Susan Clark

so ive been messing around with a raspberry pi zero w for a few months now trying to get it to handle some basic automation in my shack and honestly its going better than expected but also hitting some walls. the main thing i wanted was something that would watch my radio (ic-7300) via USB, log contacts automatically to my logging software, and maybe eventually trigger a relay to switch antennas based on band. the logging part is mostly working, im using hamlib and a python script i cobbled together from like four different tutorials. the problem im running into is the zero w just kinda chokes when im also trying to run the web interface i set up to control it remotely. not crashing exactly, just sluggish in a way that feels like its gonna cause problems during a contest or something. was thinking about throwing an arduino nano in the mix to handle the relay switching separately so the pi isnt juggling everything. does that setup make sense or am i overcomplicating this? i know some people just use a full pi 4 for this stuff but i have like 6 zero w's from a kit i bought and id rather use what i have

so ive been in ARES for about 8 months now and finally got called up for an actual activation last weekend. county emergency management had a shelter set up because of the flooding over on the east side and they needed comms support between the shelter and EOC since their commercial systems were apparently having issues. i was honestly a little nervous going in because all my experience has been nets and tabletop exercises, and those feel kind of fake you know? like everyone already knows the right answer. this was different. the EC had us set up a simplex link on the designated emergency frequency and i was handling message traffic between the shelter coordinator and the county EOC for about 6 hours straight. traffic wasnt super heavy but there were a few moments where i had to ask for repeats and i felt kind of dumb about it but the shelter manager was really patient. wrote everything down in ICS-213 format which we practiced but it felt way more real when the info actually mattered. someone needed insulin and we had to relay that through proper channels and it hit me like ok this is actually why we train. anyway just wanted to share because ive seen people on here wonder if ARES is worth joining if you never get activated. i was starting to wonder that myself. still processing it a bit but yeah it was worth it.

yeah APRSDroid has had some weirdness with certain Android versions and how it reads the GPS provider. go into settings and check which location source its set to use — if its on "network" instead of GPS that could do it, network location can be pretty far off especially if youre not near a lot of cell towers. also check if you have any mock location apps running in developer options, those can mess with what APRSDroid sees even if your maps app is pulling real GPS fine. the other thing worth looking at is the NMEA sentence format. if the TNC is somehow getting the position from a different source or theres a parsing issue the coordinates can come out scrambled. id try disconnecting and reconnecting the Mobilinkd a few times with APRSDroid fully closed and restarted between attempts, sounds dumb but sometimes it picks up a stale position from the first lock.

so i passed my general a few months back and ive been doing mostly SSB but always wanted to get into CW. finally ordered a cheap dual-lever paddle off amazon (nothing fancy, some brand called Morsex or something like that) and hooked it up to my old MFJ keyer that i borrowed from a club member. the problem is i really dont understand the difference between iambic mode A and mode B and whether i should even bother with iambic at all. ive been watching youtube videos and half of them say iambic squeezing is the way to go and the other half say just use single lever or straight key to start. im sending like 8-10 wpm right now and it sounds pretty rough honestly. also is there a trick to setting the keyer weight and speed so that it sounds less... choppy? like my dits sound fine but my dahs feel a little long or maybe im just imagining it. any advice from people who actually went through this would be great

so ive been licensed about 8 months now and just starting to get into chasing DX a little bit. been using QRZ lookups forever obviously but someone at the club mentioned dxwatch and i finally made an account and started poking around at the cluster spots and honestly im a little overwhelmed by how much is going on there. like theres spots flying in every few seconds and i dont really know which ones are worth paying attention to. im on HF with a modest setup, 100w and a wire antenna in a small yard, so im not exactly going to be working everything i see. is there a way to filter by band or by how realistic it is for a station like mine to actually make the contact? or is it just kind of learn to read the noise over time? also does anyone use any phone apps that pull cluster data? i saw a few in the app store but couldnt tell which ones are actually good vs just abandoned projects that havent been updated since 2019

I'm still pretty new to all this — just got my General last year and joined ARES maybe six months ago — so reading posts like this is actually really useful for me. I haven't been to a real activation yet, just the monthly check-in nets, and I keep wondering what I'm not thinking about that will bite me when it matters. The battery thing makes total sense now that you say it. I think I've been assuming my stuff is ready because I haven't touched it, which is kind of backwards logic when I think about it. Going to go plug everything in tonight and actually write down when I last charged what. Quick question if you dont mind — when you say ICS-213, is that something specific to your group or is there like a standard version I should be practicing with? I've seen it mentioned a few times but haven't actually filled one out yet.

