Carlos Mendoza

Great choice on the ID-5100! A detachable control head allows the bulk of the radio chassis to reside out of sight, with power leads routed through the firewall to the car battery and coaxial cable routed out to the antenna attachment locations. Make sure you use proper gauge wire for the power runs and consider ferrite cores on all cables to minimize RFI.

I've used both methods. For a 13A radio like yours, direct to battery is better. Fuse box connections can introduce noise and voltage drops. Do it right the first time - you'll have less troubleshooting later.

dont be embarrassed at all, everyone goes through this and honestly its great that you were listening before jumping in, a lot of folks dont bother doing that. what you did was totally correct by the way -- check in, give your call, say no traffic, done. thats exactly right for a lot of nets. the thing about when to add something is it does vary a bit by net but the general flow is you check in when they call for checkins, then when net control gets back to you thats your window. if you have an announcement you can just say it right then instead of "no traffic" -- something like "W1ABC, no traffic, but id like to make an announcement if thats ok" or on some nets you just say it. net control will usually guide you if youre doing something off. some nets have a specific announcements period after all the checkins, in which case you hold it til then. best thing is just to keep listening and youll pick up the rhythm pretty fast. and dont worry about net control, theyre usually pretty patient with newer folks especially on a local club net

There's always something new to learn. This year, we'll be expanding our use of Winlink and PACKET radio, which continue to be powerful tools for transmitting structured messages over RF. Focus on accurate message handling first - speed comes with practice. You'll do great!

so ive been licensed for about 6 months now and finally signed up with my county RACES group. they have a monthly drill this saturday and i have no idea what im getting into. the EC just said bring your ht and a notepad but didnt really explain much else anyone been through their first drill? is it mostly just checking into nets or do they actually simulate emergency traffic? kinda nervous since everyone else has been doing this for years and im still figuring out net procedures

yeah what he said. i made this mistake early on, had my vfo sitting at 7.299 and didnt realize my sideband was spilling over. nobody said anything but i noticed it later when i was looking at my signal on a panadapter. also worth knowing that 40m gets weird because the ITU region 1 guys (europe etc) have a different allocation so if youre working dx late at night you might hear stations operating below 7.175 which is fine for them but you still cant go there as a US general. just something to keep in mind when the band opens up

I went from a swan 350 to the ic7300 about 3 years ago and honestly wish id done it sooner. Yeah theres menus but the basic operation is still just tune and talk. The waterfall display alone is worth it - you can see everything thats happening on the band. Built in tuner works great too, no more external box The ft991a is nice but ive heard the receiver can get overwhelmed in contest situations if you have strong local signals. Depends on your QTH i guess

honest opinion? the 7300 would be a big step up from the 756P3 in terms of the SDR-based receiver and the waterfall is genuinely useful even for casual operating, you start to see propagation in a way you just cant with a traditional rig. i made the jump from an older Icom myself a few years back and i was surprised how much i used the spectrum scope just for casual operating, not contesting or anything serious. that said if you can stretch to the 7610 i think its worth it used. the dual watch thing i honestly use more than i thought i would, mostly just keeping an eye on two bands at once when im waiting for a specific station to clear up. its not a must have but its nice. i wouldnt buy new at 7610 prices but used market has been pretty reasonable lately. the 7700 is great but that feels like overkill for what you described and the older architecture means you're not getting the same SDR front end anyway

yeah the award credit system threw me off too when i first started chasing seriously. short version is LoTW is absolutely the way to go for DXCC credits, you upload your logs, the other station uploads theirs, and when they match ARRL automatically counts it as a confirmed contact. you dont need paper QSLs at all for DXCC if both sides are on LoTW, which honestly covers a surprising amount of DX stations these days, even some pretty rare ones WAS and WAZ are tracked completely separately. WAS is through ARRL too so LoTW handles that the same way, but WAZ is a CQ magazine award and you have to submit to them directly, different system entirely. your log data can be the same contacts but the submission process is different and CQ still leans more toward physical QSLs or their own online system last i checked the mixed vs phone vs digital thing is just that once you hit 100 on mixed mode you can go after the phone-only or digital-only endorsements separately. most people start with mixed and then if they do a lot of SSB or FT8 they eventually rack up enough for the mode endorsements too. just keep logging everything and dont stress about which box it falls in yet, after a while it starts to make sense on its own

I made this same mistake when I first got on HF. People try to see 100W output on average reading meters by maxing mic gain and processor drive, resulting in horrible sounding audio and dirty signals that interfere on adjacent frequencies. Set gain for just a flicker of ALC on voice peaks, not constant activation.

HackRF supports frequencies from 1MHz-6GHz but is only capable of transmitting and receiving at half-duplex, which is a major limitation I'm running into. Planning some digital repeater experiments on 70cm band and need simultaneous TX/RX capability. The HackRF One was developed by Michael Ossmann and attracts interest from amateur radio enthusiasts and RF security practitioners. For those who've worked around the half-duplex issue - are you using multiple HackRF units, or would something like a BladeRF be a better investment? Budget is around $800-1000 for the SDR platform.

yeah 20-30 mins a day is plenty, honestly more than enough if youre consistent about it. the thing most people mess up is they learn the characters too slow and then they have to relearn the rhythm later. Koch method with Farnsworth spacing is the way to go — basically you learn each character at a fast speed like 20wpm but with extra space between them so you have time to think. the idea is your brain learns the sound of the letter not the count of dots and dashes. LCWO dot net is free and works really well for this. just start with the default settings and dont move to the next character until you can get like 90% on the current set. some letters will stick immediately and some will haunt you forever (looking at you, C and Y for some reason) but it does work. i went from nothing to having my first actual CW QSO in about 4 months doing roughly what you described time-wise. wasnt pretty but it happened. also dont bother copying onto paper at first, just say the letter out loud or in your head. the pen slows everything down when youre new.

nice work getting out there. i did my first one a couple years ago and totally blanked on the log submission too, ended up emailing someone on the wwff facebook group lol. one thing i'd add is when you do your northern cabin trip, double check the reference boundaries before you set up, i once drove out to what i thought was a protected area reference only to find my operating spot was like 50 feet outside the boundary on some private land. had to relocate everything which was annoying. the maps on the wwff site are decent but sometimes zooming in on google maps with the coordinates helps too

I've been running an 80m OCFD at 70 feet on the ends for 3 years - earned DXCC on 8 bands including 15m with it. The trick is getting the height right and using a quality balun. What balun are you using?