Michael O'Brien

400 miles on 3 watts is pretty solid honestly, dont undersell that. i remember my first QRP contact felt like magic even though logically i knew the physics worked out. the warm final thing i cant speak to super specifically but every QRP rig ive used gets warm to some degree, i wouldnt stress it unless youre seeing weird power output drops or the thing shuts itself down. for hiking ive been using a SOTAbeams linked dipole and it packs down to almost nothing, little bag that clips to my pack. its cut for a couple bands so you dont need a tuner which is nice when youre already carrying a bunch of stuff up a hill. only thing is setting it up takes a little longer than a random wire but the efficiency you get from a resonant antenna on QRP is worth it in my opinion, every fraction of a dB counts when youre running low power

so we finally got around to doing a full scale simulated emergency exercise with our local ARES group on saturday and honestly it was kind of humbling. we've been talking about doing one for almost two years and kept pushing it back so i'm glad we actually pulled the trigger. the scenario was a major flooding event that took out the EOC's primary comms and we had to establish a net, pass ICS-213 traffic, and relay health and welfare messages to a shelter about 12 miles away. on paper it sounds straightforward. in practice we found out real fast that like half our members had never actually sent a formal radiogram before and a couple people didn't even know where their go-kits were. biggest lesson for me personally was that we spend way too much time talking about gear and not nearly enough time actually practicing message handling. like i have a really nice setup, dual band HT, a small HF rig in the car, decent antennas — but when someone handed me a stack of ICS forms to pass i realized i was rusty as heck. embarrassing honestly. also the net control thing is a whole job by itself. the guy running net control did great but it was obvious he needed a logging assistant and we hadnt planned for that. by hour three he was pretty frazzled trying to keep up with traffic and acknowledge stations at the same time. anyway just wondering if other groups have done these kinds of exercises and what surprised you the most. or if you have tips for making the next one more realistic without it turning into a complete mess.

so ive been licensed for about three months now and finally got my HT programmed up to hit the local 2m repeater. i can hear people just fine but when i key up nobody seems to hear me, or at least nobody responds. did some digging and i think it might be a CTCSS thing but honestly im still fuzzy on how all that works. from what i understand the repeater needs a certain tone to open up, like a subaudible tone you transmit along with your voice? i think i have 100.0 set but the club website lists 100.0 Hz as the access tone so that should be right. but then someone at the club meeting mentioned something about also needing a tone on the OUTPUT side and now im totally confused. do i need to set something on receive too or is that separate from getting into the repeater? also while im at it — is there some kind of protocol for jumping into a conversation thats already going on? i heard two guys ragchewing and wasnt sure if i should just wait or if theres a way to politely break in. dont want to be that guy who steps on everyone.

ok so i passed my general a few weeks ago and im still trying to figure out the frequency thing. i know there are portions of each band i can use but i keep seeing different things online about where to actually operate. like on 40 meters i see people talking about 7.125 and then i also see stuff about staying away from 7.200 area and band edges and honestly its all a bit confusing to me. my question is basically — is the band plan the same as what the FCC says i can use, or is it like a separate thing that hams just agree on? and what does band edge even mean, why do people make such a big deal about it. i dont want to accidentally transmit somewhere i shouldnt be

yeah the repeater failure inject is a classic and it gets people every single time, doesn't matter how many times you warn folks ahead of time. We did something similar about two years ago and same result — half the group defaulted to just calling on the repeater out of habit even after being told it was down. Muscle memory is a real thing. One thing that helped us a lot was doing a short tabletop before the actual exercise, just 30 minutes going over the comms plan and making sure everyone had the simplex freqs actually programmed and not just written on a piece of paper somewhere. Also we started requiring everyone to make at least one simplex contact during check-in just to verify the path works before the scenario even starts. Sounds like overkill but it saved us a lot of confusion mid-exercise. The ICS 213 thing is real too. We practice those separately now, like a standalone drill where thats the only focus. Trying to learn message handling AND manage net operations at the same time is just too much for newer operators.

