Steve Wilson

the smith chart question pool is like 4 or 5 questions out of the whole exam so dont let that scare you off. i just memorized the specific answers for those and moved on, never fully understood what i was looking at honestly and i still passed. the rest of the advanced theory like filter poles and transistor biasing is actually kind of interesting once you get into it, at least i thought so.
one thing i will say is if you do any contesting the extra subbands are worth having just to not deal with the pile of generals parked right at the edge of the band during a contest weekend. that alone sold me on it.

so ive been studying for like two months and passed my tech exam last week and i finally just keyed up on the local 2m repeater yesterday afternoon and said my callsign and asked if anyone was around and this guy came back to me immediately and we chatted for like 20 minutes about nothing really, just weather and how long ive had my license and stuff
i know its just a local repeater contact and nothing crazy but man it felt like a huge deal. my hands were literally shaking when i picked up the mic. the guy on the other end was super patient with me, i fumbled my callsign twice lol. anyway just wanted to post somewhere because my wife thinks im a nerd and doesnt really get why this is exciting

yeah the Q codes go back to like pre-WWII maritime and telegraph days so theres a ton of them but honestly you only really need maybe a dozen or so for everyday ham use. the ones youll hear constantly on HF phone are QRM which is interference from other stations, QRN is natural noise like static from storms, QSB is when your signal is fading in and out, QSY just means change frequency, QTH is your location, and QSL means acknowledged or confirmed which is also why we send those cards. QRZ is asking whos calling or sometimes people use it wrong to mean calling CQ which drives some folks crazy. on CW and digital modes you get way more of them because its faster to send three letters than a whole word. the abbreviations like OM just means old man which is honestly just how hams refer to any other male operator regardless of age, YL is young lady but again any female operator, DE is from in the sense of this is such-and-such station calling. 73 means best regards and 88 is love and kisses which you mostly hear between ops who know each other. you pick most of it up just by listening, honestly a few weeks of casual monitoring and it starts clicking. there are reference pages online too, ARRL has one i think

yeah VARA is definitely the way to go if you already paid for it, performance is way better than Winmor especially on a noisy HF path. the free version of VARA is speed-limited but still works for basic stuff, the paid version just gets you faster throughput which matters if youre sending anything with attachments.
one thing that got me when i first set this up — make sure Winlink Express actually has the right COM port selected for PTT if youre using that method. i spent like an hour troubleshooting a connection issue once and it turned out the software was trying to key a port that didnt exist anymore after i changed USB cables and windows reassigned it. also worth looking at the gateway activity log in the software, it shows you more detail about where exactly the connection is failing.

hey welcome to the hobby, good questions and dont worry youre definitely not the only new ham who's been confused by this stuff.
so the CTCSS tone -- you only need it on transmit in most cases. the tone tells the repeater to open up its squelch and let your signal through. on the receive side your radio can use a tone to filter out transmissions that dont have the matching tone but on most repeaters thats not how its set up, the machine just opens for anyone hitting it with the right tone. so yeah just TX tone and youre good.
as for the courtesy beep, if youre not hearing it at all it might mean your signal isnt quite making it into the machine cleanly, could be you're a bit low power or there's some terrain in the way. try bumping up to high power if you havent already and see if that changes anything. the baofeng high power setting isnt amazing but it can help at the edges of coverage.
and the linked network thing -- thats probably something like EchoLink or maybe IRLP or even Allstar. some clubs connect their repeater to other repeaters or internet gateways on scheduled nights, usually you'd hear an announcement tone or something different when it connects. worth asking at your next club meeting which system they use, pretty cool once you figure it out because you can talk to guys hundreds of miles away through your HT.

the mars mod is pretty standard stuff, been doing that on various radios for years. what i'd actually look at on the 7300 if you want a real performance upgrade is the receive antenna port — running a separate rx antenna through there for HF can make a noticeable difference depending on your noise floor situation. not a hardware mod exactly but it changes how the radio performs quite a bit. worth experimenting with if youre on a noisy lot like most of us are anymore.

so ive been listening on 40m a lot lately and people keep throwing around all these weird codes like QRM and QSB and QTH and i kind of get some of them from context but not really. is there like a master list somewhere or do people just memorize them over time? also some guys on the repeater use abbreviations too like 73 and 88 and someone said something about OM and YL and i had no clue what they were talking about. i feel like everyone just assumes you already know this stuff when youre new

so ive been listening on 40m a lot lately and people keep throwing around all these weird codes like QRM and QSB and QTH and i kind of get some of them from context but not really. is there like a master list somewhere or do people just memorize them over time? also some guys on the repeater use abbreviations too like 73 and 88 and someone said something about OM and YL and i had no clue what they were talking about. i feel like everyone just assumes you already know this stuff when youre new

same boat here, just got my technician a few months ago and put a UV-5R in the car first then upgraded to a proper mobile. the external speaker thing is real, my elmer told me about it right away. i think i paid like $30 for some random one off amazon and it works fine mounted on the a-pillar.
one thing i noticed too is the mag mount placement makes a difference for noise, like if its too close to the cab you get more wind buffeting around it. i moved mine back a few inches and it got a little better but yeah external speaker fixed most of my issues

so i just got my technician license a few months ago and ive been listening a lot before actually transmitting much. i notice some people use the NATO phonetic alphabet like alpha bravo charlie etc and some people just... say their callsign normally? like just say the letters? im confused about when youre supposed to use one vs the other. is there a rule about it or is it just preference. my callsign has some letters that sound alike so maybe thats relevant but i dont really know when to bother spelling it out phonetically vs just saying it fast

Has anyone noticed significant frequency drift on AO-73's linear transponder during high temperature passes? I've been tracking the passband shift with my SDR and noticed it can be up to 15 kHz higher than nominal when the satellite is in full sun illumination.
According to the documentation, low temperatures give higher frequencies, but I'm seeing the opposite behavior during my passes. Using a FUNcube Dongle Pro+ with the dashboard software, and my manual Doppler correction seems off by several kHz during peak thermal cycles.
Anyone else experiencing this? Would love to compare notes on thermal behavior vs transponder frequency stability.

Your 7300 will work great for general class, no worries there. As for bands, yeah 20m is popular for good reason - it's open during the day and you can work DX pretty easily. But dont ignore 40m and 80m either, especially 40m which is good both day and night. 15m can be amazing when the solar cycle cooperates but its been pretty quiet lately. I'd say start with 20m and 40m, then branch out from there once you get comfortable.