Nicole Larsen

You must cease operation immediately if you hear any non-amateur transmission on the channel. Always listen before transmitting - if you hear another signal whether amateur or government/private station, don't transmit. For antenna efficiency: a 16-foot base-loaded vertical with 4 radials might be only 5-10% efficient, meaning you could run 90-180 watts to reach the 9.15W ERP limit.

so i finally got around to trying my first summit activation yesterday. picked a local 2 pointer that looked easy on the map but man was i wrong about that hike. anyway got to the top after about 2 hours of scrambling through brush and rocks with my ft-817 and a 20m dipole setup went ok i guess but i could only manage 3 contacts in about 45 minutes before my battery started dying. is this normal for a first timer or did i mess something up? heard plenty of people calling but couldnt seem to get through the pileups. one guy told me my signal was pretty weak but readable thinking maybe i need a better antenna or more power but dont want to carry too much weight up these mountains. any tips from the sota folks here?

I made the switch from Log4OM to N1MM+ last year and honestly haven't looked back. The WSJT-X integration handles everything - QSO logging, callsign prioritization, dupe warnings based on contest rules. Learning curve is steeper but worth it if you're serious about contesting.

the TX audio thing is real, took me a while too. what mic are you using? i found the stock HM-219 was part of my problem, switched to an SM-50 on a desk stand and it helped a lot before i even touched the EQ settings. though honestly once you get the parametric dialed in most mics work pretty well with it. one thing worth doing if you havent already — look up the N4PY or W4MQ audio settings people have posted, gives you a solid starting point instead of tweaking blind. i think there was a thread on eham a while back too but cant remember if those numbers are still considered good or if the firmware updates changed anything.

the freezing up on message format is so real, i did that my first drill and felt terrible about it even though everyone was nice. what helped me was just printing out a few sample ICS-213 forms and keeping one in my go bag so i could kind of follow along if i blanked. its not cheating its just being prepared i think. also honestly watching some of the ARRL training videos on winlink and formal traffic helped me understand why the format matters not just what the format is, that made it stick better for me

so ive been licensed for about 8 months now and finally decided to get into CW properly. picked up a cheap dual-lever paddle off ebay and hooked it up to my KX2 with the built in keyer set to iambic mode A. i practiced on code practice oscillators for a few weeks before this and could copy maybe 12-13 wpm okay but sending is a completely different story the thing is, i keep getting extra dits or dahs that i didnt mean to send. like i squeeze for the letter C and it just keeps going or cuts off weird. i watched a bunch of youtube videos and everyone makes it look so natural. is this a tension adjustment thing on the paddle or is it just a matter of time practicing. also not sure if mode A vs mode B makes a big difference for a beginner, someone mentioned mode B is easier but i dont really understand why any advice appreciated, i really want to get good at this but its a bit discouraging right now

I'd echo the Yaesu recommendation. Sometimes simple is better as it allows you to learn about the hobby. Once you've had some time to use it, you'll have a much better idea of what you -really- want. Don't feel pressure to get every digital mode right away - analog FM will keep you busy for quite a while!

had a similar thing going on with my remote setup last year, turned out the router at the remote QTH was doing something weird with QoS and basically throttling UDP packets intermittently. swapped it out for a plain dumb switch on that leg and the jitter dropped a lot. probably not your issue but worth checking if theres any consumer router in the path that might be doing traffic shaping you dont know about. cant really help on the Allstar linking stuff, never gone down that road myself.

Building a homebrew 3-element 20m Yagi based on the W6QHS design, but running into matching challenges. The natural impedance appears to be around 30-35 ohms, which should be easily matched with a hairpin, but lower impedance Yagis offer better performance. Currently seeing 2.8:1 SWR across the band with direct 50-ohm feed. There are multiple ways to design a 3-element Yagi - equal spacing between all elements is the 'middle of the road' approach, but you can adjust spacing for wider bandwidth or higher gain. Boom length is 14 feet with 0.1λ spacing. Should I redesign element spacing or proceed with hairpin matching? Lower SWR is critical since even small misalignments can cause significant signal losses.

