowed Baofeng UV-5R for about a year now since I got my tech license and honestly it's done the job but I keep reading that there are way better options out there and I think its time to actually invest in something decent. the UV-5R just feels kinda cheap and the battery life is pretty rough especially when im out hiking and trying to hit a distant repeater. been looking at the Yaesu FT-60R and also the Kenwood TH-D74A but that second one is way outside my budget right now. heard good things about the FT-60R from a couple guys at my local club but wanted to get more opinions. mainly using it for local repeaters, maybe some APRS eventually, just general handheld use nothing crazy. anybody have strong feelings about the FT-60R vs something else in that $100-150 range?

yeah the frequency drift thing is real and most guys completely ignore it. i've watched DX stations walk 10kHz up the band over the course of an hour and half the pileup is still camping on where he started. its almost funny. the other thing that made a huge difference for me was learning when NOT to call. if the band just opened or a spot just hit the cluster, dont bother for the first 10-15 minutes, everyone and their brother is piling on with 1500w and big antennas and you just get buried. come back when it settles a bit and the casual ops have either worked em or given up. this probably doesnt apply if you have serious station infrastructure but for most of us its a real advantage. also — and this sounds obvious but — make sure your audio is actually punchy. i had a slight low frequency hum from my amp for months that i thought was nothing, turned out my signal was just slightly muddy and once i tracked it down my reports got better. a clean signal that cuts through matters way more than a few extra watts.

Hi everyone, I'm still pretty new to HF and trying to understand when the bands are actually going to be good for DX. I see people talking about Solar Flux Index but I'm confused about what numbers I should be looking for. I've read that 150+ is good, and some say you want it above that for several days, but yesterday I saw SFI at 140 and 20m was dead all afternoon. What am I missing here? Also, what's the deal with the K-index? Someone told me you want it below 3 but I'm not sure how much that really matters compared to the solar flux numbers.

the ALC thing is your main problem honestly. you want that meter barely moving, like just kissing the lower end of the ALC range on voice peaks. if its bouncing around a lot youre overdriving the TX audio chain and it starts sounding crunchy and splattered. backing off the mic gain and then compensating with compression if you need it is the right direction. the stock mics on most kenwoods are fine, they're just voiced kind of flat and midrange heavy. the big thing that actually helped me was cutting some of the low end below like 200hz because that low rumble doesnt carry on SSB anyway and it just eats into your power budget. if your rig has a built in parametric or even a bass/treble you can do a lot without any external gear. boosting presence around 2-3khz also helps a lot for intelligibility which is really what you want on SSB, not hi-fi audio. the other thing nobody talks about enough is mic technique. consistent distance from the mic makes more difference than most settings. 2-3 inches off to the side of the element to avoid plosives, talk across it not into it. sounds dumb but it genuinely cleans things up.

Just got my Technician license a month ago and I'm hooked! I've been enjoying the local repeaters but I'm really interested in DX work on HF. How long should I plan to study for the General exam? I have basic electronics knowledge from my work as an IT tech but I'm new to RF concepts. What are the key differences between Technician and General material? Should I jump right in or get more comfortable with my Tech privileges first?

so its like 10pm and i just got done with dinner and figured id fire up the radio and just kind of listen around on 40m for a bit. nothing specific just browsing i guess. caught a couple guys doing a ragchew out of ohio, sounded like they'd been talking for at least an hour already lol. theres something about just sitting there in the dark with a cup of coffee and the radio on that i really cant explain to non hams. my wife thinks im crazy. anyway if anyones around 7.250 or so feel free to say hi, im just puttering around

the 2x2 array on 2m is a solid starting point honestly, i ran that configuration for about two years before i went to 4x4 and i made contacts, it wasnt instant gratification but it worked. the key thing is getting your system noise figure sorted before you worry too much about anything else because a mediocre preamp will kill you more than a slightly smaller antenna. what preamp is that you pulled from the tower? if you dont know the NF you really should measure it or just swap it for something known, a good mast-mounted LNA like the SSB Electronics or a Kuhne is going to be around 0.3-0.5dB NF which makes a real difference on EME. on the feedline question, LDF4-50A at 80 feet on 2m is fine, you dont need 7/8 for that run. youre looking at maybe 1.5-2dB of loss which isnt great but with 500w and a proper array you can work with it, especially running Q65 which has even more coding gain than JT65B. just make sure your preamp is actually mast mounted and not in the shack or those 2dB suddenly matter a lot more.

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Are you using the built-in WiFi or ethernet? I found ethernet gave me much better results. The Orange Pi Zero 2 might be worth considering as it has both ethernet and WiFi options with good performance.

yeah the logbook thing tripped me up on my second activation, i think i had the wrong format for the date or something stupid like that. worth double checking your ADIF fields, HAMRS sometimes exports the date in a format that doesnt play nice with certain upload tools. i just manually fix it in a text editor which sounds painful but its only like one line to change. also 47 contacts is great, i think my first one i barely scraped 44 and was sitting there refreshing the pile up hoping someone else would call lol. the hunters are really enthusiastic once they hear you're on a new reference, i had a guy call me like 6 times because he thought his signal wasnt getting through even though i'd already logged him