Frank Nakamura

yeah i did something similar on mine probably three years ago. the fan mod is worth doing if you're running PSK or FT8 for any length of time, the stock fan is pretty anemic. i ended up just sourcing a 12v fan from an old PC power supply that had the right form factor, wasnt an exact match for CFM but its quieter and moves more air so thats a win. the only annoying part was figuring out the connector, i think i just cut and spliced rather than trying to find the exact JST header. one thing i did notice after the TX mod is that ALC behavior felt slightly different on some frequencies outside the ham bands, not sure if thats just in my head or an actual thing. on the ham bands it behaves totally normally. might be worth keeping an eye on your power output if youre transmitting anywhere outside normal freqs, not that youre doing that of course

Just got my first Baofeng UV-5R and I'm having trouble accessing my local repeater. I can hear the repeater output perfectly, but when I try to key up, nothing happens. According to the manual, the repeater uses a 146.2 Hz CTCSS tone, but I can't get it to work. I've programmed the offset correctly (+600 kHz) and tried both encode and encode/decode settings. Is there something basic I'm missing here? The repeater is W5XYZ on 146.940 MHz if that helps. Any advice would be appreciated!

You can even make paddles from paperclips, wood blocks, and scrap parts - I've seen some amazing homebrew keys! But honestly, for your first paddle, get something commercially made with good reviews. The muscle memory you develop early is important, so having consistent, reliable contacts matters more than fancy materials.

i just passed mine like two months ago so this is fresh. hamstudy.org was really all i used tbh, did maybe an hour a day for like two and a half weeks and felt ready. the practice exams on there are formatted exactly like the real thing which helped a lot mentally. one thing i wish someone told me — when you show up to the exam session it goes way faster than you expect. i think i finished in like 12 minutes. so dont psych yourself out about it

congrats on the Japan contact, that's a great first DX. ok so here's the basic rundown as i understand it after 20+ years doing this. LoTW is the Logbook of the World run by the ARRL and yes you basically upload a digitally signed log file and when both sides upload the same contact it automatically confirms. it's what most serious DX chasers and contest operators use because it counts toward DXCC and a bunch of other awards. the setup is a little annoying at first because you have to get a certificate from the ARRL and it takes a few days, but once its set up its pretty painless. you just export from your logging software and upload. eQSL is kind of a different beast, it's easier to use honestly but youre right that it doesnt count toward DXCC. some people use it just for the fun of it, you can actually get a nice looking digital card which is cool especially if you design your own. not useless, just different purpose. physical cards are definitely not dead, plenty of DX stations still love them and if you ever want a paper confirmation for your shack wall theyre great. you can send direct to the other op with a self addressed envelope and return postage, or go through the bureau which is cheaper but takes forever sometimes like a year or more. for your Japan contact id say get LoTW set up first since the other op mentioned it, that'll be your most useful confirmation for awards down the road

yeah the clusters are all kind of interconnected but DXwatch and the QRZ spot page are pulling from the same underlying DX Spider network more or less, so youll see a lot of the same spots but sometimes with slightly different delays depending on which node is feeding the site. the age of spots is always the tricky thing — 10-15 minutes is pretty normal honestly, especially on the more popular bands where stuff gets spotted and then everyone piles on and the DX station just gets buried. what helps me is using something like DX Toolkit or even just the cluster filter on DXwatch to narrow down to specific bands or modes so youre not scrolling through a wall of 40m SSB spots when youre looking for 17m CW or whatever. also some of the phone apps like DX Patrol or Ham Radio Deluxe have cluster integration that can push notifications to you which is nice when youre not sitting in front of the radio. once you get your general youll be ready to jump in, the workflow really does click pretty fast once youre actually in a pileup a few times

congrats on the first one, that feeling when the pileup hits is something else isn't it. for spotting, most people i know do both -- post an alert on SOTAwatch the night before with your expected summit time, then self-spot when you're actually set up and on freq. that way chasers can plan around you and you're not sitting there calling CQ into the void for 20 mins like you described. the alerts don't have to be exact, just a rough window and your planned bands. for logging on android a lot of people swear by SOTA Goat but i think thats iOS only actually. on android i've heard good things about a couple options but honestly half the guys i've seen on summits are just using a paper log and entering it into the database when they get home. nothing wrong with that, especially when you're also trying to manage the radio and antenna and not fall off a ridge

so ive been running FT8 for about two years now and honestly its great for what it is, racking up contacts, chasing DX when the band opens up for like 20 minutes on 17m and you just barely snag a ZL or whatever. but it's starting to feel a little hollow if im being honest. like youre not really talking to anyone, just exchanging signal reports and grid squares and moving on. a buddy of mine at the club keeps pushing JS8Call and i downloaded it a few months ago but never really sat down and figured it out properly. the interface confused me at first and i kind of gave up. but lately ive been thinking about it again especially for those times when the band is marginal and PSK31 would be useless but you still want to actually send a message to someone rather than just log a contact. my question is basically — is JS8Call actually usable for real qsos or is it more of a novelty thing. and how does the decode sensitivity compare to FT8 in practice, not just on paper. i run an IC-7300 into a fan dipole up about 35 feet, nothing special, and im mostly on 40 and 20m. curious what people who actually use it regularly think.

