David Kowalski

so i've been doing single op for a few years now, mostly CQWW and SS, and i keep reading about SO2R and how the top scores are basically impossible without it. i get the concept — you're running on one radio while hunting mults on the second — but i'm struggling to wrap my head around how people actually manage it in practice without completely losing their minds or their run frequency. like what do you do when the second radio lands on a good mult right as you're in the middle of a run? do you just let the run die? i've been using N1MM and i know there's SO2R support built in but even setting it up looked intimidating enough that i just closed the window and went back to single radio. currently running an IC-7300 as my main and i have an older TS-570 sitting around that i could use as radio 2 if i got serious about this. also i'm curious how people handle the antenna situation — do you really need separate antennas for each radio or can you get away with switching? i only have one tower and the interaction between two rigs transmitting even close to simultaneously seems like it would be a disaster for the front ends. anyway just trying to figure out if the effort to set this up is worth it for someone doing maybe 6-8 contests a year at the serious-ish recreational level, not gunning for plaques or anything

A little background: I got my Technician license about two years ago, upgraded to General last spring, and I've basically been operating from a corner of my home office that looked like a disaster zone. Radio sitting on a stack of old books, power supply balanced on the edge of the desk, coax running across the floor where I kept tripping over it. My wife was remarkably patient about it, but even I was getting annoyed at myself. The radio itself is an ICOM IC-7300, which I saved up for over about eight months. Love that radio. But a great radio deserves a decent setup around it, and I kept half-doing things and never finishing. So a few weeks ago I decided to actually commit to a proper shack setup before winter hits and I spend more time indoors on the air. The Desk Situation I picked up a used L-shaped desk from Facebook Marketplace for forty bucks. Nothing fancy — it's one of those particleboard IKEA-style things — but it gave me a lot more surface to work with. I put the radio and monitors on the main section and dedicated the shorter return section to logging, my notebook, and my MFJ-993B auto-tuner. Having the tuner off to the side instead of crammed between the radio and the monitor makes a huge difference, both practically and just visually. The desk isn't pretty but it works. One thing I did that cost almost nothing was run a length of pegboard across the wall above the desk. Picked it up at Home Depot for maybe twelve dollars. Now I have hooks for my headset, a little shelf for my SWR meter, and a spot to hang a dry-erase board where I scribble down frequencies and contest notes. If you've never used pegboard in your shack, seriously consider it. Incredibly flexible. Power Supply and Cable Management This was honestly the biggest headache. I'm running an Astron RS-35M, which is a solid supply but it's heavy and bulky. I ended up putting it on a small metal shelf I mounted under the main desk surface, which gets it off the desktop completely and keeps it ventilated. I ran the DC cables up through a grommet hole I cut in the desk. Not perfect, but it keeps things cleaner. For cable management I used a combination of velcro straps and some plastic cable raceways along the back edge of the desk. Coax goes up through a hole in the wall (finally drilled that properly instead of running it under the window like I was doing before) and out to the antenna feedpoint. All my DC runs are labeled with those little Brady label maker labels. I know that sounds excessive but when you're tracing a problem at 11pm it's really nice to know which cable goes where without having to follow it the whole length. The Microphone Setup I'd been using the stock hand mic that came with the 7300 and it's fine, don't get me wrong, but I wanted something hands-free for longer rag chew sessions. I went with an Heil PR-781 on a cheap desk boom arm I found on Amazon. The audio reports I've been getting are noticeably better than with the hand mic, and I can actually sit back in my chair without hunching over to hold the mic up. The boom arm took a little fiddling to get balanced right — the spring tension wasn't great out of the box — but I added a small counterweight I rigged from a couple of large washers tied with paracord and it holds position much better now. I also finally set up the audio levels properly in the 7300's menus. I had been running a little hot and probably splattering a bit. Got it dialed in with help from a couple of folks on a local repeater who gave me honest signal reports. Appreciate people who actually give real feedback instead of just saying "you sound great, fine business" every single time. Grounding and RFI — Still a Work in Progress I want to be honest here: this part isn't done. I have a ground rod outside but I haven't run a proper RF ground strap into the shack yet. I've been getting away with it on HF because my antenna feedline has a decent common mode choke, but I know this needs to get sorted properly before I start experiencing interference issues I can't diagnose. I picked up some copper strap and the hardware I need — it's just sitting in a bag waiting for me to actually do it. Classic ham procrastination, I know. I did add a decent power strip with surge protection to the shack, and I'm in the habit of unplugging the coax during storms now. Baby steps. Overall First Impressions Honestly, I should have done this two years ago. The difference in how much I actually enjoy operating now is pretty significant. When everything has a place and the cables aren't a rat's nest, you spend less time fighting the setup and more time actually making contacts. I got on 40 meters last Sunday evening and worked a station about 1,100 miles out without really trying, just because I sat down and started calling instead of messing around trying to find my logbook under a pile of stuff. Total cost of the shack reorganization project was somewhere around $150 when I add it all up — the desk, the pegboard, the boom arm, cable management stuff, the shelf brackets. The Heil mic was a separate purchase I'd been planning for a while. So it wasn't totally free but it wasn't outrageous either. A lot of it was just reorganizing what I already had. If you're in the same place I was — radio sitting on a stack of books, cables everywhere, kind of embarrassed to show anyone a photo of your operating position — I'd say just pick one small piece of it and fix that this weekend. It snowballs pretty quickly once you start. I'll try to post some actual pictures once I get the cable situation behind the desk looking a little less horrifying. And I'll definitely write something up when I finally get the grounding sorted. Thanks for reading through my first post here — hopefully useful to someone out there who's just getting their shack together.

