James Holloway

ok so i passed my technician exam about 3 months ago and ive been mostly just listening and doing some local repeater stuff but i want to start doing more and im not totally clear on what bands i actually have privileges on. like i know i have VHF and UHF but someone at the club meeting said techs also have some HF access? i looked at Part 97 and honestly its a lot to take in, the language is pretty dense and i kept getting lost trying to figure out which subpart applies to what. also is there somewhere that just lays it out in plain english without me having to cross-reference like 6 different sections. i dont want to accidentally transmit somewhere i shouldnt be, especially on HF where i feel like the old timers would eat me alive lol

okay so I got my tech license about three weeks ago and ive been listening to the local 2m repeater a lot, trying to get a feel for how things work before I start transmitting. but I noticed that some people when they key up there's like a brief tone right before their voice comes in, and other times there's nothing. is that just squelch noise or is it actually something intentional? I asked my buddy who got me into this hobby and he kinda shrugged lol, he's mostly into HF and doesnt mess with repeaters much. also completely separate question but related — how do you know if a repeater requires a tone to access it? I tried keying up on one last week and heard nothing back, not even the tail or anything. my radio is a baofeng uv-5r that I programmed with chirp. just trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong before I accidentally annoy someone.

yeah 25Mbps DSL sounds decent on paper but upstream on that is probably like 2-3Mbps max right? thats going to be your bottleneck pretty fast when youre pushing IQ data. the RTL-SDR at even a modest sample rate is going to chew through that pretty quick depending on what decimation settings youre using in the SDR software. i run a similar setup with an SDRplay RSP1A and had to drop my sample rate way down and use the network compression in SDR-Console to make it bearable. something like 500kHz bandwidth instead of the full thing. the IRLP node on top of that i would honestly separate completely onto its own machine or at least its own network interface if you can. mixing VOIP audio latency sensitive stuff with already compressed ham audio is just asking for trouble. i tried something similar and the echo cancellation alone was a nightmare to sort out. get the remote rig stable first then bolt on the linking stuff.

25 feet for an inverted V on 40 is not great but its not hopeless either. the pattern gets pretty ugly at that height, mostly high angle radiation which is fine for regional stuff but you'll miss the DX. that said if your noise problem is local conducted noise — which with a vertical it almost certainly is, verticals pick up everything — then yeah the inverted V is going to be noticeably quieter on receive. the directionality off the ends really does help, you can null out a lot of garbage by orienting the antenna carefully. i'd put the ends pointing toward your two noisiest neighbors. the trap vertical thing is also worth thinking about — those traps can introduce loss and the antenna is usually pretty compromised to begin with unless you've got a really good radial field under it. how many radials are you running? that's usually the first thing i ask when someone complains about a vertical underperforming.

So i finally did my first activation last weekend, W6/NS-168 up near the trailhead off highway 89. took me way longer to hike up than i planned so i was rushing a bit to get set up before the clouds rolled in. ended up making 4 contacts on 40m with my little KX2 and a wire i threw up in a tree, which i think is the minimum you need to log the summit? not totally sure on that anyway the whole thing was really fun and im already planning the next one but i have a couple questions. first — how do you guys handle the alert system on SOTAwatch before you go out, like how far in advance do you post it? i put mine up the morning of and only got one chaser calling me before i had to start packing up. second question is about the summit reference thing, when i look at the database it shows the summit has like 10 points but i only see 4 in my log on the app. is that normal or did i mess something up with the upload also had a great time just being up there with the radio, even with the wind. gonna be doing this a lot more i think

honestly the theory does stick with you more than you'd think, at least some of it did for me. i went through the whole extra pool about three years ago and yeah a lot of the filter stuff and the laplace transform questions feel pretty abstract but when i started messing around with antenna modeling and building my own end fed, having that background made the impedance stuff less mysterious. not saying i can derive everything from scratch but it gave me a mental model that actually helps. the extra HF segments matter more depending on where you operate though. on 75m and 40m when things get crowded the extra portion can be noticeably quieter. and on 80m the CW segment down at the bottom is really only accessible if you have Extra. i wouldnt say the privileges alone are worth it but combined with just knowing you went all the way, there is something to that too. the exam itself was harder than i expected but i passed second try and havent regretted it.

