Lisa Rodriguez91

oh man i remember my first EOC deployment, it was for a winter storm exercise about two years after i got my ticket. honestly the thing that helped me most was just showing up early and introducing myself to the served agency folks before things got hectic. they appreciate knowing who you are and what you're there to do, and it breaks the ice so when you're passing traffic later it doesn't feel as weird. the actual radio work during a drill is usually way less chaotic than you'd expect, at least at first. there's a lot of waiting around and then a burst of activity and then more waiting. just keep your log current and don't be afraid to ask for a repeat on anything you didn't copy clearly, nobody thinks less of you for that. re: the headset, i'd bring your own just in case. EOC setups vary wildly, sometimes they have nice rigs all ready to go and sometimes you're working off a folding table with a radio someone dragged out of their trunk. better to have it and not need it.

so i finally did my first summit activation last weekend, W4V/SH-001, figured itd be easy since its not a super high prominence peak but man i was not ready for how windy it gets up there. i had my elecraft kx2 and a wire antenna i threw together the night before, some kind of end fed thing i copied off a youtube video, and it kept wanting to blow sideways the whole time. managed to get 4 contacts which is technically enough to activate but two of them i could barely hear and im still not sure they got my callsign right. also forgot to bring enough water which was just dumb on my part. anyway i think im hooked though, already looking at peaks closer to home to try again. anyone else have a disaster first activation story

so ive been trying to figure out if its worth making the drive out, last time i went was like 3 years ago and it was a blast but gas prices being what they are now im kinda on the fence. anybody else planning to go? would be cool to maybe meetup if theres enough of us from this area. also heard the club is doing some kind of antenna building thing the weekend before but i dont have details on that yet

ok so ive been licensed about 8 months now and i keep hearing people talk about DXCC and WAS and WAZ and honestly i dont really understand the difference or which one makes sense to go after first. like i get that DXCC is about working 100 countries and WAS is the 50 states thing but WAZ has me confused — zones? what are zones and how do they work exactly also i worked a guy in Japan last week on 20m which i was pretty stoked about and i logged it in LOTW but i wasnt sure if i needed to do anything else to get credit for it. do i have to apply separately for each award or does LOTW just track everything automatically once the contact confirms my setup is pretty modest, just a G5RV in the backyard at about 25 feet and a 100w radio so i wasnt sure if i even have a realistic shot at DXCC or if thats more of a beam antenna thing

yeah that pattern really does point at the bandpass filters or the LPF/BPF switching relays. the 7300 uses a bank of filters and if one of the relay contacts is dirty or failing you'll get exactly what you're describing — TX path is separate enough that it can still work while receive tanks. the fact that it's specifically the higher bands and not a gradual rolloff across everything makes me think relay before i'd think a cap or something passive in the filter network itself. before you crack it open i'd try the reset procedure if you havent already, not because i think that'll fix it but just to rule out some weird firmware thing, and also check if the built-in preamp toggling on and off changes anything on 15m. if turning pre1 on makes zero difference on a band where it normally helps, that's another clue the signal path on that band is broken somewhere upstream of the preamp switching. honestly though if you're past warranty just open it up. the 7300 is pretty serviceable, icom's service manual is floating around online and the BPF unit is a separate module. might just need a squirt of contact cleaner on the relay if you can get to it.

so ive been licensed about 8 months now and i finally feel like im starting to get the hang of working DX but the whole cluster spotting thing still kinda confuses me. i use DXwatch sometimes and also the spotting tab on QRZ but i honestly cant tell if theyre pulling from the same data or what. like sometimes i see a spot on one that isnt on the other and i dont know if thats a timing thing or if theyre completely separate networks. also i downloaded a couple apps, one called DX Toolbox and something else i cant remember the name of, and they seem to show slightly different spots too. is there like one source thats considered the most reliable or do people just use multiple at once? i feel like im missing spots because im not watching the right thing. any advice would be helpful, still figuring all this out

