Carlos Mendoza

ok so i just passed my general a few months ago and ive been making a decent amount of contacts, mostly on 40m SSB and some FT8. everyone keeps talking about QSL cards and LoTW and eQSL and honestly im a bit lost about how all this works and which ones actually matter for awards and stuff. from what i understand LoTW is run by the ARRL and its the one that counts for DXCC but you have to get a certificate mailed to you first before you can even upload anything which seems like a lot of hoops. eQSL seems easier to sign up for but i read somewhere that it doesnt count for DXCC? and then theres still people mailing actual paper cards through the bureau which just seems really slow. like does anyone still do all three or do most people just pick one and stick with it. also when someone on FT8 says QSL in the log does that mean theyre going to actually confirm it somewhere or is it just like an automatic thing with WSJT-X. sorry if these are dumb questions im just trying to figure out the whole ecosystem here before i spend time on something that wont count toward anything.

The middle curve shows an optimized Yagi. The lower curve represents a poor performance design. Are you using the same wire diameter and height above ground in both programs? Small differences in these parameters can cause the variations you're seeing.

so ive been doing CW practice for about 3 months now and im stuck around 13-14wpm and it feels like the wall is just not moving. started with the Koch method back when i got my ticket and got up to 10wpm pretty fast but now it feels like every session im just spinning my wheels. im doing maybe 20-30 minutes a day with the G4FON trainer and some Just Learn Morse Code sessions but honestly im not sure if im doing it right anymore. the thing thats frustrating is i can copy text i already kind of expect fine but anything random or unfamiliar just falls apart above like 12wpm. like my brain just cant keep up and i start missing letters and then i fall behind and then its a cascade. does this get better on its own or is there something specific i should be changing. also wondering if copying real QSOs off the air would help more than the computer generated stuff at this point

Got my tech license back in September but just been too nervous to get on the air. Today I finally bit the bullet and called CQ on 146.52 with my Baofeng UV-5R. A really friendly OM came back immediately and we had a great 20 minute chat about antennas and local repeaters. The mic fright was way worse than the actual contact! Breaking the ice really is more important than having perfect equipment. Already planning my next QSO for this weekend.

pi is definitely overkill for relay switching but I will say if you ever want to expand it into something more ambitious — logging, cluster spotting, maybe a web interface to control stuff remotely — then it starts to make more sense. I run a pi 4 that handles my rotator controller, does automatic band switching for my amp, and serves up a little webpage I can hit from my phone. took a while to get it all stable but now it just runs. that said for what youre describing the arduino approach is totally fine and honestly easier to debug. just watch your ground loops if youre mixing the radio's USB ground with the relay circuit, had some weird noise issues early on until i isolated things properly

yeah the RemoteHams server software works totally fine for private use, you just dont list yourself on the public directory and nobody can find you. been running it that way for probably three years now with an IC-7300 and it's genuinely night and day compared to the RDP audio hack approach. the client handles jitter buffering in a way that actually makes sense for voice, you can tune the buffer size vs latency tradeoff yourself which helps a lot when the connection is being flaky. PTT-wise i find it pretty solid for SSB, like i rarely have the clipped first syllable problem that killed me with the old setup. CW through it is another story if you want to actually key it remotely, i gave up on that and just use a keyer macro approach. on the SDR side i do run an RTL-SDR dongle on the same machine and use a separate SDR# or SDRuno instance that i remote in for just to see the band, but i havent actually integrated it into the RemoteHams client itself — not sure if thats even a supported thing or if people just do it as a parallel thing. bandwidth on 25/5 should be fine for just the audio control channel, thats pretty lightweight. the SDR stream if you tried to pipe that remotely would be the killer, you'd want to run the SDR processing locally at the remote end and just send decoded audio back or something.

the hum is almost certainly your wallwart. those switching supplies are noisy as anything and a simple regulator on the output doesnt fix the RF garbage they put on the rail. try running it off a battery temporarily and see if the hum goes away, if it does you have your answer. i went through the exact same thing with a 80m receiver i built last year, swapped to a 7ah gel cell and it was night and day. the microphonics could be a few things, loose component leads, a ceramic cap that doesnt like vibration, sometimes its even the NE602 itself if you're running it anywhere near its max supply voltage. worth checking your bypass situation around pin 8 on the chip too if you havent already.

so ive been wanting to learn CW for a while now and i finally have some free time to actually sit down and try it. the problem is i dont really know where to start. theres like a million different apps and methods and youtube videos and honestly its kind of overwhelming. i tried just memorizing the dots and dashes on a chart and that did NOT work lol, my brain just cant retain it that way someone at the club meeting mentioned the Koch method but i dont fully understand how that works. and then theres LCWO which i tried for like 20 minutes and got confused pretty quick. is there a specific order people recommend learning the letters in or does it matter? also how long did it take you before you could actually copy something on the air, even just a callsign or something simple im not trying to get to 20wpm or anything crazy i just want to be able to have slow QSOs eventually. any advice from people who actually went through this would be helpful