yeah the activation zone question got me too when i started. i just pull up the SOTA peaks app before i go and it shows the activation zone radius on a map which takes all the guesswork out of it. might be worth grabbing that for your next one. also 9 contacts on your first activation on 40m SSB is honestly pretty solid, some days i struggle to get past 5 even on summits with decent takeoff angles

so ive been going back and forth on this for a couple weeks now and cant really make up my mind. basically my lot is about 80 feet wide and maybe 120 deep, suburban neighborhood, HOA isnt terrible but i still need to keep things semi-stealthy. currently running a little IC-7300 into a G5RV that i have up about 25 feet in kind of an inverted-V configuration and honestly its been ok but 40m performance has been disappointing, especially on anything past about 1500 miles or so. ive been reading about putting up a resonant 40m dipole fed with ladder line through a tuner but the space is a bit tight to get a full half wave horizontal without some serious bending at the ends. the other option i keep coming back to is a vertical — something like a trap vertical or even just a quarter wave with a decent radial field. i know verticals have a reputation for picking up more noise but the low angle radiation is supposed to be better for dx right? at least thats what ive been reading. anyone been down this road and have actual on-air experience comparing the two for 40m specifically? im not super worried about being the loudest guy on the band, i just want to actually make contacts past the US borders without it being a total fight every time.

so ive been trying to get Winlink going for about two weeks now and i keep hitting walls. running Winlink Express on a windows 10 machine, got a signalink USB hooked up to my IC-7300, using Vara HF as the modem. i can hear activity on the frequency, waterfall shows signals coming in, but every time i try to connect to an RMS gateway it just times out or gives me a 'no channel' error and moves on to the next one in the list. i went through the setup wizard like three times. audio levels seem fine, the signalink TX light blinks when it transmits. i checked that my callsign and password are registered on the Winlink website. not sure what else to check at this point. is there something obvious im missing about how the RMS gateway selection works or how VARA negotiates the connection? i feel like im close but just missing something dumb

yeah the fan dipole is a great next step, just be aware the elements do interact with each other a bit so you'll probably need to retrim after you add the second pair. i built one a few years back and the 40m legs ended up needing to come in about an inch and a half after i added the 20m section. not a big deal but worth knowing ahead of time so you dont get frustrated when your SWR creeps up a little. also for the center insulator on a fan, you kinda need something with more attachment points. i ended up making mine out of a piece of fiberglass cutting board, drilled four holes for the wire legs plus the feedline connection in the middle. holds up fine even in pretty heavy wind. the HDPE approach you used works great for a single dipole though, good call on that material.

30 miles on 40m with VARA FM doesnt really make sense, VARA FM is for VHF/UHF FM gateways. if the gateway youre hitting is on HF youll want VARA HF or Pactor if you have the modem. might be worth double checking what mode the RMS is actually advertising — you can see that in the Winlink gateway list, it'll show the connection types. that mismatch could explain a lot of the weirdness honestly.

yeah that sounds like an igate issue not a you issue. a lot of older igates are still running without internet gating enabled or the sysop just hasnt kept up with the config. you can actually check on aprs.fi by searching for the digi callsign and seeing if it shows up as an igate or just a digipeater — there's a difference in how they show up. if its just relaying RF packets but not connected to APRS-IS then your packets go nowhere as far as the internet is concerned. also worth double checking your SSID situation. are you running -9 for mobile or just your base callsign? shouldnt matter but ive seen weird filtering behavior before. the other thing i'd do is temporarily crank your beacon rate way down to like every 10 minutes so you're not flooding the channel while you debug, neighbors appreciate that even if they cant hear you complaining about it

good write up. i did the same mod on my 857 ages ago and it's been solid. one thing i'll add — double check your SWR on the extended freqs before you actually transmit anywhere outside the normal ham bands, even just for testing. found out the hard way my antenna tuner doesnt like some of those freqs and i got a little more reflected power than i expected. nothing broke but still.