not a dumb question at all, this stuff confused me for years honestly. so the short version is LoTW is the one you want if you're chasing DXCC or any of the ARRL awards — it's the only digital platform they accept for those. you upload your log (usually as an ADIF file through their TQSL software) and when both sides upload the same contact it shows as confirmed. eQSL is totally separate and has its own awards system, some people love it but it doesnt count for DXCC so take that for what its worth. paper cards are just kinda tradition at this point for a lot of ops, but some DX stations and contest stations still require them for certain awards or just prefer them. if you work a rare entity or something special its honestly still nice to have a physical card. but for day to day confirming contacts, getting on LoTW is the most important thing. get the TQSL software set up, get your callsign certificate from the ARRL, and start uploading. its a little clunky at first but once its going it just works. dont stress about being behind, you can upload old logs and it'll match anything thats already in there.

SOTA is worth looking into too if you havent already, its a completely different vibe from the big contests but super addicting. nothing like lugging a radio up a summit and making contacts. way less stressful than trying to work a pileup during CQ WW haha but yeah for your actual question, just get on and try it. worst case you make a few contacts and have fun, best case you surprise yourself

3Y0 nice one, that counts for Bouvet right? i keep missing that one. whats your antenna setup if you dont mind me asking because i feel like thats where im losing — im on a tribander at about 35 feet and i just dont have the punch for the really rare stuff on 17m. or maybe im just doing everything else wrong too, hard to tell honestly

that scotland contact at 5w is awesome, 20m was probably in good shape but still thats a solid result for a first portable outing. i've been doing POTA with a KX2 for about a year and a half and honestly the QRP thing becomes kind of addictive. you start looking at every contact differently. for antennas i bounced around a lot before settling on a linked dipole for multiband work. the EFHW you're using is great but if you ever want to try 40m or 17m without a tuner it's worth making one with the links, its a little more fiddly to set up but not bad once you get used to it. also worth experimenting with your feedpoint height, ive found even a foot or two makes a noticeable difference sometimes depending on the terrain. what logging software are you using for the parks stuff, or are you doing paper log?

yeah im planning on going, went two years before covid and it was pretty good. the flea market part was hit or miss honestly but i did score a barely used MFJ tuner for like 20 bucks so cant complain. get there early though because all the good stuff disappears fast, like within the first hour usually.

yeah the inverting thing trips everyone up at first. basically on a linear transponder the passband is inverted, so if a station moves up in frequency on the uplink you'll hear them move down on the downlink. it's just how the transponder mixes it. once you get used to it it becomes second nature but for the first few passes it's genuinely disorienting. for the doppler -- yes you really do have to retune constantly, that's just the reality of LEO work. the shift on FO-29 is something like plus or minus 10 kHz over a whole pass which sounds small but it moves fast near AOS and LOS. gpredict can actually send CAT commands to the 9700 and handle the doppler correction automatically for both uplink and downlink, you just have to set it up under the radio interfaces menu. there's a pretty decent guide on the AMSAT website for doing this with icom rigs. once you get that working it makes a huge difference, you can actually focus on operating instead of just spinning the dial. the arrow antenna is fine to start, honestly. i worked my first 30-40 contacts with an arrow and an FT-817 so dont let anyone tell you need a big az-el setup to get started.

