Frank Nakamura

so i finally got around to building a proper 40m dipole instead of just using the end-fed wire ive been running for the past year and a half. cut the elements to roughly 33.5 feet each using some 14 gauge stranded copper i had lying around from an old extension cord job, which i know is maybe not ideal but its what i had. the feedpoint is what im not super confident about. i used a SO-239 chassis connector in a small pvc junction box i got at the hardware store, epoxied the box shut after running the wires through some rubber grommets. seems weather tight but we'll see. the thing is my swr is reading around 1.4:1 at 7.150 which honestly is better than i expected but im wondering if the slight off-center height is messing with things — one end is about 28 feet up tied to the chimney and the other end is maybe 22 feet on a push-up mast so its kind of an inverted V shape but also slanted sideways if that makes sense. is that geometry going to hurt me much on receive? on transmit it seems fine, worked a few stations in the midwest from the northeast with 100w and they were giving me decent reports. just not sure if im leaving performance on the table with the weird angle. also should i be worried about the extension cord wire or is copper basically copper at hf frequencies

Our club is looking to add internet linking capability to our 2-meter repeater. We've been researching both IRLP and EchoLink systems but are having trouble deciding which route to go. The repeater currently serves a rural area with decent internet connectivity at the site. From what I understand, IRLP keeps everything RF-based with their "Keeping the Radio in Amateur Radio" motto, while EchoLink allows both radio links and direct computer/smartphone connections. What are the real-world differences in terms of setup complexity, ongoing maintenance, and user experience?

same boat as you were about a year ago lol. honestly what helped me most was just recording myself sending and listening back, its brutal but you hear exactly where the spacing goes wrong. also Chuck Adams K7QO has free code courses online that really helped me with the rhythm side of things. dont worry too much about the keyer modes yet, thats kind of a rabbit hole

I went the HackRF route instead of SDRplay and kind of regret it for receive-only stuff. the HackRF is cool because tx capable and all that but the receive performance is noticeably worse than even a decent RTL-SDR setup in some situations, higher noise figure and all. if you're just listening the RSP stuff makes more sense. though if you ever want to do any transmit experimenting the HackRF opens up a lot of doors with GNU Radio etc

yeah those two are pulling from overlapping but not identical sources — DXwatch aggregates from the DX Spider network mostly and QRZ has its own cluster feed that includes some of the same nodes but not all of them. the slight delay is totally normal, dont worry about that. you're not doing anything wrong. for filtering on DXwatch, look at the top of the page there should be band filter checkboxes, you can uncheck everything except 20 and 40 and it'll clean up the display a lot. took me forever to find that the first time too. also if you havent tried DX Summit yet (oh3bk.com) thats another good one and its been around forever so a lot of the older elmers still swear by it. once you get a feel for how the clusters work you might also want to look at a proper client like Ham Radio Deluxe or even just telnet into a cluster node directly — thats a bit more advanced but gives you way more control over filters.

As a newcomer I went with the Icom 2730A on my Elmer's recommendation. My Elmer suggested Icom as he thought the programming was a bit less confusing than Yaesu from his experience. Other folks recommended the Kenwood for the same reason. Haven't had any issues and the dual receive is great for monitoring.

Great writeup! I'm curious about your internet bandwidth requirements. What's the minimum upload speed you've found usable at the home station? I'm stuck with rural internet that's pretty limited.

yeah the raw packet thing is the move, been burned by that exact situation before where i thought my path was working and it was just igate magic making it look right on the map. also check if that hilltop digi is actually running WIDE2-2 or if someobdy set it up wrong and its only doing WIDE1-1. ive seen community digis misconfigured and nobody notices for months because most people are close enough that one hop covers them anyway

JS8Call is genuinely worth trying if you want actual QSOs. it runs on top of FT8 basically so the RF performance is similar but not quite as deep into the noise as pure FT8 since its sending text in longer bursts. i run it on 40 and 80m and theres usually activity if you know where to look, 7.078 is the main hangout. its not huge but the people who use it actually want to talk which is refreshing. your IC-7300 will handle it fine, just make sure your audio levels are dialed in same as you would for FT8 and dont overdrive the tx, same deal. PSK31 is still kinda alive but honestly its like finding a payphone. some people use it but you have to hunt around. 14.070 on 20m is where i check occasionally and sometimes theres someone there, sometimes not. if you want to chat digitally and not just exchange grid squares JS8Call is your best bet right now in my opinion.

yeah the e-skip has been really something this week, worked a couple stations in puerto rico on wednesday which i dont usually see from here in ohio. 6 meters really is the magic band, never know what youre gonna get. on the firmware thing, i updated my 705 last weekend and honestly cant tell a huge difference in weak signal receive but i also havent done a proper back to back comparison. the update did fix that annoying thing where the spectrum scope would occasionally freeze up after being on for a few hours, so that alone was worth it to me. i wouldnt stress too much about it, icom has been pretty solid with their updates, havent had one brick anything yet.

ok so ive been listening on 40m for a few weeks now and people throw around all these codes and shortened words and i honestly have no idea what half of them mean. like i hear QSL, QRM, QRZ, QTH all the time and i sort of figured out QSL means like... confirmed? and QTH is location maybe? but then sometimes people say 73 at the end of a contact and i dont know if thats a code or just someones number or what. also heard someone say OM and YL during a roundtable and had no clue what was happening. is there like a master list somewhere or do you just pick this up over time. feels like everyone else just knows this stuff already and im missing something obvious

I used the ARRL Ham Radio License Manual with their Exam Review system - study chapter by chapter, then take practice exams. The explanations really helped me understand Ohm's Law and antenna basics rather than just cramming answers. Took me about 3 weeks of 30 minutes daily.