Northern Ham

so this has been driving me absolutely nuts for the past three weeks. my IC-7300 started dropping TX intermittently, like ill be mid-qso and the power just falls off a cliff. not slowly, just gone. rx is totally fine the whole time, swr doesnt spike or anything weird. it comes back after maybe 30-60 seconds and then works perfectly for a while before doing it again. at first i thought it was thermal, like maybe something was getting hot and throttling, but ive been watching the finals temp on the display and its nowhere near the threshold. ambient temp in the shack is fine too. ive also ruled out the power supply because i swapped in my backup and same thing happens. checked the fan and its spinning properly. connector on the back of the radio seems solid. the weird part is it seems to happen more on 40m than anywhere else but i cant be 100% sure, maybe im just on 40 more often. no error codes, nothing in the menus looks off. anyone dealt with something like this before or have a starting point for diagnosis?

so ive been on 40m a lot lately just listening, not even transmitting really. something about the band being so alive at night just gets me. heard some guy working dx from what sounded like a pretty modest setup and that was honestly more fun to listen to than anything on tv right now. anyway just checking in i guess, whats everyone else up to these days

the gateway selection thing tripped me up too when i first started. basically beyond distance you also want to look at the mode the gateway supports and whether its currently active — some of those gateways in the list havent been on the air in months and Winlink Express doesnt always filter those out aggressively enough. i usually sort by distance but then cross-check on winlink.org/RFStatus to see which ones have had recent activity before i bother trying. also the hanging handshake issue, that got me for a while. with VARA HF if your TX audio is even slightly overdriven youll get this thing where it connects partway and then just stalls. i'd double-check your ALC on the radio during transmit — ideally you want it barely moving. took me forever to figure that out and it fixed like 80% of my connection failures. also some gateways are just flaky, nothing you can do there. on the peer to peer question yeah you've got the right idea. thats the main use case, if the gateway's upstream internet link is down but both stations are on the air you can still pass traffic directly. its how Winlink stays useful in actual disaster comms scenarios where the infrastructure is compromised. you set up a session directly to the other guys callsign, they have to be listening of course, and messages go straight across without touching the CMS. works great in theory, takes some coordination in practice.

yeah that tracks. 35 feet on 40m is something like 0.27 wavelengths above ground, which pushes the main radiation lobe up pretty high. you're probably doing great on regional stuff, anything within 500 miles or so, but for the longer haul paths you're sending most of your power up at like 60-70 degrees and that doesnt really work out past maybe 1000 miles depending on conditions. the vertical, even with a mediocre radial system, is going to have a lower angle lobe and thats whats making the difference to the west. if you want to keep the dipole the classic fix is just get it higher, but i know thats easier said than done. alternatively you could try inverting it into a vee which lowers the angle a bit, or honestly just add a second antenna. a simple quarter wave vertical with even 16 or 20 radials will outperform that GAP on DX paths most days once you have a decent ground plane under it.

So i finally did my first activation last weekend at a state park about 45 minutes from my house, been putting it off forever because i kept convincing myself i wasnt ready or my setup wasnt good enough. Finally just threw the KX2 and a 40m EFHW in the car and went for it. Got my 10 contacts in about 35 minutes which i was pretty happy about, mostly 40m with a couple on 20. The thing that surprised me most was how helpful the hunters were — like there were a couple guys who clearly knew i was a first timer and were super patient when i fumbled through my exchanges. One guy even called back a second time when i completely botched logging his callsign the first time, no attitude at all. My actual question is about spotting yourself. I used the POTA app to self spot and it seemed to work but i wasnt totally sure i was doing it right because my signal showed up on the map but then disappeared after maybe 10 minutes even though i was still on frequency. Is that normal or did i do something wrong? Also is there a preferred way to let hunters know youre QRT vs just going silent, feels rude to just disappear.

