Carlos Mendoza

oh man yeah that 13-15wpm plateau is SO real, almost everyone hits it. what helped me more than anything was just forcing myself to copy real qsos even when i could only get maybe 60% of it. the thing is your brain starts to fill in the gaps using context after a while, like if you heard 'tnx fer the qso ur 599 in' you dont actually need to copy every single character perfectly to know whats coming next. took me a while to trust that process but it works. also dont underestimate just listening passively while youre doing something else, dishes, driving whatever. i had cw trainer on my phone playing random words at like 18wpm for weeks just as background noise and i think it helped my ear get used to the rhythm even when i wasnt actively trying to copy. the short sessions thing is legit by the way, 20 focused minutes beats an hour of half-paying-attention practice every time in my experience

yeah whats your bypass situation look like on the mixer chip or however youre doing the mixing? sometimes people forget to bypass the supply right at the IC and the trace inductance is enough to let noise couple in. also what are you using for the product detector stage, a diode ring or one of the SA612 type chips? not trying to pile on but the unboxed thing really does matter more than people think, ive had rigs that worked fine on the bench and then picked up all kinds of garbage once i put them near a computer or a switching supply. shielding a direct conversion is kind of annoying because you have to be careful not to change the coil geometry when you close the lid but its worth doing early rather than retrofitting later.

yeah the dynamic range thing is very real, not just a spec sheet number. i went through almost the same situation a couple years back. the RTL dongle with an upconverter is fine for getting started but those FM stations were killing me too, even with a FM trap inline. switched to the RSP1B and the difference on crowded HF bands was immediately obvious, like you stop spending half your time chasing intermod artifacts and just actually listen to stuff. SDRuno takes some getting used to if you've been on SDR# but its not terrible. one thing i will say is if you're mostly on HF the RSP1B is the right call, but if you ever want to play above like 1.5 GHz for ADS-B or weather satellites or whatever then you might want to think about what you actually want to do long term because the RSP lineup has some coverage gaps depending on which model. for your FM bleed problem though yeah it helps a lot, the front end just handles it better.

ran almost exactly this comparison a few years back. had an inverted V at 35 feet and put up a 40m vertical with about 16 radials on the ground, which honestly is the real world number most people end up with not the theoretical 120. the vertical did do better on the long DX paths, europe and japan from the midwest, but it wasnt some massive difference, maybe a half S unit on average and sometimes the dipole was actually better depending on conditions and time of day. the vertical also picked up way more local noise for me because of the omnidirectional pattern, which is kind of annoying for rag chewing when youve got a plasma TV two houses down. if your soil is poor clay the radial situation matters a lot. with a skimpy radial field youre probably burning power in the ground. my honest take is if your inverted V is working and youre making the contacts you want, the juice might not be worth the squeeze. now if you could get the dipole up higher, like 50-60 feet, that would probably do more for you than switching to a vertical with limited radials.

not a dumb question at all, pretty much everyone goes through exactly this. the thing that actually worked for me after years of half-attempts was forcing myself to never look at a chart. like not once. the whole point of the koch method and really any modern approach is that your brain needs to hear the sound and just know the letter, not go through some visual translation step in your head because that completely falls apart at any real operating speed so on lcwo what you do is start with just two characters, K and M i think is the default, and you just drill those at a decent character speed like 20wpm even if the overall code speed feels slow at first. that spacing between characters is the farnsworth method and it gives you time to think while still training your ear to hear the actual rhythm of each letter. once you can copy K and M at like 90% you add the next character and keep going. honestly takes a few weeks of daily practice, even just 10-15 minutes a day, before it starts clicking the single biggest mistake people make is doing 5wpm from the start because then you just end up counting dots and dashes in your head and you have to unlearn that later. just trust the process and dont skip ahead or go back, the frustration early on is totally normal

I did something similar on my 897D a while back and while I was in there noticed one of the trimmer caps looked a little sketchy, ended up doing a full alignment after the mods which probably helped as much as anything. not saying yours needs it but if you have a frequency counter and some patience its worth checking after you've had the board out. these older Yaesu rigs can drift a bit over the years and people attribute it to the mod when really its just age.

