Mike Johnson

yeah what he said about the baofeng menu is spot on, i spent like two weeks wondering why a repeater wasnt responding to me and it turned out i had the tone set to decode only lol. chirp software actually makes it way easier to program those radios if you haven't tried it yet, you can see all the tone settings in one spreadsheet view and its harder to mess up.

i have both sitting on my desk right now lol. use the rtl for aircraft because why waste the good one on ads-b, and the rsp1a for hf. the difference on 40m at night with a lot of broadcast interference is pretty dramatic honestly. the rtl would just kind of fall apart with the big signals around, rsp1a handles it way better. hackrf is a whole different thing if you ever want to transmit but thats another rabbit hole

this is actually a pretty common gotcha with the D710. the message path can be configured separately from your beacon path in some setups and a lot of people dont realize it. worth going into the APRS menu and double checking that your message retry settings are actually configured and not just sitting at defaults. also are you sure the igate near you is two-way? a lot of igates are receive only, they'll forward your position to the internet fine but they wont inject messages back into RF for stations that are only reachable that way. if the guy youre trying to reach is also dependent on an igate to get messages then both igates need to be two-way and they need to be passing APRS-IS traffic in both directions, which honestly a surprising number arent set up to do properly. check aprs.fi for the igate near you, click on it, and see if it says RF-to-IS only or bidirectional.

so i finally did my first activation last weekend at a state park about 45 minutes from me, K-4566 if anyone's familiar with it. i was honestly pretty nervous going in because ive never really done portable ops outside of a field day and even then i was mostly just logging for someone else. brought my KX2 and a 40m end fed half wave just thrown up in a tree with a 25 foot line, nothing fancy. got there around 9am and had the whole picnic shelter to myself which was great. took me way longer than it should have to get everything set up, like maybe 40 minutes just because i was fumbling around and second guessing my antenna height. anyway once i finally started calling CQ POTA on 40m i was getting responses within like 30 seconds. completely caught me off guard. ended up with 34 QSOs in about an hour and a half, most of them hunters which i gather are just people who specifically look for POTA activators. a few of the hunters were super patient with me when i stumbled over my exchange which i appreciated. one thing i wasnt ready for was how fast the pileup moved, even a small one. i had maybe 4 or 5 callers at once at one point and i just kind of froze up. managed to work through it but definitely need to practice that. also spotted myself on the POTA website which made a huge difference in getting contacts early on, highly recommend doing that if you havent already. going to try a two-fer next month, theres a spot near me where two park boundaries overlap. anyone done one of those? any tips for logging them correctly?

the 7300 EQ is actually pretty useful once you dig into it. what i'd do first though is forget the compressor for now and just get the mic gain set right — you want that ALC meter barely moving into the ALC zone, like just kissing it on peaks. a lot of guys crank the mic gain way up thinking louder is better and then the compressor makes it worse. get the gain staging right first then revisit compression. also the PR-40 is a dynamic and has a pretty flat response which is great but on SSB you generally want to boost a bit in the 2k-3k range where voice intelligibility lives. the 7300 has a TX tone control in the menu, i think its under set > tone — play with rolling off below like 300hz and bumping the midrange a little. makes a big difference on how you cut through on a crowded band. and yeah, mic positioning matters too, you want to be talking across the mic not directly into it with a dynamic like that

Narrowed down my study options to three main resources but can't decide which approach to take: HamStudy.org - free flashcards and practice testsHam Radio Prep - paid course with video explanationsARRL License Manual - traditional textbook approachHas anyone used multiple approaches? Looking for real experiences on what actually helped you understand the material vs just memorize answers. Want to actually learn, not just pass the test.

so ive been running single op for years and my rate kind of plateaus around 80-90 qsos/hr during the busy parts of sweepstakes and i keep watching the top scores and wondering how much of that gap is just SO2R vs skill vs whatever else. ive got a second radio sitting in the shack that i mostly use for monitoring and i started thinking about actually wiring it up properly for SO2R before november. the antenna switching is the part thats making my head hurt. right now im running a 3 element yagi on 20 and a dipole situation on 40 and i dont really have great isolation between the two feedlines. i know you need serious filtering to make it work otherwise youre just blasting your own ears and front end every time you transmit on radio 1. the ICE or Array Solutions bandpass filters seem to be the standard answer but man the cost adds up fast when you start stacking them. my actual question i guess is whether anyone went from single op to SO2R and actually saw a meaningful rate improvement first time out, or does it take a full contest season to get the operating technique dialed in enough to matter. im not trying to win anything just want to squeeze more out of the time i have to operate.