honest answer: at 25 feet your dipole is basically an NVIS antenna on 40m, maybe decent for regional stuff but youre not getting much low angle radiation out of it at all. a vertical with even a modest radial system, say 16-20 quarter wave radials, is probably going to walk all over it for DX. i ran this exact comparison a few years back with an AIM analyzer and just doing A/B on actual signals and the vertical won almost every time past like 2000 miles. the clay soil thing is real but its not a dealbreaker. elevated radials help get you out of the soil loss equation somewhat. some guys run 4 elevated radials and do surprisingly well. W4RNL did a lot of modeling on this if you havent seen his stuff, worth a read before you commit to digging up your yard.

so ive been a tech for about 8 months now and honestly i mostly just do local repeaters and some APRS stuff but i keep hearing about HF and it sounds like thats where the real fun is. anyway i picked up the gordon west general study book and started going through it but theres SO much stuff in there and i dont really know what to prioritize. like the propagation section makes my head spin and the math for calculating stuff i dont even know when id ever use that in real life. i took a practice test on hamstudy.org and got like 67% which i guess is okay but not passing yet. is there a certain section that tends to trip people up or that i should really nail down before the exam? also is it worth trying to actually understand the material or do most people just memorize the question pool. i feel kinda bad even asking that but i want to be honest lol exam is in about 3 weeks so i just want to make sure im spending my time right

im in basically the same boat as you lol, been at it since january and i hover around 10wpm on a good day. what i noticed is that taking a day or two off sometimes helps more than grinding through it — like my brain consolidates stuff while im not actively practicing or something. probably sounds like an excuse to be lazy but it genuinely seems to work for me at least

ok so ive been licensed for about 8 months now and i still feel weird about when to break out the NATO phonetics vs just saying letters normally. like if someone asks me to confirm my callsign do i always go full alpha bravo charlie or is that overkill sometimes. i was on a local 2m repeater last week and just said my call normally and the guy came back and asked me to say it again which made me feel dumb. but then ive heard other people on HF just rattle off letters without phonetics and nobody seems to care. is there like an actual rule or is it just feel-based. also i keep blanking on november vs november... wait i mean i keep mixing up november and november. ok i mean i mix up november and uniform sometimes when im nervous talking. does that get easier

yeah CTCSS is almost definitely your problem. most repeaters require it to actually open the squelch on the repeater's receiver end — without the right tone your signal hits the machine but it just ignores you. it's not optional on those systems, it's how the repeater tells the difference between an intentional transmission and random noise or interference from a distant signal on the same frequency. the tone you need is usually listed in the repeater directory but sometimes they leave it blank or outdated, happens more than you'd think. try looking up your local repeater club's website directly, they usually have more current info. once you program the right tone in your radio you'll probably get right in. as for announcing yourself, most people just say their callsign and say something like "listening" or "monitoring" and see if anyone comes back. some machines have an autopatch or courtesy tone that beeps after each transmission so you'll know you made it in. good luck, it clicks pretty fast once you get that first qso going

so ive been using Log4OM for general logging for about two years now and honestly love it for day to day stuff, the QRZ lookups work great and keeping track of my DXCC progress is way easier than whatever i was doing before. but every time contest season rolls around i end up switching back to N1MM and it feels like im maintaining two completely separate lives on my radio desk. the thing thats been bugging me lately is the WSJT-X integration. i run FT8 pretty heavily during some of the bigger contests like CQ WW and i cant figure out if im better off just committing to N1MM full time or if Log4OM can actually handle the contest side of things without me wanting to throw the laptop out the window. ive read the Log4OM docs but they kind of assume you already know what youre doing with the contest module which, i dont really. anyone run both and settled on one? or is the answer just use N1MM for contests and Log4OM for everything else and accept that ADIF exports between them are part of the workflow now

so ive been a tech for about two years now mostly doing VHF and some APRS stuff and i finally decided i want to actually get on HF and talk to people further than like 50 miles lol. signed up to take the General exam next month at a local club session and honestly i dont even know where to start studying. i looked at the question pool and it seems like a lot of it is electrical theory which i was never great at in school. the propagation stuff seems interesting though and i think i can get through that ok. is the HamStudy website actually good for this or should i get a book? i saw some people mention the ARRL handbook but that seems like way overkill for just passing the test. also curious how much of the HF stuff i kind of just need to understand vs just memorize to pass because some of those electrical formulas are intimidating. anyone gone through this recently have tips?