Contest King

so i finally broke down and ordered one of those QCX mini kits a few months back, mostly because i kept seeing people talk about them on here and i was curious. took me a couple evenings to put it together, nothing too crazy for someone who's done a little soldering before. anyway fired it up on 40m and made my first contact running like 3 watts and i genuinely could not believe it worked. the other station was in ohio, i'm in virginia, and he gave me a solid 559. i know thats not some incredible dx or anything but something about knowing you're only putting out 3 watts and someone across a few states can hear you clearly just kind of changes the way you think about rf. since then ive been messing around more with antenna efficiency because i figure if im only running 5 watts i better make every bit of it count. been reading a lot about end fed halfwaves and whether the feedline radiation is actually a problem or not, still a little fuzzy on that honestly. mostly posting because i wanted to share the experience and also ask if anyone has tips for getting better results portable, like in a park or something. i have a little lipo pack i use for the radio but battery management for a whole day out is something i havent totally figured out yet.

Just picked up the new ARRL Repeater Directory 2026 Edition from DX Engineering. What a game changer! This 460-page guide now includes over 22,000 listings organized by state/province, county, and city/town, with comprehensive coverage of repeater systems throughout the United States and Canada. The big news is it's now powered by RepeaterBook and includes listings for System Fusion, D-STAR, DMR, NXDN, M17, Tetra, and P25 systems alongside the traditional FM repeaters. For those of us who travel for work or POTA activations, this is exactly what we needed. Anyone else notice how much the digital repeater landscape has expanded this year?

so ive been at this for a while now and i feel like im just spinning my wheels. started learning CW back in the spring, got up to about 13wpm copying fairly clean text, and then just... hit a wall. i can copy most letters fine when i slow down and think about them but the moment i push the speed up anything above maybe 14 i start missing stuff and then i panic and miss more and then its just a trainwreck. im using the Koch method, doing about 20-30 minutes a day with the LCWO website. i also mess around with the RufzXP software sometimes but honestly that one just stresses me out. i know people say the goal is to hear words as sounds and not think about the individual letters but i cant seem to make that jump. like i know what it should feel like but i cant get there. anyone else go through this kind of plateau and actually get through it? what actually worked for you? i really want to hit 20wpm someday, even just for casual QSOs, dont need to be a contester or anything.

Going from 3/8" to 1/4" diameter means smaller elements, so you'll need to lengthen them slightly compared to a direct frequency scale. Start with about 2-3% longer than the calculated scaling factor suggests, then tune with an antenna analyzer. Use an SWR meter or analyzer to fine-tune performance.

ok so I just upgraded from tech to general last month and im trying to figure out the 40m band. I keep seeing different charts online and they dont all agree with each other. like some say phone starts at 7.175 and others say 7.200 and I dont want to accidentally transmit somewhere im not supposed to be. also whats the deal with band edges, someone at the club meeting said to stay away from them but didnt really explain why. is it just interference or is there an actual rule about it

i had the exact same question when i started checking into nets, dont feel bad. what helped me was just listening to the net for like 2 or 3 sessions without even checking in, just to get a feel for how that particular net runs. every net has its own kind of culture i guess. the NCS on our wednesday net is pretty strict but the sunday morning one is really chill and people chat a bit between traffic passes. just jump in when it feels right and if you mess up the NCS will usually just gently correct you, nobody bites

yeah what he said about the tone. i made the same mistake when i started, had a receive tone set and wondered why the repeater sounded dead half the time lol. took me an embarrassingly long time to figure that out. one thing i'd add — if the repeater is linked to other machines (like an IRLP node or part of a statewide network) just be aware your audio is potentially going a lot further than you think. not a big deal but it kind of changes how i think about what i say on there. some of those linked systems have nodes all over the place and random people in other states might be listening in. kind of cool actually when you think about it

im kind of in the same boat tbh, been at 15 for like 6 weeks now and its frustrating. one thing that did seem to help me a little was bumping the character speed way up, like to 25wpm, but dropping the overall word speed down so theres more space between letters. farnsworth spacing i think its called. the idea is you train your ear to hear the letters as sounds not as dots and dashes you count. i dont know if its working yet but it feels different somehow, like my brain is processing it differently than before

yeah i saw the flyer at the club meeting last thursday, its april 13th at the fairgrounds off route 9. they are doing the tailgate swap meet in the parking lot starting at like 7am before the main hall opens. i grabbed a table last year and sold off a bunch of junk i had sitting in the shack so definitely worth it if you have stuff to unload. pretty sure registration is on their website but i havent checked in a while

Our regional ARES group conducted a comprehensive disaster simulation involving six counties last month, and I wanted to share some key takeaways. We simulated a cyberattack that caused widespread power outages, requiring us to operate using "simplex" directly from radio to radio. This presented several challenges as it is difficult to reach all operating locations from a single point, requiring operators to relay messages to more remote stations. Major lessons: Simplex range planning is critical - we needed more relay points than anticipatedDigital modes (Winlink) proved invaluable when repeaters went downGo-kit battery life under continuous use was shorter than expectedAnyone else participate in similar multi-agency exercises recently? What were your biggest surprises?

