Michael Thompson

i went through this exact same thing like 8 months ago lol. what helped me was just spending like an hour on AE7Q before doing anything, you can search available calls and see what formats youre eligible for. made it way less confusing once i could actually see the options instead of just reading about it in the abstract. my vanity came through in about 4 or 5 days after the window closed if i remember right

so i finally got around to building a proper 40m dipole instead of using that crappy random wire ive had strung up forever. used 14 gauge stranded copper from the hardware store, center insulator i made from a piece of cutting board (yeah really), and just ran coax down to the shack. fed it at about 30 feet with a slight inverted-v droop on each side.
the thing is the SWR across the band is fine on the low end, like 1.4:1 around 7.050 which is where i want it, but when i sweep up toward 7.250 or so it shoots up to almost 3:1. i get that SWR changes across the band but something feels off. the two legs should be equal, i measured twice before cutting. each side is about 33.3 feet. i dont have an antenna analyzer yet, just using the radio's built in SWR meter which i know isnt ideal.
wondering if anyone else has seen this with a basic dipole or if im missing something obvious. the feed point connection looks solid, i soldered everything and taped it up with self amalgamating tape.

yeah the doppler thing on linear birds is genuinely the hardest part when you start out, most people dont realize how fast the frequency is shifting especially near AOS and LOS when the satellite is coming over the horizon at you. mid-pass when its more or less overhead the rate slows down quite a bit so that's usually the easier window to work
the trick a lot of people use is to tune the downlink to keep a signal in the passband and let that be your reference, basically forget about the uplink doppler for a moment and just make sure you can hear yourself in the transponder first. if you can hear your own signal come back you know you're in the right spot. two radios definitely helps but plenty of people do it single radio with a bit of mental gymnastics. gpredict can actually drive some rigs via CAT if your 818 supports it through a USB interface, that takes a lot of the pain away honestly

so i've been meaning to post about this for a while but kept forgetting. did anyone else see the announcement from Icom about the IC-905 getting some firmware updates that actually address the ALC issue a bunch of us were complaining about? i haven't had a chance to install it yet but a few guys at the club meeting last thursday were saying it made a noticeable difference on 2.4 GHz. would be curious if anyone here has tested it.
also completely separate topic but 10 meters has been open almost every afternoon this week, like genuinely wide open, i worked a handful of South American stations yesterday just running 100 watts into my wire antenna and the signals were 59 plus. solar flux has been sitting pretty high and i know we're still riding the tail end of cycle 25 being active so maybe that's why but it feels different than last year. if you havent been on 28 MHz lately seriously just tune around for a bit, even with modest antennas its worth it.
anyway just thought id share, anything else going on that people have heard about? feels like theres been a lot of activity in the hobby lately between new gear and the bands being cooperative for once.

Been tracking my QSL confirmations over the past year and thought I'd share some interesting numbers. Out of about 1,200 contacts:
Paper direct: 65% return rate (expensive but reliable) LoTW: 22% confirmation rate eQSL: 12% confirmation rate Bureau: Still waiting on most cards (6+ months) The direct QSL method seems most effective but costs add up fast with international postage. Anyone seeing similar patterns?