Morse Coder

we did exactly this last fall, two day SET with zero generator. had three 100ah battleborn packs and a 200w solar panel for trickle during the day. ran two ic-7300s and a raspberry pi winlink node pretty much the whole time and never dropped below about 60% on the batteries combined. the trick is you really need to watch your transmit duty cycle — if guys are just ragchewing on ssb all day at 100w you'll burn through it faster than you think, but for actual emcomm traffic handling it was totally fine. cold was actually less of a problem than i expected with the lifepo4 chemistry, it was mid 40s overnight and we didnt notice any real capacity drop. below freezing might be a different story though so your october concern is probably valid depending on how cold it actually gets. i'd say bring the honda anyway as a backup, just dont run it unless you have to. quiet site is a happy site.

The goal is not to "ground" the coax shield, but to stop it from carrying RF current in the first place. A well-placed common-mode choke (1:1 current balun) is far more effective than a low-impedance ground connection inside the shack. Add chokes at the radio output and again outside the shack wall - that should eliminate your CMC path.

Welcome to mobile! I recommend the Icom 2730A dual band mobile. I have two of them and have encountered no issues with them. They have a 50-watt output. Your FTM-400XDR is a great choice too. Don't overthink the antenna - even a simple mag mount works well for local repeater work.

Installing a Kenwood TM-D710GA in my 2023 F-150 and need advice on power connections. Should I run power directly off the battery, and definitely avoid cigarette lighter sockets. But what about using the fuse box with a fused tap? The truck has a large auxiliary fuse box under the hood with some empty spots rated for 40A. Would this be acceptable or should I bite the bullet and run direct to battery terminals? Radio draws 13A max on transmitPlanning 30A fuse protectionAlready have the coax run and antenna mounted

so i finally did my first activation last weekend at a state park about 40 minutes from my house, been putting it off for months because i kept convincing myself i wasnt ready or didnt have the right gear. ended up just throwing my KX2 and a 40ft wire in a backpack and going for it. got there around 10am and found a picnic table near the parking lot, figured that was good enough. spent maybe 15 minutes just getting the wire up in a tree with a fishing pole — that part was way easier than i expected honestly. got spotted on the pota app by some guy i dont even know and suddenly i had a small pileup going which was kind of wild for a first timer. ended up with 23 QSOs on 40m and 6 on 20m before the battery started getting low, which i think counts as a valid activation. my question is about the logging — i was just writing call signs on paper while operating and i'm not sure if i need to upload the log a certain way to the pota website. also does the park reference number matter for the spot or does the app figure that out? i looked at the website and its a little confusing with all the different fields.

had the exact same thing happen to mine about 2 years ago. turned out to be one of the relay contacts in the band switching circuit got corroded somehow. easy fix once you find it but took me forever to track down because everything else checked out fine. if you're handy with a meter you can check continuity on the relay coils when you switch bands

I've been hearing distant FM stations occasionally on my drive to work - never thought to check 6m! Signals may only last 15-30 minutes at a time, so you need to act fast for regional contacts a few hundred miles away. What's the best way to know when an opening is happening?

yeah JS8Call scratches a totally different itch than FT8. i think of FT8 as more like a propagation tool that happens to let you log contacts, and JS8Call as an actual messaging system that happens to work on marginal band conditions. theyre not really competing for the same use case imo. i run JS8Call mostly on 40m in the evenings and yeah activity is sparse compared to the FT8 watering holes but the people who ARE there tend to actually want to talk. i've had some pretty good keyboard-to-keyboard QSOs with guys i now check in with regularly. the store-and-forward relay stuff is kind of underutilized but when it works its genuinely impressive — sent a message through two relays once when 40m wasnt making it direct and it got there maybe 20 minutes later. PSK31 i still load up occasionally more out of nostalgia than anything. the activity is there if you're patient and the real-time typing feel is nice, but you need a better signal path than JS8Call for sure. on a rough band day PSK31 will fall apart where JS8Call is still pulling through. so for weak signal ragchewing JS8Call wins pretty easily in my experience.