so i've been a member of our county ARES group for about 8 months now, been showing up to the monthly nets and doing the training exercises but last weekend we had an actual activation for the flooding situation and it was kind of eye opening in ways i didnt expect like the training is great and all but nothing really prepares you for the actual coordination side of things. i was stationed at the EOC and we had like four different served agencies all wanting different things and the net control was trying to juggle all of it and honestly it was a little chaotic at first. settled down after a couple hours once the ICS structure got established but man that first stretch was hectic one thing i wasnt prepared for was how much of it is just... waiting. long stretches of monitoring and then suddenly a burst of traffic and you have to be sharp. my situational awareness definitely could use work. also realized my go bag setup is not as good as i thought it was, ran into some battery issues around hour 6 which was embarassing anyway just wanted to share, curious if other folks had similar experiences with their first real activations. did it match what you expected from the training exercises?

yeah 180 is pretty solid but honestly this cycle has been surprising a lot of people, some forecasters thought we'd peak lower. i've seen the SFI touch over 200 a few times in the last couple months and when that happens 10m turns into a zoo, 15m too. the real magic is when you get a high flux AND low geomagnetic activity at the same time, like K index sitting at 0 or 1. that combo is when the long path stuff gets weird and good. if you're serious about chasing DX right now i'd watch dxmaps and the DX cluster more than the raw flux number because the cluster will tell you in real time where the openings actually are versus where they theoretically should be. propagation models are useful but they're not the same as someone in Ohio actually working VK on 15m you know. get on when the bands are open, don't wait for perfect conditions because they never last as long as you want

yeah that coax thing bites everyone at least once haha. I started keeping a little laminated checklist in my pack after my third activation where I forgot the antenna feedpoint connector and had to improvise with some electrical tape. not ideal. one thing that helped me a lot early on was switching to a linked dipole instead of the EFHW - easier to get the feedpoint up high and away from you without needing a ton of coax. but honestly the EFHW works fine once you sort the feedline length out. 4 QSOs is a valid activation, thats all that matters for your first one. the summit doesnt care how many you worked, you still get the points and so do the chasers. also worth posting on the SOTA reflector or the facebook groups, people there are really helpful and a lot of activators post their full kit lists publicly. some of those ultralight guys have it down to like 12 pounds total which i still dont quite understand but its impressive.

So ive been running a Diamond X50A on my garage roof for about two years now and its been fine for local repeaters but i keep hearing guys on the 70cm side with noticeably better signals than me even when theyre running similar power. My setup is pretty basic, IC-2730 in the shack, about 35 feet of LMR-400 to the antenna, nothing crazy. Started looking at yagis and now im down a rabbit hole. Part of me thinks a decent 5 or 6 element yagi on 440 would just demolish the collinear for the stuff i actually use it for, which is mostly two linked repeaters that are both roughly the same direction from my house, maybe 30 degrees apart in azimuth. But then id lose the omni coverage for simplex and the occasional direction that isnt covered. Anyone gone from a collinear to a fixed yagi for a similar situation and regretted it or not. Also wondering if theres something wrong with my X50A because 35 feet of LMR-400 shouldnt be eating that much signal at 440 right, like maybe 2dB or so which isnt the end of the world.

yeah the frequency pattern thing is huge and most people completely ignore it. i've worked a lot of rare ones over the years and honestly the single biggest mistake i see is stations just calling blind into the middle of the split without ever actually listening first. you can almost always figure out where the DX op is fishing if you spend 5 minutes watching instead of calling. the timing thing you mentioned is real too. experienced DX ops tend to have a pretty consistent rhythm — they listen for roughly the same amount of time each QSO, and if you learn to call right at the top of that window when they're freshly listening you stand way better odds than calling in the middle when they've probably already zeroed in on someone. i use a second receiver sometimes just to monitor the DX station's TX frequency while im searching the split, helps a lot with timing. congrats on VP6R, that ones a solid catch.

