Helen Anderson

yeah the band edge thing tripped me up too when I was a new general. I actually got a polite but kinda firm call from someone after I was operating on 7.299 and apparently my audio was going outside the band. the 7300 has that ALC meter and it's worth watching — overdriving the mic gain will widen your signal and make the band edge problem worse. also just as a heads up, 7.125 is kind of an informal dx window in that part of the band and people get touchy about domestic QSOs in there, especially during a contest weekend. not a rule just... yeah people will let you know lol

not weird at all lol. i do it on 80m too when the noise floor isnt too bad. good way to just decompress after work without having to actually think about what youre gonna say to someone

so ive been running FT8 for about a year now and yeah its great for contacts and all that but it feels like logging software talking to other logging software, i barely feel like im even there. started messing around with JS8Call last week and its more like... actual radio? you can have a back and forth, leave messages, relay through other stations. feels more like what i got into this hobby for. my question is why does nobody seem to be on it. i can find plenty of activity on 40m FT8 pretty much any time of day but JS8Call feels like a ghost town most of the time. is there a specific time or band where people actually gather or am i just not finding them. running an IC-7300 into a wire dipole nothing fancy. also tried PSK31 a while back and that had more of a conversation feel too but the signals were harder to pull out when conditions werent great. JS8Call seems way more robust in that regard which is why i prefer it. anyway curious what others think about this whole automated vs conversational digital modes thing

Try tuning the uplink frequency while transmitting to keep the downlink frequency constant. That's the standard technique for manual correction. Use maximum 5 watts to a 7 dBi antenna (25w EIRP) - lower power works well too.

Great question! Certain zones like remote Asian or polar areas are particularly difficult depending on your location. From the midwest, zones 23 and some of the polar zones will test your patience. But that's what makes it rewarding when you finally get them. The geographic spread makes WAZ feel more like a true "worked the world" achievement.

i did my first EME contact about two years ago on 2m with a pair of m2 xpol yagis and an old ic-910h running about 200w, so its definitely doable without a dish setup. took me forever to get the az-el mount sorted out and the preamp noise figure down to something reasonable but when i finally decoded a signal coming back from the moon i just sat there for a second like ok that actually worked. Q65 has kind of taken over from JT65 for weak signal EME stuff, worth looking at that if you havent already. the sensitivity is better and it handles the doppler spreading a bit cleaner from what ive read, though honestly both work. the EME2 reflector and ping jockey are where people coordinate skeds, you basically arrange a time with another station and both point at the moon when its mutually visible. thats the other thing people dont think about — you need the moon above the horizon for both of you at the same time, so depending on where the other station is that window can be pretty short.

oh man i went through this exact thing like 8 months ago. still kind of going through it tbh. one thing nobody told me that helped a lot was to just listen to CW way more than i was practicing sending. like just put on W1AW practice sessions or a CW net in the background while doing other stuff and eventually your ear starts to pick things up without you even trying that hard. took me longer than i expected to make the jump from copying individual letters to just hearing whole words, but when it clicked it really clicked also single lever vs dual lever paddle is a whole other rabbit hole if you ever go down that road lol

the low elevation passes are definitely making it harder, AO-73 needs a pretty clean shot especially if youre not running much power. 3w should technically be enough if your antenna is tracking well but 12 degrees through trees or rooftops is brutal. the trick i use for finding myself in the passband -- and yeah it feels weird at first -- is to transmit a short unmodulated carrier (just key up with no audio) while sweeping the downlink in like 1-2 khz steps. you want to do this during a higher pass when the bird is actually workable. dont do it during a crowded pass at peak time, maybe try a midweek morning pass when fewer people are on. once you hear your carrier come back you know where you sit and then you just work backwards to figure out your doppler offset error and correct it. after a couple passes you kinda internalize it. also gpredict is great but are you feeding it current keps? old elements can throw the doppler calc off enough to matter, especially near AOS and LOS when the rate of change is fastest.

so ive been licensed for about 8 months now (general class) and i keep seeing people talk about cw on here and on the air and honestly it sounds really cool but i have absolutely no idea where to begin. like i dont even know the alphabet in morse yet. i tried googling it and theres like a hundred different methods and apps and courses and i dont know which ones are actually good vs just whatever comes up first in search results. someone at my club mentioned the koch method? and someone else said just use an app. my main question i guess is do i need to buy any hardware to practice or can i do most of it just from my phone or computer before i even touch a key. also how long does it realistically take before you can actually copy a QSO on the air, not trying to be competitive about it just curious what to expect

