Ham Fan

Congrats on taking the plunge, WWFF is a great program. For the exchange you dont need anything formal, just the usual signal report works fine. What matters is that you announce your reference number at the beginning of each transmission or at least every few calls so the hunters can log it. Something like CQ WWFF de [your call] activating KFF-whatever. Most people log it in their notes and the chasers appreciate hearing it regularly. On the spotting thing yes you can absolutely use both. A lot of WWFF refs are also POTA parks so there's overlap anyway. The more spots the better honestly, I've had activations take off once I hit both networks. WWFF has its own spot page at wwff.co and the hunters there are a different crowd sometimes, more European chasers in my experience which can be nice for the log. 44 QSOs sounds like a lot but in my experience once you get spotted it goes pretty fast on 40 or 20. Good luck tomorrow, post back and let us know how it went.

yeah the intermod you heard last time was almost certainly the shared antenna situation, two rigs into a switch is asking for trouble unless you have really good isolation and even then. separate antennas will be night and day difference. one thing i'd add on the dipole spacing — 90 degrees is good but if both stations might end up on 40m at the same time try to get them as far apart physically as you can too, like if 75ft is possible go 75ft. the cross-polarization helps but distance still matters on the lower bands where the wavelengths are longer. if one is running 40 and one is on a different band entirely then you probably won't even notice. also just a random thought — if you're already running two full HF stations for an exercise, have you guys looked at doing a quick RF survey of the site beforehand? even just walking around with an HT and a spectrum display or SDR dongle can tell you a lot about what kind of noise floor you're dealing with and whether there's any local interference to worry about before you're trying to troubleshoot it mid-exercise when everyone's stressed out.

so ive been playing with JS8Call for a few weeks now and i really like the idea of it, like FT8 is great for the contest-y log a contact thing but JS8 actually lets you type back and forth which is what i thought digital modes were supposed to be in the first place thing is the band seems pretty empty compared to FT8, at least on 40m. i can hear a handful of stations but nothing like the wall of signals you get on WSJT-X. is that just the reality of it or am i doing something wrong with the dial freq? im running a pretty modest setup, IC-7300 into a trapped vertical, so not exactly a powerhouse but ive been working plenty of FT8 DX with it also for context i came up through PSK31 back in the day and i miss having actual ragchews on digital, RTTY contesting is fun but thats not really chatting either. JS8 seemed like the thing that might scratch that itch but if nobodys on it i dunno

Not required by FCC rules, no. The regs just say you have to ID with your callsign, they dont specify how you do it phonetically or even that you have to use phonetics at all. NATO alphabet is just the internationally agreed standard and in most situations it works better because everyone kinda knows it, especially if you're working DX where english isnt the other guys first language. "N for Nancy" might not land so well when youre trying to work a JA station in a pileup. That said on a casual ragchew nobody really cares. Ive heard guys use the same "home brew" phonetics for 30 years and it's fine. Where it really matters is in poor conditions or contesting or any situation where clarity actually counts — that's when sticking to NATO makes a real difference because the words were literally chosen to be distinct from each other even through static and QRM.

That's impressive range! My advice - if your homebrew is working that well, stick with it until you have a specific need the commercial antenna addresses. Maybe invest the money saved in better coax or a mast-mounted preamp instead.

yeah the hum being quieter on battery but not gone is a classic sign its not just the supply, something else is radiating into your circuit. i had almost the exact same problem with a regen i built last year, turned out my audio wiring was running parallel to the coil leads for like two inches and that was enough. moved the wires and it dropped like 15dB. worth just poking around physically and seeing if moving wires changes anything

dont feel dumb at all, everyone goes through this. the Q codes go way back to telegraph days so theres a ton of them but you really only need to know maybe a dozen or so for everyday use. QSL is yeah, acknowledgement or confirmation, QRZ is basically whos calling me, QRM is interference from other stations, QRN is static or natural noise, QSB is your signal fading in and out, QTH is your location, QRT means shutting down or going off air. those are the big ones youll hear constantly. 73 just means best regards, its been that way forever, old telegraph shorthand. and 88 is love and kisses, thats why the guy said it to the woman, totally normal usage on the air. after a while these just become second nature, you stop thinking about them. arrl website has a decent list if you want to bookmark something.

so i finally did my first activation last weekend at a state forest near me and honestly i was kind of nervous going in because ive been licensed for about two years but mostly just done local stuff on the 2m repeater and a little HF from home. a buddy convinced me to try POTA and i figured why not give it a shot. brought my ft-891 and a random wire i threw together, ran it up a tree with a throw line. took me probably 45 minutes to get set up which i know is embarassing but whatever, first time. got on 40m around 10am local and logged my first QSO within like 3 minutes which i did not expect at all. ended up with 23 contacts in about an hour and a half, enough to count as a valid activation. few things i learned the hard way -- upload your activation to the POTA website before you leave the park if you can, or at least log your park reference number correctly because i almost put the wrong one in. also hunters are FAST, like i called CQ POTA once and had a small pileup within a minute. wasnt ready for that honestly. anyway if anyones been on the fence about trying it, just go. you dont need fancy gear, my setup was pretty basic and it worked fine.

