Radio Geek

so ive been trying to get Winlink set up for a few weeks now and i think i understand the basic concept — email over radio — but im getting confused about the gateway side of things. like i get that you need a client (Winlink Express) and i have that running, but when i try to connect to a nearby RMS gateway i keep getting either a busy signal or it just times out. not sure if im doing something wrong on my end or if the gateways in my area are just slammed all the time. im running a Kenwood TS-590SG into a SignaLink USB, using Vara HF for the modem. the frequency im trying is one i pulled off the RMS list for my region but honestly i dont fully understand how to pick the right one or whether i should be trying multiple. also the whole hybrid network thing where it routes through the internet if needed — does that mean the gateway has to have an internet connection itself or is that handled somewhere else in the chain? any help appreciated, been at this for a while and feeling a bit lost

I've had both installed for probably two years now and honestly I just use them for different things at this point. Log4OM is genuinely nicer for everyday logging, the DX cluster integration and the award tracking stuff is way more fleshed out than N1MM, and yeah it handles the WSJT-X UDP feed just fine, you just point WSJT-X at the Log4OM port and it picks up the QSOs. I did have one weird issue early on where dupes werent getting flagged correctly but a settings thing fixed it, dont remember exactly what it was. For contests though I go back to N1MM every time. Log4OM can do some contests but it's just not the same, the dedicated contest mode in N1MM with the callsign lookup speed and the dupe checking and S&P vs run mode switching is hard to beat when you're in the middle of something like SS or a sprint. I dont think anyone is really using Log4OM as their primary contest logger seriously, at least nobody I know.

so ive been messing around with remote station control for about 6 months now and finally got something resembling a working setup but the audio latency is driving me nuts. running RemoteHams RCForb client on the shack PC connected to a SDRplay RSP1A for the SDR side, and then using a separate audio path through mumble for the transmit audio going into the rig which is an IC-7300. the whole thing is tunneled through a wireguard VPN back to my house and on a good day the latency sits around 180ms which is workable but not great. the problem is it just randomly spikes, like ill be in the middle of a QSO and suddenly theres like 400-500ms of delay and the other station thinks ive gone QRT or something. checked my internet connection both ends and its not obviously dropping packets or anything. also curious if anyone has experimented with linking this kind of setup into an Echolink or AllStar node. i know its kind of mixing two different worlds but the idea of being able to jump into a local repeater remotely while also having the HF rig available through the same connection seems appealing. not sure if thats even a sensible thing to do or if im just overcomplicating everything

yeah you've got the right number, 44 QSOs for a valid activation in WWFF. the overlap with POTA is real and honestly a lot of us just run both logs simultaneously, same contacts count for both programs as long as the reference is enrolled in each. most national wildlife refuges in the US are listed as KFF references and many are also POTA references so you're probably fine there. the wwff.cc site has a search tool where you can look up specific references by name or location, worth spending 20 minutes on that before you go out. once you confirm your spot is a valid KFF reference you just upload your log to the WWFF logbook after the activation same as you would for POTA. the FT-891 and a linked dipole is a solid kit for that kind of thing, 40m will probably get you to your 44 pretty quick especially if you self-spot on the POTA app which a lot of hunters monitor even for WWFF activations.

so ive been running an old TS-590SG for about four years and honestly never had a real reason to upgrade but my buddy kept going on about the 7300 and i finally caved and picked one up used off qrz classifieds last month. figured id share some thoughts since i spent way too long reading forum threads before i bought it and most of them were either fanboy stuff or from like 2017. first thing that genuinely surprised me was how good the waterfall is in practice. i knew it had one obviously but actually using it on 40m at night when its busy, being able to just see where the pileups are and where the clear spots are... its a different way of operating and i dont think i fully appreciated that until i was sitting there with it. the 590 felt kind of blind after that. the receiver itself is very good. not sure its night and day vs the 590 which also has a solid front end but on 160m with my inverted L i noticed it handles strong nearby signals better than i expected. could be placebo, hard to say without side by side testing. one thing that did bother me, the menu system takes some getting used to. stuff is buried in weird places and the touch screen is fine but not great with cold fingers in my garage shack in january. small complaint but still. anyway if anyones on the fence and has a chance to grab one used for a reasonable price i think its worth it. just my experience after about 6 weeks with it.

the math isnt as terrible as people make it out to be honestly. theres some impedance and reactance stuff where you need to actually work through the formula but if you can handle ohms law you can handle most of it with some practice. the filter theory and the amplifier questions were what got me the first time i tried, i failed by like 4 questions which was embarrassing but i went back and really drilled those sections and passed fine the second time. HamStudy is great but i'd say dont just click through and memorize the answers because some of the questions have wrong-looking distractors that start to make sense once you actually get why the right answer is right. takes longer but you'll retain it. as for whether the extra privileges are worth it, depends what you want to do. the CW sub-bands and the lower chunks of 75 and 40 are where a lot of the DX action happens so if you ever catch the DX bug you'll be glad you have it.