I picked a local state park about 45 minutes from home that I knew would be mostly empty on a cold February weekday. The temperature was hovering around 28 degrees, but I figured that would just make it more authentic, right? Famous last words. The Setup My portable kit is pretty basic - a 20-watt QRP transceiver, a 29-foot end-fed half wave antenna, and a small 7Ah sealed lead acid battery. I also brought along a folding table, a camp chair, and what I thought was adequate cold weather gear. The antenna support was going to be a 20-foot telescoping fiberglass pole that I'd been wanting to test out. Getting to the park was easy enough, and I found a nice spot near the picnic area with some trees for antenna support. That's when reality started setting in. First lesson learned: those little plastic clips that come with telescoping poles? They don't work so well when your fingers are numb from the cold. I spent about 15 minutes fumbling around trying to get the sections locked in place while wearing gloves. The antenna went up easier than expected once I got the pole situation sorted out. I tied off one end to a picnic table and used the pole to get the other end up about 18 feet. Not perfect, but it looked reasonable. The counterpoise wires just laid on the frozen ground. First Contact Jitters Once everything was connected and I'd done a quick SWR check (thankfully it was under 2:1 across 20 meters), it was time to try making some contacts. I tuned around 20 meters looking for a good frequency and found a quiet spot around 14.255. Then came the moment of truth - calling CQ for the first time in the field. "CQ Parks on the Air, CQ POTA" felt strange coming out of my mouth, but within about 30 seconds I had my first response. A station from Tennessee came back to me with a solid 5-7 signal report. I was so excited I nearly fumbled the exchange, but managed to get his info logged properly. One down, nine to go for a valid activation. The next hour was a blur of contacts. I worked stations from all over the east coast and even got a few from the midwest. The little QRP rig was performing better than I expected, and most stations were giving me solid copy reports. I was starting to feel pretty confident about this whole POTA thing. When Things Go Sideways About 90 minutes in, just as I was working my 12th contact, disaster struck. A gust of wind caught the antenna pole and sent it crashing down. The antenna wire got tangled in some nearby bushes, and I could see one of the connector crimps had pulled loose. This is where being prepared really matters, and honestly, I wasn't as ready as I thought. I had brought a small toolkit, but trying to re-crimp a PL-259 connector in near-freezing weather with numb fingers turned out to be way harder than doing it comfortably at my home workbench. It took me about 20 minutes to get everything sorted out and the antenna back up. During that time, I learned another valuable lesson: bring backup connectors and maybe even a backup antenna. Several stations had been calling me when the antenna went down, and I felt bad about just disappearing from the frequency. Wrapping Up Despite the antenna mishap, I managed to log 18 contacts total before packing up. My hands were getting too cold to write legibly in my logbook, and the battery was starting to show signs of the cold affecting its capacity. The voltage had dropped from 12.8 to about 11.9 volts, and I could tell the transmitter wasn't quite as punchy as it had been earlier. The drive home gave me plenty of time to think about what went well and what I'd do differently next time. The QRP transceiver performed great, and the end-fed antenna worked better than I expected for being so close to the ground. But I definitely need to invest in better cold weather gear and maybe bring some hand warmers. Lessons for Next Time First, dress warmer than you think you need to. What feels comfortable for a quick walk to the mailbox gets pretty miserable after sitting still for two hours. I'm thinking about getting one of those propane heaters that ice fishermen use. Second, have backup plans for everything. Extra connectors, maybe a simple wire dipole as a backup antenna, and definitely more than one way to support the antenna. I'm considering getting some of those heavy-duty tent stakes to guy the pole down better. Third, practice the setup at home first. I thought I knew my equipment pretty well, but there's something about being in the field that makes everything take longer than expected. Next time I'll time myself setting up in the backyard a few times before heading out. Finally, invest in a better logging system. Writing in a paper logbook with cold fingers was not ideal. I'm thinking about trying one of the phone apps that can handle POTA logging, or at least getting a clipboard and some pre-printed log sheets. All in all, it was a great experience despite the challenges. There's something really satisfying about making contacts from a park bench in the middle of nowhere with just a small radio and some wire. I'm already planning my next activation for a warmer day! Anyone else have stories from their first POTA activation? I'd love to hear about other people's learning experiences in the comments.