Lisa Chen

yeah the math and reality are pretty different when you're out there. i did a 30-something hour activation last fall with a 100ah lithium iron phosphate pack from bioenno, the 12v version, and it was close. like closer than i wanted. IC-7300 at 50w, a small laptop, and i had a little LED work light going through the night. made it but i was watching the voltage pretty closely by hour 20 or so. if youre doing 36 hours i'd honestly say either go with two of those packs or keep the genny as a backup even if you dont plan to run it much. the eu2200i is quiet enough that if you stick it downwind and run a longer cord its not that bad. i run mine on a 50ft 10 gauge extension and put it behind a folding table with some moving blankets around it when i need to reduce the noise signature. not perfect but workable. the linked dipole setup sounds solid, that's basically what we use too, 40/20 links on a squid pole

this is really cool to read about, im still pretty new and just joined an ARES group a couple months ago. havent been to a real activation or exercise yet but they mentioned doing something like this in the fall. i didnt realize so much of it was about coordination and paperwork honestly i thought it was mostly just radio stuff. now im a little nervous that i dont know the ICS forms at all, is that something i should study before showing up or do they usually walk you through it

congrats on the first one, 65 contacts is a solid debut honestly. for the log submission you go to wwff.us and there's a log upload section in your account, it's separate from lotw but you can upload the same adif file to both. just make sure your adif has the right fields filled in, the wwff one needs the reference in there (WWFF-ref or whatever your logging software calls it) otherwise the upload gets weird. the 44 contacts thing — yeah thats the threshold for a full activation to count toward your own awards. hunters just need to have a qso with you at the reference to get credit, doesnt matter how many you make. so your 65 definitely counts as a full activation. some refs have what they call a "5 star" thing where you need like 250 or 500 contacts but dont worry about that for now, most people never chase that anyway

so ive been going back and forth on this for a couple weeks now and cant really make up my mind. i have a 2019 tacoma and want to put up a decent dual band antenna for 2m/70cm, mostly for local repeaters and some simplex when im out hiking trails and need comms back to the truck. right now im running one of those mag mounts which honestly works okay but i know its not ideal, i get some feedback through the coax and the swr on 70cm has always been a little sketchy. the question is whether its actually worth drilling through the roof for a proper NMO mount. ive heard the lip mounts are a decent middle ground but ive also heard they can cause issues with the weatherstripping over time and some guys say the ground plane isnt as good. the truck is still fairly new so im a little hesitant to start drilling holes but i also dont want to deal with a compromised antenna setup forever. currently looking at either the Tram 1185 or the Diamond MR77 for the antenna itself once i figure out the mounting situation. anybody been down this road before?