yeah im planning on going, my buddy Dave has a table reserved already and hes selling off a bunch of his old HF gear, some kenwood stuff i think. the fox hunt is definitely happening, saw it on the clubs facebook page last week. they moved it to sunday morning though so you dont have to miss the swap tables

done both and honestly the NMO is just better in every way except for the part where you drill a hole. mag mounts always have that lossy contact between the magnet and the roof acting as part of the ground plane, and depending on your vehicle you might only be getting like 50-60% of the groundplane you think you are. NMO sits flush, makes solid contact, proper ground, done. the antenna itself performs noticeably better especially on 70cm where that contact resistance really starts to matter. for what its worth i used a Larsen NMO mount on my last truck and ran it for 6 years with zero issues, no water intrusion, nothing. just use a good self-amalgamating tape wrap and seal the inside too. the commitment thing i get but once you do it youll wonder why you waited. also the SG7900A is a good antenna, should do real well on a proper mount.

okay so i just passed my technician exam last week (finally) and im trying to figure out what handheld to buy. everyone keeps saying just get a baofeng and everyone else says dont get a baofeng and i honestly have no idea who to listen to. my budget is probably around 100-150 bucks but i could stretch a little if something is really worth it. i mostly want to hit the local repeaters, maybe do some simplex with a buddy who also just got his ticket. i dont have any other radio gear yet so this would literally be my first everything. ive been looking at the yaesu FT-65 and also the wouxun KG-UV9D but i really dont know enough to compare them properly. is dual band something i actually need or can i get away with just 2m for now? any thoughts appreciated, sorry if this is a dumb question

hamstudy.org is honestly the way to go, its free and the spaced repetition thing it does works really well. i passed mine without buying any books at all, just did like 20-30 minutes a day on that site for about two weeks. the question pool for tech isnt that bad, a lot of it is common sense stuff once you read it a couple times. the electrical theory questions tripped me up at first but once you understand ohms law the rest kind of clicks. dont stress too much about memorizing without understanding, for tech level you dont really need to go super deep, just enough to know why the answer is what it is and itll stick better anyway

Don't overlook joining a local study group - your ARRL group likely offers test prep classes. Meeting other folks preparing for the same exam gives you different perspectives and keeps you accountable. Plus you'll start building connections in the ham community before you even get licensed.

yeah 10m has been really coming alive the last year or so, we're climbing toward solar maximum and the flux being up in the 170-180 range makes a huge difference for that band. what you experienced is pretty classic F2 propagation, the ionosphere gets charged up enough to refract those higher frequencies back down over long distances instead of just letting them pass through. honestly the best thing i ever did was bookmark the NOAA space weather site and just glance at it in the morning. solar flux index above 150 and you should at least poke your head in on 10 and 12m. also dxmaps.com is great for seeing real time propagation, you can watch the spots light up and get a feel for where openings are forming before you even key up. it's not perfect prediction but you get a sense of the rhythm after a while. the south america path from the midwest in the afternoon is one of the more reliable ones when conditions are up, those guys run good stations and you'll often catch brazil and argentina pretty easily.

Looking to upgrade from my cheap Chinese radio to something more reliable. I'm considering the Kenwood TM-281A, Icom IC-2300H, or Yaesu FTM-300DR for my daily driver. Budget is around $300-400 and I want something that will work when I need it most during emergencies. Which brand has been most reliable in your mobile installations? I've heard mixed things about all three manufacturers' recent QC.

My IC-7300 mic gain is set at 5% and I get full 100W PEP on SSB with average around 35%. Use a dummy load and oscilloscope for proper measurement if possible. Your wattmeter reading 30-40W average with occasional 100W peaks is exactly where you want to be for clean SSB.

so ive been using Log4OM for about a year now for my everyday logging and i genuinely like it, the QSL management and the way it handles LOTW confirmations is pretty solid. but every time contest season rolls around i feel like im fighting it a little, especially when things get fast and i need the bandmap to just work without me babysitting it. a buddy at the club keeps telling me to just install N1MM and use that for contests and keep Log4OM for daily stuff, and yeah that makes sense in theory but then i have two databases and im always worried about things getting out of sync or missing a contact somewhere. i did try exporting from N1MM after a contest and importing back into Log4OM and it mostly worked but there were a few dupes and some funky exchange data that didnt map right. also i run WSJT-X on a separate laptop for FT8 and that logs back to Log4OM over UDP which works fine most of the time. but ive heard you can pipe WSJT-X into N1MM too and i havent tried that yet. anyone running this kind of multi-software setup or did you just pick one and stick with it? wondering if the hassle is worth it or if im just overcomplicating things