Jennifer Park

yeah what he said basically. i was in the same boat when i started and honestly just set up LoTW first since thats the one that matters most for the awards i wanted. eQSL i made an account for but i check it maybe once every few months lol. as for physical cards i send them when someone sends me one first or if i worked something interesting, i dont just blanket send cards to everyone that feels like it would get expensive real fast

WIDE2-2 is fine for suburban/urban, actually you might even get away with WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 in a lot of metro areas since there are usually enough digipeaters around. the 2-minute fixed rate is probably your bigger issue honestly. with a fixed beacon interval you end up either flooding the channel when youre stationary or missing updates when youre moving fast. if the D710G supports SmartBeaconing (pretty sure it does) id turn that on instead — it adjusts the rate based on speed and heading changes so youre not hammering the channel when parked but you still get decent resolution on the map when driving. the disappearing thing might also just be aprs.fi doing its own filtering or your packets not making it to an igate at certain points in your drive. check aprsdirect.com too, sometimes one site shows what the other doesnt. also worth looking at whether the packets are actually being received by digipeaters — the raw packet view on aprs.fi will show you hops if they're getting through at all.

so we have a county-level ARES exercise coming up next saturday and im trying to put together a halfway decent portable station that can actually do something useful rather than just checking in on the net and calling it a day. the plan is to set up at the county EOC backup site which is basically a parking lot next to an old fire station — no shore power, no nothing. ive been going back and forth on the antenna situation. i have a buddipole that ive used a few times but honestly i never feel like im getting the most out of it when im in a hurry. also have an end-fed halfwave with a 9:1 unun that i just throw up in a tree if theres one nearby, which there might not be at this particular site. thinking about bringing both and deciding on the spot. power is the bigger headache for me right now. i have a 100ah lifepo4 battery that should be fine for a few hours of HF work at maybe 50-75w but the exercise is supposed to run like 8-10 hours and i dont know if i want to push it that long without some kind of charging source. my neighbor has a 2000w honda inverter generator i can borrow but that feels like massive overkill and it's loud. anybody running a smaller genny for this kind of thing? or solar if the weather cooperates? forecast is looking partly cloudy so maybe 60% effective at best on panels. also curious what people bring for digital — im thinking just a laptop with fldigi and a signalink but im open to other ideas if theres something more packable.

so ive been running a diamond NR770HB on a mag mount for probably two years now and its fine but i keep reading that a proper NMO through the roof is the way to go for a real ground plane and better performance. makes sense in theory. the thing is i just bought a newer truck and honestly dont want to drill a hole in the roof if i can help it. looked at the lip mount options and they seem like a reasonable compromise but every time i bring it up on a local repeater someone tells me lip mounts are garbage and i should just drill the hole already. anyone actually done a comparison, like measured it or at least noticed a real difference in day to day operation? im doing mostly local repeater work and some simplex when im traveling on highways. not really trying to hit anything exotic. also the truck has a moonroof so the center of roof thing isnt even an option, probably would do it just forward of that or on the trunk lid. not sure if trunk lid ground plane is worse or what. just looking for real world input not the "drill the hole" lecture if possible lol

Nice work getting that sorted. The firewall grommet thing on newer trucks is genuinely awful, Toyota and a few others have gotten real stingy with accessible pass-throughs. I ended up using a rubber body grommet I added myself on my 4Runner install, drill a small hole, add your own grommet, done. Feels a little sketchy the first time you drill into the firewall but it holds up fine. One thing id suggest if you havent already — check your SWR at a few spots along your route, not just in your driveway. Had a buddy whos NMO install looked great parked but he was getting weird readings on the highway and turns out the cable was running too close to some metal bracket and causing issues. Probably nothing with your setup but worth a quick check.

yeah just go, youll figure it out. i did my first one totally unprepared and still had a blast. bring more water than you think you need lol especially if youre setting up and tearing down antenna in the sun

congrats on getting out there. honestly i think i had like 11 on my first one and thought i ruined everything haha. which park was that again? might try to hunt you if you post your next activation on the schedule

the IC-7300 and SignaLink combo is actually a pretty common pairing and it usually works but there are a couple gotchas. first thing id check is whether you have the 7300 set to output audio on the USB port or the ACC jack -- if youre using the SignaLink you want the rear ACC port, not USB audio, otherwise your levels are gonna be all over the place. second, make sure the 7300 DATA mode is set up right, you want to be in USB-D or whatever icom calls it, and the mic gain through the data port should be turned way down, like 10-20%, let the SignaLink handle the level. for the frequency thing -- VARA HF connects on USB so your dial frequency IS the suppressed carrier, not center. so if the gateway is listed as 14105.0 you just dial up 14105.0 in USB and let VARA put the tones where they go. some guys confuse this with packet where you sometimes have to offset. also worth checking your RMS gateway -- some of them have pretty short connect windows and if your timing is off or theres qrm on that frequency theyll just drop the handshake. try a couple different gateways in your region, the winlink map lets you filter by mode and distance. callsign registration happens automatically on first successful connect, you dont have to pre-register anywhere.