Welcome to the hobby, WB2XYZ! New hams often need guidance and encouragement - if you hear a beginner struggling, offer polite and constructive advice. Don't worry, we've all been there. Just give your call sign clearly when NCS asks for check-ins, and feel free to mention "new ham" - most nets love welcoming fresh voices!

the math tripped me up at first too but its really just a few formulas and they literally give you the same answer choices every time so after a while you just start recognizing which answer goes with which question lol. the harder part for me was all the band plan and operating rules stuff, like remembering which modes are allowed where on which band, that took more reps to get down also just fyi once you pass general you can jump on 20 meters and its wild compared to local repeaters, i made my first ever contact with someone in germany like the second day i had my new priveleges

yeah the menu thing on the 7300 is real. i remapped a couple of the function keys pretty early on which helped a lot — you can put AGC toggle on one of the dedicated buttons so you stop fumbling for it mid-qso. took me probably two months before the radio felt natural honestly and i'd been using Icom gear for years before that so it wasnt even a totally foreign interface. on the audio thing i know exactly what you mean. i actually ended up tweaking the receive equalizer settings (theres an rx eq in the set menu somewhere in the audio section) and that smoothed it out for me on phone. some guys run it totally flat, i added just a slight mid boost and it feels less harsh on long contest sessions. your mileage will vary obviously depending on your headphones or speaker setup but worth poking around in there if the fatigue thing keeps bugging you. congrats on the upgrade though the 7300 is a solid rig. the direct sampling architecture really does make a difference on a busy band.

so i just passed my technician exam last week and im trying to figure out what handheld to get as my first radio. ive been reading threads here for a few weeks and honestly im more confused now than when i started because everyone seems to have a different opinion. my local club mostly does 2m and 70cm stuff, some ARES stuff too from what i can tell. i dont really have a budget set in stone but i was thinking somewhere in the $50-150 range to start since i dont even know if ill stick with it long term (though im pretty excited about it right now). i keep seeing the baofeng UV-5R mentioned everywhere and also the yaesu FT-65 and the wouxun kg-uv9d. one guy at the club said dont bother with the cheap stuff and just get a real radio from the start but he also drives a really nice truck so maybe his idea of cheap is different from mine lol. is there like a meaningful difference between the $30 baofeng and something in the $100 range for someone just getting started doing local repeater stuff? or am i overthinking this and should just grab whatever and get on the air

so ive been going back and forth on this for a while now and cant really make up my mind. currently using WSJT-X for all my FT8 stuff which obviously has its own built in log but its pretty bare bones and i want something that ties everything together. i do maybe 2 or 3 contests a year, nothing serious, just the occasional state QSO party and maybe ARRL DX if im feeling motivated. the rest of the time its just casual HF operating, some digital, some SSB. a buddy at the club keeps telling me just run N1MM for everything because its so good for contests but honestly the interface feels like it was designed in 2003 and never touched again. i know thats kind of unfair and it obviously works great but im not sure i want to stare at that thing every time i sit down for a normal ragchew session. Log4OM looks a lot more polished and supposedly integrates with WSJT-X decently but ive never actually used it in a contest and i dont know if its going to feel clunky compared to N1MM when i actually need to move fast. does anyone actually switch between the two depending on what theyre doing or is that just asking for trouble with duplicate log entries and all that. or is there some workflow im not thinking of that makes this less of a headache than it sounds

Having operated from apartments for years, remote access democratizes amateur radio for those without antenna privileges. The purist argument ignores accessibility issues that many hams face in urban environments.

also worth knowing that 40m gets weird because of international allocations — in ITU region 1 (europe, africa) the band only goes up to 7.200 so if you're working DX on SSB up around 7.250-7.280 you might hear them but they literally cannot transmit back to you there legally. just something that confused me for a while when i first got on HF and kept wondering why europeans would go quiet after i'd call them back

I only did my first one like 6 months ago so I remember this feeling lol. one thing nobody told me was to bring way more water than you think and also the summit can be way windier than at the trailhead, my paper log was basically useless by the end. also double check the summit reference on the SOTA database, make sure the actual peak you're hiking to matches the reference, I had a moment of panic on my first one because I wasn't sure I was on the right summit. the sotamaps site is helpful for that. you'll do great though, 4 contacts on HF with any kind of wire antenna is pretty easy to get once people see your spot

