Karen Williams

so ive been playing around with DXwatch and a couple other cluster spotting sites for maybe 3 weeks now and i gotta say it took me longer than it should have to understand what i was actually looking at. nobody really explained that the spots are coming from other hams who heard something, not like some automated beacon system. once i got that it made a lot more sense why you get duplicate spots or spots that are way off frequency. anyway i use QRZ for the basic lookup stuff obviously, everyone does, but i started combining it with DXwatch to actually track down some rarer stations. what i didnt realize is you can filter by band and mode which sounds obvious but the interface isnt exactly intuitive. been running FT8 mostly so i set it to just show digital spots and that helped a ton. also the DX cluster through my logging software (using Log4OM) actually pulls live spots too so i dont even need the browser tab open anymore. anybody else using any other tools or apps they like for this? ive seen mentions of a few phone apps but havent tried any yet. just curious what other peoples workflow looks like when theyre trying to work a new one.

For the CTCSS thing — yeah you want to set it on TX only in most cases. The RX tone (sometimes called tone squelch or TSQL on some radios) would mean your radio only opens up its squelch when it hears that tone coming back from the repeater, which you usually don't need unless the frequency is really noisy and you want to filter out interference. Just TX tone is what 99% of repeaters expect from you. Double-check in the baofeng menu that you've got T-CTCS set and not R-CTCS, those are easy to mix up on those radios. As for jumping in — totally normal to just say your callsign between transmissions. Like wait for someone to unkey and then just say "KD9XYZ monitoring" or something short like that. Most regulars on a repeater are happy to have someone new check in, honestly. Just don't key up in the middle of someone talking and you'll be fine.

So ive been running WSJT-X for FT8 stuff and it logs to an adif file which i then import into Log4OM and that workflow has been fine for a while. But now i want to actually do some contesting, nothing serious just maybe the state QSO parties and possibly CQ WW at some point, and everyone keeps telling me to just use N1MM for contests. My question is basically do i need to maintain two separate logging systems now or is there a cleaner way to handle this. I looked at the N1MM documentation and it seems like it can also receive UDP packets from WSJT-X directly which would maybe let me ditch Log4OM entirely, but i dunno if N1MM is good for day to day logging when youre not in a contest. It feels like its built for contesting and might be overkill or just awkward for regular ragchew QSOs and DX chasing. Anyone running a similar mixed setup who figured out a good workflow? I dont want to lose my existing log history either, i have like 3 years of contacts in Log4OM.

yeah dead bug and wall warts are basically a noise party waiting to happen lol. i built something similar a while back, took me forever to figure out it was the switching supply radiating into my input transformer. just grabbed a 9v battery to test and half the noise went away immediately. worth trying before you go tearing anything apart

yeah 10m has been doing some interesting things lately, we're climbing toward the solar cycle peak so these openings are going to get more frequent and more intense over the next year or two probably. the flux index is a good general indicator but honestly the K index matters just as much — high solar flux is great but if there's been a geomagnetic storm and the K index is elevated, it can completely wipe out the higher bands even when flux looks good. what i usually do is check the DX cluster in the morning and if i see a lot of spots on 10 and 12 to europe or across the pacific, i know something's cooking. propagation on 10m when conditions are right is almost magic, it's one of the reasons a lot of people who been around forever still love that band. a ZL2 from wherever you are is a real catch, that's not a fluke, you were reading the band right even if you didn't realize it.

i havent done the TCXO on mine yet but ive been thinking about it. mostly i run PSK and JS8 so yeah the drift thing is real, i just compensate by letting the rig sit for 20 mins before i care about accuracy which is kinda annoying. might just do it. the fan mod the other guy mentioned is interesting too, i run split with a linear sometimes and the 7300 does get a little toasty.

so we've got a county-wide ARES exercise coming up and i volunteered to run one of the remote stations this time instead of just being at EOC. been doing some thinking about the power situation and wanted to get some input because ive never actually run a full HF setup off a generator in the field before, only batteries. the plan right now is to bring my IC-7300 plus a 100ah lithium and also have a honda EU2200i as backup or to recharge during the day. antenna-wise i was thinking of putting up a 40m EFHW with the 9:1 unun since its fast to deploy and i already have it tuned up, but part of me wonders if i should bother with a more versatile antenna given we'll be doing mostly local nets on 40 and some regional traffic on 20. my main concern is noise from the generator getting into the radio. last time somebody ran a genny at a field day site near me it was a mess on 40, just broadband hash across half the band. the EU2200i is inverter type so its supposed to be cleaner but i dont know how much that actually helps in practice versus a conventional generator. thinking about a ferrite on the coax and maybe running the generator pretty far away with a longer extension cord but thats another thing to manage. anyone done something similar for an actual exercise, not just field day? wondering if theres a setup that just works without a lot of fiddling once youre there trying to also handle actual message traffic.

