Lisa Chen

yeah the workflow you're describing is pretty much how most people start out, nothing wrong with it. the jump between DXwatch and QRZ gets old fast though. what really helped me was just connecting a logging program directly to a cluster node via telnet — HRD can definitely do this, you just go into the DX cluster settings and put in a node address like ve7cc.net on port 7373 or one of the dxfarm nodes and it'll pipe spots right into the bandmap. makes a huge difference when you can see the spots updating live on a visual bandmap instead of refreshing a webpage. for the pileup confusion thing — that's just kind of a skill that comes with time honestly. the DX is almost always listening a few kc up from where they're transmitting if they're working split, and a lot of times the spot comments will say something like 'up 5' or whatever. DXwatch does show those comments if people bother to add them. once you get used to listening for it you'll start to hear the pattern pretty quick.

the straight key vs paddle thing is kind of a personal debate in the CW community honestly. i learned on a straight key back in the day because that was just what you did, and i think it gave me a good feel for the rhythm of the code. but a lot of people swear by going straight to a paddle and keyer combo especially if your hand coordination isnt quite there yet with a straight key. the thing about iambic mode A vs mode B — dont even worry about that right now, just pick one and use it. most modern keyers default to mode B and thats fine, some operators hate it and switch to A, but when youre just learning it really doesnt matter. what matters more is getting the keyer speed set just slightly faster than you think you can handle because it tends to improve your copying speed too, there's something about your brain syncing up when youre sending and receiving at the same rate. for a budget keyer the Hamgadgets stuff is decent, or if you want to build something the K3NG arduino keyer project is free and there are cheap kits for it. my main advice is just get on 40m around 7.050 or so and listen for a while before you try calling anyone, get a feel for how real QSOs flow. the on-air experience is totally different from practice software and the sooner you get some real contacts the faster youll improve.

honestly the eu2200i isnt that bad to haul if you have a hand truck, i bring mine to every SET and nobody has ever complained about the noise since you can throttle those down pretty quiet. that said for 8 hours with that load id probably say a 100ah lifepo4 is borderline but doable if your transmit duty cycle isnt insane — winlink bursts are short so its not like youre keying up for 5 minutes straight. one thing i did for our last exercise was parallel my 50ah and a 30ah battery i had sitting around, kept things going fine. for the antenna situation, a resonant vertical on a tripod works ok but dont expect miracles on 40m with no radials down. i usually try to get a wire up if theres any trees around, even a sloper off a 30ft fiberglass mast does way better than a base-loaded vertical for that band. the drive-on mounts are fine for 2m/70cm but 40m really wants something more.

went through this exact thing last year, it's a little confusing at first but once you do it once it makes sense. one thing i'd add is that ae7q dot com is seriously your best friend for this whole process, you can search by format and see which calls are available or in a waiting period after a previous holder let them lapse. some calls have a 2 year wait after the previous licensee passed away before anyone outside the immediate family can apply, so just watch out for that when you're browsing around for ones you like

Recently tested my Larsen NMO2/70B in different mounting positions on my sedan and got some surprising VSWR readings. Roof center mount shows 1.3:1 on 2M, 1.4:1 on 70cm, while trunk lip mount reads 2.1:1 and 1.8:1 respectively on the same bands. Ground plane availability and mounting placement significantly affect mobile antenna performance, but I didn't expect such a dramatic difference. The trunk mount is more convenient for my daily driver, but those VSWR numbers worry me about transmitter stress and pattern distortion. Running 50W on a Yaesu FTM-400XDR with RG-58 jumper. Should I drill the roof or can I improve the trunk mount performance somehow?