yeah i learned in my 40s so it's definitely not a kid thing. the thing that actually worked for me was the Koch method, which basically means you start with just 2 characters sent at full speed like 20wpm and you dont move on until you recognize them reliably, then you add one more character at a time. sounds weird but your brain learns the sound of each letter instead of counting dots and dashes which is apparently how people used to teach it and it creates this mental wall around 10wpm that's really hard to break through i used an app called Morse Toad for a while and also LCWO dot net which is free and browser based. honestly the hardest part is just doing it every single day even if its only 10 minutes. i skipped a few days and felt like i went backwards. also just listening passively while youre doing dishes or whatever does help a little, at least to get used to the rhythm of it

im in basically the same boat lol, been at it about 2 months now. one thing that really helped me was using the G4FON trainer in addition to lcwo because it puts the letters in realistic qrm and QSB which is more like what youll actually hear on the air. kind of humbling at first but it speeds up recognition way faster i think. my elmer told me not to worry too much about the paddle vs straight key thing and just pick one and stick with it for a while. i went with a straight key to start and im glad i did just because sending slow is easier to control but i dunno if it actually mattered in the end

i took mine last year and the theory was actually less scary than i expected once i just sat down with it. the oscillator and filter design stuff looked bad on paper but theres only so many ways they can ask it. what tripped me up more was the operating and regulations section, some of those edge cases about what freqencies you can use and who has to identify and all that. passed with a 82 which felt good enough

yeah what he said about the tone is right. one thing that tripped me up when i was new is that some repeaters are linked to other repeaters across a wide area, like through EchoLink or IRLP or one of those systems, so sometimes theres a delay before anyone responds or you might hear someone from way far away answer you and its kind of surprising at first. if your local club repeater does that kind of linking they might have info on the club website about when the links are active or if theres certain nets that use it. worth checking out if you havent already.

yeah the instrument analogy is pretty spot on actually, and like any instrument it really does just take time and repetition. the spacing thing you mentioned is super common when you're new -- your brain is still thinking about what letter comes next while your hand is trying to finish the current one, so everything gets rushed or mushed together. one thing that helped me a ton early on was slowing way down, like uncomfortably slow, and just focusing on clean spaces between letters rather than speed. speed comes on its own later. on the paddle tension -- yes it matters quite a bit. if they're too loose you'll get accidental contacts and your dits will start doubling up on you. snug them up a little and see if that helps. the MFJ paddles are fine for learning honestly, i started on similar and worked plenty of contacts before upgrading. once you get to a point where you feel like the paddle is actually fighting you or holding you back, then maybe look at something better, but you're probably not there yet. also try sending along with a good cw audio recording sometime, like old contest audio or whatever. kind of like playing along with a record, helps your ear and your hand get calibrated together.

oh man dont stress about this at all, seriously everyone fumbles their first few check-ins. i remember my first net i called myself by my wife's callsign on accident because i was so nervous. net control has heard everything. for the ID thing — you do need to give your callsign at the end of each transmission technically, FCC requires it every 10 minutes and at the end of a contact, so on a net that means when you're done talking before you turn it back. something like "no traffic, W1XYZ" is all you need. nice and short. some nets have their own specific format and the net control will usually tell you if they want something different, like some want you to say your name and location too for roster purposes. and listening before jumping in is totally fine, thats actually how you learn the flow of a specific net. every net runs a little differently and picking up on the rhythm before you participate is smart not weird. you'll get the hang of it fast, just keep checking in.

so ive been running a little rubber duck on a handheld forever and finally decided to do something real. built my first dipole for 40m, cut each leg to roughly 33.5 feet based on the 468/f formula, used 14 gauge stranded copper i pulled from some old romex i had sitting in the garage. center insulator is just a piece of pvc i drilled holes through and zip tied everything. coax is RG-8X, about 50 feet of it running back to the shack. problem is when i tune it up the SWR is sitting around 3.2:1 at 7.150 and i cant get it below like 2.8 anywhere in the band. i expected it to be a little off but not this bad. the thing is i dont have an antenna analyzer, just watching the SWR meter on my ic-7300. the antenna is only about 18 feet high which i know is low for 40m but i figured itd at least resonate somewhere reasonable. my feedpoint connection is where im not sure i did this right — i just stripped the coax, soldered the center conductor to one leg and the shield to the other, then taped the hell out of it with self amalgamating tape. no balun or anything. could that be the problem? or is 18 feet just too low and im seeing ground effects messing with the resonant point?

oh man the linked dipole idea is great, way underrated for portable work. simple and it actually works. buddipole is nice but theres a lot of fiddling involved when youre trying to set up fast under pressure. one thing I'd throw in there is a small roll of paracord and some tent stakes, because stringing up any wire antenna without those is a nightmare. also maybe a slingshot or a fishing weight on some fishing line for getting the apex up into a tree if youre not near any support structures. sounds silly but it's saved me more than once.

