Category: Operating

  • FT8 Contesting: How Digital Contests Actually Work

    Part of our Getting On The Air guide. Most hams who run FT8 do it casually, working stations one at a time while doing something else with half their attention. Contesting on FT8 is a completely different animal. It is fast, structured, and genuinely competitive, and understanding the difference will save you a frustrating first…

  • Winter Field Day: A Dedicated Guide

    Part of our Getting On The Air guide. Winter Field Day gets treated as a footnote to the June ARRL Field Day, and I think that undersells it. It is run by the Winter Field Day Association rather than ARRL, it happens on the last full weekend of January, and cold weather changes enough about…

  • Cool HF Nets Worth Checking Into: History, Schedules, and Purpose

    Part of our Clubs and Nets guide. Nets are one of the most underrated parts of HF operating. A lot of newer hams think of HF as either ragchewing on SSB or grinding out FT8 contacts, but there is a whole world of organized, scheduled nets running every single day, some purely social, some handling…

  • The Complete Ham Radio Glossary: Definitions and Acronyms for Every Corner of the Hobby

    Ham radio runs on jargon. Half the barrier to getting comfortable in this hobby is not the electronics, it is the alphabet soup that gets thrown around on every net, every forum thread, and every product listing. I built this page to be the one link I send someone when they ask what a term…

  • FT-891 vs FTX-1 Field vs G90: Which Portable HF Radio Wins for POTA

    Part of our Getting On The Air: Modes, Operations, and Making Contacts guide. I get some version of this question constantly: which of my three portable-friendly HF radios should someone actually buy for POTA. I own all three, I use all three in the field, and the honest answer is that they’re not really competing…

  • Net Topics That Actually Get People Talking

    A quick-reference list of net topics for when check-ins wrap up fast and the net needs somewhere to go.

  • IOTA and County Hunting: Niche Award Programs Worth Knowing About

    DXCC gets most of the attention as the classic ham radio award chase, but it’s far from the only one. IOTA and County Hunting both offer a genuinely different kind of goal, one geographic, one domestic, and both worth knowing about even if DXCC isn’t your primary focus. IOTA: chasing islands, not just countries Islands…

  • Grayline DXing: Timing Your Operating Around Sunrise and Sunset

    The grayline, the twilight band circling the earth between day and night, isn’t just a nice thing to look at on a map. It creates a real, repeatable propagation advantage on the low bands that serious DXers plan their operating around. Why the terminator boosts propagation The short version: the D layer, which absorbs HF…

  • Contesting with the FTX-1: Menu and Setup Tips for Faster Runs

    How I set up the FTX-1 for a contest weekend, from menu shortcuts to logging integration that keeps the run moving.

  • Setting Up the FTX-1 for POTA: A Portable Field Kit Walkthrough

    What actually goes into my FTX-1 POTA kit, from the radio and antenna down to the small stuff that saves an activation.

  • FTX-1 Care and Feeding: Cooling, Cleaning, and Long-Term Reliability

    Basic maintenance habits that keep the FTX-1 and SPA-1 running reliably after heavy field and shack use.

  • Common FTX-1 Problems and How I’ve Solved Them

    The actual problems I’ve run into with the FTX-1 across field and shack use, and what fixed each one.

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