nice work. i just started hunting a few months ago and guys like you doing activations are the reason its so fun to chase parks. one thing i noticed from the hunter side is that activators who give their callsign and park reference number every few contacts are way easier to log correctly, sometimes the spots on the website have typos and hunters are guessing at the park number if you dont say it. just a small thing but it helps us on the other end keep the log clean

so ive been doing contests semi-seriously for a few years now, usually top 10 or so in my section but nothing crazy. been reading a lot about SO2R and rate optimization lately and honestly im not sure if its worth the headache for someone at my level or if i should just focus on squeezing more out of single radio operation first. my current setup is a k3 into a 3 element yagi on 20 and a dipole for 40/80, nothing exotic. during cqww last year i was running maybe 80-90 qsos an hour on a good run which i know isnt elite but felt pretty solid to me. the thing is i watch videos of the big guns and half their rate comes from hunting mults on the second radio while keeping a run frequency, and i just wonder how much of that is actually learnable vs needing a whole different station setup. anyone gone through this transition and can tell me honestly if it changed their scores significantly or was it mostly just more stress for marginal gains at the non-superstation level

dont sleep on paper cards though honestly. i know it sounds outdated but getting a nice QSL from a rare entity in the mailbox never really gets old. i still send cards through the bureau for most of my contacts, it just takes forever to get them back sometimes like 2 years in some cases through the ARRL outgoing bureau but the cost is pretty low. that said for actually building toward DXCC just use LoTW, it's way faster and easier to track. i have like 280 entities confirmed there and i'd still be waiting on half those paper cards probably

honestly the question pool isn't as bad as it sounds when you actually sit down with it. there's 426 questions total but only 35 show up on the actual exam and they're pulled from specific sections so if you focus on the ones you're weak on it goes faster. HamStudy dot org is what i usually point people to, it tracks which questions you keep getting wrong and drills those specifically. most people i know who used it consistently for like 2-3 weeks passed fine, no electronics background needed. the ARRL book is good if you actually want to understand the why behind things but if you just want to pass and figure the rest out on the air, the question pool method works. i wont lie to you. lot of new hams do exactly that. the understanding comes later when you're actually playing with the radio and running into stuff.

Honestly you're probably fine. Off-center mounts are super common especially with sunroofs and moonroofs in the way, and yeah the radiation pattern gets a little wonky but in practice for hitting repeaters it really doesn't matter. you'd have to be doing some pretty serious weak signal work or maybe satellite stuff before that asymmetry would actually bite you. the fact you're getting into repeaters 40 miles out on UHF with a mag mount and a Tram antenna tells me everything is working the way it should. i ran an off-center mount on my old jeep for three years and never noticed any real world difference. if you ever do a permanent NMO hole drill through the roof you can get it centered then, but for now don't sweat it.

so ive been a general class for about 3 years now and i keep going back and forth on whether to bother with the extra exam. i did fine on the general but some of what i've seen in the extra question pool looks pretty intimidating, like the stuff about filter design and transmission line theory and some of the amplifier questions honestly make my head spin a little. my main thing is i dont really do a ton of HF contesting or anything where the extra privileges would matter all that much day to day, mostly just some casual ragchewing on 40 and 20. but i kind of feel like i should just finish what i started if that makes sense. is the theory section actually as rough as it looks or is it one of those things that seems worse than it is before you sit down and actually study it

so ive been a member of our local ARES group for about 8 months now, been to most of the monthly nets and a couple of the tabletop exercises but this weekend is my first actual activation — county emergency management asked us to support a pretty big community event and apparently they want radio coverage at like 6 or 7 different sites around the fairgrounds area. my EC told me i'll probably be stationed at one of the outer posts which is fine, i have my HT and a slim jim hanging in my go bag but im wondering if there's stuff i just wont know to expect that nobody really tells you about ahead of time. like the practical stuff. how long do you usually end up waiting between actual traffic, do you just sit there? should i bring more battery than i think i need? i have two 2200mah packs and was thinking of bringing a third just in case but dont want to overpack any advice from people who've done this kind of thing would be helpful, even just like general "here's what caught me off guard" type stuff

