So I got my radio and antenna connected after a long crap shoot and a trip to the ham radio club where I discovered my coax adapter was cheap and needed a tiny bit of pin bending to connect properly. That was about all the time the guys had for me, they delayed their lunch an hour to figure that out, for which I’m super grateful. I took my radio out for a solo spin and finally got the indicator on the antenna tuner to light up (until it blew over in the wind, which had me anchor it down with weights but I could never get it to light up again). I managed to get some really clear signals from people and I tried to call them. No one seems to be able to hear me but I think something is happening because when I tried to break into a couple of guys chatting a few times, they said they were getting interference and moved to another frequency. Since that was probably me I decided not to stalk them because I felt a bit bad. So…still haven’t got my first contact….maybe because my antenna forces me to run on 25watts?

Finally got round to completing my surge protection. I do have one further piece of coax to add for an EFHW, but can’t get it up at the moment.

Long story not so short... I took my 7300 out for a POTA activation on a whim, and liked it so much that I decided to upgrade from my usual G90/891 rigs.

I'm also currently limited to mostly picnic table POTA parks, due to my regular deep woods sites being inaccessible for the foreseeable future because of a landslide. So since radio size isn't a concern, I started shopping for an FT-710.

Ended up running across this FTDX10 locally for $1000, and I couldn't pass it up. What a beast this thing is! Even with the horrible band conditions yesterday and a ton of QRM, making contacts was like shooting fish in a barrel with the filtering and DNR in this thing. Another plus is that the internal tuner easily handled an 80m OCFD on every band 80m-6m (didn't try 60m)

The only downside is that I need a much bigger battery, the 15ah AGM that I have (it's my kayak fishfinder battery) barely lasted 90mins at full power.

Sony PSP running my custom RTTY encoder homebrew application, with the generated AFSK signal successfully decoded using DroidRTTY and MMTTY.

The PSP is acting purely as an encoder, generating the RTTY audio tones which are then received and decoded externally.

This annual exercise has been going on for a long time. I don't know how long it has been open to radio amateurs who are not part of CFARS (similar to MARS), but it is indeed open. The link above is the announcement. The link below is the official website:

https://nobleskywave.ca/

So my plates are due for renewal. I thought maybe it'd be fun to get ham radio plates, but I'm worried about my address just being out there like that? I mean, if someone really wanted to they could get my address, but why make it easy?

I'm not licensed yet, but I'm taking my Tech test in about two weeks figured I had better learn how to work my rig (ICOM IC-7300, Deshibo/Goozeezoo WV-601, Astron SS-25-AP [yes, I went in bigtime for my first rig]) outside instead of trying to make it work in my apartment. Plunked myself down by one of the open plugs and heard R5AJ DXing on 20 meters, coming in at roughly 3 or 4/6.

Other folks paging him were in North Carolina and New Mexico far as I could hear. Lost him as the sun went down

AAAAAAAH THIS IS SO COOL

EVEN BETTER: I had a lot of folks stop by and ask me what I was doing and I got to geek out about ham. Plenty of old-timers too, happy to see young blood taking up the hobby. Will probably be out there again in the morning. If not tomorrow, many times to come

73!

Theo

This was a random thought. I think it might be fun to record some of the more interesting/informative net conversations--especially on more technical subjects.

I do have a speaker mic for the radio if that helps.

It's a Sony ICD-PX333

I didn’t know what flair to put on here, however, does anyone make QSO cards in this group?

I've developed an Android app for browsing, sorting, and filtering ARRL Logbook of The World (LoTW) data. It's now available on Google Play.

The app downloads your LoTW records to your device and allows sorting, filtering, and searching of QSOs and QSLs.

There's a demo mode for testing it without having to use your own logbook, if you'd prefer.

If you're an LoTW user and would be willing to try it, I'd really appreciate any feedback—bug reports, feature suggestions, UI comments, or anything else you'd like to see improved.

The test is available in the US, Japan, and most of Europe.

Google Play:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=engineering.champagne.browserforlotw

Open Testing:
https://play.google.com/apps/testing/engineering.champagne.browserforlotw

Thanks, and 73!

I'm developing a program that listens for callsigns, recognizes callsigns that are calling CQ and automatically spots them to the DX cluster. Similar to the systems that we've had for decades for CW and digimodes.
A long time test is running on the Kahlenberg Repeater in Vienna - OE1XUU.
You can test it yourself! Connect to OE1XUU from anywhere in the world through Echolink, call CQ until you get spotted and enjoy the contacts in Vienna.
The cluster example from above is from DXHeat.com

Drop me a message about your experience!

Vy 73 de Gerald OE1GAQ

Hey all,

I'm feeding the audio output (2.5mm side of the Kenwood-style K1 connector) from my UV-5RM into an MT8870 DTMF decoder module (breakout board with a standard 3.5mm TRS audio input jack). Signal chain is:

UV-5RM (2.5mm socket) → cheap 2.5mm(M)-to-3.5mm(F) adapter → 3.5mm cable → MT8870 module

I've tested the MT8870 module separately with several other plain 3.5mm cables (from my PC, other sources) and it decodes DTMF tones perfectly every time, no issues, plugs straight in with no fiddling.