yeah the baofeng for uplink is probably hurting you more than you realize, those things can drift 2-3 kHz just from TX heat which on a linear transponder basically sounds like youre sliding around. even a used FT-817 or IC-705 makes a huge difference because the TCXO keeps things stable and you can actually use hamlib properly with them. for the workflow i run gpredict with two radio instances, one controlling the downlink rig and one for uplink, and i set a manual doppler offset in gpredict for the transponder passband center. its not perfect but its way better than doing it by hand. the thing nobody tells you is you have to account for the transponder inversion on linear birds -- your uplink goes up as your downlink goes down relative to the center, so if you just let gpredict chase both independently it sounds wrong. took me an embarassing amount of time to figure that out. 6 minute pass with a whip on the downlink and a handheld yagi for TX is actually not bad honestly, if you were hearing yourself at all youre closer than you think

congrats on the first one, getting those 4 contacts is always the hardest part mentally because you're just sitting there hoping someone hears you. it gets easier once you get a feel for spotting yourself on SOTAwatch, that made a huge difference for me early on. on the points — the activator gets the points based on the summit rating, so a 10 point summit gives you 10 activator points. chasers get 1 point per contact regardless of what summit you're on, which always seemed a little unfair to me but that's just how it works. the winter bonus is usually double points and it runs from november through the end of january but it does vary by association so worth checking your specific region's rules on the sota database, theres a page for each association that spells it out. the 818 is totally fine and plenty of people use them for years. if weight becomes an issue later some folks go to the MTR or a QRP labs radio but honestly for starting out you dont need to overthink the gear, antenna placement matters way more than the radio at those power levels.

so ive been licensed for about 6 years now and EME has always been kind of the holy grail thing in the back of my mind, you know the mode that seems completely insane until you start reading about it and then it seems slightly less insane but still pretty wild. anyway i finally have a yard situation where i could maybe put up a serious antenna and my neighbor who runs 2m EME told me i should just go for it but i dont really know where to start in terms of minimum viable setup. im on 2m right now with a pretty decent station, running about 400w into a 9el yagi which i know is nowhere near enough. ive been reading that you need somewhere around 1kw and a big array to even have a shot at making contacts but then ive also seen stuff about JT65 making it more accessible than it used to be. is there a realistic entry point here or is this genuinely a mode that requires a massive investment before you hear anything at all? and if someone has done this recently id love to know what your first contact experience was like

so ive been licensed about 3 months now (technician) and i finally got a decent HT, a Baofeng UV-5R which i know isnt the fanciest thing but it works. anyway theres a 2m repeater maybe 8 miles from me that i can hear people on just fine but when i try to transmit nobody seems to hear me. i looked up the repeater on repeaterbook and it shows a CTCSS tone of 100.0 Hz. ive got that programmed in i think but im not sure if im doing it the right way — like is the tone supposed to be on transmit only, or do i need it on receive too? also i heard someone on there last week say something like 'please identify before kerchunking' and i wasnt sure what that even meant. i dont want to be rude i just dont totally understand all the etiquette stuff yet. is there like an unwritten rulebook for using repeaters or do i just kind of learn as i go?

so i finally did my first activation last weekend up on W4T/SU-001 and honestly i went up there thinking i'd maybe get my 4 contacts and call it a day but ended up staying almost two hours and worked like 14 stations including a couple S2S contacts which i didnt even realize was a thing until some guy on 40m told me he was also on a summit in colorado and we could both log it my setup was just an HF-go kit thing with an end fed halfwave thrown up in a tree and my little kx2, nothing fancy. the hardest part honestly wasnt the radio stuff it was finding the actual summit reference. i kept second-guessing myself on whether i was actually in the activation zone. the SOTAwatch app helped but the terrain up there was confusing and i wasnt sure if i was within the 25 meters vertical of the true summit or whatever the rule is anyway just wanted to share because ive been lurking this forum for months reading about SOTA and it seemed way more complicated than it actually is once you just go do it. if anyones been on the fence about trying an activation i say just go, worst case you dont get your 4 QSOs and you still had a nice hike