so ive been licensed about 8 months now and only recently started trying to actually work some DX instead of just ragchewing on the local repeater. a buddy at my club mentioned cluster spotting and i found dxwatch pretty quickly but honestly im a bit lost on how people actually use these tools together in practice. like i get that the spots show up and you can see whos been heard on what frequency but i dont really understand the workflow. do most people have qrz open at the same time to look up callsigns? im currently flipping between three browser tabs and it feels clunky. also some of the spots seem really old or just wrong when i tune to the frequency — is there a way to filter or is that just how it is sometimes? also someone mentioned there are phone apps that do some of this, ive seen ham radio deluxe mentioned a lot but thats windows only i think and im mostly on a mac. just wondering what other people are actually running day to day, not looking for anything fancy just something that works without a huge learning curve

yeah 60hz hum on a DC receiver is almost always one of two things in my experience — either your audio stage is picking up radiated hum from something nearby (fluorescent lights are terrible for this, even LED drivers can cause it) or you've got a ground loop between your detector and audio amp sections. the fact that it doesnt change when you switch power supplies pretty much rules out the supply itself. i'd try shielding the audio amp section first, just tape some copper foil around it and tie it to ground and see if anything changes. also check if the hum changes when you move the board around or rotate it — if it does, its probably pickup rather than a loop issue. on my 20m receiver i had the exact same thing and it turned out my audio transformer was sitting too close to a toroid i was using for the RF input filter, just rotating it 90 degrees fixed it. weird how much difference that can make.

congrats on the first one, that feeling when you hit the 4th contact is pretty great isnt it. on the sotadata thing, sometimes it takes a few hours to show up, occasionally longer if the server is being weird. if its been more than a day or so double check that you entered the summit reference correctly, like even a small typo in the reference will cause it to not match. the points should show up in your activator score once the log processes. and yeah the chasers thing is totally normal, a lot of the serious chasers have their radios parked on certain SOTA frequencies like 14.285 or 14.310 and they just hear you calling CQ SOTA and pile in. some of them also watch SOTAwatch alerts but plenty just stumble onto activators by scanning. actually makes it kind of fun when someone finds you without an alert. the audio question, the 818 internal mic can be a little bassy if youre real close to it, try backing off a bit or there are aftermarket mics that work better for portable use. some folks use a cheap headset and it cleans things up a lot. dont sweat the 59 reports too much though, a lot of chasers just throw that out reflexively.

i was in the same boat not too long ago honestly. one thing that helped me was just keeping a little notepad next to the radio and writing them down as I heard them and then looking them up after. after a few weeks it just kind of clicks. also if you get on some of the slower nets where the net control explains things a bit more youll pick it up faster than just listening to DX pileups where everyone's going a mile a minute

yeah part 97 is rough to read if you're not used to it, dont feel bad. the ARRL has a summary chart on their website that breaks down privileges by license class and its way easier to follow than the actual FCC document. short version for you: as a tech you've got all the VHF and up stuff plus some limited HF. on 10 meters you can do phone above 28.3 MHz and CW/data on the lower part of the band. 15 meters you technically have CW privileges in a tiny slice but most people dont even bother with it, its not very practical. for talking to international stations thats really just about whether the other country allows it and whether you're using a band and mode you're licensed for, the FCC doesnt have a specific rule blocking techs from working DX as long as you stay in your privileges. your friend at the club was half right i guess, 15m phone is definitely off limits but its not completely off limits if that makes sense

psk31 is basically dead on most bands which is sad cause i always liked it better than the contest-y feel of ft8 but thats just how it goes i guess. never tried js8call but this thread is making me want to. does it need a separate audio interface config or can you share the same virtual cable setup you already have going for wsjt-x

had a 991A for about three years before i moved to a 7300 and honestly for HF SSB the icom just feels tighter. the 991A is a good radio dont get me wrong but the receiver on the 7300 is noticeably cleaner to my ears on crowded band conditions, like during a contest weekend or when 40m is wall to wall. the waterfall alone changed how i operate, i actually find openings now instead of just spinning the dial hoping. that said if you genuinely want an all in one box the 991A makes sense. i just found myself never using the VHF/UHF side after the first couple weeks so it felt like i was paying for stuff i didnt touch. if HF is really your main thing id say just get the 7300 new and done, youll probably keep it for ten years.

