Sarah Chen

yeah what he said about the inverted-V changing impedance is real, i went through the same thing with my first 20m build. one thing i'll add is that proximity to your fence post and any nearby metal or the ground itself is going to pull the resonant frequency down a bit from what the formula predicts. 468/f is really just a starting point in free space, real world installations almost always come out a bit long. try trimming maybe 3-4 inches off each leg and remeasure, bet it moves in the right direction.

so ive been running a diamond X50 on the roof for about two years now and it works fine for hitting the local 147 repeater but theres one machine about 40 miles out that i can just barely key up on a good day, like if the weather is right and i run 50w from the shack. been thinking about whether a yagi would actually help here or if im chasing my tail. the thing is the repeater is roughly NNW from me and my house kind of blocks that direction at low angles, i think. i put the X50 up pretty high, maybe 30 feet on a chimney mount. the other option i was thinking was just a longer collinear, like the X200 or maybe a Comet GP-9, get a couple more dB of gain and see if that does it. but someone at the club last week was saying a 5 element yagi pointed at that repeater would wipe the floor with a collinear for a fixed path and i cant really argue with that from a pure gain standpoint. the problem is i dont really want a dedicated antenna just for one repeater, i use 2m pretty broadly for the club nets and occasional simplex. so i guess my question is, has anyone gone down this road and figured out a good compromise? or is a yagi just overkill for repeater work in general when youre not doing weak signal stuff

so ive been messing around with remote station control for about six months now and finally got a decent setup going but im curious if anyone else is running RemoteHams RCForb or the SDR remote stuff for anything beyond just casual listening. my situation is i live in an HOA nightmare so the remote shack at my dad's property about 40 miles out is basically my only option for real HF operation. the latency isnt terrible on a good day, maybe 150-200ms round trip which is workable for SSB but CW is kinda rough unless you go full QSK and just deal with it or run a keyer at the remote end. i set up a Raspberry Pi out there running a bunch of stuff and the audio path is actually the part that gives me the most headache — the codec settings in RCForb are a bit buried and i never quite know if im optimizing them or just making things worse. also thinking about tying in some IRLP or Echolink nodes for VHF/UHF linking through the same internet connection out there but not sure if that's going to create a bandwidth nightmare or if it's actually fine in practice. anyone done both at the same site? the upload at that location is only about 15 Mbps which should be plenty but i've been surprised before.

so ive been chasing summits for about 6 months now and finally decided to try my first activation this coming saturday. picked out a local summit that's only a W4V reference, 2 points i think, figured i'd start easy. but i have some questions that the SOTA database and the reflector havent really answered for me in a way that makes sense. first thing — do i have to be exactly on the summit or just within the activation zone? i know theres a 25 meter rule or something but i want to make sure im not disqualified if i set up slightly below the actual peak because the top is really rocky and not great for antennas. second thing is about the spotting — do i need to post a selfspot on SOTAwatch before i start calling or can i just start on a frequency and hope chasers find me. ive seen people use the RBN to get auto spotted but im not sure how that works with SSB since im not doing CW yet. running a Yaesu FT-818 with a homebrew linked dipole if that matters. also does anyone have tips for keeping a log in the field, i tend to fumble around with paper when im cold and nervous

I went SDRplay RSP1A a few years back and havent looked back. The difference on HF is real. My RTL still gets used for ADS-B because why not, its fine at 1090 MHz, but for anything below 30 MHz the RSP wins pretty easily. You can actually use it without a separate upconverter which is nice. One thing nobody mentions much — the SDRuno software that comes with it is actually pretty decent now, it was rough when i first got mine but theyve updated it a fair bit. You can also use it with SDR# or GQRX or whatever you prefer which is good because software lock-in is annoying. For FT8 monitoring just pipe it into WSJT-X via virtual audio cable and it works great.