Field Day is honestly the perfect starting point and i wish i had done it earlier in my ham career. the pressure is way lower than a real contest because you're usually operating with a club, so if you freeze up or forget the exchange someone right next to you can help. the exchange itself is dead simple too — just your class and section, thats it. you'll make that exchange probably 200 times in a weekend and by hour two it just comes out automatically. for something solo and coming up soon, CQ WW SSB is in October and honestly dont let the size of it scare you. yes its enormous but that actually works in your favor as a newcomer because there are SO many stations calling CQ that you can just search and pounce all weekend without ever having to run a frequency. just tune around, hear a loud station, give your callsign, log it, move on. the exchange is just signal report and CQ zone which you can look up once and write on a sticky note. with an IC-7300 and a dipole you will absolutely get in the log. sweepstakes i would save for year two tbh. the exchange has like five pieces of info and when its fast-paced SSB it can be a lot to process until you know what youre doing.

im in almost the exact same situation with my Tacoma lol, ended up just keeping the mag mount because i couldnt commit to drilling. the FT-7900 is a great radio btw you're gonna like it, the dual watch on that thing is really useful when you're monitoring a repeater and a simplex freq at the same time. good luck with the install whichever way you go

honestly its pretty much feel-based in everyday repeater chat. if someone asks for your callsign and the band is clear and quiet you might just say it normally, but if theres any QRM or the other person asks you to repeat yourself you switch to phonetics. the real place where phonetics matter a lot is HF, especially when youre trying to work someone through a pile-up or conditions are rough. i work a lot of DX and sometimes the only thing getting through the noise is brute-forcing each letter phonetically. on a local 2m repeater doing a ragchew its a bit overkill but nobody's gonna think its weird if you do it, if anything a new ham using proper phonetics usually gets a positive reaction from the old timers. just dont over do it to the point where it slows everything down on a busy net or something.

so i finally jumped into CQ WW this past october and honestly wasnt prepared for how intense it gets. i had a rough idea of what exchange contesting was from reading about it but actually sitting down at the radio for several hours and working stations back to back was something else entirely. my log ended up being pretty modest, maybe 200 QSOs on 20m and a little bit on 15, but for my first real contest effort i was happy with it. one thing that threw me off was the zone numbering. i kept second guessing myself on which CQ zone im actually in and had to look it up twice which probably cost me a few contacts. anyway that aside it was a blast and now im kind of hooked and looking ahead at whats coming up. ARRL Field Day is obviously the big one everyone talks about and ive been trying to get my local club to let me set up a separate station for digital modes since thats kind of my thing but we'll see. also been poking around SOTA a bit which isnt really contesting i know but there are some activator events that feel contest-adjacent, like the SOTA days where everyone tries to hit as many summits as possible. is there a good calendar someone uses to track all the major contests and activiation events in one place? ive been bouncing between a few different websites and its kind of a mess. and also for those of you who do ARRL SS every year, is phone or CW more fun in your opinion? im leaning toward giving CW a shot this november even though my fist is still pretty rough.

so ive been trying to get my APRS setup working for about two weeks now and im losing my mind a little. running a TM-D710G with the internal TNC, callsign and SSID are set correctly (pretty sure anyway), path is WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 and i can hear packets on 144.390 just fine. the radio decodes them and i can see the station list filling up. but when i key up and send a beacon, nothing shows on aprs.fi. tried manual beacon, smart beaconing, doesnt matter. one thing i noticed is the TX light does flash when i beacon so it IS transmitting something. a buddy a few miles away with a direwolf IGate said he can occasionally hear my packets but they're not making it to the internet. he said something about the SSID on my path being wrong but i dont fully understand what he meant. is there like a setting on the radio that controls what gets included in the packet header vs just the voice side of things? also is there any way to decode my own packets locally to verify the packet content before it goes out? i have a spare SDR dongle sitting around.