I've been using SatPC32 with my IC-9100 for three years now. The real-time CAT control is vital due to continuous velocity changes, and SatPC32 handles this flawlessly. Yes, the UI is dated, but it's rock-solid reliable for serious operation.

yeah 17m has been doing some funky stuff this week. i think we had a coronal hole stream come through which can mess with the higher K index numbers but sometimes before it fully arrives you get this window where things are actually enhanced for a bit. the ZL path from the midwest in the afternoon is not crazy unusual when conditions line up right, long path can do weird things. as for K vs Kp, basically the same thing, Kp is just the planetary average of all the ground stations while K is your local measurement. for HF DX you generally want K under 3, ideally 1 or 2. when it climbs to 4 and above the higher latitude paths start falling apart first, transpolar routes to Europe and Asia get hit hard. aurora enhancement is real but thats more a VHF thing, 6m guys love a good geomagnetic storm for that reason. on HF it's mostly just noise and absorption messing things up. for catching openings in real time i swear by the DX cluster combined with just tuning around yourself. pskreporter is great but youre right that its kind of a retrospective tool. RBN, the reverse beacon network, is better for seeing whats happening right now if youre a CW guy.

so ive been running a little Yaesu FT-450D for about three years now and its been fine honestly, no real complaints, but ive been eyeing the IC-7300 forever and theres one locally for sale, guy wants $850 for it, says its about two years old and he upgraded to a 7610. screen looks clean in the photos and he says the finals are good but obviously i cant verify that just from a picture. my main thing is just HF casual operating, some SSB ragchewing on 40 and 20, occasionally poke around on 17m, nothing crazy. i dont do digital except maybe wspr every now and then just to see how propagation is doing. i know the 7300 has the whole direct sampling SDR thing going on inside and the waterfall display is supposed to be really useful for finding activity but coming from the 450D which is pretty basic in that department im not sure how much of a real-world difference ill actually notice day to day. also the shack is in a small bedroom and RFI is always a mild annoyance — does the 7300 do anything notably different in terms of noise floor or is that more about my antenna situation (which honestly isnt great, dipole in the attic). anyway just looking for thoughts from people who have actually used one, not looking for the spec sheet stuff i can read that myself

yeah the not writing thing is huge and it took me forever to actually commit to it. what worked for me was setting the character speed way higher than my overall speed -- like 20wpm characters but with long gaps between them. Farnsworth spacing i think its called. that way your brain learns what fast code actually sounds like but you still have time to process. if you just slow everything down uniformly your brain learns slow code and then has to basically relearn later. i went from nothing to passing the 10wpm test in maybe 6 months but i was doing like 20-30 minutes a day pretty consistently. some days felt like i went backwards. just keep going honestly

so ive been messing around with remote station control for about six months now and finally got something stable enough that i dont feel embarrassed talking about it. running a IC-7300 at the home QTH tied into RemoteHams client, works fine for basic stuff but i started wondering if anyone has actually bolted an SDR onto the backend for panadapter output through the remote session. i know the 7300 has the USB audio and IQ output stuff but getting that piped cleanly through the RemoteHams infrastructure without the latency going completely sideways has been a pain. the internet linking side of things is where it gets messy for me. ive got a decent upload at home, maybe 35mbps, but the remote end where i operate from is sometimes pretty sketchy hotel wifi and the audio compression artifacts are already noticeable on SSB. adding SDR data on top of that feels like wishful thinking but i keep reading about people doing it so figured id ask here before i spend another weekend going down a rabbit hole. anyone have a working setup they'd describe? not looking for a perfect solution just want to know what tradeoffs people are actually living with day to day

so ive been running a little handheld in the truck for a while now just to hit the local repeaters but im finally pulling the trigger on a proper mobile, looking at the FTM-300 or maybe the ID-4100 if i can find a good deal. anyway the antenna situation is what im going back and forth on right now. the truck is a 2019 F-150 and i really dont want to drill if i can avoid it but everybody keeps telling me magmounts are garbage and i should just bite the bullet and do a lip mount or NMO through the roof. is that actually true or is it just the purists talking. ive seen some guys running magmounts for years with no issues but then again i dont know what antenna or radio they were using so hard to compare. also if anyone has done the FTM-300 install specifically in a newer ford i'd love to hear how you ran the cable. the firewall passthrough on these trucks is a nightmare from what i've read.

