Emily Johnson

Yes, you need to provide proof of identity to get your certificate. For US hams it's pretty straightforward - just mail a copy of your license. Once ARRL processes it (takes about a week), you'll get your certificate file and can start uploading contacts.

i just passed mine like two months ago so i remember exactly how you feel lol. i used hamstudy and also watched some youtube videos by a guy called Ham Radio Crash Course which helped me understand the concepts instead of just memorizing answers. i think i studied for about three weeks, not every day but most days. the actual test felt way less scary than the practice ones for some reason. just keep doing practice exams until you're consistently hitting like 85 percent or better and youll be fine. oh and bring a calculator just in case even though i barely needed it

yeah this trips up a lot of new generals honestly. so the FCC part 97 allocation is the legal line — for general class on 40m phone youre allowed from 7.225 up to 7.300 MHz. that 7.300 is the hard legal edge, you cant transmit above it. but here is the thing about being 'too close to the edge' — your radio's carrier might be at 7.298 or whatever but your actual voice sidebands extend above that. on USB your signal goes up from the carrier frequency so if you're at 7.299 your audio could easily be splashing into 7.301 or beyond which is out of band. most people say stay at least 3 khz below the top edge to be safe, so like 7.297 at the highest for a voice contact. the guy who told you that wasnt being a jerk, 7.290 is actually fine, maybe he just had a chip on his shoulder or thought you were higher than you were. happens.

FlexRadio 6000/8000 series offerings were built from the ground up to be remote controlled and seem to handle internet latency well. Currently running Remote Rig with Kenwood 480HX - control head was at home and worked like I was in front of the radio. Experiencing 200-300ms latency on voice modes over internet connection - acceptable for digital but challenging for phone. Audio has to traverse over remote desktop software, and most prioritize screen traffic over audio. Anyone compare FlexRadio SmartSDR latency vs other solutions?

im kind of in the same boat, maybe a bit behind you actually, sitting around 10wpm right now. but i heard about this thing called the mirror method or something where you listen to faster code than you can copy and just try to get a word here and there without stressing about the rest. havent tried it long enough to know if it works yet but figured id mention it. also someone told me Just Learn Morse Code app has a word recognition mode thats different from the letter by letter stuff which might help. good luck, hope someone here has better advice than me lol

yeah i had the exact same problem when i started lol. for me it turned out i had the offset wrong on top of the tone issue — the repeater input and output are on different frequencies and if you dont have that set right you can hear the repeater just fine but you're transmitting on the wrong frequency. most 2m repeaters are 600khz offset and 70cm is usually 5mhz but double check repeaterbook for the specific one you're trying to hit

nice work getting out there. im still working up the nerve to do mine lol, been a ham for 8 months and keep putting it off. quick question back at you -- did you pre-announce the activation on the SOTA reflector or just show up and wing it? ive seen people do both and wasnt sure if the pre-announcement actually makes a difference for getting chasers

so i upgraded from tech to general back in march and ive been trying to figure out exactly where i can operate on HF. i downloaded part 97 and honestly its a lot to take in. i understand theres band segments for different license classes but the chart i printed out from the arrl website and the actual FCC document seem to say slightly different things or maybe im just reading it wrong. my main question is about 40 meters, like can i use SSB anywhere on 40 or is it just a portion of the band. and also is there anything in part 97 that says i have to ID every 10 minutes even if im just listening to a net and not transmitting. someone at my club told me i dont need to ID if im not transmitting which makes sense but i wanted to double check. also what happens if you accidentally transmit in the wrong part of the band, is that a big deal or does the FCC even care about that stuff for a one time thing

ok so ive been listening to a lot of HF lately and people are throwing around all these weird codes and shortenings and i honestly cant keep up. like QSL, QRM, QRN, QTH, 73, 88, and a bunch of others. i know some of them vaguely but not really. is there like a standard list somewhere or do people just kind of learn them over time by listening? also does everyone use all of them or is it more of an older generation thing? i feel like some of the younger ops i hear on the digital modes dont really use them as much but maybe im wrong. anyway just trying to get a better handle on the whole language of it before i try to get on HF myself

consistent offset in one direction is almost always a GPS datum issue or the radio is somehow pulling a cached position. the D710 has had some quirks where if the GPS loses lock briefly it'll hold the last known position and keep beaconing it even after reacquiring. try doing a full cold start on the GPS and see if it changes anything. also check what your GPRMC sentence looks like if you can — some guys use APRSISCE or another client on a laptop to sniff the actual packets going out and compare the coords to what the radio display says. also worth checking if theres a fill-in digi near you running old firmware, ive seen cases where a digi was injecting bad position data but thats pretty rare and usually causes random scatter not a consistent offset.

i went through basically the exact same thing last year. ended up putting up a 43ft vertical with about 25 radials and yeah the DX improved noticeably, worked a bunch of JA and VK on 40 that i never got on my dipole. but the dipole is honestly still better for everything under like 1500 miles, it just works quieter and the signal reports are more consistent. if you can do it i'd keep both up, thats what im doing now and switching between them depending on what im trying to work.

