Rick Anderson

nice work, 40m is usually pretty solid for those if you get on mid morning or early afternoon. i find WWFF a bit more relaxed than SOTA honestly, like theres less pressure about the summit window and you can just hang out and make contacts at your own pace. some of the references out here in the midwest are huge state forests so you could technically be anywhere in like 50,000 acres which is kind of amusing. one thing i'd add is worth joining the WWFF facebook group or at least checking the spots page regularly because there are more activators out there than you might think, they just dont always publicize it. also some parks overlap with other programs like POTA and the contacts count for both which is nice for the chasers chasing multiple awards at once.

the generator vs battery thing really comes down to your expected run time and how mobile you actually need to be. for most ARES stuff where youre setting up at a fixed location for several hours i'd lean generator every time. a eu2200i is overkill honestly, i run a predator 2000 and it handles my 7300 plus a few accessories no problem, and yes its louder but you stick it downwind 20 feet and run an extension cord and its really not that bad. fuel is a solved problem if you prep right — just keep two one gallon cans rotated in your kit. that said i've also done events where the noise was completely unacceptable and the battery-only approach was the only option. in those cases i run a 100ah and a 50ah in parallel through a victron battery protect and just accept that im gonna have to manage tx duty cycle more carefully. two batteries sounds heavy but if you pack smart it really isnt that different from hauling the generator plus fuel plus cord. on the antenna front i switched from a buddipole to a 40m EFHW on a 31 foot jackite pole like two years ago and never looked back. setup is honestly under 5 minutes once you practice it and it loads fine on 40 20 and 15 without a tuner if you cut it right. the buddipole is more flexible in theory but that flexibility costs you time every single deployment

so ive been planning this for about three weeks now and tomorrow i'm finally doing my first WWFF activation at a local nature reserve, its listed as a KFF reference which is great. ive done a few SOTA activations before so i kind of know the drill with portable operating but WWFF feels a bit different because from what i understand you need 44 QSOs to get a valid activation logged? or is it just 44 for the hunters to count it toward their awards, im a little fuzzy on the exact rules still. my plan is to run my KX2 with a random wire up in a tree, should be fine for 40 and 20m, maybe poke at 17m if conditions cooperate. ive already spotted myself on the WWFF spotting network and set up an alert on parksnpeaks. just hoping the bands dont completely die on me. the reserve is pretty remote which is exciting but also means if something goes wrong im kind of on my own out there. anyone done activations at KFF references specifically, any quirks i should know about compared to other programs? and do i need to submit my log anywhere specific after or does it go through the normal ADIF upload route

Well done OM! Rewarding HF activities as DXing, contesting and QRP operating still rely heavily on CW - thousands of hams enjoy CW for its relaxing mode different from most other communication. You've opened up a whole new world of operating. Try some POTA or SOTA activations - CW really shines in those situations.

I do 15 minutes of Koch method first thing each morning, then 10-15 minutes of actual QSOs in the evening. The morning session builds reflexes, evening practice applies them. Key tip: don't write everything down during QSOs - practice head copy for short exchanges!

yeah this is basically exactly what i do and it works fine. N1MM for contests, Log4OM for everything else. the key is just exporting your N1MM log as an ADIF after the contest and importing it into Log4OM, takes like two minutes. i havent had duplicate issues doing it that way but i do make sure i set the date range on the import so it only grabs the contest period. as for WSJT-X and N1MM together, yes it works, there's a whole setup in N1MM where you configure it to accept UDP from WSJT-X. you run WSJT-X, point its UDP output at N1MM's port, and they talk to each other. logging happens in N1MM automatically when you hit log in WSJT-X. took me maybe 20 minutes to figure out the first time but once its set its set. honestly for a serious contest weekend N1MM is just in a different league for the dupe checking and rate display stuff, Log4OM isnt really built for that kind of pressure

does it do it on SSB and CW both or just one mode? i ask because i chased a similar problem on a different rig for way too long and it turned out to be the mic compressor doing something stupid on SSB that i had turned on and forgotten about. probably not your issue since you mentioned the dummy load but just thought id throw it out there.

