Karen Williams

ha dont worry about it, literally everyone does exactly that the first time. i blanked so hard on my first net check-in that i forgot my callsign halfway through and had to start over. net control has heard it all, they're not going to think less of you. for most local nets the format is pretty simple — callsign, first name, location, and sometimes signal report if they ask. some nets also want to know if you have traffic or announcements. best thing to do is just write it down on a notepad before you key up. like literally have it in front of you. "this is W4XYZ, John, in Springfield, no traffic" or whatever. after a few times it becomes automatic but there's zero shame in reading from notes especially at first. and no, just listening is totally fine. lurking on a net isnt rude at all, lots of people do it. you're not obligated to check in ever if you dont want to.

yeah 44 unique callsigns is correct, same contact on multiple bands counts separately though which helps when youre struggling to get the numbers. spotting yourself on the WWFF spotting network ahead of time makes a huge difference, a lot of hunters are watching that constantly. also post on the WWFF Facebook group a few days before, the hunters on there are pretty active and will put you in their calendar basically. i do a lot of activations in state forests and once you get a reputation for being a reliable activator people start showing up for your spots pretty quick. 40m is almost always better than 20m for domestic contacts in my experience, especially in the morning. sounds like you figured that out yourself anyway. congrats on the first one

so ive been running my FT-857D for a few years now mostly on HF and occasional VHF/UHF stuff and i always kinda wondered if doing the mars/cap mod would actually make a noticeable difference in day to day use. well last weekend i finally pulled the trigger and opened her up, moved the diode, and reflashed the menu options. the whole process took maybe 45 minutes including me being paranoid and triple checking the service manual like four times before touching anything. honestly the TX range extension was the obvious part but what i actually didnt expect was messing around with some of the menu settings that were locked before really changed how the rig felt to operate. set up a couple things for digital modes that i couldnt get to before without annoying workarounds. also retuned the mic gain a bit while i had everything open because mine always seemed a little hot on SSB and people said i was peaking too hard. anyway not really a question i guess just curious if anyone else has gone down this rabbit hole with the 857 or similar rigs and what other mods you thought were actually worth doing vs the ones that sound cool online but dont really pan out in practice. ive seen some stuff about the internal speaker mod and the TCXO upgrade but im skeptical on both

congrats on the first one! that shaky feeling goes away pretty quick once you get a few under your belt. 40 meters is great for beginners too - usually friendly folks on there especially in the evenings

I've been reading about how SO2R is a must if you want to maximize your contest score, and rate versus multiplier strategy guides were useful before SO2R but not anymore. This got me thinking about how contest strategy has evolved. In the "old days" you had to choose between running for rate or searching for multipliers, but with SO2R you can theoretically do both simultaneously. However, I'm finding that it was a weekend of one radio CQing and the second radio always tuning, never really had two bands open enough to try 2BSIQ - it was old-fashioned SO2R. How do current top contesters balance rate optimization with multiplier hunting when propagation doesn't cooperate for true dual-band operation? Are there specific techniques for maximizing the efficiency of the "search and pounce" radio during slow periods on the run frequency?

your consumption numbers are a little optimistic imo. the 991a in certain configs especially if someone cranks the fan or you're doing any digital at higher power levels can spike pretty good. i'd add at least 15-20% margin to whatever you calculate and then add more for stuff you forgot to account for like the charge controller itself, any lighting if it runs late, phone charging, whatever. people always underestimate the parasitic loads at a field setup. that said 100ah lifepo4 you can realistically pull 80-85ah out of it without stressing it so if your numbers are right you're probably okay but its close. i'd bring the genny. parking lots usually dont care as much about noise as you'd think and the eu2200i is quiet enough that its really not a big deal. run it for an hour mid-day to top up and then you're golden for the rest of the exercise without anxiety

the wind thing is real, i always bring extra tent stakes and some paracord now. took me three activations to figure that out. also if your fingers are getting that cold fingerless gloves are kinda useless, i switched to those texting gloves and they actually work ok for the keypad on the kx2. congrats on the first one tho

so ive been at this for about 8 months now and the progress from 5 to around 12-13 wpm felt pretty natural, i was using the Koch method through the lcwo website and just grinding through the lessons every morning before work. but somewhere around 13 wpm it just... stopped. like i hit a wall and i cant seem to push past it no matter what i do. the weird thing is i can copy numbers and common words like CQ DE RST 599 no problem at a higher speed, its the less common letters and especially certain combinations that trip me up. Q and Y specifically just destroy me. i slow down to write them out and then ive missed the next two characters already. ive been doing about 20-30 min a day which i know isnt a ton. should i be doing more sessions? different material? ive tried listening to W1AW code practice but i feel like im just lost half the time at their faster speeds. any advice from people who actually pushed through this plateau would be great, i dont want to give up on CW, always wanted to get a ticket back when you needed it and now that i finally have time i really want to make it work

