u/thesoulless78

How do you guys have them set up? I'm sure I'll eventually figure out what I use all the time but just looking for some ideas.

Wish the keypad key long presses had more options too.

Seems like some places say it has GPS, other places don't, and AnyTone's website doesn't list a Pro model at all.

Anyone know what the deal is with it?

Most of the guidance I've found is just "most backcountry water sources in the US are fine".

But on a very busy/concentrated section of trail it also seems like it only takes one person with crappy (pun intended) hygiene to make for a very miserable experience.

Is there a cutoff where you decide it's just better to be safe? (For example I'm planning a trip that follows a section of the AT and we'll probably be using water sources near shelters). Or somewhere to look up water reports?

Just wondering.

I get how TDMA works but I'm just curious how they clock the two timeslots. I assume it's not like FT8 that just uses an actual clock since a lot of radios don't have clocks. I assume there's not necessarily a master pulse since even with a repeater there's no signal unless it's keyed up.

Is it just internally clocked starting on whenever the first packet gets sent and that's close enough for everything to stay synced well enough?

Got any recommendations?

Verified there's line of sight to a friend's house but I'm juuust shy of the link budget with my 25W output and I figure I can rig an antenna cheaper than buying a new radio.

Have a WA5VJB cheap Yagi I probably could make work with the right paracord rigging and using the feedline to control azimuth but curious if there's anything easier.

Maybe grab some RG-6 to match it and do a full wave loop? Maybe a hentenna which looks like basically the same thing with a different match?

Probably don't want to do a collinear because that'll push the center of the radiation lower since I'm limited by maximum height.

Have a Certum 3 that I ended up ordering with pull the dot loops because everything else was out of stock, and I'm really not into the loops.

I found one article claiming 3-6 dB attenuation through them but it was clearly AI generated so I don't trust it. MyAntennas I think has a brief statement that laying on a roof is like laying on grass and there's loss there.

I definitely observed laying a wire directly on my roof doesn't work at all (mostly wanted to see how noisy an attic antenna would be and my roof is easier access than the attic).

The real application is I'm now curious if I'm better off putting a 2m antenna in my attic directly above the shack or putting it outside with a much longer feedline. But I'm also curious about HF (pretty set on HF going outside just since the access to my attic space sucks so running feedline across is about all I wanna do up there). But I am just curious if there is actual data anyone knows about.

Edit to add: I appreciate the "it works for me and I made lots of contacts" but I really am looking for some hard data or better sources.

Just trying to settle on one of these. No crazy usage just some photo editing and some ham radio digital modes on an old laptop.

Fedora pros:

- easy to setup/maintain, most polished/just works out of the bunch

- kinda semi-officially endorsed by a lot of people at KDE and I like Plasma.

Fedora cons:

- definitely the slowest to boot out of all of the choices

- couple of the ham apps segfault on start when installed from RPM so I have to build from source or use Flatpak

Arch pros:

- feels faster than Fedora

- can pretty easily set it up the way I want or use Endeavour if I want to be extra lazy

- great documentation

Arch cons:

- doesn't package any of the ham stuff at all so I have to use the AUR or Flatpak, then again I'm not worse off than on Fedora

Void pros:

- has all the packages I want

- boots super fast

- people say it tends to break stuff less often than Arch

Void cons:

- can't use Plasma Login Manager because it doesn't have systemd

- last time I tried it briefly I couldn't get SDDM to start (100% user error but at the time I didn't feel like figuring it out). Would be half tempted to give Xfce another shot and just not care about systemd integration or even Wayland really

Anyone have experiences running any of these that might push me one way or the other?

Full disclosure I orderes the BNTECHGO 12ga stranded stuff and I wonder if it's oversized a little since the 45a contacts crimp onto it solidly and I can't seem to get all of the stands into the 30s.

But is there a trick I'm missing? Can I pry the contact open a little or something like that?

I assume I can grab some sort of module that affects brightness and just add a gradient mask to it, but not sure what works well. Color Balance RGB I kind of know what the sliders do but not sure if there's something simpler that also would work.

Curious to see what the pricing looks like on this. 100W, built in 3:1 tuner, remote head operation over Ethernet.

Not sure I'll want to be an early adopter since Xiegu seems to release stuff with half baked firmware that constantly changes but it seems cool.

Tried on Windows after installing the Yaesu drivers and on my Linux laptop. I see the audio device show up and a USB hub showing up but no serial ports are connected.

Anyone know what might be going on?

On the latest firmware and did a factory reset too.

Title. Thinking of building an OCFD or something like that. Would be a Ruthroff paired with an external choke since I only have one core on hand.

What about for an EFHW since that's flux coupled instead of being a TLT?