Michael Stevens

Can confirm the APRS modem on the FT3D is junk in comparison to those Kenwood uses. Mine has trouble decoding signals that are sometimes as high as S9. The TM-D710 I have will decode S3 with ease. Same modem architecture in the FT-5DR I believe.

so i just passed my general last month and got my sequential callsign assigned which is fine but its kind of a mouthful and i was looking into getting a vanity call instead. ive been reading the FCC ULS stuff and i honestly cant tell if its just whoever applies first gets it or if theres some kind of priority system still in place. like i found some old posts from maybe 2010 or so saying there used to be tiers where certain relatives of silent keys got priority and stuff like that, but i dont know if any of that still applies. does anyone know how it actually works now? and is there a waiting period after you get your sequential before you can apply for a vanity or can you just go ahead and do it right away also is it worth using one of those third party services or just do it yourself through the FCC site directly, i saw some sites charging like 20 bucks for what seems like just filling out a form

yeah the workflow thing is real, i went through the same thing when i first got into dx chasing. what i ended up doing was just using DX Summit on one monitor and keeping my logging software open on the other. the spots on dxwatch and dx summit are mostly pulling from the same cluster network so you dont really need both honestly. for free options, Log4OM has cluster integration built in and it's completely free, that might be worth a look. also the QRZ logbook has gotten better about showing band conditions but i still trust pskreporter more for figuring out if propagation is actually going to cooperate before i even bother tuning around. for what its worth your setup is totally fine for working dx, ive seen guys with less than that work 200 entities so dont let the 100w thing discourage you

yeah the rfi thing is brutal at some parks. i activated one near a cell tower last month and could barely hear anything. what band were you on? 20m can be pretty dead during the day sometimes, especially if propagation isnt great. might want to try 40m or even 80m if you have a tuner. also make sure you're spotting yourself on the pota website so hunters know youre there

the timeout thing is almost certainly a propagation or dial frequency issue, especially on HF. the RMS list shows nominal frequencies but conditions change throughout the day. if you're seeing the gateway listed as active but still timing out, try checking the Winlink map (winlink.org has a live gateway map) and look at the last heard time for that station — if it hasnt had a connection in a few hours during daytime, maybe that path just isnt working right now. for the hybrid network question — yeah the gateway itself needs an internet connection to relay your message to the Winlink CMS servers. thats the whole point of the RMS (Radio Message Server), it's basically a bridge. the radio leg is just your last mile. so if you're hitting an RMS that has spotty internet on their end, messages can queue up or fail silently. Vara HF is the right call though, way better than Pactor for most people without a hardware TNC. make sure your audio levels are dialed in tight, the SignaLink is sensitive to drive level and if you're clipping you'll just get garbage on the other end even if the connection appears to start.

i did a POTA activation last fall at a state park and even that was kind of chaotic, cant imagine dealing with a summit on top of it. did you spot yourself on SOTAwatch before you went up? makes a huge difference for getting pileups instead of just calling CQ forever into nothing

the single callsign thing took me forever to learn too. i used to think sending it more times meant more chances but all it does is muck up the pile for everyone including yourself. one clean transmission beats three sloppy ones. also depending on conditions sometimes just waiting a few minutes while the pile thins out is the move, especially if you hear the DX struggling with the qrm. they'll sometimes slow down and work more deliberately and thats your window

yeah the cluster world can feel like drinking from a firehose at first, totally get it. dxwatch does have band filters, look at the top of the page there should be checkboxes or a dropdown depending on which version youre looking at. you can also filter by mode which helps a lot if you only do ssb or only do cw. one thing that really helped me was switching to using a dedicated cluster client instead of the web interface. a lot of people use dx4win or if youre on a mac there are some options, but honestly for just getting started the dx summit website at dxsummit.fi is really clean and has decent filtering built in. you can set it to only show your continent or only certain bands and it refreshes automatically so you dont have to keep hitting reload. the qrz workflow you described is pretty much what everyone does at first, some people use clublog or dxheat instead because they show you right away if its a new one based on your log. if you upload your log to clublog and link it up, dxheat will actually highlight spots in green or red depending on whether you need it. that was a game changer for me when i figured that out

had the 7300 for about three years before i picked up the FTDX10 last spring. honestly both are good radios and you'll be happy either way but since you asked — for casual SSB and FT8 the 7300 is probably the easier choice. the waterfall on it is genuinely great, very intuitive, and the wsjt-x integration is dead simple. i never felt like i was fighting the radio. the FTDX10 does have a better receiver on paper especially if you're in a situation with strong adjacent signals, the 300hz roofing filter on the 10 is real and you can hear the difference in a pileup. but for a dipole and end-fed on a normal evening ragchew or FT8 session youre probably not going to notice. the preamp and attenuator behavior is also a bit different between them, took me a bit to get used to the Yaesu's approach. i think the 7300 is more immediately friendly if that makes sense. the FTDX10 rewards you if you dig into it. either way upgrade from the 590 will feel like a lot since that SDR waterfall changes how you operate more than you'd expect.