I've been using a straight key for about 6 months and can copy around 12-13 WPM reasonably well. Just got my first paddle (Whiterook MK-44) and I'm struggling with the transition. My timing feels completely off and I keep making extra dits when I don't mean to. Any tips for making this transition smoother? Should I drop back down in speed while learning the paddle mechanics, or try to maintain my current speed? Many clubs recommend starting with a straight key to learn the fundamentals, but if you're aiming for faster proficiency, a paddle might be a better long-term investment.

i ran a flat dipole for years then switched to inverted V when i lost one of my end supports after a storm and never bothered changing back. 40 and 80 both, same coax feed. signal reports didnt change noticeably. the angle thing is real in modeling but at normal suburban heights the ground reflection is dominating everything anyway so the theoretical difference kind of gets swamped out. download MMANA-GAL if you want to play with it, its free and way easier to get started with than EZNEC in my opinion

so i just passed my technician exam last week (finally) and everyone keeps telling me to just get a baofeng to start with but then i see people on here saying they're garbage and i should save up for a yaesu or kenwood instead. i dont really know what i need yet honestly. im probably just gonna use it for local repeaters and maybe some simplex if any of my neighbors end up getting licensed too. budget is like 50-80 bucks to start but i could stretch it if theres a really good reason to. the thing that confuses me is all the feature stuff — like do i actually need dual band, or APRS built in, or whatever a wires-x node is. just want something that works and doesnt fall apart. any thoughts would help a lot

so i finally participated in a full SET (simulated emergency test) with our county ARES group and i honestly thought i was more prepared than i was. been licensed about 4 years now, HF and VHF, done plenty of nets, figured how hard can it really be when its not a real emergency. turns out pretty hard actually. the scenario was a flood event, EOC was activated, we had to handle health and welfare traffic and coordinate with the served agency which in our case was the county emergency management office. first thing that went wrong was my go-kit battery situation — i tested it indoors a week before and it was fine but sitting outside for 3 hours in the heat it started acting up and my output was dropping. not exactly a great look. but honestly the bigger lesson for me was message handling. i havent done formal radiogram traffic in probably two years and it showed. had to ask the net control to repeat stuff twice and i could hear the slight pause before he said 'no problem' lol. also propagation on 40m was weird that morning and we had a lot of stations trying to check in at once which created some chaos on the frequency. anyone else done these SET exercises and have lessons learned to share? especially curious if other groups do tabletop exercises before the actual radio portion or if you just jump in. our EC mentioned maybe doing that next year but nothing formal yet.

yeah what he said about the generator. one thing i'd add - if youre worried about noise from the eu2200i try running your coax feedline in a big loop away from the generator exhaust side, sometimes its not even RF its just the physical vibration coupling into stuff weirdly. sounds dumb but i spent an hour chasing what i thought was RFI once and it was literally mechanical hum getting into a loose connector. also for the APRS vertical just make sure you get some separation from your HF antenna or youll get intermod weirdness if both rigs are transmitting anywhere close to simultaneously. probably obvious but i've seen people set up right next to each other and wonder why things act up

so this has been bugging me for a couple weeks now. my 857 is putting out maybe 20 watts max on 40 meters but hitting full 100w on every other band i've tested. checked the ALC and it looks normal, SWR is flat into a dummy load so its not an antenna thing. radio was working fine then one day just... wasnt. no idea if i bumped something or what. already reflashed the firmware thinking maybe some setting got corrupted, didnt help obviously. im wondering if its a PA transistor issue specific to that band but i dont really know how the 857 splits up its driver stages. anyone dug into one of these before? schematics are online but theyre not exactly easy to follow when you dont know what youre looking for

The exams are multiple-choice tests - you receive a pamphlet containing the test questions and an answer sheet for recording your choices. There are no bonus points for achieving a perfect score other than bragging rights - just remember there are 35 questions and you need 26 correct.

I just finished almost the exact same install in my Tacoma last week, weird timing. I went with the FTM-500DR instead because I wanted the APRS without needing an external TNC and the color screen is really nice in daylight. My only complaint so far is routing the power cable was a total pain on the Tacoma because of how tight everything is around the firewall grommet. Ended up using the existing grommet on the driver side and just barely squeezed the cable through. Direct to battery is definitely the right call, I tried running off the fuse box first and had all kinds of weirdness with the voltage dropping on transmit.