the preamp location is something people underestimate. like you said 500w and a yagi thats one thing but if you stick a relay-switched preamp even 2 or 3 feet from the feedpoint versus right at the feedpoint you're leaving a noticeable chunk of sensitivity on the table. coax loss at 144 MHz adds up fast and it all becomes noise figure. i spent way too long wondering why my decode rates were worse than expected before i moved my MGF1302 based preamp literally onto the boom connector at the feedpoint and it made a real difference. also dont overlook your tracking. if youre hand-pointing or using a non-computerized rotor setup you're going to miss a lot of the contact window especially when the moon is moving fast relative to your horizon. i use a simple az-el setup with a G-5500 and it works fine but you need the control interface talking to your logging software so it actually follows the moon. thats kind of the unsexy part nobody talks about but its just as important as the antenna gain.

Check PSK Reporter after transmitting some CQ calls - put your callsign in to see where you're being heard, then try different bands and times. JS8Call is growing but nowhere near FT8 levels yet. Many operators moved from PSK31 to FT8 due to typing speed limitations.

im pretty much in the same boat as you, got my general last year and the whole cluster thing took me a while to get my head around too. one thing that helped me was just keeping DXwatch open on a second monitor and not even trying to chase everything i see, just watching the patterns for a while to get a feel for how fast spots move. the app i ended up sticking with is Ham Radio DX on android, seems pretty responsive. but like the other guy probably knows way more about the technical side than me. just wanted to say you're not missing something obvious, it really is just kind of a mess of overlapping tools and you kind of pick the one that clicks for you.

so ive been wanting to get into ham radio for a while now and finally decided to just go for the technician exam. i downloaded some app and theres like 400+ questions in the pool and im kind of overwhelmed honestly. like do i need to actually understand all the electronics stuff or can i just memorize the answers? my brother said just memorize everything but that feels wrong somehow. also not sure if the hamstudy website is better than the gordon west book or what. any tips from people who actually went through this recently would be helpful, im not super technical but im not completely clueless either

Field Day is genuinely the best starting point, dont stress about it too much. The whole point is that its a club activity and nobody expects a new ham to know everything. Show up, tell people its your first time, and someone will sit next to you and walk you through the exchange. Most Field Day groups are thrilled to have extra operators because it means more contact hours. CQ WW is a different beast and i wouldnt start there honestly, especially as a phone op it gets pretty chaotic and the pileups can be brutal when you're still figuring out how logging software works. N1MM is what most people use and theres a learning curve. If you want to ease into HF contesting before Field Day i'd say try the ARRL Sweepstakes or even just a state QSO party, the exchanges are simpler and the pace is a bit less insane. SOTA is totally separate from contests, its more of an awards program where you activate summits and chase other activators, very different vibe but also a lot of fun if you like hiking. some people do both.

honestly same, im pretty new to HF and the propagation stuff is kind of overwhelming at first. someone told me to just install the DX Toolkit app and watch the alerts, which helps a little. still dont fully understand all the numbers but im learning. the random ZL contact sounds awesome though, thats exactly the kind of thing that makes me want to keep at it

haha the gate thing is a real hazard, ive heard that story more than once. some parks are pretty strict about it too so worth checking hours before you set up, especially in winter when they close early. but yeah 16 contacts is totally solid for a first activation, you only need 10 to validate so youre good. and youre right about spotting early, that was the thing that made the biggest difference for me when i was starting out. i usually spot myself before i even finish setting up the antenna now, then by the time im on the air theres already a few hunters listening for me. the POTA.app hunters are pretty quick to respond once you show up on the map. the 705 and an EFHW is honestly a great combo for portable work. i run something similar. what length wire are you using?