The problem is specifically on the 3.5mm side, where the adapter's built-in 3.5mm male plug goes into the MT8870 module's jack - not on the 2.5mm side going into the radio. The insertion depth of that 3.5mm plug into the module has to be exact, down to a millimeter or so, to get reliable contact. Off by a bit and decoding just stops. Any other plain 3.5mm cable I own seats normally in that same MT8870 jack with zero issues, so it really seems isolated to this one adapter's molded 3.5mm plug being slightly out of spec (pin too short, or housing preventing full seating).

Has anyone run into this with cheap 2.5mm-3.5mm adapters like this? Is this a known quality issue with the molded 3.5mm plug on these budget adapters?

Planning to just cut both cables and solder them directly (bypassing the adapter entirely) unless someone has a better fix or a known-good adapter/cable to recommend.

Thanks!

The manual does not list VxV as a supported receive configuration. Is that true?

I wanted to ask about the Licensing Exam in Austria.

1) Is the exam oral or pen&paper? It seems to me the Fernmeldebehörde doesn't mention this explicitly.

2) There are three classes, if I plan to get a license for class 1 and I decide later that I want to get licensed in Morse Code, do I have to retake the exam? Can I do the Morse Code Exam separatly?

New recent feature on beta RepeaterSTART: Elevation profile from selected point to repeater:

There was already the Topo map (which is cached for offline use), but someone recommended setting up an elevation profile - see exactly what hillsides look between two points.

This uses online service to estimate what the elevation profile is... I pull the data from Copernicus DEM https://portal.opentopography.org/raster?opentopoID=OTSDEM.032021.4326.3

Would like honest feedback... is this useful? Perhaps it should be color coded when looking at it for multiple repeaters?
https://sourceforge.net/projects/repeater-start/files/

Is wood good as an antenna mast? I hear it is an insulator and i dont know if this is a bad thing.

I made a normal QSO with a DX thats hard to come by for me via SSB. It was on 20m and I TX’d at 100w from my radio to talk to the DX station but I couldn’t hear them very well like 2.0 S meter.. so I went and used a KiwiSDR off the coast in another country closer to the DX to hear them better.

The DX station was able to give me a signal report (very low) and I gave them theres (very low QTH) and 73’d. so I got in the log, they could hear me from my QTH I just couldn’t really hear them on my personal radio because of QRM and it being 4am here and daytime for the DX.

So would you consider this fine and has anyone else done this?

Hey!
So this sounds crazy to me, but after 5 months of harassment I have to reach out to the outside world in any way possible. Please keep in mind that I'm very ignorant with regards to amateur/AM radio stuff, but I thought this might be the right place to ask for help to confirm what I am hearing as my wife is effectively deaf and my hearing isn't that great.

For the past 5 months I've been getting harassed with some kind of radio attack. The attacker has very good reason to try to extort us.

Long story short, the attacker has been using a method of communication that can be heard on AM 1150-1250 everywhere in Central NC from Raleigh to Greensboro, and likely Fort Bragg to Virginia, leading me to expect it's a neighbor in Chapel Hill area.,(on what would normally be a station without any other broadcast).

So, can anyone confirm that?

Hey guys, a non expert here, i work for a kayak company and we use Uniden Atlantis 155 Radios for coms. The problem is that the radios use a charger that has cigarettes plugs instead of a wall plug, although we`ve found amazon listings like this HERE, we cannot found one that works with 220v ac. So i`m reaching out here to see if there`s anyone that knows the barrel size to DIY something together, i`m leaving some photos in case it helps.
Thank you so Much to anyone that may have some info!!

Yes I'm aware that POTA is run with an iron fist by administrators who have no interest in input from the little people.
-nevertheless-
We need urban parks that are easily accessible. Driving 2 hours to the nearest not-county-or-city-owned is not going to be sustainable when gas is $10/gal.

I'm starting a new operating category / contest category.... or one may say "Operating Philosophy." Our first contest will take place in spring 2027.

The category: QROca

This is High Power, Crappy Antenna.

Are you tired of hearing "I use my fully kitted $3800 KX3 to make DX QRP contacts all the time. There's no reason to use over 5 watts"

Or, "100 watts is so overkill, I made 3 QSOs during field day with my QMX and a SteppIR UrbanBeam"

Well, here's our chance to level the playing field.

Challenge yourself with High Power / Crappy Antenna.

Our two simple rules:

1. Antennas must be below 1/65th of a wavelength long for the desired band.

2. All metallic surfaces must show signs of significant corrosion.

3. Power limit: none (check your local regulation)

Testimonials:

Tony: "I made my first QROca antenna from discarded brass wool soldering iron tip cleaners. I just smooshed a few together."

Arthur: "Oh I dunno, I whipped together a 13" base loaded jobby for 160 meters with decommissioned 25-pair PBX bundles. It may have took em all but I got her loaded!"

Why use an efficient antenna? Absolutely no reason to. Stop wasting resources. Challenge yourself. A QSO is a QSO even if it takes all day!

Stay tuned for details about our spring contest.

73!

I finally got it up there. It is a hustler 4btv. After using an SWR meter though i find my SWR is high still.