HamStudy is honestly probably the best thing you can do, dont stress too much about the book unless you actually want to understand the material deeper which isnt a bad idea but its not required to pass. the question pool is public so the exam is literally just pulling questions straight from it, no surprises. for the math stuff, there really isnt that much of it on the tech exam. ohms law is just E=IR and if you can remember that and do basic multiplication you'll get those. the decibel questions are more about memorizing a few key numbers than actually calculating anything -- like 3dB is roughly doubling power, 10dB is 10x, that kind of thing. just drill those on HamStudy until they feel automatic and youll be fine. i studied for maybe 2 weeks using HamStudy every day on my lunch break and passed with only a couple wrong. its very doable dont overthink it

honestly for the exam itself, memorizing the patterns is mostly enough to pass. like you dont need to fully derive why an LC circuit resonates at a certain frequency, you just need to know the formula is 1 over 2 pi times the square root of LC and be able to plug numbers in. hamstudy will drill you on those until they stick. the reactance questions kind of have a rhythm to them once you've seen enough of them. that said, and im probably going to sound like an elmer here, if you actually want to use HF and understand whats going on with your antenna and radio, taking a bit more time with the impedance concepts pays off later. i passed general years ago kind of on autopilot and then found myself totally lost when i was trying to troubleshoot my antenna and had to go back and learn it all anyway. so maybe split the difference, learn enough to pass but keep a note of what confused you and revisit it once youre on the air. band plan stuff yeah its pretty reasonable, just remember general doesnt get everything, theres some portions of each band still extra only. caught me off guard on practice tests a couple times.

so ive been messing around with remote station stuff for about 6 months now and im at the point where i need to decide whether to just commit to RemoteHams or keep trying to build my own thing with a raspberry pi and some SDR gear. my current setup is a pi 4 running SDRangel with an RTL-SDR and it kinda works but the latency is all over the place and i cant figure out if its my router, my ISP, or just the software being weird the thing is i already have a decent HF rig at the home QTH (IC-7300) and i want to be able to hit it from work or from the car on the laptop. i looked at RemoteHams and it seems pretty polished but i dunno if the SDR remote piece is really integrated well or if its more of an afterthought. i also saw some stuff about internet linking which made me think about whether i could tie this into my local IRLP node somehow, probably a different rabbit hole entirely anyone whos done both the DIY route and also tried RemoteHams have an opinion on which way is less painful? im not afraid to get into config files and stuff but i also dont want to spend another three weekends debugging something that should just work

ok so i finally upgraded from tech to general last month and im trying to figure out the 40m band. i know generals get more privileges but i keep seeing different charts online and some of them seem to contradict each other or at least i think they do. like the FCC allocation says one thing and then the ARRL band plan says something slightly different and i dont know which one actually matters legally. also whats the deal with band edges, my elmer told me to stay away from the edges but didnt really explain why. is it just interference or is there some rule about it. sorry if this is a dumb question i just dont want to accidentally transmit somewhere i shouldnt be

Lip mounts work fine for what youre describing, honestly. The pattern will be a little off compared to dead center roof but for hitting repeaters around town you wont notice. I ran one on my old Subaru Outback for three years and never had a complaint from the other end. Just make sure you get a good quality one, the cheap ones on amazon have thin metal and the connection gets floppy after a while which is a pain. For the coax routing on a CRV I cant say for sure but most modern crossovers have rubber weatherstripping along the D pillar that you can carefully peel back and tuck RG-8X or LMR-240 behind without too much drama. Take your time and use a plastic trim tool, not a screwdriver, or youll regret it. I usually leave a little extra slack near the hatch hinge area so the coax has room to flex when you open the liftgate otherwise it just slowly works itself loose over time.

