Bob Williams

i went through the exact same debate last spring and ended up just building both lol. dipole is still up as a backup. my take is the vertical wins for DX but its way more work and way more sensitive to everything around it — my neighbor's chain link fence was causing me grief for weeks before i figured out what was happening. dipole just works, plug it in and go. if DX is your main thing go vertical with proper radials, if you want something reliable that covers everything and dont want to mess with it the dipole is hard to beat honestly

Working on optimizing my FT8 setup to eliminate spurious emissions. Currently running IC-7300 with WSJT-X 2.6.1. I understand the importance of avoiding ALC activation, but I'm getting conflicting advice on proper audio drive levels. The document advises how to set the transmit levels to drive the radio without causing ALC and generate harmonics, including understanding the ALC meter and setting the radio power, audio input level, and external sound card if used. It recommends setting the radio bandwidth as wide as possible, from 200Hz-3000Hz or up to 5000Hz if the radio allows. What's the optimal approach for setting Windows audio levels vs WSJT-X power slider vs radio ACC/USB output level?

i keep a little printed card taped near my rig with the most common ones, made it myself when i was starting out. honestly after a few months on the air you just absorb most of them without even trying. QTH, QSL, QRM those'll be second nature pretty quick. one that tripped me up for a while was QSY, thats when someone says lets move to a different frequency. and QRX means standby or wait a minute basically. dont worry too much about memorizing them all upfront, just look em up when you hear a new one and it sticks pretty fast that way

so ive got this kenwood tm-281a mounted in my pickup and the thing keeps cutting out when im transmitting. doesnt do it all the time but maybe every 5th or 6th transmission just drops to nothing. checked all the connections twice, power cable looks good, antenna cable seems tight. really starting to bug me because it happens right in the middle of conversations on the local repeater anyone else had this problem? starting to wonder if its a heat thing or maybe the radio is just getting old. bought it used about 8 months ago

Don't forget about Doppler shift - on 2m it's around 440Hz which WSJT handles automatically. Start with skeds with 8-yagi+ stations - they're very patient with newcomers and will work you even at -28dB. I'd strongly recommend getting that preamp at the antenna though.

dont forget a way to charge that lifepo4 that isnt just wall power. solar panel or a car charger cable at minimum. i learned that one the dumb way, showed up to a deployment with a full battery and no way to top it off and by hour 10 i was starting to get nervous. also lighting. a headlamp sounds obvious but i did not have one in my kit the first time i deployed for a hurricane activation and it was not fun trying to find connectors in the dark.

Welcome to the hobby! You're absolutely right about the fake Prolific chip issue - it's due to "fake" Prolific chips in cheap cables, and Prolific put a "poison pill" in their later drivers that detects the fake chip, not letting you talk to it. Get an older driver version that works with the fake chips, or better yet, cables that use a genuine FTDI brand chip set seem to install more easily and consistently.

yeah what he said about radials is right but also dont underestimate just raising the dipole if thats an option at all. even getting to 35 or 40 feet makes a noticeable difference. i went from 30 to about 45 feet on mine and the dx rate on 40 improved pretty noticeably. not saying skip the vertical idea just that sometimes the easier path is just getting more height on what you already have

so ive been trying to get into dx chasing a bit more seriously lately and everyone keeps telling me to use the cluster spotting networks but honestly the whole thing is kind of confusing when youre first starting out. like i have qrz pulled up on one tab and dxwatch on another and im not totally sure im using them together in the most efficient way. what i do right now is check dxwatch for spots and then when i see something interesting i go over to qrz to look up the callsign and see what entity its from and whether its a new one for me. but sometimes by the time ive done all that the pile up has moved on or the station is gone. is there a faster workflow people use or am i missing some feature that ties these together better. also is there a way to filter dxwatch by band so im not scrolling through a million spots for bands i cant even operate on right now im running a kenwood ts-590 and a dipole up about 30 feet, mostly on 20 and 40 meters if that matters. general class ticket, been licensed about 8 months now

yeah i was in the same boat like 8 months ago lol. i just did practice tests basically the whole time, maybe looked at a youtube video here and there when i really didnt get something. took me about 3 weeks of casual studying. the parts about electrical safety and operating procedures are pretty easy, the math scared me but theres only a few questions on it and honestly if you just memorize what the answers are you can get through it. one thing i wish someone told me is to just go take the test sooner than you think youre ready, worst case you fail and see what areas need more work and most VE sessions let you retest same day if you want