so ive been running a remote station for about 8 months now using RemoteHams and overall its pretty solid but CW is just basically unusable for me at certain times of day. the latency swings wildly, like sometimes its totally fine and i can work a pileup no problem and then other times its 300-400ms and im just making a fool of myself. both ends are on decent fiber so i dont think its a bandwidth issue per se. the SDR side of things is actually what im most curious about - im running an SDRplay RSPdx as the RX front end and feeding it into the remote software. the receive audio quality is genuinely great when everything is working, way better than i expected honestly. but the transmit timing when keying through the internet just feels like gambling. i saw somewhere that there's a way to do local sidetone buffering to at least make it feel more consistent on your end even if the actual transmitted signal is still at the mercy of the connection, has anyone actually got that working in RemoteHams specifically? also curious if anyone has experimented with using something like EchoLink or IRLP alongside this kind of setup for linking to a repeater for local net check-ins when youre away from home. seems like it might be redundant but i know some guys run multiple systems.

had something vaguely similar on an older 706 years back, turned out to be a cold solder joint on one of the connectors between the RF board and the control board. wiggling the internal ribbon cables very gently while keyed up actually reproduced the fault which made it pretty easy to find. wouldnt necessarily expect the same on a 7300 but the diagnostic approach is the same — try to reproduce it and narrow down which board its coming from. also worth checking the DC connector on the back of the radio itself, those can develop resistance over time especially if the radio gets moved around or the cable gets tugged. even a little bit of resistance there can cause voltage to sag right at the radio even if your supply looks fine at the terminals.

dont panic, youre probably fine with the third party thing as long as you were the control operator and the other person wasnt saying anything you wouldnt be comfortable with on a public channel. the rule is basically that a licensed ham has to be in control of the station at all times, so as long as you were right there supervising it and could have stopped transmission at any point youre good. now the third party traffic restrictions only really come into play when youre communicating with certain countries that dont have third party agreements with the US, so on a local repeater with your buddy that really shouldnt be an issue at all. on the emission types question, yeah part 97 can be a bit dense to read. for tech HF privileges the short answer is on the 10m phone segment you can do SSB, AM, that sort of thing. ARRL has a pretty readable privileges chart that honestly explains it better than the actual rule text does, id just google that and bookmark it.

Start with getting the 2-meter band perfect first, then work on 70cm - they can interact with each other. That's a quality antenna so it should tune up nicely. Check that your NMO mount has a solid ground connection to the roof too.

I went through this same debate last summer. Ended up just bringing both on a few trips to compare and for me the yagi was clearly better once I was pointed at something, but I missed the omni aspect more than I expected. Like there were a couple times I heard someone call on the repeater behind me and I had no idea until I rotated around. the M2 5el is a nice antenna, pretty light and breaks down small enough, I dont think its as painful to transport as you'd expect. mines been up hills a few times now with no complaints.

Our club is looking to add internet linking capability to our 2M repeater and we're weighing the options between AllStar, EchoLink, and IRLP. We want something that's reliable for emergency communications but also user-friendly for regular ragchewing. AllStar (http://allstarlink.org) Radio/Smartphone/PC to Radio/Smartphone/PC Smart Phone and PC support works, but is a little "rough" Great, crystal clear voice quality (as good as the radio/repeater is) Best repeater-to-repeater options Very flexible network options Can function without the Internet (using private networks) What are your experiences with these systems? Any gotchas we should know about before diving in? Looking for real-world feedback from folks who've actually deployed these.

so i just passed my technician exam last week and im starting to look at handheld radios and honestly i had no idea there were this many choices. ive been reading reviews for like three days straight and i feel like i know less now than when i started lol i keep seeing people mention the baofeng uv-5r as a starter radio and yeah its cheap but then someone else says spend a little more and get a yaesu or kenwood and youll be happier long term. the price jump is pretty significant though and i dont really know what features actually matter vs what's just nice to have on paper right now i mostly want to hit the local repeaters and maybe do some simplex with a buddy who lives about 8 miles away, nothing exotic. dual band would be nice i guess. is there stuff i should be looking for that isnt obvious from just reading specs? battery life maybe? build quality? i genuinely dont know what separates a decent HT from a frustrating one