Ahmed Hassan

so ive been messing around with a pi 4 i had sitting in a drawer and i got direwolf running on it last week, got it connected to my kenwood TM-V71A through a cheap sabrent usb audio interface. its actually working as an igate now which is kind of cool but i want to take it further. the thing is i want to add some automation to it — like have it monitor a few frequencies and maybe trigger some relay outputs based on certain conditions. i was thinking of wiring up an arduino uno to the pi over serial and using the arduino to handle the actual GPIO switching so i dont have to worry about the pi's 3.3v pins doing something dumb to my radio equipment. anyone done something like this or am i overcomplicating it. also the audio levels going into direwolf are kind of all over the place, not sure if its the soundcard or the cable i made. using a standard 6-pin mini din to 3.5mm setup, nothing fancy.

so ive been a ham for about 3 years now and keep telling myself ill get a proper go-kit together and then never do it. last month we had a pretty bad storm come through and our local ARES group got activated and i showed up with basically... my HT and a half dead battery pack. embarrassing honestly. so im actually doing it this time. i picked up an old Pelican-style case at a surplus store and have a Yaesu FT-891 i was thinking of using as the main rig since its pretty compact and does HF plus i already own it. my question is more about the power side of things — do most people go with a dedicated LiFePO4 battery or just a big AGM? i was looking at a 20ah LiFePO4 from Bioenno but the price kinda hurts. also do you guys keep your go-kit fully assembled and ready to go or do you break it down between activations? i feel like if its broken down i'll never actually grab it in time any advice from people who actually use theirs in the field appreciated, not just theoretical setups

I went through the same decision a couple years back. Ended up getting the RSP1B and don't regret it but I'll be honest, the first week I was like did I actually spend this money for this. Took a while to figure out the gain settings and IF bandwidth stuff before it started really shining. One thing nobody told me was that you really want a decent bandpass filter upstream if you're doing HF work, even with the RSP1B. I had an AM broadcast station about 8 miles away and it was just stomping all over everything until I slapped a highpass filter on the coax. After that it was like a completely different radio. If you're set on shortwave and utility monitoring I think it's worth it but budget maybe another 20 bucks for some filtering too or you might be disappointed at first.

the two K3s route is a good call if you go that way, the filtering on those is tight enough that you can run them closer together without as many desense issues compared to mixing radio brands. i tried mixing a K3 with an FTDX101 for a while and getting the audio levels and keying delays matched up was kind of a pain. one thing i'd add — dont underestimate just getting your SO1R rate up first. a lot of people jump to SO2R thinking its going to fix rate problems that are really antenna or operating technique problems. like if youre only doing 80 qsos an hour SO1R, adding a second radio isnt magically going to double that, you gotta fix the fundamentals first. work on your exchange timing, your CQ rhythm, knowing when to move vs stay on a run frequency. those things transfer directly and they're honestly more impactful than most hardware changes.

I used the IZ2UUF Koch CW app on Android - it's fantastic and free. Best feature is it speaks letters after playing code so you don't watch the screen, completely hands-free, helping you hear letter sounds not individual dits and dahs. Made my commute productive!

yeah the 450D receiver is decent for casual use but once you put it next to anything with a roofing filter setup it starts to show its limitations. i ran one for about 2 years before moving to an 7300 and the difference on 40 was pretty stark, especially late evening when the eu stations start rolling in and the band just gets absolutely packed. the ATU thing is a known issue, icom just never made it that aggressive, its more of a convenience tuner for antennas that are close to resonant. i run mine into a manual tuner for anything sketchy impedance wise. also the fan — yeah its audible, some people do a fan mod or just live with it. doesnt bother me after a while honestly, brain just tunes it out. good pickup at 800, those things hold value pretty well