Had the same issue until I read the part about starting Soundmodem before RMS Packet, with VARA FM started automatically by RMS Packet. Also critical to set proper delays in Windows task scheduler. Worth checking your power settings too - USB ports powering off can cause issues.

Definitely worth getting a vanity! I'd suggest using sites like RadioQTH or AE7Q to check availability before applying. The 1x3 N callsigns are popular because the suffix works well as initials. Don't feel pressured to use all 25 slots - I got my call with just 8 choices on my list.

had almost the exact same symptoms on mine about a year ago, turned out to be the RF input relay. those small signal relays that switch between the antenna and the internal attenuator/preamp path can get flaky, and when they do the receive tanks but tx is routed differently so it still looks fine. icom used a pretty standard relay there, nothing exotic. you can actualy hear it click when you key up if you listen close. the way i confirmed it was to probe the relay contacts with the radio in receive mode and wiggle the board slightly near that area — got intermittent noise changes which pointed right at it. if youre comfortable with SMD rework it's not a terrible job to replace, just takes patience and a decent iron. if not, icom service centers know this failure and it shouldnt be a huge repair bill. worth calling around for a quote before you dig in yourself.

For what it's worth, I've been running my IC-2730A for two years now with 10AWG wire direct to battery and it's been rock solid. The radio manual specifies the current draw - mine pulls about 13 amps on high power. Don't forget the inline fuse near the battery terminal!

so ive been a Tech for about two years now and mostly just doing VHF/UHF stuff on my local repeaters and some APRS. lately ive been really curious about HF and all the guys at my club keep telling me to just go get my General already. i started looking at the question pool and honestly some of it looks pretty intimidating, especially the electrical stuff and the propagation questions. i dont have an engineering background or anything, im just a regular guy who got into this hobby during the pandemic. i guess my question is how long did it take you guys to feel ready for the General exam and is there a good way to study for it or do i just need to memorize the whole question pool? also is there anything specific about the HF privileges that i should know before i even bother, like is it worth the hassle for what you get access to. sorry if this is a vague question im just not sure what i dont know yet if that makes sense

what coax you running to that mag mount? because thats where i'd look first. those whips usually come with RG-58 which at 2m is gonna eat a couple db before you even get started, especially if the run is long or its an old cable with any moisture in it. i replaced the coax on my setup and it made a noticeable difference on marginal paths. also where exactly is the mag mount sitting on the vehicle matters a lot more than people think. dead center of the roof is ideal but most people stick it wherever is convenient and then wonder why the pattern is messed up. anyway worth checking those basics before spending money on a new antenna.

i was in the exact same spot about eight months ago and ended up with the Baofeng UV-5R just because it was $25 and i wasnt sure if i'd even stick with the hobby. it worked fine for getting started, heard everything on the repeater, people could hear me ok. but i did eventually swap to a Yaesu FT-70DR and its just... nicer? the dual watch actually works the way you'd expect, the battery lasts way longer, and it does C4FM digital which some repeaters around here are moving to so i guess my take is if you're pretty sure you're gonna stay active maybe just go for something mid-range now instead of buying twice like i did

I went to my first hamfest last year and it was overwhelming but awesome! Bring a cart or wagon if you can - learned that the hard way carrying a heavy antenna tuner across the parking lot.

hey welcome to the hobby first of all. so the CTCSS thing -- you only need to set the transmit tone, not a receive tone, at least for most repeaters. the receive tone (sometimes called DCS or just squelch tone) is only for filtering out the audio on your end if you dont want to hear every kerchunk, but it wont affect whether the repeater hears you. so if you have 100.0 set on your TX you should be good there. one thing that trips up a lot of people with baofengs is the menu system is kind of a nightmare and sometimes the tone gets set in one memory channel but not the one you're actually using. worth double checking that the tone is saved to the actual channel you're transmitting on and not just set globally or whatever. as for getting on -- yeah just key up, say your callsign, and maybe something like "[your call] listening" or "monitoring" and see if anyone comes back. some repeaters are just quiet a lot of the time though, doesnt mean youre doing anything wrong. try it a few times at different times of day, evenings tend to be more active around here at least.

