Rebecca Turner

so ive been chasing FT5ZM or something similar tier rare DX for a while now and always just get buried in the wall of noise. figured id post what finally clicked for me after years of just mashing the transmit button like an idiot. the biggest thing honestly was listening way longer before i even tried to transmit. like embarrassingly long. i spent probably 20 minutes just watching where the DXpedition was actually pulling calls from, not where they SAID they were listening. because those split instructions change constantly and half the time the op is fishing a couple kHz away from what theyre announcing. once i had a feel for the pattern i started placing my call just slightly ahead of where the pileup was densest. also started using just my callsign suffix for a lot of pileups - the last two letters only. some guys hate this and think it's bad practice but on SSB it really does cut through better sometimes when everyone else is blasting their full 9-character call into a sea of noise. on CW obviously just your full call but crisp timing matters way more than power i think. on the radio side i'm running an IC-7300 into a 3-el yagi at about 40 feet, so nothing crazy, 100w. didn't upgrade the amp for this, just worked on operating technique. curious if others have found stuff that consistently works or if it's just kind of random luck no matter what you do

so i heard the Tri-County ARC is doing their annual hamfest again and i havent been in a few years. last time i went i picked up a pretty decent MFJ tuner for like 12 bucks which was a score. wondering if its worth making the drive this year, its about 90 miles for me. anybody been recently, is the swap meet still decent or has it turned into mostly vendors selling new stuff at retail prices

yeah the harmonic thing on 40 is almost definitely a grounding issue, ive seen similar stuff happen when people disturb the shielding inside the 7300. that radio is pretty sensitive to any kind of ground loop near the PA because of how the board layout is. id start by just going over every ground point you touched with a magnifying glass and a good light, cold joints near RF sections can look totally fine visually but still cause garbage like this also worth checking if the artifact tracks with your transmit frequency or stays fixed — if it moves when you change freq its almost certainly intermod or harmonic from the PA, if it stays put its probably oscillation somewhere which is a different problem. the bypass mod itself shouldnt be causing anything on 40 since youre modifying the receive path, so im guessing something incidental got disturbed during the work

the dummy load test basically confirms the RF path from the PA to the SO-239 is okay which does narrow it down to either the sensing circuit or something up the line. what does the ALC look like when you transmit into the antenna? if the ALC is going nuts but the power output is normal that would tell you something. also curious what the SWR reads on say 40m vs 2m — oh wait 7300 is HF only never mind. anyway i'd grab the service manual before doing anything else, icom service manuals are actually pretty good about showing the bridge circuitry and you should be able to trace the forward and reflected voltage sense lines with a meter without too much hassle

i did almost this exact thing last summer, had a vertical on the roof and put up a cheap 7el yagi i built from a design off the ARRL site just for one hilltop repeater. ran both into an A/B coax switch i mounted in the shack. works great, only thing i will say is make sure your feedline loss isnt eating your gains, i was running like 40 feet of RG-58 initially on the yagi which was dumb. switched to LMR-400 and it made a bigger difference than i expected on 2m. 55 miles is doable with a decent yagi if theres not a mountain in the way

yeah im going friday and saturday this year. we usually meet up at the coffee truck near the main entrance around 7ish, its become kind of an informal thing for our group. if you see a bunch of guys with nooelec sdr dongles hanging off their badges thats probably us lol. bring cash the atm lines get insane

im kind of in the same boat as you, been at it for maybe 6 weeks now. what worked for me was just picking like 5 letters and drilling those until i didnt have to think about them at all, then adding more. i use an app called morse mania on my phone which is pretty good for just random letter practice during lunch or whatever the thing nobody told me is that copying by hand is totally different from just recognizing letters in an app. like i could identify characters fine but then i tried to actually write them down while listening and it fell apart completely. so now i practice writing too which feels dumb but apparently thats just how it goes

okay so ive been checking into our local 2m net for a few months now and i think i have the basics down but theres something thats been bugging me. when the net control calls for check-ins and i give my callsign, does that count as my ID for that 10 minute window or do i still need to ID separately when i transmit later? like if net control asks me something and i just answer the question without saying my call at the end, is that a violation or just kind of frowned upon? also related — i notice some guys on the net say their call like three times when they check in and some just say it once. is one of those more correct than the other or is it just personal style? our net control is super nice but i dont want to be that guy who does everything wrong for months before someone finally tells me.

