Bob Martinez

the k3 and 590 combo is actually not bad for starting out with this, k3 has pretty good roofing filters so it holds up reasonably well as the run radio. one thing people dont talk about enough is the SO2R controller situation — you need something to handle the antenna switching and PTT interlocking so you dont transmit on both at the same time, that scenario is bad news. microham makes stuff for this, there are also some cheaper options people have built. the interlocking is not optional. i started SO2R maybe three years ago and my scores jumped more than i expected even though i felt pretty clumsy with it for the first several contests. the muscle memory takes a while. i basically lost rate for the first two contests while i was figuring out the workflow and then it started clicking. give yourself a few low-pressure contests to just practice the technique before you try to optimize for score.

yeah did the mars mod on mine a couple years back, pretty standard stuff. what i actually spent more time on was the receive side — added a little external preselector for the HF bands and that made a bigger real world difference than any firmware unlock type thing. the 857's front end isnt the strongest and on a decent antenna you can get some intermod from strong locals if youre in a busy RF environment. also if you havent already look into the CAT control setup if you do any logging or digital, that rig plays pretty nice with most software once you get the baud rate sorted out. i think i had mine set wrong for like six months before i actually read what hamlib wanted from it lol

I run both depending on the application. For ARES work where we need to hit distant repeaters from low terrain, the 5/8 wave definitely helps. But around town with good repeater coverage, the 1/4 wave works just fine and is less likely to get whacked by low branches or drive-throughs!

yeah dont overthink it, just get on during CQ WW SSB and start calling back to people. worst that happens is someone doesnt hear you and you try again. i remember my first one i was so nervous about the exchange i wrote it on a sticky note and taped it to the monitor lol. worked like 40 countries in a few hours just search and pouncing and felt like a total rockstar afterward even though my score was probably bottom 10% of everyone entered.

A proper DC UPS will provide smooth transition from power supply to backup battery without disturbing rig operation, then switch back and recharge after power restoration. The investment in a PWRgate system pays off during those multi-day outages when a computer UPS would have quit hours ago.

the band edge power rolloff thing is definitely real, not just something you read on eham. icom builds in that protection deliberately and the mod bypasses it. whether that matters depends on what you're doing i guess. for casual ragchewing probably irrelevant but i noticed it immediately when i was doing a contest and kept parking near 14.350. one thing i'll add — after you do the mod some people notice the ALC behavior changes slightly in certain modes, nothing dramatic but worth knowing. and make sure you're actually on the right jumper if you go in there, there's a diagram floating around on the radioreference forums that's way better than the one in the service manual. the service manual one is technically correct but the photo quality is garbage.

trimming both legs equally is the right move yeah, trim a little at a time from each end, like an inch or two, retune and check again. going from 7.080 to 7.2 you probably only need to lose maybe 4-5 inches total off each side so dont go crazy. the inverted-v angle does shift things a little compared to a flat dipole — generally makes it look slightly shorter electrically so your resonance ends up a bit lower, which kinda tracks with what youre seeing. the 120 degree angle is pretty common and fine. the choc block thing is going to be a problem eventually. not immediately, but water gets in, corrosion sets in, and then your connection goes to hell over a winter. if you want a proper cheap fix just get a piece of HDPE cutting board or even a decent hardwood, drill two holes, use proper ring terminals crimped to the wire and a stainless bolt with locknuts. seriously takes 20 minutes and will last years. the twisted wire in a terminal block is just asking for grief in a year or so.

dont stress too much about the summit reference stuff, you dont register beforehand or anything like that. the reference already exists in the database — someone else set it up years ago most likely. you just activate it, log your contacts, and then submit them on the SOTA database website afterward. pretty straightforward once you do it once. the self spotting on sotawatch is honestly worth figuring out before you go up though. if you have cell service up there you can spot yourself which basically tells all the chasers youre on the air and they come running. i usually do it right after i make my first contact just so i know the radio is actually working. if no cell then you can ask someone on the air to spot you or just work simplex and hope people are scanning. the ft-818 will do you fine, 5 watts is plenty especially on 40 in the morning. good luck up there

im in a pretty similar spot, built a mountain topper radio kit last fall and ive been doing SOTA activations with it. the MTR is even more barebones than the QCX, like no display at all, but it forces you to actually know your keying speed and band feel which has been kinda fun in a weird way. your florida contact on 40m with 5w is totally believable, i worked a station in texas from a summit in vermont last month and we were both running under 5w. propagation was just cooperating that day. thats honestly the thing i like most about qrp, when it works its way more satisfying than just cranking the power up and bulldozing through.