so ive been putting together a go-kit style setup for a local ARES exercise this weekend and im trying to figure out the power situation once and for all. right now i have a 100ah lithium (the bioenno one) and a small honda eu2200i that a buddy is lending me. the exercise is supposed to run about 14 hours with some overnight stuff thrown in and im running an IC-7300 plus a signalink and a raspberry pi for winlink. my rough math says im pulling maybe 18-20 amps on transmit with everything running, maybe 8-10 on receive. so over 14 hours with a mix of rx and tx i figured the battery alone probably wont cut it unless im really careful. but i also dont want to run the honda the whole time because noise is a thing and also fuel hauling is annoying. the antenna situation is a 40m/80m linked dipole hung as an inverted V off a 31ft jackite pole. works decent but i always feel like im fighting the feedline on 80. anyway - is anyone else doing something similar for extended field ops and how are you handling the generator/battery balance? do you just run the genny for a few hours to top off and then go quiet on battery?

the timing thing is huge and most people just never figure it out. ive worked enough rare stuff from both sides — did a small DXpedition to a carribean entity a few years back, nothing major, just a few guys with yagis — and from the DX side the thing that kills you is the constant wall of calls before youve even finished sending your report. you literally cant copy anything when 200 guys are transmitting simultaneously so you just spin the VFO and hope someone stands out. what i noticed when i was on the sending side is that the stations that broke through were almost never the loudest ones. it was the ones with clean signals and good timing. there was this one guy who was maybe s7 on our end but he consistently waited just a beat longer than everyone else and we kept pulling him out because hed be the first clear signal after the noise died down for a half second. i actually logged him twice by accident because he was so workable. split discipline matters too. if the DX says 'up 5' dont be the idiot calling on their frequency. youre not going to work them and youre going to get yelled at in the comments on the cluster. check where the DX is actually listening by watching who they come back to, not just where they say theyre listening. those arent always the same thing especially later in a DXpedition when they start adjusting without announcing it.

so ive been chasing rare DX for about 3 years now and pileups have always been my nemesis. last night there was a 3Y0 operation on 17m and i actually broke through after maybe 40 minutes of trying, which for me is basically a personal record for something that rare. what finally worked was switching to split and listening really carefully to where the DX was actually coming back. i know thats obvious but i was being dumb and just firing into the middle of the pile instead of watching the pattern. he was consistently coming back about 3-4 kHz up from where most people were calling, so i parked there and waited for a gap. also dropped my power down actually — i know that sounds backwards but my signal was probably just adding to the wall of noise and i think a cleaner less splattered signal at 400w did more than the full 600 was doing. also timed my calls to right after he finished with the previous station, not during the other QSOs when half the pile is already transmitting. seemed like pretty basic stuff but honestly i wasnt doing it before. curious if anyone else has tricks that actually work in practice vs theory. ive read all the usual advice but real world stuff from people who chase DX regularly would be good to hear.

yeah what the other person said, HamStudy is totally fine. i didnt use anything else. one thing id add though is dont just grind questions without understanding WHY the answers are right, especially for the band privileges stuff because thats actually useful to know when you get on HF so you dont accidentally transmit somewhere you shouldnt be. made that mistake once early on, thankfully someone politely pointed it out on the air. also once you pass and get your General ticket, 40 meters is a great place to start if you want to make contacts, its usually pretty active and propagation is decent even when the bands arent cooperating on 20. good luck with it

so we have a county ARES exercise coming up in about three weeks and im trying to nail down the power situation before i commit to hauling everything out there. the EOC wants us to set up a portable net control station in a park about 2 miles from the main building, no shore power obviously. right now my plan is to run my IC-7300 and a small packet station off a 100ah lithium battery with a 200w panel but the exercise is supposed to run something like 18 hours straight and i dont know if thats going to be enough depending on cloud cover that day. ive got a Honda EU2200i i could throw in the truck but man that thing is another 47 lbs and i hate wrestling it in and out. the antenna situation im less worried about, planning on a linked dipole up in whatever trees i can find, maybe 30-35 feet if im lucky. done that setup a dozen times. its really just the power budget thats nagging at me. anyone run long duration field ops off solar only and actually had it work out, or is a generator just the right call for anything over 12 hours?