so ive been doing contests for about 3 years now, mostly phone, some CW, and im starting to hit a ceiling on my rates. running somewhere around 80-100/hr on a good run which honestly feels decent but ive watched some of the top scorers put up crazy numbers and a lot of them are running SO2R setups. been reading about it and it seems like the theory is pretty straightforward — while youre waiting for a contact to complete you flip to radio 2 and either S&P or start a new run frequency — but actually implementing it without the two radios destroying each other seems like a nightmare. my current setup is just a K3 into a hex beam and a 40m dipole, nothing fancy. to do SO2R properly i'd need another radio, some kind of switching, probably bandpass filters or a 2x2 antenna switch and station master or whatever, and then actually retraining my brain to manage two radios at once. feels like a huge investment for maybe 20% more contacts. anyone here actually run SO2R at a competitive level and willing to be honest about whether the juice is worth the squeeze for someone not really trying to win their category, just trying to improve rates and have more fun during the contest period

ok so i just got my technician license about three weeks ago and ive been trying to get on the local 2m repeater that the club runs. i programmed in the frequency and offset and everything but nobody can hear me or at least nobody responds. did some reading and apparently i need a CTCSS tone? the repeater directory listing shows 100.0 but i honestly have no idea if im supposed to transmit that tone, receive it, or both. also i keyed up a couple times just to test and said my callsign but felt super awkward about it, like is that even allowed when nobody else is talking? i dont want to be rude or step on anyone. my radio is a baofeng uv-5r if that matters, been trying to figure out the menus for an hour now

welcome to the addiction lol. i got into WWFF about two years ago and now i basically plan every camping trip around whether theres an unactivated reference nearby. my wife thinks i have a problem. she's probably right. the wildlife refuge ones are often really good because theyre usually quiet areas with decent takeoff and you dont have to deal with crowds like you sometimes get at the popular state parks.

Built something similar last year - used FT-140-61 ferrite cores instead of air-wound coils. More compact and higher Q factor, though more expensive. Your setup proves that simple solutions work great. Did you notice any bandwidth compression compared to a full-size dipole?

honest answer? both camps are right depending on what youre trying to do. a dipole at 30 feet on 40m is basically an NVIS machine, great for regional stuff but yeah the takeoff angle is pretty high. the vertical with a decent radial system will beat it for DX contacts no question in my experience, but "decent radial system" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. ive seen guys with 8 radials wonder why their vertical is noisy and underperforming and the answer is usually just... more radials. the old ON4UN low band book has some good data on the diminishing returns curve, basically you get most of the benefit somewhere around 30-60 radials and after that youre just digging for fun 16-20 buried radials will get you maybe 80% of the way there though, its not like you need a full 120 to make it worthwhile. clay is annoying but a flat spade and some patience works. i did mine over a couple weekends. what tuner are you running with the ladder line setup?

so ive been running a mag mount on the roof of my truck for about two years now with a diamond SG7900A and honestly its been fine but i keep reading that a proper NMO through-the-roof mount is the way to go for a permanent install. the mag mount does slide around occasionally when i hit highway speeds and ive got this weird patch of paint rubbing off under it which is annoying. the thing holding me back is obviously drilling a hole in my truck roof. feels like a commitment. currently running an IC-2730 in the cab and i mostly do local repeater stuff plus some simplex when i go camping with buddies. nothing serious like contesting or anything. is the NMO actually that much better electrically or is it more just about the mechanical stability? i can never find a straight answer on this that isnt someone trying to sell me something

ok so ive been licensed for about 8 months now (general class) and ive been mostly just doing casual QSOs on 40m and some digital stuff on FT8 but a buddy at my club keeps telling me i should try an actual contest to really sharpen up my operating. he mentioned CQ WW coming up in october and also ARRL Sweepstakes not too long after that. honestly the whole contest thing feels a little overwhelming from the outside. like i know the basic idea is to work as many stations as possible and log the exchange but ive never actually sat down and done one from start to finish. do i need special software or can i just log on paper for a first attempt? and is CQ WW even a good starting point for a newcomer or is it total chaos on the bands that weekend also been looking at SOTA a little bit — i know its not a contest exactly but there seem to be events and activations people coordinate around. is that a separate thing entirely or do people sometimes combine that with contest weekends any advice appreciated, i dont want to show up totally clueless