I always tell new CW folks to start with a basic paddle and keyer if your goal is contesting or DXing because you can go much faster—much sooner. I'd suggest trying both at a hamfest before buying. Some operators prefer single-lever for simplicity, others prefer dual-lever.

so ive been on the air for about 6 months now and made maybe 40 contacts or so. keep hearing about these digital qsl things but honestly its a bit confusing. seems like theres lotw and eqsl and probably others? i got some paper qsl cards printed but they cost like $50 for 100 cards plus postage is getting crazy expensive these days. wondering if i should just go digital or do both or what. also not really sure how the whole process works - do i need to upload every single contact or does it sync with my logging software somehow? using ham radio deluxe if that matters

so ive been putting this off for like two years because i was worried about voiding the warranty but the warranty expired ages ago so i finally just did the MARS/CAP mod on my FT-857D last weekend. for anyone who doesnt know what im talking about it basically involves removing a diode on the main board that restricts the TX range, lets you transmit outside the normal ham bands which is useful if youre actually enrolled in MARS or CAP or whatever. anyway the mod itself wasnt that bad, tiny soldering work but nothing crazy if youve done board-level stuff before. i used a magnifying headset and a fine tip iron, took maybe 20 minutes including the time i spent second-guessing myself. the rig came back up fine, all my normal ham freqs work exactly the same, havent noticed any difference in performance on 40m or 20m which is mostly what i use. what i did NOT expect was how much better the RX feels on some of the lower freqs, like 160m and the AM broadcast band. not sure if thats placebo or if the mod somehow affected something but it does seem a bit more lively down there. probably imagining it. has anyone else done this and noticed anything weird after, good or bad? also thinking about doing the TX power mod next but ive heard mixed things about longetivity so might skip it.

Used an RTL-SDR and SDR# to analyze my IC-7300 SSB signal into a dummy load. Seeing IMD products at -32dB relative to the main signal around ±6kHz from center frequency. At more than 6 kHz separation the distortion energy level should be at least -40 dB compared to the pass band signal. A reasonable criteria for poor quality SSB signal is one that has a width greater than 6kHz at 40dB down. My settings: MIC 50%, COMP 3, using SM-30 desk mic. The -10dB bandwidth looks good at 2.8kHz, but those IMD products worry me. Is this acceptable for general operation or should I back off the compression? Running 100W into MFJ-264 dummy load, no amplifier in line.

im kind of a newcomer to ARES stuff, just joined a few months ago, but we had a tabletop exercise at our club meeting last month and even that was really eye opening for me. we never actually keyed up but just talking through who does what and in what order made it obvious there were like three people who all thought they were supposed to be net control. nobody had actually written down who had primary vs backup roles. I asked about getting involved in a real field exercise and somebody mentioned the county does one in the spring so i'm hoping to observe at least even if im not ready to take on a real assignment yet. reading your post makes me think i should probably work on simplex operating before then and maybe actually study the ICS stuff rather than just skimming it.

ha yeah the weight thing gets everyone on their first time out. i made the same mistake, thought id need backups for everything. now i just do the 818 and a 49:1 endfed thrown up in whatever tree i can find and honestly the contacts come easier than you'd think when the band cooperates. 6 contacts still counts though, you got your points

yeah i had the same issue when i started, turned out my TNC baud rate didnt match what the gateway was expecting. worth checking that the channel config in Winlink Express actually matches your TNC settings exactly, like even a small mismatch on the packet speed and it just times out without telling you anything useful. kind of frustrating honestly

yeah dual references are totally a thing, if the area is registered in both POTA and WWFF you just activate it for both at the same time, same contacts count for both programs. You'll want to spot yourself on both the POTA app and the WWFF spotter which is at wwff.cc i think, or just use hamspots. Getting spotted early makes a huge difference, especially for WWFF since the hunter community is a bit smaller than POTA so you want every eyeball on you you can get. For logging i just use a paper log in the field and then type it into ADIF master when i get home, upload the adif to the WWFF logbook upload page. It's not as slick as the POTA app but it works fine. Make sure you get at least 44 contacts for the activation to count, thats the WWFF requirement, different from POTA's 10. Some references are pretty remote so you might want to plan for a couple hours of operating rather than a quick 20 minute thing.