haha the forgotten counterpoise is practically a rite of passage at this point. i did something similar on my second activation, forgot my coax jumper and just sat there staring at my radio for a good 10 minutes before i figured out a workaround. 4 contacts still qualifies you so thats a W, even if it doesnt feel like it. the EFHW without a counterpoise is kinda hit or miss depending on terrain, you might have actually been fine with the wire on the ground if the soil was decent. wait till you do one in winter, thats when the real fun starts trying to operate with gloves on

so ive been at this for about 8 months now and im honestly starting to wonder if im doing something fundamentally wrong. started with just w1aw code practice files and got comfortable enough at 5wpm that i could copy most of it without too much trouble, but every time i try to push past maybe 8 or 9 wpm i just fall apart. like completely. its like my brain just stops processing and i start panicking and then i miss the next three characters trying to figure out the one i missed. a guy at my club told me to jump straight to 20wpm with farnsworth spacing which i tried for a few weeks but honestly it just felt demoralizing and i wasnt sure i was actually learning anything or just guessing. maybe i gave up on that too soon? hard to say. anyway im curious what actually clicked for you if youve been through this. did you just grind through it? use a specific app or program? practice a certain amount of time per day? ive heard lcwo is good but havent dug into it much yet. i want to get to 20wpm eventually, would really love to make some actual qsos on cw someday instead of just listening.

I made almost this exact jump about 18 months ago, went from a 7300 to the TS-890S and honestly the difference in the receiver is real but whether its worth it kind of depends on what bothers you right now. If you're not bothered by anything specific with the 7300 then probably no. But the 890 in a crowded 40m evening is noticeably cleaner to my ears, the roofing filter situation is just better and the AGC behaves more predictably in my experience. The IF filtering options are more granular too which i appreciate for CW but you said you mostly do SSB so maybe less relevant that said the 7300 is not a bad radio at all, its just a different class of receiver. if you can get hands on one at a hamfest or club demo before buying id do that first

so ive been doing CW practice for about 3 months now and im stuck around 13-14wpm and it feels like i hit a wall. when i started i was doing the Koch method using LCWO and honestly the jump from 5 to about 10wpm felt pretty natural, like it just clicked after a few weeks of daily practice. but now im sitting here every morning with my coffee doing 20 minute sessions and i feel like im not moving at all. i know the standard advice is just keep at it and dont try to copy every single character, more of a flow thing. but i'm curious how long it actually took people to get to 20wpm comfortably. not contest speed or anything, just solid ragchew speed where you're not sweating every letter. and does anyone have a specific thing that actually helped them break through a plateau like this, a different tool, a different approach, something

I just took mine last month so pretty fresh for me. I basically did hamstudy every night for two weeks, maybe 20-30 minutes, and passed fine. I did skim the ARRL book for the sections I kept getting wrong just to understand it better but I didn't read the whole thing cover to cover, thats probably overkill for tech. the thing that tripped me up was some of the band plan and frequency stuff, like knowing which portions of which bands techs are allowed to use on HF. theres a few questions about that and I kept mixing them up. worth paying extra attention to that section in the pool.

I run a similar setup, been doing internet linked remote ops for probably 4 years now. Honestly the ISP issue you're describing is real and there's not a lot you can do about it besides maybe getting a second ISP at the remote end for failover. I run a cellular LTE backup at my remote site and it kicks in automatically if the main connection drops. Expensive but when you have antennas you cant be at, losing access is painful. As for SDR-Console remote vs RemoteHams — they're kind of different animals. RemoteHams integrates rig CAT control pretty tightly which is the main reason people stick with it despite the quirks. SDR-Console remote is cleaner for pure SDR receive but youre right that rig control is more limited depending on what radio you have. What radio is it? That might change what options actually make sense for your setup.

i use an app called DX Toolkit on my phone just to have something handy when im away from the shack and want to see whats spotted. its not perfect but does the job for a quick check. honestly though for serious DX chasing at the radio i just have a second monitor now with the cluster up, old laptop basically becomes a dedicated shack display. maybe overkill but it works lol

im in basically the same boat as you lol, been a general for almost three years and keep putting it off. started going through the question pool last month and some of it is definitely confusing but not impossible. the filter stuff i actually found interesting once i watched a couple youtube videos explaining the theory behind it, made the questions make more sense instead of just guessing. anyway dont let the math heavy looking questions scare you off, a lot of them are the same formula just with different numbers plugged in

QRZ all the way here. Yes the interface is older but it's rock solid and fast. Plus when I click a callsign I instantly get their QRZ page with QSL info, which saves tons of time during contests.