yeah this is basically the eternal question for anyone doing both contesting and casual HF work. i went through the same thing a couple years ago. what i ended up doing is using N1MM strictly for contests and nothing else, then after the contest i export the adif and import it into Log4OM with the duplicate check turned on. Log4OM is actually pretty decent at catching dupes as long as your dates and callsigns match up, the issue usually comes in when WSJT-X has already logged some of those same stations from a previous session and the timestamps are slightly off. the WSJT-X integration in Log4OM got a lot better in the newer versions, theres a UDP logging option where WSJT-X can push QSOs directly to Log4OM in real time so you dont have to do the manual adif import thing anymore. worth looking at if you havent set that up yet. still doesnt solve the N1MM side of things but at least the FT8 logging becomes automatic

nice work on the recap, those old electrolytics on the 857 are definitely getting to the age where they start causing weirdness. ive seen a few come through the bench with intermittent TX power issues that turned out to be caps in that section. cant help much on the display thing but one mod i did do on mine that was worth it was adding a small fan to the heatsink — not because it was overheating but i just do a lot of WSPR and JS8 and the duty cycle gets high. stuck a quiet 40mm Noctua in there with a simple thermistor circuit and it barely comes on but when it does it really keeps the finals happy. probably overkill for normal SSB use.

yeah 40 has been kinda rough this week, i had the same thing tuesday night. tried moving down to 7.185 and got a couple guys but the QSB was terrible. heard someone mention solar flux has been doing weird things but honestly i dont really follow that stuff closely enough to know if thats actually the reason

the ft-991a might actually be your limiting factor before SO2R even becomes the question tbh. not knocking it, its a fine radio, but for serious contesting you really want something with better roofing filters and a cleaner front end when the band is wall to wall signals. i upgraded from a similar radio to an older ic-7600 and the difference in a crowded 40m contest was pretty dramatic, could actually hold a run frequency without getting stomped by nearby stations nearly as much SO2R is great but id think about squeezing more out of your current SO1R setup first — things like rate optimization through smarter cq timing, when to abandon a run frequency vs stick with it, how aggressively to chase multipliers vs protect your rate. theres a lot of room to improve score without adding a second radio if the fundamentals arent dialed in yet. N1MM has that rate display that shows your rolling average and just watching that number obsessively for a few contests taught me more about operating strategy than anything else

So ive been trying to get Winlink working for about two weeks now and i think im close but not quite there. Background: i got my General last year and i mostly do local VHF stuff but the ARES group here keeps talking about Winlink for emcomm exercises and i finally decided to just dive in. I installed Winlink Express and got the Vara FM trial running. I can see RMS gateways on the frequency list thing in the program and i can actually connect to one of them — or at least it looks like it connects, shows the handshake or whatever — but then when i compose a message and try to send it nothing actually shows up in my sent folder and the other person never gets anything. I dont know if the message is getting stuck somewhere or if im doing something wrong with the addressing. Also confused about the difference between RMS relay and RMS gateway. The docs kind of explain it but not in a way that clicks for me. Is the gateway just the node i connect to over RF and then it handles getting the message to the internet side? And do i need to have an internet connection myself for any of this or is the whole point that i dont need one? Running an IC-9700 into a Arrow dual band yagi if that matters. The gateway im trying to hit is maybe 15 miles out, should be totally workable.

so i've been meaning to put together a proper go-kit for probably two years now and i finally just sat down last weekend and did it. our ARES group has been nudging everyone to have something ready and honestly i kept putting it off because i didn't know where to start and every time i looked at what other people had built it felt overwhelming. ended up going with a mid-sized Pelican case i had from a camera thing, threw in my old Yaesu FT-857D, a 40Ah LiFePO4 battery i picked up last year, a SignaLink for digital modes, and some basic coax and connectors. also packed a small notepad and pencil because honestly i've seen people show up to events and not have anything to write on which seems like a basic thing. antenna situation is a 40/20m linked dipole rolled up in a bag that i can throw up pretty quick. the thing i wasn't prepared for was how much the cable management situation matters. everything kind of worked on my bench but when i actually tried to set it up in a hurry in my backyard it took forever to figure out which cable went where. thinking about labeling everything with colored tape but curious if anyone has a better system for that. also wondering if i'm missing anything obvious that i'd regret not having at an actual deployment.