Built transformers with both cores last year. The Fair-Rite definitely runs cooler during FT8 sessions - measured 15°C lower after 30 minutes continuous at 75W. Size advantage is huge for backpack portable work.

so i finally joined my county ARES group a few months back after getting my general and ive been going to the weekly nets and the occasional training session but next weekend they're actually activating us for a local marathon event and i honestly dont know what to expect. like i know the basics, i can operate a radio obviously, but im not sure how formal everything is on an actual activation vs just training nets. do i just show up with my HT and wait to be told what to do? should i bring my mobile rig too just in case? our EC sent out an email but it was kind of vague about specifics. ive done a couple ICS-100 and ICS-200 courses online which the group requires but this is my first real world thing. any advice from people who've done these before would be great. im a little nervous tbh

Finally finished my homebrew 5-element VHF yagi after weeks of mechanical work, but I'm struggling with SWR tuning. Getting about 1.6:1 at 146 MHz but it jumps to 2.3:1 at the band edges - much wider than expected. I've tried adding small tubing sections to the driven element tips as suggested in various articles, but the adjustments seem too sensitive. Using a half-folded driven element design with 50-ohm direct feed per WA5VJB specs. Should I add a short coax jumper to verify my SWR readings aren't being affected by feedline resonance effects?

Cross-trained units capable of handling communication outages, power loss, and network disruptions made all the difference. Our group had practiced switching between HF voice, digital modes, and even packet when needed. The redundancy planning from our quarterly exercises paid off big time.

honestly the ADIF import route works but just double check your contest exchanges are mapping to the right fields because ive had N1MM put stuff in SRX_STRING and Log4OM kinda chokes on it depending on the version. minor thing but annoying when you go back and look at an old contest QSO and the exchange info is missing.

so i finally did my first activation last weekend, W4T/SU-001, and i thought it would be pretty straightforward since ive been a ham for like 3 years and figured i knew what i was doing. yeah. no. got to the summit fine, conditions were decent, had my KX2 and a linked dipole i built a few months ago. set everything up, spotted myself on SOTAwatch, and then just... waited. and waited. got one contact in the first 20 minutes which was great but then the pile just dried up. started wondering if my spot even went through right or if the antenna was messed up. ended up with 6 QSOs total which qualifies the summit but barely, and two of them were on 2m FM which i almost feel like cheating using lol. i know 4 is the magic number so technically its a successful activation but man i expected more based on how it sounds when people talk about SOTA. also the wind was absolutely brutal up there, lost one of my tent stakes i was using to guy the mast and spent 20 minutes chasing it around the summit. is it normal for the first one to feel kind of chaotic? any tips for getting more chasers to respond would be appreciated, especially on HF

So ive been using Log4OM for a couple years now for general logging and i really like it, the interface makes sense to me and the QSL tracking stuff is solid. But every time a contest rolls around everyone seems to be running N1MM and honestly i get why, it just handles contest stuff way better. My question is whether people are actually running both on the same machine and swapping between them or if theres a cleaner way to handle this. Right now my workflow is kind of a mess. I do WSJT-X for FT8 which logs to Log4OM fine, but when i jumped into the ARRL DX contest last month i spun up N1MM and now i have logs in two places and im not totally sure how to merge them without creating duplicate entries. I exported the N1MM log as an ADIF and tried importing it into Log4OM but a few things looked weird, some of the exchange data didnt map right and i ended up with some contacts missing the RST fields. Is there a standard way people handle this or am i overcomplicating it. Would love to hear how other people set up their shack software, especially if youre doing a mix of digital modes and contesting.

