Emily Johnson

so this has been a project ive been sitting on for a few months now. i got a schematic from some guy on qrz who swore up and down that bypassing the stock preamp switching and wiring in an external LNA before the first mixer stage would give me a noticeable improvement on 6m and up. i figured worst case i brick a radio i paid too much for, right anyway i did it last weekend and honestly the noise floor did drop a little bit, im seeing maybe 2-3dB improvement on 6m when i compare it against my buddys stock 7300. but here's the thing — somewhere in the process i think i messed with a ground trace near the PA section because now on 40m specifically i get this weird harmonic artifact showing up about 15kHz above wherever im transmitting. its not horrible but i can see it on the waterfall and im sure other people can hear it anyone dealt with something like this after messing with the front end? im wondering if i disturbed something or if maybe theres a cold solder joint somewhere. i dont have a spectrum analyzer good enough to really nail down where its coming from, just using the built in waterfall which is obviously not ideal for self-diagnosis not really sure what my question is exactly, more just throwing this out there to see if anyone else has gone down this road

so ive been at this for about three weeks now, built a direct conversion receiver for 40m loosely based on the NorCal design but i swapped out a few parts because i couldnt source the exact values locally. getting audio out of it which is exciting but the problem is there's this massive hum riding on everything and when i touch the coil form it shifts the frequency noticeably. like i can tune in SSB signals and actually hear voices which feels like a miracle honestly but the hum is bad enough that its hard to copy anything weak. the LO is a colpitts oscillator running around 7 MHz, wound on a t50-2 toroid. power supply is just a wall wart i had laying around, regulated 12v but maybe thats the issue? i havent put it in a box yet either, everything is just sitting on a piece of copper clad with the components tacked down. i measured about 80mV of ripple on the supply rail which seems like a lot but im not sure what the threshold should be for this kind of circuit. any ideas where to start chasing this down?

ok so ive been licensed for about 3 months now (technician) and i finally got a decent HT, a Baofeng UV-5R that my buddy gave me. i can hear people talking on what i think is the local 146.940 repeater just fine but when i key up nobody responds and i dont hear my own audio come back through. did some reading and apparently i need to set something called a CTCSS tone? but i have no idea what tone to use or where to even find that info for my area. also not sure if theres something called an offset i need to worry about too. honestly the manual for this radio is pretty terrible so any help would be great. been feeling kinda dumb about this for a few weeks now lol

oh man that is very relatable, my first time on a repeater i keyed up and just said my callsign and then completely blanked on what to say next. just dead air for like 5 seconds before i managed to squeak out my grid square. the guy who answered me was an elmer type, super chill about it, walked me through the whole exchange. i still cringe thinking about it but honestly everyone on 2m around here has been nothing but helpful to new folks. dont sweat the baofeng thing either, plenty of people start with one, just get something better when you can

i just zip tied mine to a RAM ball mount stuck to the center console lip with the adhesive base. been in there two years and hasn't moved. probably not the cleanest solution but works fine for me and no holes anywhere. the FT-7900 is pretty light so it holds ok

honestly the General exam is not that much harder than Tech, maybe slightly more involved on the theory side but nothing crazy. i used HamStudy exclusively and passed first try, just did like 15-20 minutes on my phone whenever i had a spare moment, lunch breaks commuting whatever. the question pool isnt enormous and once youve seen most of the questions a few times it starts clicking. the regs stuff i actually found easier than expected because a lot of it is just common sense once you understand the band plan. the electronics questions like the reactance and impedance ones tripped me up at first but there are only so many of them and the math is not that brutal if you just memorize the formulas. give yourself like 3-4 weeks and youll be fine, especially if you already passed Tech without too much trouble

this is really interesting to read as someone whos only been licensed about a year and just joined my local ARES group. i havent been through a full exercise yet, just the orientation stuff. the part about freelancing on the air is something i worry about honestly — like i dont want to be that guy but im also not 100% sure ill know the right call in the moment when things are actually happening is there any good way to get reps in without waiting for the next big drill? asking because our next county exercise isnt until spring

so i finally did it after putting it off for like two years lol. passed the tech exam yesterday at the library session and my callsign just showed up in the FCC database this morning, way faster than i expected. anyway i grabbed my baofeng (yeah yeah i know) and managed to hit the local 2m repeater tonight and actually had a real qso with some guy named Larry who was super patient with me fumbling through my first exchange. i was so nervous i forgot my grid square when he asked and had to look it up on my phone while keying up which was pretty embarrassing. but it counted right? that was a real contact. im still kind of in shock that it actually worked and people could hear me. what do you guys remember about your very first qso, was it as nerve wracking for yall?