yeah the preference system is still in place, they didnt get rid of it. basically when a callsign becomes available theres a 18 day filing window and all applications that come in during that window get processed together at the end — its not purely first come first served within that window. after the window closes the FCC sorts through them by preference order: first priority goes to close relatives claiming a silent key's call, then former holders trying to reclaim their own old call, then other applicants ranked by license class with extras at the top. so if youre a general applying for a 1x2 or 2x1 format call you might be competing against extra class applicants and youll be lower in the preference order. doesnt mean you cant get it, just means if someone with a higher preference also applied for the same call during that window they get it first. for 2x3 calls the competition is usually a lot less fierce honestly, might be worth looking at those if you just want something cleaner than your sequential. AE3 something or whatever format fits your district. the website RadioQTH dot net has a decent tool for checking call availability and seeing when calls are expected to be released, thats where i always start when helping new folks figure this out

so ive been running SO2R for a few contests now and i still feel like im leaving a ton of points on the table. like i get the basic concept, radio 1 runs a frequency, radio 2 is hunting mults on the other band, but in practice it gets chaotic fast. especially during the first few hours of a big contest when the run rate is already high on radio 1 and youre trying to not blow the pileup while also actually copying a call on radio 2. my current setup is an ic-7300 and an older ft-991a as the second radio, running them through a microham station master. the intermod isnt terrible but band combos like 40 and 80 at the same time are still rough even with the bandpass filters. 20 and 40 is way more manageable. what i really cant figure out is the timing. like when do you actually pull focus to radio 2 long enough to make a contact without dropping the ball on the run. do you wait for a lull, do you just take the hit and let a few callers wait, what. feels like theres a skill here that takes forever to develop and i dont really see it discussed much beyond the basic SO2R explanations that just say 'practice' also does anyone actually use SO2R for phone or is it mostly a CW/digital thing in practice

yeah im in the same boat as you honestly, been at it for maybe two months now. i use the Just Learn Morse Code software on my laptop and also LCWO when im at work on my break. it gets less overwhelming after the first week or two i promise. the first few letters feel impossible and then suddenly something clicks and you just start hearing words instead of individual letters, at least thats what happend for me around week three or so. still not fast enough to do anything on the air but im getting there i think

just upgraded myself like two months ago so pretty fresh on this. the part that got me was the regulations stuff, like the operating privileges for each band and which modes are allowed where. i kept mixing things up. the tech pool doesnt really go into that as deep so it felt new club station is actually a great way to start on HF before you buy anything, wish i had done that more instead of just jumping into buying a used radio that turned out to have some issues but thats a different story

welcome to the addiction, haha. ok so honestly for your first time just do search and pounce the whole weekend, dont even try to run a frequency. tune across the band, find someone calling CQ contest, give them your call, and when they send you the exchange just reply back with 59 and your zone. for CQ WW your zone is CQ zone not ITU zone, and if youre in the US most of us are in zone 3, 4, or 5 depending where you are — there's a map on the CQ WW website that takes like two seconds to look up. running a frequency is great when youre getting a lot of rate but as a new station you'll spend most of your time fighting QRM and losing the frequency anyway so dont stress about it. just work as many unique callsigns and zones as you can and have fun. the zones are actually the fun part because you start recognizing prefixes and figuring out where people are from. JA is Japan, UA9 is Siberia, stuff like that. log everything even if you think you got the call wrong, you can sort it out later.