dont stress too much about the logging, honestly. if you're using HAMRS or even just Log4OM it'll handle most of the required fields automatically. the main thing is making sure your WWFF reference shows up in the right spot in your ADIF — it goes in the SIG and SIG_INFO fields if i remember right, SIG should be WWFF and SIG_INFO is the actual reference like USFF-0123 or whatever yours is. some logging apps have a specific WWFF mode which makes it dead simple. and yeah the hunter community is a bit different from POTA chasers, though theres definitely overlap. WWFF has its own awards structure and people hunting references can be really enthusiastic about it, especially for less common state references. i activated a small wildlife refuge last spring and got called by a bunch of European stations which surprised me. just spot yourself on the WWFF spotter and you'll get some action for sure. 44 contacts sounds like a lot but on a decent day with a decent antenna you'll get there. good luck tomorrow

so ive been doing CW for about three years now, always on a straight key, and i finally broke down and bought a used Bencher BY-1 off a guy at the club. been messing with it for a few weeks and honestly i have mixed feelings. the keyer itself is great, im using the built-in keyer in my 7300 and the iambic mode is something i'm still wrapping my head around. like i understand the concept, squeeze both paddles and it alternates dits and dahs, but my brain just isnt wired for it yet. i keep reverting to single-lever mode because it feels more natural coming from a straight key background. sending is actually smoother now for callsigns and common words but the second i have to send something unusual i totally fall apart. anyone else go through this transition? how long before it started clicking? i feel like im sending worse now than i did six months ago on the straight key which is kind of demoralizing

honestly it's not that bad, i was in the same spot about two years ago. the question pool being public means the actual test questions are all available ahead of time, so you can literally study the exact questions you'll see. i used hamstudy.org and just did practice tests every night for like two weeks, maybe 20 minutes a day and passed no problem. the technician exam is 35 questions and you need 26 right so theres a bit of room to miss some. dont stress too much about understanding every single concept at first, some of the electrical theory stuff makes more sense after you actually start using the radio anyway

so ive been licensed for about 3 years now and finally decided to try satellite work after watching some videos about it. got myself a yagi for 2m and a separate one for 70cm, both handheld, and im using gpredict to track passes. the passes show up fine and i can see the doppler shift curve but when the satellite is actually overhead i just cant seem to hear anything on the downlink. im working AO-91 mostly because everyone says its a good starter bird. my radio is an FT-818 and i have a cheap preamp inline on the 70cm side since thats the downlink. i was working a pass last night that gpredict said was about 72 degrees elevation which should be pretty much overhead and still nothing. i double checked my frequencies and i have 435.240 as the downlink. am i missing something obvious here because this is getting a bit frustrating. the uplink is 145.960 right? is it possible the sat was just dead or not in service? i honestly cant tell

honestly the best thing I ever did was just start logging everything in WSJT-X or whatever you're using and make sure LoTW upload is turned on automatically. the credits just kind of accumulate on their own after a while and one day you look up and you've got 60-something entities confirmed without really trying that hard. the paper QSL thing is a bit more of a hassle but yes they do count, you'd submit them through the ARRL card checker at a hamfest or mail them in, there's info on the ARRL site about it. as for chasing multiple awards at once -- yeah just work everything and sort it later, thats what most people do. WAS kind of takes care of itself if you're doing any contesting at all since US stations are everywhere. WAZ takes a bit more deliberate effort depending on which zones are hard for you geographically. DXCC is the one most people get obsessed with though and honestly it earns it, theres nothing quite like finally snagging that one entity you've been waiting on for months. attic dipole on an IC-7300 is more than enough to get started, FT8 will get you a long way on the entity count even if you want to eventually chase phone or CW credits too.

yeah i ran that exact dual-logger setup for about a year, Log4OM for daily stuff and N1MM for contests. the ADIF export/import works well enough but you really do have to stay on top of it or your dupe checking in N1MM gets unreliable. what i ended up doing was just importing my Log4OM ADIF into N1MM before any major contest so the master log was current. bit of a pain but not terrible once you have the workflow down. the WSJT-X integration in Log4OM is honestly pretty smooth in version 2, they put a lot of work into that. UDP listener is built right into the config menu and it picked up my spots without much fuss. still had to fiddle with the port settings because i had a firewall thing going on but thats not really a Log4OM problem. personally i just went back to N1MM for everything because im too lazy to maintain two logs, but if the UI bothers you Log4OM is genuinely nicer looking and has better QSL tracking built in.