okay so i've been licensed about 8 months now and i still feel kind of awkward about nets. like i know the basics, you wait for net control to ask for check-ins, you give your callsign, whatever. but theres this local 2m net i've been listening to almost every week and i still havent checked in once because i always second-guess myself on the timing. like last tuesday net control said something like 'any further check-ins' and i keyed up but then someone else was already talking so i backed off. do i just keep trying or is there some trick to knowing when the frequency is actually clear? i'm running an HT into a jpole in the attic so i dunno if that's part of the problem too. maybe im just not hearing everything they are. also is it weird to check in and then just say you have no traffic and no announcements? feels kind of pointless but i see people do it all the time

yeah im planning on going, third year for me. the flea market is absolutely where its at, the indoor stuff is cool to browse but the deals are outside. my buddy found a working Kenwood TS-830S last year for like 80 bucks, dude didnt even know what he had. meet up sounds good, whereabouts do you usually start, like which entrance or gate area?

congrats on passing! i was in the exact same spot about a year ago and went with the baofeng to start. its fine, does the job, but i will say i ended up getting a yaesu about 6 months later anyway because the receiver on the cheap ones can be kind of deaf on weaker signals. not a huge deal for local stuff though. one thing nobody mentioned to me that i wish they had — check what repeaters are actually active in your area first before you decide anything. some places have tons of activity, some its pretty quiet and you might end up wanting to look at other bands or modes sooner than you think. just something to keep in mind

so ive been licensed about 8 months now (general) and i mostly just do HF with a borrowed Icom from my buddy but ive been reading a lot about QRP and the whole low power thing really appeals to me. part of it is cost, part of it is just the challenge i guess. anyway i got a QCX Mini kit from QRP Labs sitting on my desk and im kind of intimidated to start. ive done some basic soldering before — replaced caps on an old radio and built a small antenna tuner kit — so im not totally green but this feels like a bigger commitment. my main questions are around efficiency i think. like does the antenna matter way more at QRP power levels or is that just something people say? i keep reading that a bad antenna at 100w is still a bad antenna at 5w which makes sense but also like... is there a real practical minimum you need before QRP contacts are even realistic? im in a pretty suburban area, no huge antenna farm or anything, just a 40m dipole up about 25 feet. also is there anything specific i should watch out for with the QCX Mini build? any gotchas people have run into.

I'm helping coordinate our county ARES group and want to make sure we're fully compliant with station identification rules during emergency nets. Each amateur station must transmit its assigned call sign at the end of each communication and at least every 10 minutes during a communication to clearly make the source known, with no unidentified communications allowed. During lengthy emergency traffic handling, the constant ID requirements can slow things down significantly. Robert Dukish, KK8DX, filed a petition noting that requiring participating stations to use assigned call signs during each transmission could prove "burdensome and can hinder the flow of emergency traffic on the channel", but the FCC turned it down. What are the best practices for staying compliant while maintaining efficient emergency communications? Are there any legitimate shortcuts or techniques that experienced emergency coordinators use?

the fcc allocation for general on 40m phone is 7.175 to 7.300, so thats your legal limit. the arrl band plan is just a gentlemans agreement about where different modes tend to hang out, it doesnt have any legal weight but ignoring it will get people grumpy at you real fast especially around 7.200 which can get pretty crowded. the band edge thing is real even with modern radios -- your carrier frequency has to stay within the allocation, so if youre running SSB and your dial says 7.300 your actual signal can punch above that depending on your sideband. most guys stay a few khz inside just to be safe. nothing wrong with being cautious on that

Had similar issue with my Arduino antenna analyzer project. Adding a small fan to keep the Si5351 cool made a huge difference. Also, let it warm up for 30 minutes before calibrating the correction factor.

QRP is another big one you'll hear a lot — means low power operation, like 5 watts or less. people get really into that. and QSY means you're changing frequency. oh and QRZ is basically "who is calling me" but on repeaters and pile-ups people use it kind of loosely to mean like "go ahead" or "next caller" which is technically wrong but thats just how it is now lol dont stress too much about memorizing all of them at once, i was in the same spot when i started and it honestly just comes with time

Had the exact same problem with SatPC32 on my 9700. The issue was the VFO locking setting in satellite mode - make sure you disable that. Also check your TLE update frequency, old elements will cause drift on high passes.

yeah the band plan tables in part 97 are a nightmare to read the first time, dont feel bad about that. so for technicians the short version is you do get some HF but its pretty limited. on 10 meters you can do phone in a small slice up near the top of the band, i think it starts around 28.3 MHz, and you also have some CW privileges on 10m below that. there's also tech phone on 15m but only a tiny segment, and same deal with 40m — very narrow CW only chunk near the bottom. the ARRL band plan chart is honestly way easier to read than the actual part 97 text, id just google that and bookmark it. the actual regulation is 97.301 and 97.305 if you want to look at the real thing but the ARRL version lays it out visually and is much friendlier. and yeah the FCC does care about operating outside your privileges so its worth being sure before you key up anywhere new.