Google "MARS CAP MOD" - nearly any radio can be opened up like that, a lot of the "Big three" use a part on the board that has to be snipped out or a wire cut and others only require software changes. Most TYTs can be opened without hardware mods.

so i passed my technician exam last thursday and my callsign showed up in the ULS database like two days later which honestly surprised me i thought it would take longer. anyway i borrowed my buddys baofeng uv-5r to get started and i figured out how to program the local 2m repeater and just keyed up and said my callsign and that i was a new ham and honestly wasnt sure anyone would respond but this older guy came back to me right away and we talked for like 10 minutes about nothing really, just the weather and what got me interested in radio. it was kind of a big deal for me even though its probably the most basic thing you can do. just wanted to share i guess, feels good to finally be on the air after studying for like two months

I run dual IC-7600s with great success. You absolutely need proper band-pass filters - I use the 6-band VA6AM set with their HP triplexer. The IC-7600 front end handles the filtered signals without overload issues. Start with the filtering before any switching box.

so ive been putting this off for way too long but after the storms last spring that knocked out power for almost a week in my area i figured it was past time to actually get serious about a proper go-kit. right now i've got a ft-891 i was planning to use as the main rig, a 40ah lifepo4 battery i picked up a few months ago, and a random wire antenna with a manual tuner. threw it all in a rubbermaid tote for now which is obviously not ideal. what im not sure about is the ancillary stuff — like how much coax do you actually bring, do you carry a second antenna option, what about logging if the laptop dies, that kind of thing. also wondering if anyone runs a dedicated HT just for local comms while the HF setup is handling traffic or if thats overkill for most activations. i have a baofeng kicking around but honestly trust it about as far as i can throw it for anything serious. would love to hear what people actually have in their kits vs what they thought they needed when they first built them out

I get these cycles too. For me it usually lines up with band conditions improving or some contest I stumble into by accident and then I'm hooked again for a few months. The drake guy sounds like a good contact — did he say which model he was running? I've been curious about the TR-4 series for a while now and hardly ever hear people actually using them on air anymore.

so i've been lurking on this forum for a while and finally pulled the trigger on a QFX-40 kit back in january, took me way longer than it should have to build it because life kept getting in the way but i finally finished it up a few weeks ago and did my first real portable outing with it saturday. went up to a state park about 45 minutes from my house, threw a random wire up in a tree maybe 30 feet or so, and just started calling CQ on 40m with 5 watts. honestly did not expect much. i've always run 100w from the shack so this felt like showing up to a knife fight with a strongly worded letter. ended up making 11 contacts in about 3 hours, including one guy in texas who was running QRP himself and gave me a 579. i was so stoked i almost knocked my water bottle into the rig. the whole setup — rig, paddle, battery, tuner — fit into a small daypack and the battery lasted the whole session with power to spare. i think im hooked. already looking at the ubitx and the mountain topper as next builds/purchases. anyone else do a lot of SOTA or just general portable QRP? curious what antennas people are using out in the field, i feel like my random wire situation could be a lot better.

oh man i remember being exactly where you are, dont stress about it at all. the "no traffic, monitoring" thing is just a shorthand some ops use to let net control know two things at once — that you have nothing to pass along AND that you'll stay on frequency after the net in case someone needs to reach you. totally optional phrasing but it does sound more polished yeah. for the timing thing, the best habit i picked up early on was just waiting about a full second after you hear the squelch tail drop before you key up. feels awkward at first like youre being too slow but it gives time for any repeater delays to clear and honestly prevents most of those doubling situations. also if you ever arent sure if its your turn, its totally fine to just wait and let net control prompt you, thats literally their job and a good NCS isnt going to mind at all. youre doing fine just by showing up consistently, the procedures just kind of click after a few weeks

yeah the jump from rtl direct sampling to the RSP1B is pretty significant honestly. the noise floor alone makes a big difference on HF, youre not fighting the hardware as much. i had a v3 dongle doing the same thing you are and switched to the RSP2 a couple years back and it wasnt even close. the SDRuno software has come a long way too, used to be kind of clunky but its pretty solid now. the HackRF thing your buddy is talking about — its a great piece of kit if you want to transmit or do wideband stuff, but for pure receive performance its not in the same league as the SDRplay. noise figure on the HackRF is something like 8-10dB depending on band, the RSP series is way better than that. if youre just listening theres really no reason to go HackRF unless you specifically need that transmit capability or the wide frequency range matters to you. one thing i'd say though, no matter what SDR you get, your antenna is going to matter more than anything. i spent weeks tweaking software and hardware before i realized my random wire was the actual problem.

