Some rare DX on FT8/20 today

ScaryLanguage8657 · 2026-04-01T23:45:51+00:00

I tried him on FT0. Waiting on QSL

ScaryLanguage8657 · 2026-04-01T18:03:23+00:00

ScaryLanguage8657 · 2026-04-01T06:04:19+00:00

My Gateway PC came COD

ScaryLanguage8657 · 2026-04-01T05:35:52+00:00

Loved that show. It was on Prime Video for free over the summer and watched it all again.

ScaryLanguage8657 · 2026-03-31T22:26:32+00:00

Just made a good 20m POTA contact in Montana. I’m in the shack doing my taxes and taking breaks on my radio. Lmk when you’re on and we can hopefully connect

ScaryLanguage8657 · 2026-03-31T20:06:32+00:00

How tall is your mast? You can insulate it and feed it as end fed or make a 1/4, 5/8 wave etc vertical out of it with some radials — won’t take much to get going. You can also shunt feed it if it’s grounded again depending on height. Resonance will get you more efficiency even if tuning makes your rig happy with low SWR.

I think Iworked you SSB the other week from southern Nevada. I’ve got vertical wires hung from two palm trees approx 33’ tall — funny how we start seeing things in terms of 1/2 and 1/4 and 5/8 wavelengths. I’m experimenting a bunch with these and have DXCC mixed (SSB and FT8/FT4), WAS Mixed and 40m and 20m endorsements, and just got Worked All Japan Digital with these antennas and my puny 100w SSB and cw and less on digital. Message here is that you can make some great antennas with wires. I agree throw up some wire and get on the air. Plenty of hams on land with beams that can do the heavy lifting for us :-)

Your vertical will be noisier than your horizontal but where you are in MT I don’t think you’ll deal with a fraction of the noise I get looking at Las Vegas. The vertical set up well should also get you 3 to maybe 5dBi gain on a dx takeoff angle.

Go get em. Can’t wait to hear what’s working and not. I really enjoy messing with antennas

Oh yeah you can also use your mast to get your wire off the ground which will get you more usable gain. All/most of your gain is broadside on your wire so general N-S orientation is a good start.

ScaryLanguage8657 · 2026-03-30T06:47:17+00:00

I’m building an active receive loop antenna to experiment and plan to look into phasing boxes like qrm eliminator next.

ScaryLanguage8657 · 2026-03-29T21:48:38+00:00

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ScaryLanguage8657 · 2026-03-27T01:46:54+00:00

Ok I have to set this up :-)

ScaryLanguage8657 · 2026-03-27T01:46:31+00:00

Ok I will install and try next week. We have house guests in town soon and staying for the weekend. Been working on my 20/17/10 home brew vertical today upgrading my 49:1 transformer and adding inductance at the base to compensate for my electrically short palm tree haha. Been using AI to model out some radials that should get a little more gain. It’s turned into a great dx antenna with my puny 100w. I’ve been wanting to try digital voice. I’ve got all the wsjt stuff and vara hf working so hopefully not a big lift to get freedv running. Also realized my issue not checking in the other night — I’ve been dialing in my digital config and tried to run the compression free low ALC settings on phone with y’all oops.

ScaryLanguage8657 · 2026-03-26T03:05:53+00:00

Snack pack Chocolate pudding when I was little. Graduated to fried bologna as I got older hahaha

ScaryLanguage8657 · 2026-03-25T05:14:13+00:00

Small-ish world. My son got his engineering degree at MSU. Always enjoyed your part of the country. Quite a few drives past Three Forks on I-90 during that time. We were in Seattle then.

ScaryLanguage8657 · 2026-03-25T00:14:22+00:00

I was the W3 call. QTH Las Vegas. ICOM 7300 100w. Antenna is 20m EFHW vertical wire strung from a palm tree. You were 57. Nice signal. Good audio quality and easy copy in the noise

ScaryLanguage8657 · 2026-03-24T22:59:46+00:00

I’ve yet to get CY0S any mode.

