Sarah Mitchell94

so ive been building this direct conversion receiver for 40m based loosely on the Sudden design, swapped out a few parts because i couldnt source the originals and honestly thought it would be close enough. the thing actually receives signals now which is more than i expected after the first smoke test went badly, but the audio is just... rough. lots of hum, kind of a raspy quality to everything, and strong stations sound almost distorted even when im barely touching the volume pot. the LO is running off a VXO built around a 7.1 MHz crystal i pulled from an old CB radio, not sure if thats part of the problem. the audio amp stage is basically a LM386 with the gain cranked because i thought more was better (i know, i know). power supply is a wall wart 12v switching supply that i had laying around. i built the whole thing ugly style on a piece of copper clad and the layout is probably a mess if im being honest. anyone been through this kind of thing before? not sure if i should chase the power supply issue first or look at the audio amp stage, or if theres something fundamentally wrong with the mixer i havent thought of yet.

been doing 2m EME for a few years with a 4x9 el array and about 700w out, its totally doable but man the preamp situation is no joke. i fried my first LNA because i forgot to sequence properly and let the amp key up before switching. thats a whole other thing you gotta sort out, the sequencer, because if you TX into your receive preamp youre having a bad day one thing nobody really told me starting out was how much the moon's position matters in terms of practical operating windows. like yeah the moon is up for hours but the actual window where youre both pointing at it with good geometry and the path is workable is sometimes pretty short depending on where you both are. the EME2 software or the built in stuff in WSJT-X handles the tracking but you need an az/el rotor which adds to the cost if you dont have one

so i've been licensed for about two years now and i keep hearing people talk about go-kits at our club meetings and i always nod along like i know what im doing but honestly i've never actually put one together. last month there was a pretty bad storm in our area and our county ARES group got activated and i just kind of sat at home feeling useless because if i had shown up i wouldn't have had any of my stuff organized or ready to go. anyway that was kind of a wake up call. i want to put something together that's actually useful and not just a bag full of random cables and a radio i grabbed off the shelf. i have a Yaesu FT-891 which i use mostly for HF at home, and a couple of handhelds. what do i actually need in one of these things? power is the part that confuses me the most — like how much battery do i need, do i need a solar panel situation, how long should i be able to operate without any external power? i have no idea what a realistic activation even looks like in terms of hours. any thoughts from people who have actually done this stuff would be really helpful. i dont want to over-engineer it but i also dont want to show up somewhere with a dead battery and no way to charge it

Excellent points! One common mistake is transmitting on a frequency your license class doesn't allow - always check the frequency allocation chart for your license class before transmitting. I see this a lot with new Generals who haven't memorized their privileges yet.

That S2S contact on 20m is the best feeling, I got my first one a few months ago and the guy was activating something in the Rockies, couldn't believe we were both sitting on summits having a chat. Anyway I've been doing SOTA for about a year now and the knee thing is real — trekking poles are non-negotiable for me now especially on the way down. Also maybe look into a lighter kit over time, I run just the KX2 with a small lipo and a end-fed half wave and the whole radio bag is under 2kg which makes the hiking part a lot more enjoyable. You get home not completely wrecked which means you want to do it again sooner.

So ive been trying to get Winlink Express working for the past week and a half and im starting to think im overcomplicating this whole thing. Background: i have a Kenwood TS-590SG hooked up through a SignaLink USB, running Vara HF, and i can see gateways in the list no problem. I can even see RF propagation looks decent on 40m to a couple of the closer RMS nodes. But here is where it gets weird. I connect, it says session started, and then just... sits there. Sometimes it eventually times out, sometimes it actually pulls a message through but then drops mid-transfer. I checked the VARA waterfall and the signal looks clean to me, no obvious noise floor issues. ALC is behaving, audio levels seem right. Is there something about how RMS gateways handle the handshaking that i should know about? Like is there a timing thing with how Winlink Express initializes the session versus when VARA actually finishes its negotiation? I swear ive read the documentation three times and it doesnt really address this specific thing. Or maybe im just expecting it to be faster than it actually is and the timeouts are normal? Anyone run into this with VARA HF specifically?

so ive been chasing 3Y0 type entities for years and always struggled to break through when a real rare one comes on. last weekend there was a pretty decent DXpedition active on 17m and 20m and i finally sat down and really paid attention to what i was doing instead of just calling randomly like everyone else. couple things that made a huge difference. first i actually listened to where they were coming back, like really listened for a good 5-10 minutes before even touching the mic. most people just start calling the second they hear a pileup and that drives me nuts because youre just adding noise. i was running about 600w into a 4 element yagi pointed their direction and i started calling about 1.5 to 2 khz up from where i kept hearing them come back. not exactly where the crowd was. also switched to a shorter callsign interval. just sent my call once, maybe twice max, then waited. i think a lot of us were trained to just keep hammering but the DX operator is trying to pull partials out of the noise and if youre sending your call over and over you might actually be stepping on yourself. anyway it took maybe 20 minutes but i got through. curious what techniques other people use, especially split operating and whether anyone uses the RIT trick on ssb to find where theyre actually listening