Join a local ARRL study group if possible - collaborating with others makes studying more effective. Focus extra time on Ohm's law and basic circuits since that knowledge helps when you start building your station. The social aspect is worth it too - you'll meet your first elmers before you even get licensed!

so ive been chasing this one for about two weeks now and im starting to lose my mind a little. my IC-7300 is only putting out maybe 30-35 watts on 20m when its set to 100w. it does this across most of the HF bands, slightly worse on 10m where i might get 20w if im lucky. 40m seems a bit better but still not right. before anyone asks — yes i checked the power output menu, yes ALC looks normal, i already reseated all the connectors i can get to without full disassembly, antenna is fine (ran it on a dummy load and same issue), and the finals arent running obviously hot. the radio was working perfectly fine like six weeks ago and i didnt change anything i can think of. just turned it on one day and noticed the output was way down. no smoke, no weird smells, nothing obvious. thinking it might be one of the driver transistors or maybe a biasing issue but i really dont want to just start swapping parts blind. anyone been down this road with one of these?

had almost the exact same thing on mine a while back, turned out to be one of the driver transistors was leaky. not fully dead, just leaky enough to mess up the bias on the whole chain. it measured okay static but when i did a dynamic test it was clearly unhappy. cant remember the part number off the top of my head but its in the service manual, which if you dont have yet you really need to grab it because the alignment proceedure in there is actually pretty good for diagnosing where the chain breaks down.

I had almost the exact same problem when I started and honestly the paddle adjustment made a huge difference for me. I didn't realize how much the contact spacing affects things until someone at a club meeting actually looked at my paddle and said the gap was way too tight. worth checking that before you blame your technique entirely

okay so the baofeng vs yaesu debate has been going on forever and honestly both sides have a point. i started with a UV-5R and it got the job done for hitting the local 2m repeater but the receiver really does pick up a lot of garbage, like youll hear all kinds of intermod in busy RF environments. that said for $25 if you brick it figuring out chirp programming its not the end of the world. the FT-65 is genuinely a step up though. the menu system is way more sensible and the audio is clearer, both transmit and receive. if your ARES group does any actual deployed operations they might have opinions about what radios they want members running, worth asking them before you spend anything. some groups are pretty particular about it. i know ours strongly prefers radios that can do NOAA weather channels natively because we do a lot of served agency stuff. if budget allows id honestly say stretch to the FT-65 or even look at a used VX-6R if you can find one in decent shape. waterproofing matters more than people think when youre standing in the rain at a public service event wondering why you didnt spend the extra forty bucks.

so ive been using an RTL-SDR v3 with the direct sampling mod for a while now and honestly for the price its been great, picked up a ton of stuff on HF that surprised me. but im starting to feel like im hitting the ceiling on it, especially on the lower bands where the noise floor just seems higher than what people show in their screenshots on reddit and here. been looking at the SDRplay RSP1B which i can get for around $130 and wondering if anyone has actually done a side by side or switched from the dongle world to something like that. the dynamic range specs look way better on paper but i know specs on paper dont always translate to real world results especially with a mediocre antenna which is what i have right now (just an end fed about 30ft up in a compromised location). also curious if SDRuno is as clunky as it looks or if i just need to spend more time with it. im coming from SDR# and gqrx mostly. not opposed to learning new software but if its a pain id rather just keep using the rtl and save the money toward a better antenna first.

so ive been at this for about 8 months now and im kind of stuck. started learning CW back in the spring and got to around 5wpm pretty quick using the Koch method and just drilling letters every night. but somewhere around 10-12wpm things just fell apart for me. i can copy individual letters fine if i think about it but by the time im processing one character the next two have gone by and then im just lost. ive heard people say you should just jump your sidetone speed way up and copy what you can, which sounds terrifying honestly. been using LCWO and also just listening to W1AW code practice sessions when i remember to. my send speed is actually better than my receive which i did not expect. anyway curious what actually clicked for you guys if you went through this plateau. did you just grind through it or was there some specific thing that helped. feels like im close but also feels like 20wpm is a million miles away some days.

I'm looking for some good mobile apps to keep an eye on the DX clusters while I'm away from the shack. I've been checking out DX Spots app which provides a live feed of the DX Cluster network, showing all the current Amateur Radio spots but wondering what others are using. HamAlert seems like the portable version of the spotting dx cluster and can notify you of callsigns needed for WAS or DXCC. What's your go-to app for DX spotting when mobile?