If the other operator is having trouble picking my callsign out of the noise, it sometimes helps to switch phonetic alphabets. Sometimes one or the other sound just happens to get through better or is more recognizable by the other radio operator (especially if English is not their primary language).

so ive been chasing decent audio on 40m SSB for a while now and honestly im not sure what's actually moving the needle vs what's just placebo. i run an IC-7300 and for the longest time i just left the mic gain and compression where they were from the factory and figured that was fine. then a few months ago i started actually listening back to recordings of my own audio and... yeah it was not great. kind of thin, a little peaky, hard to copy through QRM. started messing with the parametric EQ in the 7300 and bumped up the low mids somewhere around 250-300hz, rolled off some of the high end above 2.5k, and pulled back the compression ratio a bit. honestly it made a noticeable difference. still not studio quality obviously but people stopped asking me to repeat myself as much. what i'm still not sure about is the microphone itself. im using the stock HM-36 hand mic which everyone says is garbage but when i actually compare my audio to some of the guys running SM-50s or even aftermarket stuff like an Heil PR-40 the difference isnt as dramatic as i expected. maybe my ears are bad. or maybe i just havent found the right settings yet. curious what other people have found actually helps — talking about real on-air stuff not just bench testing. like does TX bandwidth setting matter much? ive seen people say 2.8k is the sweet spot but some DX guys swear by narrower. genuinely not sure what to believe at this point.

The DHS now requires all volunteers, including amateur radio operators, to have completed the FEMA IS-100.c, IS-200.c, IS-700.b and IS-800.d courses. As a result, the Yavapai County Office of Emergency Management has mandated that all amateur radio operators participating in emergencies must have completed the FEMA training courses. Plus the ARRL EC-001-S course so that everyone has the fundamental knowledge of how amateur radio operates as part of emergency communications.

i went through the exact same confusion a few months ago when I started getting into DX. what helped me was just picking one and sticking with it for a while rather than jumping between them. I use DXwatch now and yeah the band filter is there, took me a minute to find it too. one thing nobody told me that i had to figure out — you can also filter by continent which helps a lot if youre specifically hunting something like EU or JA stations and dont want to wade through a bunch of NA spots you could work any time

i went down this rabbit hole last year and ended up switching to a Raspberry Pi instead of arduino just because i wanted to add a web interface so i could control it remotely too. ended up way more complicated than i planned lol but it does work. if you just need local automation the arduino approach is totally fine and probably more reliable honestly since theres no linux to hang on you. one thing to think about — do you want manual override? i added a physical rotary switch that can bypass the whole arduino thing in case something goes sideways during a contest or whatever. saved me a few times when i was updating firmware at a bad moment

so ive been running ft8 for about a year now and yeah its great for contacts and filling in the map but honestly after a while it starts to feel like youre just clicking a button and watching a computer talk to another computer. not much operating skill involved if im being honest with myself. someone at the club last month mentioned js8call and said its basically ft8 but you can actually type messages back and forth, relay stuff through other stations, even do some basic messaging over hf without internet. that actually sounds interesting to me. my setup is pretty modest, ic-7300 into a trapped vertical, so im not running a kilowatt or anything, but ft8 contacts usually arent a problem even at 50 watts. my question is kind of twofold i guess — is js8call actually used enough that youd find other stations to talk to on a random weeknight, and is the weak signal performance close enough to ft8 that id still get through when band conditions are marginal? i know its a wider bandwidth mode so im assuming the sensitivity isnt quite the same but i dont really know the numbers off the top of my head. also still have a soft spot for psk31 but man that waterfall is a ghost town compared to what it used to be. feels like everyone just migrated to ft8 and never looked back.

Remember you can skip questions and come back to them later. If you encounter something you don't know, don't panic - use process of elimination to narrow down choices. You've prepared well if practice tests are going well. Trust your preparation!