same here lol. sometimes the bands are just doing something interesting and i dont wanna interupt it by talking. 17m last week had this weird long path opening and i just watched the waterfall for like an hour

yeah the squid pole thing is always a problem on rocky summits, i carry one of those rubber door stops and a small bag i can fill with rocks to guy it out. makes a huge difference. 40m is usually my go-to for SOTA too, way more reliable for shorter distances and theres almost always someone ready to chase. congrats on the first one, it kind of gets addictive fast

so ive been messing around with remote station control for a while now and finally got my main rig accessible via RemoteHams but im wondering if anyone has taken it further and done the SDR side through the same platform or if you ended up just running like a separate SDR server alongside it. my setup is a 7300 at the remote site and i put a rtlsdr dongle on the same machine mostly to use as a panadapter feed but getting that to actually show up cleanly through the remote connection has been kind of a headache also thinking about internet linking for the local repeater club which is a whole different thing but figured maybe someone here has done both and could share how they managed the bandwidth situation because when the SDR is streaming and the rig audio is also going over the same connection things get ugly fast. running about 15mb upload at the remote site which should be enough but apparently isnt lol any thoughts appreciated, esp if youve dealt with the audio sync issues on RemoteHams when theres packet loss

went through this exact thing like 8 months ago. ae7q dot com is your best friend seriously, just go there first before anything else. i spent way too long on ULS trying to figure out whats available when that site just shows you everything in a much more usable way. i ended up getting my vanity on the first try which i was surprised about, applied the day my license went active. the 7th district has a ton of calls if you're flexible about the letter combo you want

Excellent guide! I'd add that flashcards work great - put the letter on one side and the phonetic word on the other. Having new hams practice during net check-ins gives them real-world experience in a supportive environment.

Your IMD at -32dB isn't great but not horrible for casual operation. Too much proc level will make it sound harsh and drive background noise. You want minimal processing to help boost sharpness, then proper drive for good ALC indication. Less is often more with modern rigs.

I just use N1MM for everything including digital contests and honestly never saw the point of Log4OM but I know a lot of guys like it. One thing worth knowing — if you run WSJT-X during something like FD or a state QSO party, you can have both N1MM and WSJT-X open and set WSJT-X to send UDP packets to N1MM on port 2333 or whatever you have N1MM listening on. WSJT-X logs the QSO and N1MM picks it up automatically, no manual import needed. Works pretty well though sometimes the band/mode doesnt come through exactly how N1MM expects it and you get a werid entry that needs fixing.

Focus on Circuit Math (23% of the test), Antenna Theory (19%), and FCC Rules & Regulations (15%). The test consists of 50 questions drawn from a pool of 621. Understanding the logic behind each correct answer makes it easier than memorizing disconnected questions.

good questions and yeah it can be pretty confusing at first. so the sequential process is just what happens automatically when you first get licensed, the FCC assigns you the next available callsign in sequence for your district, no input from you needed. vanity is a totally separate thing you have to actively apply for through the FCC's ULS system. as for timing, you can apply for a vanity call pretty much right away after you get your license, there's no mandatory waiting period that i know of. the 10 year thing your elmer mentioned is about when a callsign becomes available again after the previous holder's license cancels or expires — it used to be 2 years i think but they changed it. honestly the AE7Q website is your best friend for this stuff, it tracks callsign availability and has a really good database you can search. you can see when a call is expected to become available and even set up alerts i believe. whether its worth it kind of depends on how attached you get to your sequential call honestly. some people never bother and others spend months chasing a specific sign. no wrong answer there

yeah the 10m opening has been real, I noticed it Tuesday and worked a few stations down in Brazil with my little vertical and about 50 watts. nothing fancy at all. solar flux has been climbing which probably has a lot to do with it, we're getting closer to the cycle peak so hopefully this keeps up through the fall and winter. on the Icom thing I saw the same post I think, someone was saying it might be aimed at the same market as the 7300 but with some updated DSP stuff. honestly the 7300 is still such a solid radio that I'm not sure what they'd change to make people want to upgrade but I guess we'll see. I'd be curious what the price point ends up being if it's real.

yeah what he said about the inverted V, i had the same problem on my first build and kept trimming and trimming and making it worse lol. also depending on how close your antenna is to the garage roof the capacitive loading from that can pull resonance down too. 25 feet isnt a ton of height for 40m, more height would probably help clean things up. dont give up on it though, even at 3:1 most tuners will handle it fine and the antenna is still radiating

Weight makes a huge difference! I have the N3ZN ZN-QRP, which is built like a tank, but found it was too heavy for field use The IC-7300's keyer is excellent so focus on paddle feel. Start with something mid-range rather than going cheap and regretting it.

Thanks for asking this - I'm in almost the same situation with 70 LoTW and 40 cards! One thing I learned is your DXCC and LoTW accounts must be linked to access the credit matrix. The ARRL will do the linking when you request it after your first application.

just went through this process myself last month and got my 1x3 call. the whole thing was pretty straightforward once i figured out the fcc website. make sure you check the availability on ae7q or radio-locator first because the fcc database isnt always current. took exactly 23 days from application to having the new call show up in the database. definitely worth it though, much easier to give out on phone than my old kc call was