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

yeah the message traffic thing is no joke. our group ran into exactly that same wall a while back. everyone can handle a few radiograms in a comfortable meeting room but throw in some stress and a realistic pace and suddenly the format goes out the window. we actually started running what we call a "traffic sprint" at the end of every monthly meeting now — basically someone plays net control and just fires messages at people as fast as reasonable for about 15 minutes. no stakes, just reps. it's helped a lot with people getting the muscle memory down so they're not thinking so hard about the form when things get hectic. the frequency assignment thing is such a classic problem too. we eventually moved to laminated cards that get handed out physically at the activation point. if it's not in their hand they won't have it when it matters. email is basically useless for that stuff in my experience, people file it away and forget.

yeah get lotw sorted out first before anything else, that's the main thing. i waited way too long to do that and lost credit for a bunch of contacts because the other station wasnt logging paper cards anymore. the setup process is annoying but you only do it once. for what its worth i went after WAS first just because it felt more achievable when i was new and domestic contacts are generally easier to get confirmed. DXCC kind of built up on its own while i was doing that. WAZ i actually still havent finished and ive been licensed 6 years so dont feel bad if that one takes a while

so ive been running SSB on 40m mostly, sometimes 20m, and i keep getting reports that my audio sounds like im talking through a pillow or something. running an IC-7300 into a dipole, nothing fancy. i went through and set the TX bandwidth to around 2.4kHz which i thought was reasonable, mic gain is sitting around 50% and i have the compression off because somebody told me compression was bad. speech processor is off too. the thing is i can hear myself in the monitor and it sounds fine to me, but every third or fourth contact somebody will mention my audio is muddy or hard to copy. one guy said i sound like im in a barrel which i thought was kinda funny but also frustrating. ive messed with the bass and treble on the radio a little bit but im not really sure what im doing there. is there some kind of baseline EQ setting people use for voice on SSB that actually works? or is this more of a mic placement thing

did this mod on mine maybe 8 months ago and honestly it was fine, the disassembly is a bit tedious but nothing scary if you've ever worked inside a modern rig before. the screws on the bottom panel are the annoying part, you have to be careful not to strip them. the diode itself is tiny so you need decent magnification and a fine tip iron. the broadcast band thing is real but so is the overload issue. without an attenuator or some kind of preselector in front of it you'll get intermod on strong local AM stations, i have a 50kw station about 12 miles from me and it just bleeds into everything below about 4MHz. slapped a 20dB pad in and it cleans up pretty good. above that it's actually pretty usable for utility monitoring, VOLMET and stuff like that comes in clean. whether that justifies voiding your warranty is a different question and only you can answer that one.

dude just get a cheap paddle from ebay and try it out, you can always sell it if you hate it. i was the same way when i started but honestly the difference is huge especially once you get above 20wpm or so

The center of a vehicle roof is considered the best for mobile antenna placement. Drilling a hole for a permanent installation in the center of the roof is considered the cleanest and best method, provided the roof is metal. However, if clearance is an issue, fender mounts work reasonably well - just expect some directional pattern distortion.

yeah the igate question is easy — go to aprs.fi, search for the igate callsign, and look at the raw packets tab. if nothing is showing up in the last hour or two it's probably down. you can also check aprs2.net and look at the server stats, sometimes you can see which igates have been heard recently depending on how the data is aggregated. and yes absolutely set up direwolf on a pi, i've been running mine for like two years now as a receive-only igate and it's rock solid. just get a cheap RTL-SDR or even a baofeng with a cable into the pi's audio in and you're most of the way there. the direwolf docs are actually really good, bob bruninga wrote that software for a reason. main thing is get your PPM offset dialed in if you go the SDR route or you'll have decode issues.

You should not set your transmit frequency to be exactly at the edge of an amateur band or sub-band to allow for calibration error, modulation sidebands, and frequency drift. I usually start around 14.160 and avoid the DX window around 14.200-14.230 unless I'm working serious DX.

just upgraded myself a few months ago and had the exact same confusion. the chart on the ARRL website actually helped me more than the FCC part 97 tables which are kind of dense to read through. also worth knowing that 7.290 is kind of informally used for AM on 40m so if you stumble onto a bunch of AM stations down there thats why, they wont bite but it can be surprising if you dont know

so ive been messing with remote station stuff for about 6 months now and honestly im kind of at a crossroads. currently running a shack at my parents place about 90 miles out, got a decent antenna situation there (40m dipole, a vertical for 20 and up) and ive been using RCForb through RemoteHams to connect in. works okay most of the time but theres always this latency thing that bugs me when im trying to work CW, like even 150ms is enough to throw off my rhythm and i end up having to slow way down. the SDR remote side of things is interesting to me — ive been reading about guys using SDRplay or an Airspy at the remote end feeding into SDR-Console or even just SDRuno over the internet and the receive quality is genuinely impressive compared to the compressed audio RCForb pushes through. but then you still need something for transmit which means youre running two separate systems basically. anyone here actually done a hybrid setup like that? where you use an SDR for monitoring/receive and then have the actual rig controlled separately for TX? seems clunky but the RX audio quality difference is noticeable. or am i just overthinking this and should stick with what works even if the audio isnt pristine. also wondering if the RemoteHams server infrastructure is reliable enough for serious contesting or if people generally roll their own VPN + hamlib type setup for that