the tape measure yagi is probably fine honestly, 5w should be more than enough for AO-73 if you're pointed right. the pointing is almost always the issue when you're doing it by hand — those passes go faster than you think and if you're off even 10-15 degrees you can lose several dB pretty quick especially near the horizon. try watching the elevation readout in gpredict while you operate so you at least know roughly where to aim. on the doppler thing — one thing that trips people up is that gpredict corrects for your uplink doppler but you still have to tune around a bit on the downlink because the doppler on the downlink frequency shifts at a different rate than the uplink. with a linear transponder you basically need to find your own signal and then park your downlink VFO on it and just let gpredict handle the uplink. took me probably three or four passes before i got the hang of it. also make sure you're in LSB on the downlink for the 70cm side of AO-73, that inverting thing is real and will make everything sound garbled if you have it wrong

so ive been using my old baofeng UV-5R for about two years now and honestly its fine for what it is but im starting to feel like i want something a bit more... i dont know, capable? reliable? hard to explain. it works but sometimes i feel like im missing stuff or the audio isnt great when im out hiking and theres background noise. my main uses are local repeaters, APRS occasionally (though i dont have a dedicated TNC or anything, just playing with apps), and sometimes i take it out on SOTA activations with a friend who does that regularly. budget is probably somewhere in the $150-300 range but could stretch a little if something is really worth it. ive been looking at the Yaesu FT-65 and the Kenwood TH-D74A but that kenwood is way out of my price range honestly. also looked at the Wouxun KG-UV9D but not sure about that one. anyone gone through this same decision lately or have strong feelings about any of these?

so i finally picked up a used FT-7900R and i want to get it properly installed in my Camry but im kind of stuck on the antenna situation. the car is leased so i cant drill anything and the trunk lip mounts i keep seeing people talk about seem like they might not give the best ground plane. ive been looking at the mag mount route but i dont know, seems kind of janky for a permanent-ish install. does anyone run a through-glass NMO or something like that? i mostly just want to work the local repeaters on 2m and 440, nothing crazy. just dont want to compromise the radio performance too much or scratch up the car

44 QSOs total across the whole activation, not per band -- you definitely dont need to hit 44 on each band, that would be brutal for some references especially the harder to reach ones. Some activators log 44 and pack up, others stay for hours and rack up 200+ contacts, totally up to you. Spot yourself for sure, it makes a massive difference. Put yourself on the WWFF spotter page and also throw a spot on DX Summit or POTA spots if you want since a lot of hunters watch both. Dont wait until youre already set up and calling CQ for 20 minutes with nothing, just spot first thing. Your callsign, the KFF reference, frequency and mode and youll have a pileup pretty fast on a weekend morning. HAMRS works fine, just export the ADIF afterward and upload it through the WWFF logbook portal. Ive done it a dozen times that way no issues. Have fun out there, first activation is always a good time even if something goes sideways with the antenna.

LoTW is absolutely worth setting up even if it takes a few days to get your certificate sorted. yeah the process is a bit clunky but you only do it once and then its just uploading ADIF files after that. if you ever want to go for DXCC or WAS or any of the major ARRL awards you pretty much need it, eQSL credits dont count for those unfortunately. that said eQSL isnt useless, there are awards that accept it and honestly some dx stations only confirm via eQSL so having both running is the smart move. i have logbook of the world, eQSL, and i still send paper cards for any new country or really memorable contact. the paper card thing is definitely not dead, plenty of dx operators love getting them and sending them back. for the Japan contact you mentioned, look up his callsign on QRZ.com, most operators have their address listed or at least say how they prefer QSLs. for sending overseas you usually tuck a couple US dollars or an IRC in the envelope to cover return postage. some guys just say no reply needed which is also fine. short answer: get LoTW set up this weekend, keep using eQSL, and send that paper card to Japan because thats part of the fun of this hobby honestly

so ive been running FT8 for about a year and a half now and yeah i get it, its great for weak signal dx and running up the entity count but honestly after a while it starts to feel like watching a spreadsheet update itself. you're not really talking to anybody. started messing around with JS8Call a few weeks ago and its a completely different vibe. you can actually send real sentences, check in on nets, even do store-and-forward messaging which is kind of wild when you think about it. the tradeoff is obviously the sensitivity isn't quite as deep as FT8 since you're pushing actual text through the codec instead of just a fixed-format exchange. i think its like 10-12dB worse than FT8 depending on the speed setting you use. my question is i guess — does anyone actually run JS8Call regularly and have a group or net they're part of? feels like most of the activity i see is just a few beacons and the occasional heartbeat message sitting there unresponded to. curious if theres a time of day or band where it actually gets lively or if im just missing where people hang out on it.