You can narrow down the DX cluster via selection fields for bands, and clicking on a call sign takes you to the corresponding QRZ.com page. I like QRZ's integration since I'm already logged in there for lookups anyway. The seamless workflow keeps me productive during pileups.

so ive been meaning to do this for like two years and after the last storm that knocked out power for three days in my area I finally stopped procrastinating. started pulling together what I think a decent go-kit should have but honestly im not sure if ive got the priorities right. right now I have my FT-817ND, a 40ah LiFePO4 battery, a roll of RG-8X with a few connectors already on it, and my slim jim hanging antenna on some paracord. got a small DC power strip from powerwerx, logbook, a few spare fuses, and my APRS tracker. threw it all in a Pelican 1510 which just barely fits. what im not sure about is whether I should have a dedicated HF antenna situation vs just relying on whatever I can throw up when I get somewhere, and also how much do you guys actually test this stuff before you need it? feels like I put stuff in a box and then never touch it until the battery is dead and something doesnt work. I want to actually be useful if our ARES group gets activated and not be the guy fumbling around for an hour trying to remember how to set up his own gear.

Having problems with Ham Radio Deluxe satellite tracking when working MO-122's inverting linear transponder. The V/u inverting linear transponder is 30 kHz wide with uplink 145.910-145.940 MHz LSB and downlink 435.810-435.840 MHz USB, but HRD seems to be miscalculating Doppler corrections mid-pass. Anyone else experiencing this? The tracking option in a radio cannot correctly compensate for Doppler, this is one reason why many QSO's drift gently across the linear transponder's available bandwidth. Only correct computer control will ensure that two or more stations stay on the same frequency while the satellite passes overhead. My IC-9700 drifts about 1-2 kHz during TCA despite having fresh Keplerian elements.

I literally just got my tech ticket like two months ago so I remember exactly how lost I felt at first. hamstudy is what I used and I passed no problem, but the thing that actually helped me the most was just doing the flash cards over and over every day on my phone when I had a few minutes. took me about three weeks of casual studying. the electrical theory stuff tripped me up at first, the formulas and ohms law stuff, but once you get a feel for it its not so bad. good luck with it

so ive been running FT8 for about a year now and yeah its great for racking up contacts and all that but honestly it feels more like a video game than a conversation. you just exchange grid squares and signal reports and thats it, done, move on. i started poking around JS8Call a few months back and its a totally different vibe — you can actually type stuff back and forth even if the connection is barely there. my setup is nothing special, ic-7300 into a random wire out back, WSJT-X for the FT8 stuff and JS8Call obviously for the other. running on 40m mostly at night. the thing im trying to figure out is whether anyone actually uses JS8Call regularly enough that theres people to talk to, because the few times ive gone looking the band seems pretty quiet compared to the usual FT8 pileup on 14.074. also tried a little PSK31 last winter and that was actually fun, felt more like an old teletype thing. does anyone still work that mode or has everyone just migrated to the WSJT stuff at this point

dont overlook the menu settings before tearing into it hardware wise. theres a setting in the set menu under tx/rx that sometimes gets reset or corrupted, specifically the RF power ceiling thing. also check if the previous owner maybe had it set up for some kind of external amp and had it configured to limit drive. i know it sounds dumb but ive been burned by that before, spent an afternoon with a scope and it was a menu setting the whole time. embarrassing.

i passed mine last spring and the theory was less scary than i thought going in. some of the BJT and op-amp questions tripped me up at first but there are only so many questions in the pool so you kinda just pattern match after a while. i wont pretend i deeply understand all of it lol the extra band privileges on 80m phone alone made it worth it for me because thats where a lot of the nets i wanted to check into were sitting. small thing but it bugged me as a general

ha yeah that freezing up feeling is totally normal, i did the same thing my first few times. so for most voice nets the net control will say something like "are there any check-ins" or "the net is now open for check-ins" and thats your cue — you just say your callsign phonetically and wait. some nets want your name and location too, just listen to what other people are doing before you go and you'll pick it up fast. for the special event station thing, honestly just treat it like a regular contact. they usually have a pileup going so you might have to call a few times, just give your callsign clearly and wait for them to come back to you. a lot of special event stations are super patient with newer hams too, they want people to work them. and make sure to grab their QSL info because thats kind of the whole point, they usually have a nice card or certificate you can get afterward.