So we ran a simulated disaster exercise with our local ARES group last Saturday, the scenario was a major flood event cutting off the county EOC from surrounding served agencies. About 14 operators showed up which was honestly better turnout than I expected for a Saturday morning. Things started fine, we had net control set up at the EOC, repeater was working, everyone checked in. Then someone decided to throw in an injects — they told us the repeater just went down. Had to scramble to simplex and honestly that's where things got real interesting fast. Turns out about half the group either didn't know the simplex calling frequency we'd agreed on or couldn't hear each other because of terrain. We just kind of assumed everyone remembered the plan from the last meeting like six months ago. The other thing that caught us off guard was message handling. We had people trying to do ICS 213s but a couple operators had never actually filled one out under any kind of time pressure before. Reading it aloud over the air takes way longer than you'd think when youre trying to stay concise and accurate at the same time. Not complaining though, this is exactly why we do these. Would love to hear if anyone else has run into similar stuff or what scenarios your groups have tried. We're trying to build a better exercise for the fall.

yeah the whole thing can feel like alphabet soup at first, totally get it. so basically LoTW does track everything in the background as long as you upload your logs regularly — you dont have to do anything special per-contact. when you want to actually apply for an award you go into the ARRL LoTW interface and it'll show you your confirmed credits broken down by entity, state, zone, band, mode, all of it. you only pay when you actually apply for the award certificate. the mixed/phone/cw thing just means you can earn separate endorsements. like if you work all 100 DXCC entities on CW only thats a harder thing to do and you get a CW endorsement on top of the basic mixed one. for starting out dont worry about it, just log everything and let LoTW sort it out. honestly id say go for WAS first since you're already almost there without even trying. 40 states confirmed is really close — the hard ones are usually Delaware, Rhode Island, sometimes the dakotas depending on propagation. once you knock that out DXCC becomes the real rabbit hole and trust me it is absolutely a rabbit hole lol. WAZ kind of takes care of itself along the way

so i've been wanting to do LEO satellite work for probably two years now and last weekend i finally just did it instead of reading about it more. used my FT-818 and one of those arrow antennas, nothing fancy for the first pass. managed to hear myself in the downlink which was pretty exciting honestly. the doppler correction thing is what i'm struggling with though. i was doing it manually by just nudging the dial every 30 seconds or so but obviously that's not really workable when you're also trying to point the antenna. i've got a windows laptop i could bring outside, is gpredict actually usable for real time correction if i connect the radio via cat? i've seen people mention it but not sure how well it actually works with the 818 specifically. also the linear transponder on AO-73 — i know its inverting so USB on uplink means LSB on downlink or whatever, but does the passband shift noticeably during a pass or do you kind of pick a spot and stay there. i was all over the place and couldn't tell if that was me or doppler or what

so we have a fairly big ARES exercise coming up next month and im trying to nail down my portable setup for the first time as the actual station lead, not just a helper. running an IC-7300 as the primary HF rig and a couple of VX-6Rs for local VHF/UHF. the antenna situation is where im going back and forth. for the field site we've been assigned, it's a parking lot behind a community center, so no trees to hang a wire from really. i was thinking a 20m hamstick on a mag mount on the roof of my truck, or maybe bringing my Buddipole and setting that up on its tripod. the buddipole would obviously be better for flexibility but its also more to set up under time pressure and those exercises always have some kind of timed deployment component. the bigger question is power. i have a 100ah lithium battery (battleborn) that should in theory run the 7300 for a good while at moderate power, but the exercise is supposed to run 8 hours and i dont want to be that guy who goes QRT because his battery died at hour 5. was thinking about bringing along a small honda generator as backup, like the EU2200i, but then i have to deal with noise, fuel, the whole thing. anyone run a setup like this and have an opinion on whether the battery alone is realistic or whether the generator is basically mandatory for a full day operation?

the HF vs HT question really depends on what your local ARES or RACES group actually uses. some nets around here are VHF only for local coordination and HF is for passing traffic to the state EOC, so having both actually does make sense if you're involved with a group one thing i'd add — documentation. not just the freq list but like, written down procedures for yourself. sounds dumb but when things are stressful and you're sleep deprived you will forget how to set up your own antenna faster than you think. i have a laminated one-page 'set up checklist' in my kit and i've used it every single drill even after doing this for years

nice one, the KX2 is such a solid little rig for this stuff. i keep meaning to do more POTA but life keeps getting in the way. did you log it on the app while you were out there or just paper and upload later?

im in basically the same boat as you lol, been at it for like six weeks now. i use an app called Morse Mania which i think is pretty decent for beginners, it sort of games-ifies it which helps me stay consistent. i also found that listening to actual QSOs on like 40m even when i cant understand anything at all still helps somehow, my brain is starting to pick out letters here and there which is pretty cool. just wanted to say youre not alone in finding it confusing at first, the resources are kind of scattered everywhere