i dunno i tried SO2R once during sweepstakes and honestly it just stressed me out lol. maybe im not cut out for it. i felt like i kept losing my run frequency to other guys while i was off hunting mults on the second rig. single radio felt more relaxing and i wasnt doing THAT much worse rate wise at my power level anyway. maybe its more worth it when youre running a kw and actually holding a frequency for long stretches

so yesterday afternoon i was just doing some casual monitoring on 10m and holy cow it just lit up around 2pm local time. i was pulling in stations from south america like they were next door, worked a couple guys in brazil and one in argentina without even really trying. running maybe 50 watts into a dipole up about 25 feet so nothing special at all. cycle 25 is really delivering lately and i feel like a lot of people are sleeping on 10m still because they got used to it being dead for so long. also on a completely different note, has anyone been following the new icom ic-905 stuff? i know its been out a little while but i finally got to mess around with one at the club meeting last thursday and the microwave bands capability is just wild. not sure i have any practical use for it living in the suburbs but it was cool to see. and apparently yaesu has been dropping hints about something new too, saw a thread on another forum but couldnt find much solid info, might just be rumors. anyway just wanted to share the 10m thing because its worth getting on if you havent lately. even a simple wire antenna is working great right now.

yeah what he said about HamStudy is right. I'd also add that once you start getting above like 80% consistently on the practice tests you're probably ready. some people overstudy and then second guess themselves on the actual exam which is way worse than just going in confident. one thing i'll mention -- the VE sessions near me sometimes let you retake same day if you fail which takes a lot of pressure off. might be worth checking with whoever is running the exam session in your area. either way the fee is pretty small so even if you had to do it twice its not the end of the world, though you'll almost certainly pass first try if youre putting in the time

so ive been going back and forth on this for a while and figured id just ask here because i keep going in circles on my own. i have a pretty decent hilltop location about 1800ft asl and im trying to decide whether to put up a decent yagi setup or just go with a longer collinear like a diamond X510 or similar for 2m/70cm general use including some weak signal ssb stuff on 2m when conditions are right. the thing is the collinear is obviously way more practical for everyday use, local repeaters, random contacts etc but i know a yagi is going to walk all over it for actual weak signal work. my current setup is just a homebrewed jpole which honestly works fine for local stuff but i want to push further. has anyone run both and can actually compare the real world difference? not just theoretical gain numbers, more like what did you actually notice. also worried about wind loading up there, we get some serious gusts in winter so that factors in too.

so ive been using WSJT-X for FT8 for a while now and it logs to its own internal log which is fine but i want to get a proper logging program set up that handles everything, contest stuff included. a buddy at the club swears by N1MM but he basically only does contests so im not sure if its overkill for everyday use. someone else mentioned Log4OM and from what i can tell it looks a lot more polished for general shack logging but i honestly dont know how well it handles contest operation. the main thing i need is decent WSJT-X integration so the QSOs from FT8 sessions automatically show up without me having to import an ADIF file every single time. does anyone actually have both working together or is it kind of a pain to set up the UDP logging stuff. i messed around with the WSJT-X settings a bit and saw the UDP server option but got lost after that

88 got me too when i first started lol. someone said it to me on 40m and i had absolutely no clue what they meant, had to go look it up and felt kinda awkward in retrospect haha. the Q codes do click eventually though dont stress it too much

just to add on to what the other guy said — when i was first getting into this i spent way too long trying to troubleshoot my VARA HF setup before i realized my audio output levels were way too hot and i was just splattering all over the place. the waterfall in VARA will show you if the signal looks right. took me forever to find the sweet spot on the soundcard gain. also one thing nobody told me early on is that you really want to make sure your grid square is entered correctly in your station settings because that affects how you show up in the RMS proximity list and some emcomm groups actually check that stuff. probably not a big deal for casual use but worth setting right from the start.

so ive been trying to figure out if its worth making the drive out to dayton again this year. last time i went the flea market area was honestly the best part, picked up a barely used IC-7300 for way less than retail and a bunch of random coax connectors i didnt even know i needed. my buddy says the indoor vendors have gotten more expensive every year but the tailgating outside is still pretty decent if you get there early enough before all the good stuff walks off. anybody else planning on going or have tips for the swap meet area specifically, like where to park to be close to the outdoor stuff

yeah it definitely gets easier, i used to freeze up on X and Q every single time. foxtrot... no wait. anyway the general idea is you use phonetics whenever theres any chance of confusion, so weak signals, noisy bands, any time you're giving out your call for a log or during a contest. on a quiet local repeater with full quieting you can probably just say your call normally and be fine, but if there's any static or the guy just didn't catch it the first time, phonetics just makes sense. there's no hard rule written down somewhere that says you must always use them, it's more just what's practical. the more you do it the more it becomes automatic, like i don't even think about it now i just kind of switch into phonetic mode when conditions warrant it.