LoTW is impersonal but efficient. I've switched to all-LoTW for awards and only send paper QSLs for special occasions or rare DX. Many contacts are confirmed within minutes, and it's free for all licensed amateurs. The cost savings alone make it worthwhile for serious DXers.

ran a 12 hour ARES activation last fall with almost the exact same question nagging at me. ended up doing both - brought a 100ah lifepo4 as primary and kept the honda staged in the truck as a backup/recharge option. ran about 6 hours purely on battery doing moderate voice traffic on 40m, 7300 set to about 80 watts which helped a lot. when the battery got down around 20% i fired up the generator just long enough to top it back up and then shut it off. neighbors at adjacent booths appreciated not listening to that thing all day. the buddipole is fine but honestly for a parking lot if you can get any kind of mast up, even a 20ft painters pole, a simple end fed halfwave is faster to deploy and i've found it performs just as well or better on the bands i usually work. the buddipole takes forever to tune if conditions change and you want to shift bands mid exercise. just my experience with it anyway

congrats on the VP6R, that ones been on my list too and i keep missing the openings or they're just not hearing europe when the band is up for me. what time were you getting through, like what propagation window? im assuming youre stateside. the 0200z thing makes sense for long path maybe. the timing stuff you mention is something i read about in a QST article ages ago and sort of forgot. gonna have to actually practice it instead of just knowing about it in theory lol. i feel like my problem is i panic a little when i actually hear the DX and just start calling without really listening properly first, which is exactly backwards from how you should do it.

As a bureau volunteer, this caught us completely off guard. My reader was a little upset about this because this decision was made with little or no input from the bureau managers, and they were quite caught off guard by this decision. Even so, I do sympathize with the volunteers who were not asked for any input. We're doing our best to keep costs reasonable for users.

yeah what he said. also some nets have a specific format where they take check-ins by region or by license class or whatever, so if you dont know the net's format it can feel random. i'd suggest just listening for a few sessions before you try to check in so you get a feel for how that particular net runs. they're all a little different honestly.

okay so ive been licensed for about three months now and i finally got a handheld that can hit the 147.xxx repeater in my area. the club's website says to use a 100hz CTCSS tone to access it but when i program it in i can hear other people just fine but nobody seems to hear me back, or at least nobody responds. tried calling CQ a couple times and just got silence. then last week i was messing around and forgot to set the tone and keyed up by accident and someone actually came back to me that time which was weird. so now im not sure if i even need the tone or if i had the wrong frequency offset set or what. the repeater is listed as plus offset but my radio might have it backwards, i honestly dont know. its a baofeng so the menus are kind of a nightmare to figure out. also separate question — is there like a standard way to call on a repeater? i feel like just saying my callsign and saying listening sounds weird but i dont know what the right thing to do is. been listening for a few weeks and people seem to just jump in mid conversation sometimes without introducing themselves which also confuses me.

i just passed mine like three weeks ago and the oscillator circuit questions almost got me lol. studied for maybe six weeks using the ARRL extra book and one of those online practice exam sites. the theory is dense but its not impossible, i dont have an engineering background at all and i got through it fine. the full HF privileges feel good even if i havent used all of them yet

the noise issue you mentioned from last year is real and honestly the main reason i switched to pure battery for anything comms-related. even a supposedly "clean" inverter generator will sneak hash onto the bands if your feedline runs anywhere near it. i keep the generator for non-radio loads only now — fans, lights, charging reserve batteries — and just run the rig directly off lifepo4 through an anderson powerpole distribution block. 100ah should be plenty for a 7300 if youre not running 100 watts the whole time. i typically see maybe 18-22 amps peaks on transmit at full power, way less if you drop to 50w which honestly is fine for most exercise comms anyway. with the laptop and fan factored in youre probably looking at maybe 10-12 amp average draw depending on duty cycle. do the math and you should be fine through dinner at least. bring a second battery if you can swing it though, just peace of mind. chameleon in heat i havent had problems with but i always make sure the base isnt sitting on asphalt or anything that'll radiate heat back at it. grass or dirt and it's been fine for me in july deployments.

ok so ive been licensed about 8 months now and i keep hearing people talk about chasing DXCC and WAS and WAZ and honestly i thought i understood it but the more i read the more confused i get. like i know DXCC is working 100 countries or entities or whatever they call them, and WAS is all 50 states, but then WAZ is zones and i dont even fully understand how the zones work — are they the same as ITU zones or is that a different thing entirely? also im trying to figure out if i should be logging contacts specifically with awards in mind or just logging everything and then sorting it out later. i have like 200 contacts in my log already and i have no idea if any of them count toward anything. im using WSJT-X for FT8 mostly with a simple wire dipole up about 25 feet, so i dont know if that even matters for award purposes. basically just trying to understand how people manage all this without going crazy. do most people use some kind of software to track it or are there guys still doing it on paper