Taking my Technician exam next Saturday and getting nervous about the actual test session process. I've been studying for months but realized I don't know what to expect when I walk into that room! Can someone break down the typical flow? I know to bring my $15 exam fee and photo ID, but what happens after that? How long does the whole process take? Do they grade it immediately? Also wondering about calculators - I can bring one as long as memory can be flushed before the exam, right?

yeah this trips up a lot of new generals, dont feel bad. so the key thing is there are two separate things going on. the FCC part 97 rules are the law -- those are the hard limits you absolutely cannot cross. for 40m as a general you get phone privileges from 7.175 up to 7.300 MHz, below that down to 7.025 is CW and digital for generals too. the ARRL band plan is more of a gentlemans agreement, it tells you where SSB activity tends to cluster versus where CW ops hang out, but nobody is going to cite you for being in the wrong spot within your legal privileges. the band edge thing though, stay away from exactly 7.300 because your signal has sidebands and if any of that bleeds over youre technically out of band. most people stay at least 3 kHz inside the edge to be safe, so like 7.297 or so for the upper end on phone.

so ive been a Tech for about 8 months now and mostly just been doing VHF/UHF stuff on my local repeaters and some simplex. its been fun but honestly im getting a little bored and everyone keeps telling me i need to get my General so i can actually get on HF. my question is how hard is the General exam compared to Tech? i remember the Tech exam being easier than i expected but i heard General has a lot more electrical theory and i was never great at math in school. im using the HamStudy website to practice and some of the questions about impedance and like reactance and stuff are going over my head. is that stuff actually going to matter when im operating or is it just for the test? also what bands do you even get access to as a General that you dont have as a Tech, i know you get some HF but im not totally sure which ones

honestly the technician exam is pretty manageable if you put in a couple weeks of studying. the question pool is public, which is the big thing people dont realize — like the actual questions that can appear on the test are all available ahead of time, there's no surprises. hamstudy.org is where i'd point you first, just make up an account and start doing practice exams, it tracks what you're getting wrong and focuses on those. i used that and the ARRL technician manual and passed first try with about three weeks of studying maybe an hour a day. you dont need any equipment before the test, just show up, pay the fee (it's like 15 bucks through most VE teams), and do your thing. after you pass the FCC puts your license in their system usually within a week or so and then you're good to go. your neighbor sounds like he'd be a solid resource too honestly, having someone local who can show you the ropes makes a big difference

i went through this like a year ago so maybe i can help a little. the ae7q site someone probably mentioned is seriously the best resource, i spent way too long on the FCC site itself getting confused before i found it. one thing i'll add — when i applied i didn't realize you could list multiple callsigns in order of preference on the same application so i just picked one and kind of held my breath lol. not sure if that's still how it works but worth double checking before you submit because if your first choice gets snagged in the lottery you might be out the fee with nothing to show for it.

yeah the duplicate spots thing is totally normal, that's just how the cluster network works — multiple nodes around the world receive and rebroadcast spots so you'll see the same callsign come through from like W4 nodes and EU nodes within seconds of each other. its actually useful because it tells you the signal is getting out in multiple directions. DXwatch is just a web frontend that aggregates all of that. for android i'd honestly just point you toward DX Alarm, its not fancy but it does what you need — you set up alerts for specific callsigns or DXCC entities and it pings you when something shows up in the cluster. also the DX Summit website (oh3bk's thing) works great in a mobile browser if you dont want to mess with apps. i personally have it bookmarked and just use it from my phone when im away from the shack and hear that there might be something rare on. as for QRZ vs DXwatch they're not really the same thing, QRZ is pulling from the cluster too but i find the filtering on DXwatch is a bit more flexible. once you start getting into it you might want to actually telnet into a cluster node directly through your logging software but that's a whole other thing, no rush on that

the 857D is a solid choice for a go-kit, i ran one for years before switching. just make sure you get a good DC cable with an inline fuse right at the battery, dont skip that part, learned that the hard way when i got some arcing at a connector once. not a disaster but not fun either. one thing people dont think about enough is antenna stuff. like the radio is almost the easy part. having a quick deploy antenna that actually works and that you can set up in 10 minutes in a parking lot or a field — that matters more than which case you picked. i really like the EFHW wire antennas for HF deployments, light and you can get one up in a tree pretty fast. for VHF just a mag mount on a car roof does the job most of the time.

I made flash cards for the most common ones and practiced during my commute. Remember you'll hear Q-codes in voice modes too, not just CW, so even if you're not a Morse operator you need to know them. Once you start using them regularly, they become second nature.

yeah the ICS thing clicks real fast once you're in an actual activation. I remember my first one years ago thinking all the check-in and logging stuff was just bureaucracy but when the EOC coordinator is asking for a status update every 30 minutes and you have nothing written down it gets real uncomfortable fast. sounds like your group runs a solid program. a lot of ARES sections around here have been struggling with keeping trained operators engaged between activations, which is the real challenge imo. the hurry up and wait is just part of it, served agencies appreciate that you showed up more than people realize.