When I first got my license back in February, I was so excited to get on the air that I immediately bought a Baofeng UV-5R and started hitting the local repeaters. That was fun for a while, but I kept hearing about HF and all the amazing contacts people were making around the world. The problem was, I had absolutely no idea where to begin with putting together an HF station. The Research Phase (aka Going Down the Rabbit Hole) I spent weeks watching YouTube videos, reading forums, and asking questions on Reddit. Everyone seemed to have different opinions about what radio to get as a first HF rig. Some people swore by the Yaesu FT-450D as a great starter radio, others recommended the Icom IC-7300 even though it was more expensive. A few suggested looking at older rigs like the Kenwood TS-440 or TS-940. The antenna situation was even more confusing. Dipoles, verticals, loops, beams - my head was spinning. And don't even get me started on all the discussions about feedline, SWR, and antenna tuners. I was starting to feel overwhelmed and wondering if I'd bitten off more than I could chew. Making Some Decisions Finally, I decided to stop overthinking it and just pick something reasonable to get started. My budget was around $800 for everything, which I knew wasn't huge but should be enough for a basic setup. After reading countless reviews, I settled on a used Yaesu FT-450D that I found on a local ham swap page for $350. The seller was super nice and even threw in a desk microphone. For an antenna, I decided to start simple with an end-fed half wave. I know there's some controversy about these antennas, but they seemed like a good compromise between performance and ease of installation for someone renting an apartment. I ordered a 49:1 UnUn kit from a small company and planned to build my own wire antenna. Setting Up the Shack The spare bedroom in my apartment isn't huge - maybe 8x10 feet - but it was enough to set up a basic station. I found an old wooden desk at a thrift store for $25 and spent a weekend sanding and refinishing it. It's nothing fancy, but it gives me plenty of room for the radio and has drawers for storing accessories. One thing I didn't anticipate was how many cables and accessories I'd need. Besides the obvious power cable and microphone, I ended up needing coax, an SWR meter, and various adapters. The local ham radio store was incredibly helpful - the owner spent almost an hour with me making sure I had everything I needed and explaining what each item was for. Power was another consideration I almost missed. The FT-450D needs 13.8V DC, and while it came with a cigarette lighter adapter, I knew I needed a proper power supply for base station operation. I found a good deal on a used Astron RS-20A linear supply. It's probably overkill for the FT-450D, but I figured it would handle any future radio upgrades. The Antenna Adventure Installing the antenna was definitely the most challenging part of the whole project. My apartment is on the second floor, and I don't have access to the roof or a yard where I can put up poles. I ended up running the end-fed wire from my shack window, around the building to a tree in the courtyard, and then back to another tree. It's not ideal, but my SWR readings are reasonable on most bands. The 49:1 transformer is mounted in a small weatherproof box just outside my window. I had to get creative with the mounting since I couldn't drill into the building, but some heavy-duty double-sided tape and a couple of zip ties seem to be holding everything securely. Getting the feedpoint impedance right took some experimenting. The antenna calculator said I needed about 65 feet of wire for 40 meters, but I ended up having to trim it a few times to get the SWR down to acceptable levels. Thank goodness for the SWR meter - I would have been completely lost without real-time feedback. First Contacts and Lessons Learned After all the setup work, making my first HF contact was incredibly exciting. I started on 20 meters in the afternoon and was amazed at how many signals I could hear. My first QSO was with a station about 500 miles away - not exactly DX, but it felt like magic compared to the 5-mile range I was used to with my HT. I quickly learned that my antenna works much better on some bands than others. It's pretty good on 40 and 20 meters, okay on 15 meters, but pretty awful on 80 meters. I think the apartment environment and low height are hurting performance on the lower bands. That's something I'll have to work on in the future. One surprise was how much difference the time of day makes. I'd heard about propagation in my license study, but experiencing it firsthand was eye-opening. 20 meters that was dead in the morning would come alive in the afternoon with stations from all over the country. What's Next Now that I have a functioning HF station, I'm already thinking about improvements. I'd love to try a different antenna design - maybe a magnetic loop for better performance in this limited space. I'm also interested in digital modes like FT8, which means I'll need to figure out the computer interface situation. The whole experience has been incredibly educational. While the technical aspects were sometimes frustrating, there's something really satisfying about building a station piece by piece and learning how everything works together. If you're a new ham thinking about getting into HF, my advice would be to start simple and don't let perfect be the enemy of good. You can always upgrade and improve things later, but getting on the air and making contacts is what this hobby is all about. 73 and hope to work you on the bands!