so i got my general back in march and ive been mostly doing local 2m stuff and some casual HF when the bands cooperate. a buddy at my club keeps telling me i need to try a contest and honestly the whole thing seems a bit overwhelming from the outside. like i look at the CQ WW calendar and there's just so much going on and i dont really know what the difference is between all of them or which one would be a good first experience. i did listen in during field day this year but wasnt actually operating, just watched some of the club guys do it from the park. that was fun but i still felt pretty lost on the exchange stuff. someone mentioned SOTA too which i guess is different, not really a contest but people do activations and chasers log contacts? i downloaded a few cabrillo files just to see what they look like and yeah that did not help my confusion at all lol anyway if anyone has suggestions for a good first contest to actually participate in, or just how to wrap my head around the whole contesting world in general, id appreciate it. running a modest setup here, IC-7300 into a dipole up about 30 feet.

had almost the same thing happen with mine last fall. ended up being the ends were too close to some metal gutters and it pulled resonance way down. moved the ends out a few feet and it came right back up. might not be your issue but worth checking whats near the end insulators.

so i finally got around to building a 40m dipole after years of just using a cheap vertical i bought off amazon. used some 14 gauge stranded wire i had lying around from an old project, cut it to the formula lengths and hung it inverted-V style off a mast in the backyard. center insulator i made from a piece of PVC i had, drilled holes and zip tied the coax through it. pretty proud of it honestly. anyway my question is about the feedpoint. when i measured SWR it was around 1.8:1 which isnt terrible but i was expecting something closer to 1.5 or even lower since everything online says a dipole should be pretty close to 50 ohms. im using RG-8X to the shack, maybe 60 feet of it. i did NOT put a choke balun or any kind of current balun at the feedpoint, just connected the coax braid to one leg and center to the other. could that be causing current on the outside of the coax messing with my readings? ive been meaning to wind a 1:1 choke but havent gotten around to it yet. the antenna is about 25 feet high at the apex which i know isnt great for 40m but its what i have. just curious if anyone else has gone through this and what you found made the biggest difference, the balun thing or just trimming the legs.

Not a dumb question at all, honestly this stuff confused me for the first year or two as well. So the short version is they're all separate awards run by different organizations and you track them separately, though the contacts can overlap — meaning one QSO with Japan could count toward DXCC, WAZ, and WAS doesn't really apply there since that's just the 50 US states but you get the idea. DXCC is the big one most people chase first, that's 100 confirmed countries basically (they call them entities which is a whole other rabbit hole). WAZ is Worked All Zones, there are 40 CQ zones around the world and you need one contact confirmed from each. WAS is just the 50 states, which sounds easy but Alaska and Hawaii will chase you in your sleep. For confirmation LoTW is by far the easiest path now, a lot of DX stations upload there and when both sides confirm the QSO it counts. Paper QSL cards still work and some awards actually require them for certain band endorsements or rare entities, but for getting started just get on LoTW and make sure the stations you're working are uploading there too. Your Japan contact is almost certainly a valid DXCC entity so log it carefully and check if they're on LoTW.

so ive been on FT8 for about a year now and yeah its great for working new grids and all that but honestly after a while it starts feeling like a slot machine more than ham radio. you click, you wait, you get a confirmation, repeat. im not complaining about it exactly but i wanted something with more... actual communication happening. tried JS8Call a few weeks ago and its definitely more like a real qso but the waterfall is pretty sparse compared to FT8. i run about 30w into a dipole up maybe 25 feet and i can hear people but responses are slow or nonexistent sometimes. not sure if its my setup, the time of day, or if the mode itself just has way fewer users now. also the timing windows confuse me a bit — i know you can set different speeds but im not sure which one most people use for general rag chew type stuff. also been messing with PSK31 lately and honestly that one i kind of love, theres something nice about actually typing a real sentence and having someone on the other end type back in near real time. propagation has to cooperate though and i feel like 40m is the only band where i can reliably find activity on it anymore. anyway curious what other people are running for digital outside the FT8 grind. RTTY seems like its mostly contests at this point? or am i wrong about that

yeah the 2m radio that always ends up in the kit, i feel that deeply. mine is somehow always in there too along with like three feedlines i dont remember packing. honestly for 12 hour emcomm stuff we've just gone back to the generator for the main station and kept a smaller lipo just for handheld charging and backup. the weight tradeoff sucks but reliability anxiety during an actual activation is worse imo. last drill we had a generator go down and spent 45 minutes troubleshooting a carb issue which was its own special kind of fun, so there's that side of it too. i've had pretty good luck with the yamaha ef2000is for weight vs output but it's still not exactly a backpacking item. the linked dipole setup sounds solid for NVIS though, what heights are you getting on the ends