same thing happend to me when i got my ticket last year, couldnt even remeber to say my callsign at the end and the guy on the other end had to ask me again. felt like an idiot but honestly everyone starts somewhere. whats your HT? im still using a cheap baofeng and trying to figure out if its worth upgrading yet

im pretty new to this too so take what i say with some salt but i downloaded an app called HamSatDX or something like that... actually no i think it was just called HamAlert, you can set it up to notify you when certain dx stations get spotted on certain bands. saved me from missing a few openings when i was just sitting at work. someone on here mentioned it a while back and its been pretty useful honestly even if i dont fully understand all the settings yet

welcome to the rabbit hole haha. okay so the technician is where everyone starts, you dont need the general or extra until you want HF privileges which is the longer range stuff. the tech exam is 35 questions multiple choice and honestly its not that bad if you use hamstudy.org, just grind the question pool for a week or two and youll be fine. the questions repeat a lot. dont bother buying a radio until after you pass, mostly because once you're studying you'll figure out what bands interest you and that changes what you'd want anyway. find a local club too, a lot of them do free license classes and the elmers there can answer stuff way faster than googling. the ARRL has a technician manual but some people find it overkill just to pass the test

so i finally did my first POTA activation yesterday at the state forest near me, been putting it off for months because i kept second guessing my setup. ended up just throwing the KX2 and a random wire in my backpack and heading out. forgot my coax adapter so i had to MacGyver something with electrical tape which worked surprisingly okay but the SWR was kinda ugly on 40m. managed to get like 9 contacts in about an hour and a half before it started raining, didnt hit the 10 to qualify so i gotta go back. honestly wasnt even that frustrated about it, just kinda fun to be out there doing radio stuff in the woods ya know

I went through basically the exact same thing with my first inverted-V, obsessed over getting the SWR perfect and eventually a guy at my club just told me to stop worrying about it. 1.8 isnt going to hurt anything and on 40m you probably wont notice a difference in signal reports vs a 1.1 match. the antenna is up and it works, which puts you ahead of a lot of people. I spent like three weekends tweaking mine before I just accepted it and started actually using the thing to make contacts. one thing though — how is the feedline routed? if the coax is just drooping down along one of the legs for a while that can skew your readings depending on where your analyzer is. might be worth checking that if you havent already.

yeah the 60m power dropoff thing is a known annoyance, some guys just run reduced power on that band and call it a day but if youre doing board work anyway makes sense to address it. i did the TX mod on mine like two years ago and it's been fine. never touched the roofing filter though, honestly my ears arent good enough anymore to care about that level of adjacent rejection haha. getting old is rough on the hobby in ways nobody warns you about.

So i finally pulled the trigger and scheduled my first ever Parks on the Air activation for tomorrow morning at a state park about 45 minutes from my house. K-2254 if anyone wants to hunt me, ill be on 40m probably around 7.260 or wherever i can find a clear spot, maybe dip into 20m if conditions look decent. I've done a bunch of hunting from home which honestly got me hooked on the whole thing but activating is a completely different beast apparently. I got my KX2 all charged up, random wire antenna cut for 40m, a few extra batteries just in case. I'm planning to get there around 9am local and set up, maybe do a spot on the POTA website before i start calling. My main worry is just not getting the 10 contacts needed. Like what if nobody hears me or i pick a frequency thats already occupied and dont realize it. Also not sure if i should just stay on one band or jump around. Anyone done a bunch of activations have advice for a first timer? Dont want to blow it on my first try haha

one thing that tripped me up when i was new was that some of these get used as questions and answers depending on how you say them, like QRN? means is there static, but just saying QRN means there IS static. same with a lot of them. took me a while to figure out context matters a lot. also youll hear QSY which just means changing frequency, and QRZ which is who is calling me. that one gets used at the start of a pileup a lot and it confused me for the longest time because it sounds like it should mean something more complicated

same thing happend to me like 3 months ago haha, i was shaking a little when i first keyed up which is embarassing to admit but whatever. the guys on our repeater were really cool about it too. what HT did you end up getting?

so ive been licensed for about 3 months now and when i first got on HF i was pretty careful about using phonetics every time i gave my callsign, like Kilo Foxtrot whatever etc. but i noticed a lot of the more experienced guys on the local repeater just say their call letters normally without spelling them out phonetically, and sometimes they dont even give their full call, just the last couple letters. is there like an unwritten rule about when you actually need to use them vs when its just overkill? i dont want to sound like im reading from a checklist every time i key up but i also dont want to drop bad habits early on. my elmers kind of glossed over this part