so i decided to finally go for my technician license after years of just being interested in radio stuff. bought a couple books and downloaded the hamstudy app but honestly im kind of overwhelmed by how much there is. like i get that you need to know the question pool but some of this stuff about ohms law and antenna theory feels like a lot for someone who hasnt done any electrical stuff since high school maybe is there a specific order i should be studying in or do most people just go through the question pool and memorize answers without really understanding everything? i feel like i should understand it but i dont want to fail the exam either. been using hamstudy for a few days and its kind of fun actually but not sure if thats enough on its own also when does the current question pool expire, someone told me theres a new one coming and i dont want to study the wrong stuff

so im studying for my tech license and one of the things that keeps coming up is phonetic alphabet stuff, like alpha bravo charlie etc. my question is when youre actually on the air is that like a rule you have to follow or can you just say whatever makes sense? i feel like i heard someone on a local repeater just say stuff like 'N for november' but also sometimes people use random words that arent the nato ones. just wondering what the actual deal is because the books make it sound pretty strict but real life seems different

44 QSOs is the minimum to get the activation counted as valid in the WWFF system, both for your activator credit and for the hunters logging the reference. so yeah you want to hit that number before you pack up. the good news is on 40m during a decent afternoon you should knock that out in maybe 30-45 minutes if you can get spotted and people are hunting, WWFF has a pretty active community and hunters are always watching the spots. for log submission you upload your ADIF to the wwff.to portal, its pretty straightforward, just make sure your log includes the reference number in the right field, different logging software handles that differently. i use HAMRS for field logging and it has a WWFF field built in which makes life easy. if you're using paper log just transcribe it into something that exports clean ADIF before you upload. honestly dont stress too much, your setup sounds solid and the KX2 with a wire in the trees is basically the classic WWFF loadout. have fun with it, the parks hunters are a friendly bunch and theyll be glad someone is activating that reference

i was in the exact same spot about two years ago and ended up going with the UV-5R just to have something while i figured things out. used it for maybe 6 months and then got a Kenwood TH-K20A when it went on sale and the difference was pretty noticeable tbh. not saying the baofeng is terrible but once you use a radio with good audio and a sensible menu system you kinda dont want to go back one thing nobody mentioned to me when i started -- whatever you get, buy a better antenna. the rubber ducks that come with these things are pretty mediocre and a nagoya or diamond antenna makes a real difference especially if your local repeater isnt super close

so ive been a tech for about 8 months and lately ive been thinking about getting my general and actually getting into HF but honestly the thing that keeps pulling me back is wanting to learn CW first. i know its not required anymore but i just feel like id regret it if i never learned it properly. the problem is i have no idea where to start. theres like a million apps and websites and youtube videos and i genuinely dont know which approach is actually worth the time. ive heard some people say just learn the letters slow and speed up later, and other people say you have to learn it fast from the beginning or you'll never get past a certain speed. which is it? also how long did it actually take you to get to a point where you could have a basic QSO

welcome to the rabbit hole lol. okay so first thing, dont overthink it. the technician exam is honestly not that bad if you put in a couple weeks of studying. the question pool is public, meaning every single question that could show up on the test is published online and you can study from it directly. hamstudy.org is what most people use these days, it tracks which questions youre getting wrong and focuses on those, its pretty good. there used to be a gordon west book that people swore by and its still fine but honestly the free online stuff is probably enough for tech. as for doing tech and general in the same sitting, yes you can absolutely do that. once you pass tech they can just hand you the general exam right there. i did mine that way. general is a step up in difficulty, more about propagation and some electrical theory, but if youre already in study mode it makes sense to just knock both out. give yourself maybe 4-6 weeks of solid studying and you can do both. just use hamstudy for both pools simultaneously and youll have a good feel for where you stand before you go in.

yeah ft8 kind of does that to you after a while. i went through the same thing, chasing dxcc slots is fun for a bit then you realize youve had zero actual contact with any of those people lol. i dabbled with js8call and also went back to psk31 for a bit just because you can actually ragchew on it when conditions are decent. js8call is slower and weaker signal capable which is neat but psk31 has way more personality if that makes sense, people will actually talk about their rigs and antennas and stuff. not trying to talk you out of js8call just saying there are options if youre looking for more human interaction on digital. ft4 is also worth knowing about if you do contests, its basically ft8 but faster turnaround.