oh man i remember this exact feeling when i was starting out, it really is overwhelming at first. okay so here's my honest take — the baofeng UV-5R gets a lot of hate but honestly for a brand new ham who just wants to get on repeaters and learn the hobby it does the job fine. the programming is a bit of a headache until you get CHIRP sorted out but once you do its not bad. that said if you have 150 to spend i'd probably stretch just slightly and look at the Yaesu FT-65 or the BF-F8HP if you want to stay in the baofeng world but with a little more power. dual band is worth it yeah, being able to hit both 2m and 70cm repeaters opens up a lot more options depending on your area. the FT-60 is a tank and people have had them for 15+ years with no issues, older doesnt mean bad in this hobby. i wouldnt stress too much though honestly — get something in your budget, get on the air, and youll figure out what you actually want in an HT after a few months of using it.

oh man the FT-817 is a great choice for this, ive been running one in my go-kit for years and the thing just works. low power draw, covers everything, and it fits in a surprisingly small case. mine lives in one of those Pelican 1510 cases with foam cut out for the radio, a LiFePO4 battery, and a few coax adapters. i also keep a roll of wire in there for a quick end-fed if i need it. the biggest thing i'd tell you is dont wait for it to be perfect before you actually test it. i thought mine was ready and then took it out to a ARES exercise and realized i forgot a power cable adapter and had no way to run the thing off the battery i brought. embarrassing but better to find that out at a drill than at an actual event. make a checklist, go set it up in the backyard, make a contact, then figure out what was missing. youll learn more doing that than reading about it. also keep some food and water in your kit. sounds obvious but a lot of people forget theyre going to be sitting somewhere for a long time potentially.

yeah i did that mod too, mines been running fine for like 8 months since. one thing i noticed — and maybe this is just my unit — is that transmitting way outside the ham bands the final seems to run a little warmer so i try not to do it for extended periods. probably nothing to worry about but its in the back of my mind. someone in my local club swapped out the internal fan on theirs with a slightly higher CFM unit because he does a lot of FT8 and was worried about thermals during long duty cycle stuff. said it made a noticeable difference. i keep meaning to check my temps more carefully during a long digital session but havent gotten around to it. not really a performance mod but kinda related i guess.

oh man W4T/SU-017, i've chased that one a few times. decent signal path from where i am. ill be listening around 10 so hopefully we make a contact, ill be one of your four haha. my only tip and take it for what its worth since im still pretty new myself — bring more food than you think you need. i did my first activation a few months back and was so focused on the radio stuff i forgot to eat and by the time i was packing up i was completely wiped. small thing but made a big difference on the hike back down

so ive had this thing for maybe three weeks now and figured id write up some impressions since i spent a lot of time reading threads like this before i bought it. came from an old TS-430S that i inherited from a silent key uncle so this is kind of a big jump for me in terms of how modern rigs work. first thing that hit me was just how good the waterfall is for actually finding signals. i know everyone says this but seriously it changes how you operate. i spent the first two nights just watching the 40m band breathe, which sounds dumb but i never really visualized propagation like that before. found a couple stations calling CQ that i never wouldve tuned across manually. the touch screen is fine, not amazing. sometimes i have to tap something twice especially if my hands are a little cold in the shack which gets drafty in the fall. not a dealbreaker. the twin PBT on SSB is really nice once you figure out the interaction between the two controls — took me an embarrassingly long time to understand what i was actually adjusting. one thing that bugged me out of the box was the default noise reduction settings felt a bit aggressive and made voice sound kind of robotic. turned NR down to like 3-4 and that helped a lot. also hadnt touched the RF gain in years since my old rig kind of did its own thing, but on this one i actually need to ride it sometimes on crowded band conditions. anyway not a review just some thoughts. happy to answer stuff if anyone else is on the fence about picking one up.