so ive been messing around with remote station control for about 6 months now and im at the point where i need to decide whether to just commit to RemoteHams or keep hacking together my own thing with a raspberry pi and some VoIP stuff. right now i've got a pretty basic setup — IC-7300 at the shack, a cheap ubiquiti router for the link back to the house, and im using a mix of rigctld and some custom scripts a buddy wrote for me. it works maybe 70% of the time which honestly isnt good enough when i want to jump on a pileup. the RemoteHams SDR remote side of things is what im really curious about. ive read the docs and watched a couple videos but i cant quite tell if the audio latency is actually usable for SSB or if its more of a listen-only/CW kind of deal in practice. the website makes it sound great obviously but i want to hear from people actually running it day to day. also does anyone know how the internet linking side plays with something like AllStar or is that a totally different animal

so ive been messing around with LEO sat work for a few months now, started with the easy FM birds like SO-50 just to get the hang of passes and the doppler thing, and i finally decided to try one of the linear transponder birds, specifically AO-73 since i keep hearing its pretty active. my problem is i can hear the downlink fine on 145.935 or wherever it is at the start of the pass, got my FT-817 and a handheld yagi, but when i transmit on the uplink i either hear nothing come back down or i completely stomp on other guys who are already working the transponder. i know you have to tune around and compensate for doppler on both ends which is where i think im losing it — im trying to do it manually and it just feels like chasing my tail the whole time. is there a simpler way to set this up without a full station and rotor system? ive seen people work these things with just handheld yagis so i know its possible, im just clearly missing something fundamental about how to manage the tuning. also not sure if my uplink power is too high, i read somewhere you should barely tickle the transponder but i dont know what that actually means in watts.

hamstudy.org is honestly all you need if your main goal is just passing the exam. i didnt even crack a book, spent maybe two weeks doing the flash cards every night for like 20-30 minutes and passed with a pretty comfortable margin. the site tracks which questions you keep getting wrong and focuses on those which is really helpful. the electrical theory questions are kind of annoying but there arent that many of them and once you see the same ones cycle through a few times you just kind of memorize the answers anyway. dont stress too much about actually understanding every single thing, you can dig deeper into the theory stuff after you get your callsign if you want to. the pool only has 35 questions on the actual test so the odds are pretty manageable once youve gone through everything a couple times

the QCX mini is such a solid first build, good choice. im jealous you got it working first try, mine had a cold solder joint on the toroids that took me forever to find lol. midwest from the northeast on 40m at 5w is genuinely not bad at all, id call that a success. on the battery question i dont have a ton of data but i switched to a bigger 5ah pack and just stopped worrying about it honestly. probably not the most elegant solution but it works for a day out

Running 100 feet of extension cord helps tremendously - keeps the RFI source well away from your antenna field. Also try a big snap-on ferrite core (mix 31) around the entire AC cord right at the power supply input. Sometimes the generator case itself needs grounding to your station ground.

Maybe unpopular opinion but I think we need ARRL more than ever for spectrum defense. Yeah the dues sting but who else is going to represent us in DC when the cellular companies come knocking?

yeah the split setup is pretty much what most people end up doing honestly. N1MM is just built for contesting in a way that nothing else really matches, the function key macros and the way it handles multipliers and the rate display are all kind of optimized for that specific use case. Log4OM is excellent software but its not really trying to be a contest logger first for the WSJT-X thing, N1MM doesnt directly integrate with WSJT-X the same way Log4OM does, what most people do is run WSJT-X logging to its own ADIF file and then import that seperately after the contest if any of those contacts count. during a phone or CW contest youre probably not running FT8 anyway so it might not even matter for your situation the ADIF import into Log4OM after the contest works fine, ive been doing it for years, just watch for dupes if youre importing into a log that already has some of those calls from other operating

ran both for a couple years at my old QTH before i moved and honestly the answer is annoyingly it depends. my inverted-V was about the same height as yours and it was great for regional stuff out to maybe 1000 miles, really solid signals, easy to tune, no fuss. the vertical i had was a homebrew quarter wave with 16 elevated radials at about 4 feet off the ground and yeah it did seem to punch a bit better into europe at the lower angles but the difference wasnt like night and day, more like one or two S units on a good path. the radial thing is real though. i tried running mine with just 4 radials first and it was noticeably worse, more loss, tuner was unhappy, the whole thing. went to 16 and it cleaned right up. if you cant do elevated radials properly id honestly just keep the dipole and maybe try getting it up higher if thats possible. every 5-10 feet of additional height helps more than people think on an inverted-V.