Log4OM is really nice for everyday stuff, the DX cluster integration and the way it handles DXCC tracking is way better than N1MM for casual operating. N1MM is kind of overkill if youre not actually running a contest rate. that said i tried switching fully to Log4OM for a contest once and i missed N1MM badly about 20 minutes in, the SO2R stuff and the function key macros are just so much more dialed in for that use case. just keep both installed honestly, disk space isnt exactly a concern in 2024

Just got my General license last month with callsign KD9XYZ and I'm thinking about applying for a vanity call. I know I can list up to 25 call signs in order of preference but I'm feeling overwhelmed by all the options. Should I really fill out all 25 slots to increase my chances? Also, I see there's a $35 application fee - is it worth it for someone just starting out? Any advice on choosing good Group C calls that might actually be available?

You definitely have redundant upconversion there. My RTL with upconverter is semi-permanently attached to my HF rig and I run it as a bandscope without issues. Try bypassing either the internal or external upconverter.

the theory really isnt as bad as it looks honestly. i went through the gordo guide and some of the ARRL handbook sections and after a few weeks it started clicking. the LC circuit stuff and the way they explain resonance actually made me understand my antenna tuner better so it wasnt wasted effort even beyond just passing. the impedance matching questions tripped me up at first but once you get the concept its the same idea showing up in like a dozen different questions. as far as privileges go, for phone it does open up the lower edges of 75 and 40 meters which can be useful when the band is crowded and everyone is piled into the general portion, you can drop down a bit and find clearer spectrum. and on 17 and 12 meters the general already gets the whole band so honestly there you wont notice much difference. for what you described your operating is, its maybe a modest upgrade day to day but the knowledge is worth it regardless imo

ok so ive been running 2m and 70cm off a discone that's been sitting in the attic for like 3 years and honestly it does the job but i keep wondering if i'm leaving a lot on the table. finally decided to get a proper dual band collinear up on the roof, probably a Diamond X510 or maybe the X300 if i can't justify the cost difference right now. the run from my shack to the roof is going to be somewhere around 60-70 feet, maybe a bit more depending on how i route it to avoid the HVAC stuff. i've been going back and forth between LMR-400 and just using RG-8X to keep costs down. i know RG-8X isn't ideal but at 2m it should be okay right? or am i just being cheap and it's gonna hurt me more than i think at 440? also anyone dealt with getting coax through a tile roof without making a huge mess of it? there's a vent pipe up there i might be able to run it alongside but not sure how watertight i can get that

yeah timing is huge and i think a lot of people underestimate it. what ive found is that experienced DX operators often have a rhythm to how they work the pileup and if you can pick up on that rhythm youre way ahead of the crowd. some guys work fast, some take a breath between each QSO, some will swing their beam occasionally and when they do their receive pattern shifts. thats a window. on frequency placement within the split range, ive had best luck sitting slightly above the center of where everyone else is piling up. the DX is often tuning around anyway and the edges of the spread tend to be less crowded. also depends a lot on propagation obviously because sometimes the DX just cant hear the low end of the pile at all on a given path. barefoot can absolutely work if conditions are decent and your antenna is pointed right. ive seen guys with dipoles and 100w work some genuinely rare ones because they found the right moment. running a kw helps but its not the whole picture. patience and technique honestly account for more than power most of the time, at least that's been my experience after doing this for a while.