yeah 2.8 on 40 with a homebrew first attempt honestly isnt that bad lol. my first dipole was like 4.5:1 because i didnt account for velocity factor on the coax when i was doing some calculation i half understood. anyway the choke balun thing the other guy mentioned is real, i thought it was kind of voodoo at first but it genuinely made a difference on mine. also what does the SWR curve look like across the whole band? if its a clean curve thats dipping somewhere predictable you just need to trim or extend, if its weird and lumpy theres probably something else going on with common mode current or a connection issue.

I was in exactly the same spot about a year ago, just listening for like three weeks before I worked up the nerve to check in. What finally helped me was that the net control on our local net was really patient and would slow down if someone new seemed confused. I'd say just go for it — give your callsign when there's a gap after the check-in request, and if net control doesn't copy you just try again. most net controls appreciate new check-ins and will work with you.

yeah the ICS integration thing took our county like three or four years to really click. our EC basically embedded himself with emergency management for a long time, showed up to tabletop exercises even when ARES wasnt officially invited, stuff like that. now we're actually written into the county CEMP which makes a huge difference when an activation happens because we're expected to be there, not just tolerated. also side note — packet for shelter-to-EOC traffic is solid but have you guys looked at Winlink at all? we switched over and it simplified a lot of the message handling, especially for written records which the served agencies really appreciate. just something to maybe bring up with your EC if you havent already.

so i finally worked up the nerve to check into the county ARES net this morning, been listening for about three weeks just trying to get a feel for how it runs before jumping in. everything seemed fine, i gave my call when the net control asked for check-ins, got acknowledged, all good. but then later in the net when they were doing traffic i guess i keyed up at the wrong time and apparently stepped on someone? net control came back and said there was interference on frequency and i just froze up and didnt say anything because i wasnt sure if it was me or not. so my question is, if you accidentally double with someone or cause interference, whats the right thing to do? should i have just said my call and apologized right then? i felt bad sitting there not knowing if i was the one who did it. also is there like a standard way nets handle that situation, i wasnt sure if i should wait and let net control sort it out or just speak up. dont want to make things worse by talking when i shouldnt be

had the RSP1A for a while, its decent. my one gripe is SDRuno feels kinda clunky compared to SDR# but i think they've updated it a few times since i last really dug in. the hardware itself is solid tho. if you're doing HF receive the difference from the dongle is real, not just spec sheet stuff you cant actually hear

so ive been doing contests for a few years now, mostly single op stuff on 40 and 20, and i keep reading about SO2R and how it changes everything rate-wise. but every time i look into setting it up i get this sinking feeling like its gonna take me six months just to get the station wired up properly without the radios beating each other to death. my current setup is an IC-7300 as the main and i picked up a used TS-590SG last winter that i was planning to use for monitoring but never really got around to it. i've got a couple of tribanders up at different heights which should theoretically help with isolation but i honestly dont know if its enough. reading about needing bandpass filters, maybe a 2x4 antenna switch, the whole logging software integration thing with N1MM... it feels like a whole project just to get to the point where i can even try it. is it actually worth it for someone doing maybe 10-15 contests a year at the serious-but-not-crazy level? like i'm not trying to win a national plaque or anything, i just want to push my rates up and stop feeling like im leaving points on the table during the slow parts of a run. anyone gone through this and have thoughts on whether the juice is worth the squeeze

so ive been at this whole CW thing since i got my general last spring and i started at basically zero, worked up to around 5wpm using the Koch method with LCWO and that part was actually pretty smooth. got to 13wpm over the summer and now i just... cant seem to break through. every time i try to push to 14 or 15 it just turns into mush and i panic and drop back down. i practice maybe 20-30 minutes a day, sometimes less on busy days. using LCWO mostly but ive also been doing some of the W1AW code practice files which i really like because it feels more like actual operating. im copying by hand which i know some people say is wrong but it feels more natural to me. is this a normal plateau or am i doing something wrong with my practice routine? id really love to get to 20wpm eventually, maybe even get on HF CW for real. any tips from people who went through this?