RTTY guy here and honestly i still think theres something to be said for modes where you actually type in real time even if the weak signal performance isnt as impressive. but i get it, JS8Call does fill a gap. i messed around with it during a few slow contest weekends and the heartbeat feature is kinda neat where your station just announces itself periodically without you doing anything. one thing though — make sure your time sync is spot on, like within a second or less. i had all kinds of decoding issues early on and it turned out my PC clock had drifted. probably obvious to most people but it tripped me up for longer than i want to admit

First Field Day here - should I bring my own radio or can I use the club's? Also nervous about the GOTA station since I'm a new Tech license, but excited to maybe talk "across the state, USA or the world" with supervision!

Just got my Technician license last month (W5XYZ) and I'm trying to figure out the best way to confirm my contacts. I keep hearing about LoTW and eQSL but I'm getting conflicting advice. Which system should a new ham focus on? I've made about 20 QSOs so far on 2m and 40m and want to start working toward some awards. Also wondering if I should bother with paper QSL cards at all given the postage costs these days.

Both solid choices! For newcomers reading this - either radio will get you on the air and making contacts. Don't get paralyzed by analysis. The best QRP rig is the one you actually take to the field and use. 73!

so ive been part of our local ARES group for about 8 months now, been going to the monthly nets and did a couple of the tabletop exercises but this weekend theres an actual activation for a pretty big marathon event in our county and its the first time ill be deployed in a real support role and not just observing my EC assigned me to one of the water stations about 3 miles from the finish line, ill be doing radio relay between the med team at my station and net control at the finish area. been told to expect maybe 4-5 hours of operation, mostly just check-ins and passing any medical traffic if something happens i think im prepared but im second guessing everything. my go-bag is packed, HT is fully charged with a spare battery, i wrote out the ICS-213 form procedure on an index card because i always blank on the format when im nervous, and ive been practicing keeping my transmissions short and clear. but like... is there anything that always catches newer operators off guard at these events that i should know about? not talking about big emergencies, just the little stuff that trips people up also not sure how formal the net discipline is going to be at something like this compared to our training nets, our EC is pretty experienced but i havent really talked to him much about what to expect day-of

not a dumb question at all, everyone starts somewhere. honestly for the tech exam the question pool is totally public so you can just study directly from it, theres 35 questions on the real test all pulled from a pool of like 400 something. HamStudy dot org is what most people use now, it does this spaced repetition thing where it figures out which questions you keep getting wrong and drills you on those. took me maybe 2-3 weeks of like 20 mins a day before I felt ready. the electronics stuff isnt too bad for tech, theres some ohms law questions but nothing you cant handle if you watch a youtube video about it. ARRL has an official study guide book too but honestly between hamstudy and maybe ham radio prep app you probably dont need to spend money on anything. just take practice exams until youre consistently hitting 85% or above and youll be fine on the real thing

yeah the cluster thing confused me too when i first started, so you're not alone. the spots come from a mix of both — some are posted by actual operators who just worked or heard a station, and some come in through automated skimmer networks which are basically SDR setups running software that decodes signals and auto-posts spots. so a spot could be minutes old or it could be from a guy who posted it and then the band shifted and now thats gone. generally anything more than like 10-15 minutes old on HF you kind of have to treat with suspicion, especially on the higher bands where conditions flip fast. for which tools i actually use, honestly DX summit has been around forever and i still check it, but i mostly use the cluster feed built into my logging software now (i use log4om). if you're just starting out though just bookmarking DXwatch and refreshing it is totally fine. the QRZ lookup habit is a good one to build early — not just to verify the call is real but also the bio page sometimes tells you operating habits, preferred bands, all that.