so ive been a ham for about 8 months now, got my general last spring and ive been mostly doing stuff on 40m and some local repeater stuff. someone at my club mentioned ARES and said i should look into it but honestly the info on the websites is kind of all over the place depending on what county you look at. my main question is what actually happens at a real activation, like not a drill but an actual emergency. do they expect you to just show up and know what youre doing or is there training beforehand that walks you through it. i took the ICS-100 and 200 online courses because someone said you need those but i dont really know what comes next or if theres more i should be doing before i even show up to a meeting. also not sure if my setup is good enough — i have a baofeng and a mobile rig in the car, nothing fancy. would that even be useful or do they need people with bigger stations

yeah the bias drift thing is real on these, i had an 847 with similar symptoms a while back. the PA bias pots on the yaesu HF portables are small trimmers and they do drift over time especially if the radio got hot at some point. before you go poking around in there though, definitely check the ALC line — theres a known issue where the ALC feedback can misbehave and actually throttle the PA without the meter showing it properly. you kind of need the service manual to trace it right, the schematics are on radiomanual.net if you dont already have them. also worth checking all the band data lines on the PA board connector. i forget which pin it is but if one of those gets flaky the radio can switch to a low power mode silently. seen it happen when the connector gets a little corroded.

yeah aprs.fi will show you the digipeater path in the packet detail, look for the path trace on each entry. if you see WIDE1-1 in the via field getting replaced with an actual callsign you know a fill-in digi grabbed it. if you're only seeing wide area digis then you probably dont have any WIDE1-1 capable fill-ins nearby and you might as well just run WIDE2-2 and skip that first hop entirely. i went through the same thing when i moved out to a more rural area. ended up dropping to WIDE2-2 and my coverage actually got more consistent. less elegant maybe but it worked. also depending on how remote you are you might want to bump your beacon rate down a little so you're not hammering the channel unnecessarily since out in the sticks there's probably not a ton of traffic anyway.

so i finally got around to mounting my FT-7900R in the truck after it sitting in a box for like three months. went with a lip mount on the trunk lid for the dual band antenna, pretty standard setup. my question is about the coax routing because im not 100% sure i did it right and dont want to find out the hard way. i ran the coax under the door sill trim on the passenger side, then along the kick panel and under the carpet up to the center console where the radio sits. to get through the firewall i used one of those rubber grommets that was already there, just pushed a small slit in it with a screwdriver and fed the PL-259 through. the power cable i ran direct to the battery with an inline fuse about 6 inches from the terminal like everyone says to do. audio is clean on receive, transmitting seems fine but i havent really done a proper test yet. just wondering if the grommet method is okay or if im asking for water or exhaust issues later. truck is a 2019 F-150 if that matters.

congrats on the first one, that germany contact on 5w SSB is no joke especially from a New England summit. those EU chasers are serious about SOTA and they have big antennas pointed this way constantly. for the logging question — yeah you want to log all your QSOs, not just the four minimum. the database tracks everything and chasers need to see the full log to claim their points. i think technically you can submit with just four but its kind of considered bad form and you'll get emails from people wondering why their contact isnt showing up. just log em all, its not that much extra work in sotadata once you get used to the interface. on the mode stuff, there used to be CW bonus points back in the day but they got rid of those a while back, so its all the same points now regardless of mode. some people still do CW because the contacts come faster and you can work more summits in a day if youre doing s2s stuff, but for qualifying a summit it doesnt matter at all. sounds like you had a great first outing, whats the next summit?

so ive been licensed for about 8 months now, tech class, mostly just doing some local 2m stuff but ive always been kind of curious about HF and every time i read about it morse code keeps coming up. i know its not required anymore obviously but it seems like people who know it really swear by it and i guess i want to understand why. anyway i dont even know where to start. like do you just memorize the dots and dashes on a chart or is there some other way people learn it. i tried doing that once with a printed chart i found and it honestly just made me more confused because i couldnt hear what it was supposed to sound like in my head. is there an app or a website or something that actually works for beginners who have zero background in this. also how long does it take realistically, i dont want to set some crazy goal i cant hit

yeah dont overthink it. stepping on someone is way less likely than you think because net control kind of manages the timing. worst case you double with somebody and net control just asks you to go again, happens to everyone including people whove been doing this for years. i did it just last month actually and ive been licensed since 98 lol