so i've been wanting to get my technician license for like a year now and i finally decided to just do it. bought a couple books from amazon but honestly theyre kind of overwhelming and i dont know if im studying the right stuff. like one of them goes really deep into electronics theory and i'm not sure how much of that actually shows up on the test vs just being good background knowledge. is there a specific question pool i should be focusing on? i heard the pool changes every few years so i want to make sure whatever im using is current. also does anyone have opinions on the hamstudy website vs just going through a book? i'm more of a visual learner i think but i also tend to zone out doing flashcards for too long. just wondering what worked for people who recently passed

welcome to the net rabbit hole haha. honestly when i first started doing nets regularly i tried to check into everything and burned out on it pretty quick. now i just have maybe 3 or 4 that i actually care about — the local 2m one like you, a regional traffic net on 80m wednesday evenings, and then i try to catch the 10-10 net on 10m when the band cooperates which isnt always. for special event stations the ARRL website has a list but the one i actually use more is the special event station page on QRZ, they update it pretty often and you can sort by date. the national parks on the air thing runs all year so you didnt totally miss it, theres always another one coming up. just search NPOTA or actually its called POTA now — parks on the air — and there's a whole website for it with activations listed by date and location. some weekends there are like 20 activations happening at once if you're on HF.

so ive been a General for about two years now and i keep going back and forth on whether to bother with the Amateur Extra. honestly the main thing holding me back is the theory sections — i remember the General exam having some stuff about impedance and reactance that i barely scraped through and from what people tell me the Extra goes way deeper into that stuff. like actual math and filter design and transmission line theory and whatever else. i work a normal job and dont have a ton of time to study so im trying to figure out if its realistic or if im setting myself up to fail. also curious how much of the extra HF spectrum actually matters in practice, like does having full privileges change your operating experience that much or is it more of a bragging rights thing at that point. i genuinely dont know what im missing since i cant get on those frequencies to find out

i dont know what it is but the last few weeks ive been getting on the radio more than i have in maybe two years. started just checking into the local 2m net again and somehow that turned into me pulling out the HF rig and working some dx on 20m for the first time since like 2022. its weird how it comes in waves for me. anyone else go through these phases where you step away and then something just pulls you back in?

also worth knowing that 40m is kind of a mess internationally, below 7.175 or so is where a lot of european stations run SSB and thats legal for them under their own allocations, so sometimes you'll hear activity down there and wonder why. doesnt mean you can go there as a US general though

oh man traffic nets can be a little intimidating at first because the pacing is different from a roundtable or a ragchew net. net control is usually moving fast through the check-in window and if your signal isnt punching through or the timing is off it's easy to get skipped. best thing is just to try again after a few callsigns, most NCS operators will circle back or open another check-in window at the end. dont sweat it, happens to everyone starting out. for the special event certificate thing it totally depends on the specific operation. some of them you just log the contact yourself and submit an ADIF or a paper log through their website, others require a QSL card exchange. ARRL special event stations usually have a page on their site with the specific instructions and sometimes a direct email for the trustee running the operation. the W1AW portable operations during Centennial a few years back had a whole dedicated submission portal so it kinda varies. id say just google the callsign plus certificate and you'll usually find what you need pretty quick.

yeah the listening thing is huge and most people skip it completely because theyre too eager to start calling. ive worked quite a bit of rare dx and the single biggest factor for me is knowing how the specific op is working the pile. some of them are very systematic — they'll work by region, by number, by first letter. you can pick that up pretty quick if you actually pay attention instead of just jamming the key every few seconds. the frequency spreading trick works but you have to be careful with it because if the dx is running a fairly tight split like only 1-2 kHz you can end up way outside where theyre even listening. ive seen guys calling 5 kHz above the dx tx frequency and just wasting their time. also worth noting some ops are really skilled at pulling weak signals out of a mess, so raw power isnt always the answer people think it is. clean signal, good timing, and honestly a bit of luck with propagation at the right moment. ive worked some seriously rare stuff barefoot on a dipole just because the band opened up right and i was in the right spot at the right moment.