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.

yeah that sounds exactly like a coax connection issue, been there. on my old Silverado i had the same thing with a lip mount and the center pin on the PL-259 had worked loose just enough to cause intermittent contact. drove me crazy for like a month. id start at the radio end first since thats the easiest to get to, then work your way back toward the antenna. if you have a multimeter you can check continuity from the center pin at the radio end all the way up while someone wiggles the antenna — if it drops out you found your problem pretty quick. also worth just double checking the NMO mount itself. sometimes the nut underneath the roof sheet metal works loose even if you think its tight. a little loctite on the threads isnt a bad idea once you find the culprit.

so ive been licensed about 8 months now and i keep hearing people talk about chasing DXCC and WAS and all these different awards and honestly im not sure where to even start. like i understand the basic idea — you work a certain number of entities or states or zones and you submit proof and you get a certificate. but thats about where my understanding ends. my setup is pretty modest, running about 100 watts into a dipole up about 30 feet and i live in a suburban area so i have some noise issues but ive been getting decent contacts on 20 and 40 meters. i already have maybe 30-something states in my log since i started, just from casual operating and a couple contests. does that count toward WAS or do i need to do something special to get credit for them. also with DXCC i see people talking about mixed mode vs phone vs cw and all that — do those count separately? feels like there might be a lot i dont understand about how the credits actually work. any advice on where to start would be great, not trying to go crazy just want to have something to work toward

so ive been fighting this thing for about two weeks now and im starting to lose my mind a little. picked up a used 7300 from a local guy, seemed fine at first, but i noticed the power output is just... soft. like running 100w into my wattmeter and the meter shows maybe 28-32 depending on band. doesnt matter if im on 40 or 20 or 10, its always in that range. ALC looks okay on the display, not pinning, drive is set to 100%, RF power knob is at max. already went through the obvious stuff - checked the coax from the rig to my meter (swapped cables to confirm), confirmed the wattmeter is accurate with my other radio, did a factory reset just to see. nothing changed. the radio sounds clean on receive, no weirdness there. transmit audio reports are fine from other stations. i did notice the finals area gets a bit warmer than i'd expect but not crazy hot, and there's no fault indicator or anything popping up in the menu. starting to wonder if one of the PA transistors is partially gone or if theres something upstream limiting drive to the finals. anybody dealt with this before on a 7300 or similar SDR-based rig? not sure if i should crack it open and start probing or just send it to a service center.

yeah that exact thing happened to me, the 10wpm wall is real and pretty much everyone hits it. what you're describing with knowing the letter but thinking about it too long — that's the whole problem right there. you're still decoding instead of just hearing. took me forever to figure out that you have to kind of give up on consciously identifying each character and let your brain do it automatically, which sounds easy but really isnt. what actually worked for me was two things. first i bumped my character speed up to like 15 or even 18wpm but kept the word spacing slow, so farnsworth timing basically. forces you to hear characters as sounds not as patterns you count. second thing was i stopped practicing random letter groups and switched almost entirely to real words and QSO text. your brain is way better at anticipating real language than random strings, and that anticipation is part of how fast operators actually work. give it another few weeks at higher character speed and i promise something will click

had the 991A for about a year before i switched to the 7300 and honestly the VHF thing sounds better than it is in practice, at least for me. the 991A is a solid radio dont get me wrong but you can tell Yaesu was trying to do a lot of things at once with that design and the HF receive just feels a little softer compared to the 7300 side by side. not night and day but noticeable when you're trying to dig something out of the noise on 20m late at night. the 7300 waterfall is also just really good, like stupidly addictive, way more than i expected. and the built in tuner on both is pretty mediocre honestly so if your antennas are anything other than close to resonant you might want an external one eventually anyway. if you really think you'll use 2m go 991A, if 2m is just a nice-to-have the 7300 is probably gonna make you happier on HF day to day

honestly the best thing about all three of those awards is that your contacts count toward whichever ones apply — you dont have to chase them separately if that makes sense. like if you work W5RRR in Texas on 20m and he confirms on LoTW, that contact can count toward WAS (Texas), DXCC (USA entity, though that only helps if you're working toward mixed or phone or whatever), and WAZ for whatever zone Texas falls in. so just keep working everything and let the log sort it out later. 40 LoTW confirmations in 8 months on FT8 is a solid start. i'd actually recommend downloading the DXCC country list from the ARRL site and just looking at it once in a while — youll start to recognize which prefixes are which entities and it becomes kind of addictive honestly. WAZ is 40 zones total and some of them are genuinely hard to get, zone 2 up in the arctic being the obvious one. start with DXCC and WAS since those have the clearest paths forward for someone on HF and the mixed mode submissions make it accessible without needing a specific antenna setup or anything crazy

so ive been doing a lot of hilltop activations lately, mostly on 2m and 70cm, and ive been using a diamond x50 on a painters pole which works pretty well honestly but im starting to wonder if im leaving a lot on the table by not bringing a yagi up with me. the thing is, setup time matters to me and the x50 literally takes 30 seconds to get going. the yagis i've been looking at are the m2 2m5wl and the arrow ii for dual band. the arrow seems like the obvious portable choice but ive heard the gain figures on those shorter yagis are kinda optimistic and you have to be really careful about aiming which on a windy hilltop can be a pain. i did one activation where the wind was just destroying my setup and i was glad i had the collinear because i didnt have to worry about pointing it. for working into repeaters and doing some ssb on 2m the collinear seems fine but if theres ever a weak signal situation or i want to try for some dx off a tropo opening i feel like i'd want that directional gain. anyone been through this same decision? do you guys just bring both or is that overkill for casual /p ops

ok so ive been licensed for about 8 months now, passed my general last spring and ive been on HF a bit but im honestly still confused about some of the Part 97 stuff. like i know there are band plans and frequency allocations but im not sure where the actual FCC rules end and where the band plans are just kind of... suggestions? my elmer told me the ARRL band plan isnt actually law but then he also said if i transmit outside of it i could still get in trouble somehow and i dont fully understand that also i saw something online about third party traffic and i have no idea if that applies to me or if its only for certain situations. i was going to let my wife say hi to someone i was talking to in Mexico and then wasnt sure if i was allowed to do that basically i just want to know where i can actually read the rules in plain english because part 97 itself is kind of dense and im worried im going to accidentally do something wrong

If the other operator is having trouble picking your callsign out of the noise, it sometimes helps to switch phonetic alphabets - sometimes one sound just gets through better or is more recognizable, especially if English isn't their primary language. I'll often mix ITU with DX phonetics during contests to provide variety for weak contacts.

The Kenwood user interface is very easy to me. The TH-D75 will have APRS, D-STAR digital voice, and 222 MHz capability. That said, it's expensive and might be overkill for starting out. I'd second the FT-65R recommendation - great radio to cut your teeth on.