internet linking and SDR remote are kinda two different rabbitholes honestly, i wouldnt mix them on the same planning if that makes sense. for the repeater linking you probably want to look at allstar or maybe IRLP depending on what the club already has going, SDR streaming is more of a personal shack thing. i run my remote with just the rig audio and skip the panadapter entirely when im mobile because the latency on the visual stuff annoys me more than helps 15mb upload should be fine for one rig connection, thats way more than needed for compressed audio. id suspect something else is going on, maybe QoS on your router isnt prioritizing the audio packets and the SDR stream just eats everything. throw the rig traffic on a higher priority queue and see if that cleans it up before you mess with anything else

yeah what he said. also just download the ARRL band plan pdf, its like one page and way clearer than trying to piece it together from random websites. i wasted so much time trying to read those color coded charts before someone told me about that

As someone new to POTA, I started with just clicking re-spot on pota.app and updating it with information when I heard activators. Both apps you mentioned look advanced - maybe I should stick with the basics until I start activating myself?

Overcharging batteries can decrease their lifespan. Turn off radios and remove batteries before storing. Do not store radios or batteries in active chargers. Good charging habits are just as important as usage habits for long-term battery health.

welcome to the hobby. first QSO on a repeater is a good way to start, the locals are usually pretty forgiving. HF is a whole different animal when you get there but in a good way. took me about 3 months after my tech to upgrade and i wish id done it sooner honestly.

yeah so Q codes go back to like the early 1900s, they were originally used in maritime and commercial telegraphy so operators could communicate across language barriers without needing to share a common language. every Q code is technically a question when you send it alone, and an answer or statement when you add a response. like QTH? means "what is your location" and QTH is "my location is..." — most people on voice just use them as shorthand and drop the question format though. the ones you'll hear constantly are QTH (location), QSL (confirm/acknowledge, also the cards people trade), QRM (man-made interference, other stations), QRN (natural noise, static from weather etc), QSB (signal fading), QRZ (who is calling me, you'll hear this a lot when someone finishes a transmission and wants to know who else is out there), QRP (low power operation, usually 5 watts or under), and QSY which means change frequency. theres a ton more but those are the daily drivers. 73 means best regards, comes from old telegraph codes too. 88 is hugs and kisses, you'll mostly hear it between people who know each other well, sometimes between married ops or close friends. there are other number codes like 55 which is good luck but that one you almost never hear anymore. and yeah people absolutely say Q codes out loud on SSB, totally normal, nobody thinks twice about it.

you're definitely not overthinking it, it IS kind of a mess honestly. the short version is that LoTW is the one that matters most if you're ever chasing DXCC or other ARRL awards — eQSL is nice but the ARRL doesn't accept it for their main awards, so a lot of serious DXers treat it as basically just a nice digital souvenir. that said plenty of people use both. physical cards are still very much a thing and a lot of operators genuinely love them, especially older timers. some rare DX stations will only confirm via paper QSL through the bureau or direct. the bureau system through ARRL is pretty cheap if you're patient, direct mail costs you a dollar or two per card when you factor in postage and the return envelope. i'd say get comfortable with LoTW first since that's the one doing the heavy lifting for awards, then worry about the rest later. once you get your certificate uploaded it's actually pretty painless to log and upload contacts.

i was in the exact same spot about 8 months ago and ended up going with the baofeng uv-k5 instead of the uv-5r because it was only a few bucks more and it does a lot more frequency coverage which i thought was cool. chirp works fine with it. honestly havent had any complaints hitting the 2m repeaters around here. the one thing nobody told me that i wish they had — buy a better antenna almost immediately. the rubber duck that comes with those cheap HTs is genuinely awful and just swapping it for like a nagoya NA-771 made a real noticeable difference. that tip alone is probably worth more than the difference between radios at your budget level tbh

WAZ kind of snuck up on me, i wasnt really paying attention to zones at all for like my first two years and then someone mentioned it and i pulled up my log and realized i was actually way closer than i thought. some zones are really tough though depending on where you are geographically, zone 1 up in northern canada is weirdly hard to catch for me here in the midwest your dipole setup can absolutely do all three btw dont let anyone tell you otherwise, i worked most of my WAS on 40m with a wire antenna and a tuner

yeah dont cut more wire until you sort the choke thing, that drove me nuts on my first build too. also 1.8:1 at resonance on a dipole usually means the feedpoint Z is a bit off from 50 ohms which makes sense for an inverted-V, the angle of the legs changes the impedance, closer to like 70-75 ohms at 90 degrees but lower angles bring it down. some people just stick a 1:1 balun on there and call it good enough, the tuner in the 891 can handle 1.8 no problem anyway