yeah i was totally lost on this same thing when i got my general. what helped me was just pulling up the ARRL frequency chart they have as a PDF and printing it out and keeping it near the radio for a while. you kind of just absorb it over time honestly one thing i'll add is that 40m especially gets weird at night because the band opens up internationally and you start hearing stations from other countries operating in frequencies that would overlap with where US amateurs operate, thats a whole other thing to wrap your head around but just be aware that what you hear doesnt always mean its where you should be transmitting

yeah done almost exactly this with a 7300, its actually one of the cleaner projects to start with because the band data is so well documented. the BCD lines are open collector outputs so you do want pullup resistors on the arduino inputs, 10k should be fine. the cheap relay boards from amazon almost all have the opto-isolation built in now, look for the EL817 or PC817 optocoupler chip on the board, if its there youre good. if its just a ULN2003 driver chip with no opto then id add a separate barrier between that and the arduino just to be safe. one thing i ran into — the band data changes like instantly when you spin the VFO through bands and if youre not debouncing or adding a small delay in your code the relays will chatter like crazy while you tune across band edges. i added a 200ms delay before the relay actually switches and that cleaned it up completely. the OLED is totally worth adding, i used a 128x32 SSD1306 one and it adds like 20 lines of code with the adafruit library, dont skip it

okay so ive been putting off doing a proper mobile install for like two years now and im finally just doing it. got a used Yaesu FTM-400 from a guy at the club and its in pretty good shape, just needs a new mic clip but whatever. my question is about antenna placement. im driving a 2018 Honda CRV which is one of those crossover things with the weird roof line, not a flat roof like a truck or sedan. i was thinking of doing a lip mount on the rear hatch but ive heard that can cause issues with the liftgate if youre not careful about how you route the coax. the other option is drilling which i really dont want to do on a car i dont own outright yet. is the lip mount going to hurt my signal much compared to center of roof? i mostly just want to hit the local repeaters and maybe do some simplex when im out hiking with friends who have HTs. not trying to work the world here, just solid local coverage. also if anyone has done a CRV install specifically i would love to hear how you ran your coax inside, the D pillar on these things looks like a nightmare

so ive had my IC-7300 for about 3 years now and honestly its been a great radio, no real complaints, but ive been eyeing the IC-7610 and also looked a bit at the Kenwood TS-890S and im starting to wonder if the jump is actually worth it for what i do which is mostly SSB and some digital on 40 and 20m, occasional 15m when the band cooperates the dual watch on the 7610 is kind of appealing and the roofing filters on the 890 seem like they'd help in a contest pile-up situation but i dunno, maybe im just having shiny object syndrome and the 7300 is doing everything i actually need it to do. my shack is pretty basic — the 7300 into an LDG tuner and a homemade fan dipole up about 30 feet, nothing crazy has anyone actually made this jump and felt like it was genuinely worth the money or did you feel like you could have just stuck with what you had? not looking to spend 2500+ unless theres a real practical difference day to day

man im jealous, ive been wanting to do SU-001 for a while. did you take the trail from the north side or come up the ridge? i heard the ridge approach is shorter but steeper and i dont know if my knees would survive it with a pack lol anyway yeah the activation zone thing tripped me up too on my second or third activation, i asked on the reflector and basically got the same answer, if youre on the mountain and made a reasonable effort to get to the top youre not gonna get flagged. the database trustees are pretty reasonable about it from what ive seen

I'm kind of in the same boat as you, stuck around 14 right now so watching this thread. One thing that helped me a little bit was doing short sessions more often instead of one long one — like 10 minutes in the morning and 10 at night instead of a 30 minute block. I read somewhere that sleep helps consolidate the learning or something like that. No idea if thats actually true but my copying did get a bit smoother after I switched it up.

the pile drying up happens to me every single time lol, i think once youre off sotawatch's front page the chasers move on. i usually spot twice, once when i get set up and again about 15-20 min later on a different band if i have one set up. 2m fm can sometimes pick up local chasers too if your summit has line of sight to any decent population areas, might be worth throwing a handheld in the pack next time just for a few extra contacts when hf slows down.

For example, "lima" should not be confused with Lee-mah (incorrect) but pronounced as "Lee-ma" (correct). Many letters in the phonetic alphabet can sound similar, like "Mike" (M) and "November" (N). Using the correct and clear pronunciation can help you avoid confusion.