CQ Op

yeah same thing happened to me when i first started checking into nets, the timing thing specifically. what helped me was just listening to the net a few times before actually checking in so i could get a feel for how that specific net runs because they really do vary a lot. some are super formal with traffic and stuff, some are basically just a ragchew with a net control keeping order. one thing i'll add — if you're on a repeater with a bit of delay or a long tail, that can make it really hard to know when someone stopped transmitting. sometimes what sounds like dead air is actually the repeater still going. that might have been part of what happened when you keyed up too early.

welcome to your first net, that first check-in feeling is something almost everyone remembers. you actually did the right thing by listening first, thats honestly the best way to learn how a particular net runs because they can all be a little different. traffic just means formal message traffic, like if someone has an ARRL radiogram or a health-and-welfare message to pass. if you dont have any you just say "no traffic" or sometimes net control will skip you if you already indicated youre just monitoring. no big deal that you stayed quiet. as for the signal report thing, if net control or someone asks the net in general for reports you can absolutely chime in, just wait for a pause and give your callsign first before you say anything. something like "W1XYZ, you're five by nine here" is totally fine. people appreciate hearing from more stations. the ARRL has a decent page on net procedures but honestly just keep showing up on that net and youll have it figured out in a few weeks. the regulars are almost always happy to help newcomers along.

yeah what he said about the inverted V making it electrically longer is spot on, i ran into the exact same thing with my first build. ended up having to trim like 3 inches total off each leg to get it where i wanted it. also just curious what you used for the balun situation, did you put a current balun at the feedpoint or just run the coax straight to the center insulator? i skipped the balun on my first one and had rf coming back down the coax shield and into the shack, took me way too long to figure out what was causing the weird rf feedback on my mic.

yeah what the other guy said about the SSID is real important. if his radio is beaconing as W1XYZ-9 but you're sending messages to W1XYZ you're gonna get nothing. APRS treats those as completely different stations. i made that mistake for like two weeks when i first started messing with this stuff and felt pretty dumb when i figured it out lol

yeah i had the same exact debate when i got my first mobile rig. ended up just drilling the roof and honestly it wasnt as scary as i thought, but i totally get not wanting to do that on a newer car. one thing i will say is that running coax through the door jamb is probably contributing more to your issues than the antenna spot — the constant flexing can damage the shield over time and ive seen that cause all kinds of weird rf problems. worth at least rerouting it through a grommet somewhere if you can find one.

okay so a few things here. the telnet option is basically just connecting over the internet directly to a winlink CMS server, so that kind of defeats the purpose if you're trying to do actual radio email. you want vara HF or vara FM or packet depending on what you're doing. for HF with the 7300 vara HF is the right call, just make sure your audio levels in vara are showing a clean signal, not peaking out. there's a little meter in vara itself and you want it in the green not slamming red for the failed sessions, yeah messages do stay in your outbox until they successfully get posted to a CMS. so if it timed out before completing the handshake they're still sitting there waiting. you can also check the session logs in winlink express, its under the menu somewhere, and itll tell you if the transfer actually completed or not. the channel selector is decent but honestly i usually just pick a gateway i know is active and try a few frequencies manually. some of those listed gateways havent been on the air in months

made almost exactly this jump about 18 months ago, went from the 7300 to the 7610 and honestly the roofing filter difference is real, especially on 40m during a busy evening or a contest weekend when the band is packed. the 7300 is no slouch but when you're trying to pull out a signal 2-3khz away from a strong station the 7610 just handles it better, less splatter getting through. the dual receiver thing though — if youre not doing serious SO2R i'd say it's nice to have but you wont use it as much as you think. i use it mainly to keep an ear on a second freq while im in a qso on the main vfo, but that's something you can kind of fake with a second radio anyway. the real upgrade for me was the reciprocal mixing performance and just the overall feel of having two independent receivers doing their thing. if budget is a concern id honestly say the 7300 is still a fantastic radio and you could spend that difference on a better antenna and probably come out ahead for your operating style

the single yagi EME thing is real but you gotta be honest with yourself about what you're getting into. with 4 yagis and legal limit on 2m you can work stations that have big arrays on the other end, but you're not going to be working other small pistols very often. the JT65 mode changed everything though, back in the analog days you basically needed a massive antenna farm and i remember guys spending stupid money just to get a handful of contacts a year the preamp thing is absolutely not marginal, it's probably the single most important thing you can do after antenna gain. system noise figure on EME basically needs to be under 1dB to be competitive, ideally like 0.5-0.7dB range. that masthead preamp youre running is probably garbage for this, you want something like a low noise amplifier specifically designed for 2m EME, SSB Electronic or DB6NT stuff is what most people run. the feedline loss between the antenna and the preamp matters enormously, even like 0.5dB of coax before the LNA wrecks your noise figure. mount it right at the feed or as close as you physically can start with 2m, get 4 yagis crossed polarized if you can, and just get on during the big EME contests and see what you can hear. WSJT-X and JT65B is the mode, moonbounce.info has the skeds. you'll be surprised what you can do once the system is optimized

okay so ive been licensed about 8 months now and i keep hearing people talk about chasing DX and getting awards and i finally started looking into it properly this week. DXCC, WAS, WAZ — theres so many of them and i honestly dont fully understand how they work or which one makes sense to go after first as a general class op with a pretty basic station (IC-7300, end-fed halfwave in the backyard). from what i can tell DXCC is like the big one where you need contacts with 100 different countries or entities or whatever they call them, and WAS is all 50 states which honestly sounds more doable for me right now. WAZ i looked up and its the 40 CQ zones which seems like it could overlap with the other two a lot. do the contacts count for multiple awards or do you have to make separate QSOs for each program? and is Logbook of the World the only way to submit these days or can you still mail QSL cards? sorry if this is a really basic question, i just dont want to start logging contacts randomly without understanding what actually counts toward what

so i finally did my first WWFF activation last weekend, been putting it off for months because honestly the whole process of finding a valid reference and logging everything seemed kind of intimidating compared to just going out and doing a SOTA. ended up going to a state forest about 45 minutes from my house that's listed in the KFF database and it was honestly a great time. ran about 3 hours on 40m SSB and got maybe 38 contacts, which i think is enough to validate the reference? i read somewhere you need 44 but then saw something else saying 44 is for a full activation. im a little confused on what the actual threshold is. also do hunter contacts count differently if the other station is also in a nature reference at the time, like if theyre doing their own activation simultaneously? the nature part of it was really cool actually, way more relaxed vibe than SOTA since i wasn't on a summit and could just set up comfortably under some trees. had deer walking through maybe 30 feet from me while i was in a pile up which was pretty surreal. anyway if anyone has done a bunch of these and can clear up the validation rules id appreciate it, the wwff.net site has a lot of info but its kind of hard to navigate