yeah you can absolutely apply once you hit 100 confirmed, you dont need to wait for more than that to submit. then every time you want to add more entities you just submit an endorsement application — so like when you get to 150 confirmed you apply for the 150 sticker, then 200 and so on. the ARRL makes it pretty straightforward through their awards portal if most of your confirmations are on LoTW, you basically just request the credit online and they tally it up. on the WAS question i'd say go for both honestly, they dont really interfere with each other that much. WAS is mostly about patience with a few tricky states like ND and some of the less populated ones. i worked on both simultaneously for a while and it was fine. the one thing id say is dont burn yourself out trying to chase everything at once — pick a goal for the month and focus there. DXCC first makes sense since it sounds like you're already fired up about it.

so ive been on HF for about 8 months now and just starting to really get into chasing DX and i gotta say the whole cluster spotting thing is a bit overwhelming at first. i use QRZ a lot already for lookups obviously but i only recently figured out you can set up an alert thing on there and also watch spots come in. then someone on a local net mentioned DXwatch and i went and checked that out too. my question is basically are people using both of these at the same time or do you just pick one? i have them both open in browser tabs and sometimes the same spot shows up on both but sometimes one has something the other doesnt. also is there a way to filter by band on dxwatch because right now im seeing spots for 160m and stuff which i cant even use yet, just feels like a lot of noise in the feed. also tangentially — is the dx sherpa app worth bothering with or is that kind of overkill for someone like me who's just trying to work a few new entities here and there. appreciate any thoughts

same boat as you were a few months ago lol. what helped me was just keeping a little cheat sheet next to the radio and whenever i heard something i didnt recognize i'd look it up after. after a while they just kind of stick. QRP is another big one, means low power operation, like under 5 watts. theres whole groups dedicated to QRP operating. also 73 isnt technically a Q code but everyone says it and it just means best regards or basically goodbye. and 88 means love and kisses which you hear some people use but not super common. dont stress about memorizing all of them at once

im pretty new to all this but i just finished my ARES sign-up and our EC actually gave us a recommended list which i can share if you want. one thing he kept emphasizing was having a printed ICS-213 message form or whatever the served agency uses, because not every place will have them and showing up ready makes you look way more professional apparently. i havent done a real activation yet so take my advice with a grain of salt but the go-kit class i took said to test everything together before you need it, like actually set it all up in your yard and run it for a few hours. that way you find out your power connector is slightly loose or whatever before its an actual emergency.

the gateway doesn't need anyone sitting there, most of them run 24/7 unattended on a dedicated machine. your message goes from your radio to the RMS, the RMS forwards it to the CMS (that's the central server Winlink runs), and from there it gets routed to wherever - either another ham's Winlink inbox or out to the internet as actual email. so the store and forward happens at the CMS level mostly, not really on the gateway itself. for your connection issue - what mode are you trying, VARA HF or VARA FM or Winmor? if there's an RMS near you on VHF that'd be way easier to test with first since you dont have to worry about propagation being the problem. also double check your dial frequency vs the center frequency thing in VARA, thats tripped up a lot of people. the waterfall in VARA should show the other station's signal when it responds, if you're not seeing anything at all in the waterfall then either the gateway isnt hearing you or something with your audio routing is off.

yeah i was in the same boat not that long ago tbh. i just stayed on 2m and 70cm for the first few months while i sorted it out, nothing wrong with that. the repeater scene in most areas is pretty active and you learn a lot just operating before worrying about HF access one thing i'll say is dont stress too much about accidentally doing something wrong when you're just starting out and asking questions like this — the FCC isnt sitting there waiting to pounce on a new tech who made an honest mistake. obvious stuff like broadcasting music or encrypted transmissions or operating without ID'ing, that's where people actually get in trouble

so ive been licensed for about 8 months now, got my general last spring and been mostly doing local repeater stuff and a little HF when the bands cooperate. A guy at my club mentioned ARES and said i should come to the next meeting but honestly i dont really know what i'm walking into. like is it super formal? do i need specific gear already? i dont have a go-bag or anything set up yet and i'm a little worried i'll show up and everyone will be way more experienced and i'll just be sitting there lost. also i read somewhere that RACES is a separate thing from ARES? or are they basically the same in practice? my county seems to have both listed on the ARRL site but i can't figure out if i should join one or the other or if they kind of overlap. any help appreciated, i just dont want to walk in completely clueless