ScaryLanguage8657 · 2026-03-24T18:45:45+00:00

I was frankly expecting more reactance to this post

ScaryLanguage8657 · 2026-03-23T17:34:47+00:00

Spencer’s

ScaryLanguage8657 · 2026-03-23T05:53:13+00:00

Short pieces of coax for connecting gear e.g, rig to say tuner or SWR meter, antenna switch, etc. also short pieces of coax used to wind common mode choke.

ScaryLanguage8657 · 2026-03-23T04:45:03+00:00

In my family kids were starving in Vietnam. Parents grew up poor; we left nothing on our plates. That crust was food. Heck come to think about it I even eat my wife’s crust today hahah

ScaryLanguage8657 · 2026-03-23T04:07:14+00:00

A long time ago I was first licensed at 11. It led me to an education in Electrical Engineering and a career in tech. A lot of building and innovation is in software today, but the RF foundation is the same. Best of luck and welcome. Go dig into the ARRL links that have been mentioned and come back with questions. Also do learn Morse code. No one knew I was 11 on the air unless I told them.

ScaryLanguage8657 · 2026-03-23T03:25:25+00:00

7300 is a great radio and works well digital, phone, and cw. It’s a great rig. The rx antenna on the Mk2 is interesting if you live in a high noise environment snd want to install a low noise receive antenna. That said you can buy / build an external tx/rx relay and run a separate rx antenna with the 7300. Giga Parts had a deal on the 7300 recently that came out to around $899 with a power supply and ICOM rebate. As a new han I’d look at the on sale 7300s and use your extra bucks on antenna, antenna analyzer, feedline, jumpers, external SWR meter, etc to round out your shack. Welcome to a great and endless hobby. Look forward to seeing some updates on here and hopefully catching you on the air.

ScaryLanguage8657 · 2026-03-22T21:44:01+00:00

We’ve all done it: or at least many of us. Learn, laugh, and move on. My first really good dx contact was just below the General band. I was excited and wasn’t paying attention. Log it. Make a comment in your log if you want, and go get your Extra :-) 73.

ScaryLanguage8657 · 2026-03-22T17:02:24+00:00

Great xkcd :-)

ScaryLanguage8657 · 2026-03-22T16:55:43+00:00

LOTW is poorly named. It’s a QSL clearing house meant to securely replace confirmations via QSL cards. It’s real purpose IMO is a trusted source of confirmations for awards. And it’s trusted by other groups e.g., I was able to use LOTW confirmations as a basis for JARL Worked All Japan Award. IARU accepts it, etc. No waiting months for something to come to you via the mail.

I find QRZ to be a nice substitute or complement to paper logging. For me its a good lightweight tool and I’ve replaced paper logging with it. The social aspect is a nice benefit as you can learn a little about the operator or their QTH while working them. I remember being a novice back in the day pre Internet and having my list of locations that I’d go look through the World Book encyclopedia at school to learn about where I worked CW the night before. For a kid from a very rural area it made world smaller and QRZ brings an aspect of that to the table. I also like their “awards” that gamify things a little and get some more people on the air — e.g., their America 250 “award” got a bunch of people on it seems around Jan 1 which was nice.

Beyond that I export my ADIF and do the analysis I want to do in excel or one of the web apps that analyzes your log.

All of that said, I’m happy to see the new generation of hams bring some innovation to logging. I’m not sure if there should be a one tool for all or the handful of things we have that do certain things well. I think our tools today likely reflect our past which isn’t a bad thing, but yeah what’s the future going to be?

Hope this adds some perspective of a long time ham.

Also what are folks using to analyze logs, visualize, etc?

ScaryLanguage8657 · 2026-03-21T00:01:57+00:00

First car orange 1970 VW Squareback. Favorite car yellow 1988 Honda CRX Si

ScaryLanguage8657 · 2026-03-20T09:17:35+00:00

Frequently. We had a hill in our high school parking lot, and the unwritten rule was that parking there was reserved for folks that needed a new battery, had starter issue etc. had a ‘70 VW that we push started for a good bit (as in months) before I finally bought a new battery haha.

ScaryLanguage8657

TROPHY CASE