yeah the upstream is almost certainly your bottleneck, 0.8 up is pretty rough once you start pushing SDR IQ data even at the lower sample rates. what sample rate are you running the SDR at? if youre doing anything above like 250k samples you're probably saturating that uplink pretty fast especially if echolink is also grabbing a chunk of it. I had a similar mess a while back running a remote on a pretty marginal connection, ended up dropping the SDR sample rate way down and switching to the OPUS codec at a lower bitrate in RCForb, made a huge difference. you lose some bandwidth on the display but for actual listening its totally fine unless you're trying to do wideband monitoring. also worth checking if your router at the site has any kind of traffic shaping — give the RemoteHams traffic higher priority than the echolink node and see if that helps. the two running on the same box competing for upstream is almost definitely part of the problem.

ok so ive been licensed about 4 months and still kind of fuzzy on this. like i know NATO phonetics, alpha bravo charlie etc, but when is it actually required vs just optional? i was on a local 2m repeater the other night and gave my callsign and someone came back and asked me to say it phonetically, which i did, but then later i heard other guys just rattling off their calls without phonetics and nobody said anything is it a band thing? like HF you need them but VHF you dont? or is it just when conditions are bad? i dont want to sound like im being overly formal on a casual repeater chat but also dont want to get in trouble for not using them when i should. my tech manual wasnt super clear on this

ok so ive been checking into the local tuesday night net for about 3 months now and i keep second guessing myself on the ID rules. i know the FCC says every 10 minutes and at the end of a transmission but like... on a net when the NCS is moving through check-ins pretty fast, do you ID every single time you respond or just at the end when youre done talking? i asked one of the guys at the club and he said just follow what the net control says but that doesnt really answer my question because sometimes NCS moves so fast i barely have time to say my callsign let alone do a full ID. also related i guess -- when someone finishes their traffic and says QNI or whatever, is it rude to ask a question right after or do you wait for NCS to open the floor? i dont want to be that guy who steps on people but i also dont want to miss my chance to ask something if its relevant to the net topic. been lurking more than participating honestly because im not sure of the proper flow. any advice appreciated, still very much learning the ropes here

yeah the 7300 keyer works great, just plug a dual-paddle into the key jack and youre good to go. the mode A vs mode B thing trips a lot of people up — basically it comes down to what happens when you release both paddles at the same time. in mode A it stops right away, mode B will finish out the last element before stopping. a lot of ops actually prefer mode A when theyre starting out because mode B can feel like the keyer is "finishing your thought" for you and it gets confusing until your muscle memory is more solid. i ran mode A for probably the first year and only switched to B after i'd gotten comfortable enough that it stopped mattering either way. the bigger thing honestly is just finding a paddle that feels good in your hand. i spent way too much money on a fancy paddle before i realized i was perfectly happy with a cheaper Begali clone i found at a hamfest. dont go overboard until you know what tension and spacing you like.

oh man i remember this exact feeling, it was probably the most frustrating part of the whole journey for me. the thing that finally broke me through was stopping all the practice software for like two weeks and just listening to actual QSOs on 40 meters. not trying to copy everything, just leaving it on in the background while i did other stuff around the shack. your brain starts to pick up the rhythm of real operators and it kind of rewires how you process the characters. also the thing your club friend said about going faster isnt wrong exactly but the way it helped me was i raised the character speed to like 20wpm but kept the farnsworth spacing really wide so i had more time between characters to process each one without slowing down the actual sound of the letters. that way your ear learns what a fast C or a fast R actually sounds like without the pressure of copying a whole word every second. after maybe a month of that i started closing the farnsworth gap little by little and it just kind of came together. you'll get there, 13 to 20 is honestly the hardest stretch and everyone hits that same wall around 12-15

so i've been wanting to get into ham radio for a while now, my neighbor has a big antenna setup and got me interested. i went and looked up the technician exam and honestly i'm a little overwhelmed. there's like 400 something questions in the pool and i dont even know which ones are more important or if i need to memorize all of them. is there a study guide people actually recommend or should i just grind the question pool on one of those websites. i tried reading the ARRL handbook my neighbor lent me but its kind of dense and jumps around a lot. any tips from people who actually went through this recently would help