i was in the same boat when i got my tech, just upgrade to general honestly its not that hard and then most of HF opens up. studied for like two weeks and passed. the question pool is online for free and a lot of the part 97 stuff shows up in the exam anyway so you kind of learn the rules while you study which is nice

congrats on the first one, they're addictive right? yeah the pre-activation alerts on SOTAwatch are definitely worth doing, i usually put mine up the evening before and include the bands and modes i'm planning to operate plus an approximate start time. chasers absolutely use them, especially the dedicated ones who have a whole morning routine of checking whats coming up. some of the regulars on 40 will literally be sitting there waiting for you if you post a good alert. the S2S contacts are the best part honestly, theres a whole separate log for those and the points are worth more. once you start recognizing the callsigns of other activators you kind of develop this little community. also get the SOTA Goat app or just the regular SOTAwatch app on your phone for self-spotting, even with marginal cell service it usually gets through if you step around and find one bar. some guys use APRS to spot via radio which is slick if you're in an area with no cell at all.

yeah the 7300 works pretty well with RemoteHams in my experience but 25 up should be plenty, sounds like its def the work network. i run mine on a basic cable connection with like 10 up and SSB is totally usable from home to home, maybe 200ms ish which isnt perfect but workable. never tried from a corporate connection tho so cant say for sure thats it. one thing i never see people mention is the CI-V settings, make sure the baud rate between the 7300 and whatever youre using for the serial bridge is maxed out, slow CI-V can add weirdness to the control latency separate from the audio thing. probably not your main issue but worth checking if you havent

im literally studying for it right now lol, also upgrading from Tech. the propagation questions tripped me up at first but once you read a little about how the ionosphere works it kind of clicks and then the questions make more sense instead of just memorizing answers blindly. still doing that too but it helps to understand it a little

For Android, try the "DX Spots" app from Google Play. It pulls from multiple cluster sources and has good band filtering. Not as fancy as DXPocket but it's free and works well.

mumble jitter buffer is probably your enemy tbh. there's a client side setting buried in the audio options, i forget exactly where now, but you can set the jitter buffer target really low like 10ms and see if that helps. might make it crackle more but worth trying before you spend money on a new pi. also slightly off topic but i went the arduino route for just the PTT and keyer stuff and kept the pi out of the audio chain entirely, works great and way less complexity. arduino nano reads a footswitch and key and handles all the timing, pi just does logging and cluster spotting. each device doing what its good at kind of thing.

yeah messaging in APRS is a whole different animal compared to just beaconing. the thing most people dont realize is that for a message to actually get delivered, the receiving station has to be heard by the igate too, not just you. the igate needs to see both sides basically. if your buddy is RF only and the igate cant hear him directly, or if hes not connected to APRS-IS through a client like aprsdroid or something, the message just kind of dies in the network. also check whether your igate is actually bidirectional. a lot of igates are receive-only, meaning they push stuff to APRS-IS but they dont gate messages back down to RF. you need a two-way igate for that and they're honestly not as common as youd think. you can check on aprs.fi by looking at the igate station page and it should show whether its rx-only or two-way. thats probably your issue right there.

yeah the 7300 has a pretty aggressive default TX EQ and a lot of guys dont realize how much that mid-range bump can mess with audio on the receiving end. first thing id do is get someone you trust on a local repeater or a nearby HF freq and have them actually critique it while you tweak in real time, the monitor isnt a great representation of what goes out over the air. for SSB specifically you generally want to roll off anything below about 300hz pretty hard, cut some of the low mids around 400-500hz, and boost a little presence around 2-3khz. voice intelligibility lives in that upper mid range. the 7300 has a built in speech processor too — if thats cranked up it will absolutely cause splatter if your mic gain is already too hot. id back the proc off or turn it off entirely first and set a clean baseline before adding any of that back in. also the mic itself matters more than people admit. a cheap dynamic bundled mic is often voiced for close-up broadcasting, not for SSB. doesnt mean you need to spend a lot but something like an SM58 or even a Heil PR-40 if you wanna go down that rabbit hole makes a noticeable difference.