yeah message handling is almost always the thing that falls apart, at least in every exercise ive been part of. everyone practices the radio part, getting signal reports, making contact, whatever — but the actual information management side gets treated like an afterthought until suddenly youre in the middle of a real activation and someone hands you a handwritten note on a napkin and says relay this to the EOC. we had a similar situation a couple years back during a Skywarn activation that turned into more than just weather spotting. a bad storm rolled through and actually caused some infrastructure damage and suddenly we were getting requests for real welfare check relays. we werent ready for the volume and had two people trying to log everything in a notebook while also operating, it was a mess. after that we started dedicating at least one person at every deployment specifically to logging and message handling, not touching the radio at all. made a huge difference. also started doing monthly traffic nets just to keep the ICS form muscle memory alive. its boring but it works. the 9-year licensee thing doesnt surprise me at all by the way. a lot of folks get their ticket to do DX or satellites or whatever and the traffic handling stuff just never comes up in their normal operating. drills are really the only way to find those gaps before it matters.

honestly your friend isnt wrong about just drilling the question pool, thats basically what most people do and it works fine for the tech exam. the pool is public so youre not cheating, the ARRL literally puts the whole thing out there. HamStudy.org is what i used and it tracks which questions you keep getting wrong so you can focus on those. took me maybe 2 weeks of like 20 minutes a day before i was passing practice tests consistently. the reactance and impedance stuff, i wouldnt stress too hard on understanding it deeply just to pass the test. youll pick it up more naturally once you actually start using the radio. just memorize which answers go with which questions for now, the theory can come later when it actually means something to you.

I've had good luck manually adjusting by following the "One True Rule" — tune both frequencies, with priority on the higher frequency band. If you can't do CAT, adjust the higher of the two frequencies used. Takes some practice but works well once you get the hang of it.

Looking for advice on unlocking the frequency range on my TYT TH-7800. Bought it from US distributor so it's properly locked down to 2m and 70cm bands, but would like to monitor GMRS and NOAA channels. This was a software lock that had been added to comply with the FCC. Has anyone successfully opened up the frequency range on this model? Programming software hasn't worked for me so far.

so ive been doing POTA for about a year now and someone in my local club mentioned WWFF and i went down a bit of a rabbit hole this week trying to figure it out. signed up on the wwff.cc site and found a nature reference not too far from me, its a state wildlife management area that has a USFF reference number and everything. my plan is to take the ft-891 and a random wire up in a tree and just try to make 44 contacts which from what i read is what you need for a valid activation. running QRP or close to it probably, maybe 50 watts if the battery holds up. my question is — is there anything specific about logging for WWFF that trips people up? ive seen some posts saying the ADIF export has to have certain fields or the upload gets rejected and i dont want to spend 3 hours in the woods and come home to a failed upload. also do hunters just show up and use the same references as POTA or is it a totally separate crowd? sorry if this is basic stuff, just want to go in prepared

yeah the counting dots and dashes thing is a trap, i think every new ham falls into it because it seems logical but it completely prevents you from ever getting fast. same thing happened to me back in the late 90s before there was much online stuff, my elmer actually grabbed my pencil out of my hand during a practice session and said just listen, dont write, just listen. i thought he was being ornery but he was right the Koch method is solid, G4FON's software on windows is still what i point people to even though its old, and jst5 on android works pretty well if youre doing mobile practice during a commute or whatever. the key thing you figured out about character speed vs overall speed is exactly right, its called farnsworth timing and most decent practice software supports it. you want your brain to learn the shape of each letter at full speed even if theres a long gap between letters so you have time to process one more thing that made a huge difference for me personally was actual on-air practice. copying practice files is fine but real qso's have a different kind of pressure and also real operators dont always send perfectly which actually helps you learn to fill in gaps from context. find a slow speed net or qrs frequency and just jump in, worst case you send agn and ask for a repeat, nobody minds

dude the 7300 is perfect for general, i have the same radio. honestly just get on 20m first thing after you pass, thats what i did. worked my first DX station within a week of upgrading. the band plan stuff makes more sense once you actually start operating and hear whats where

honestly with those dimensions and what youre describing i'd just do the inverted V and not overthink it. 28 foot apex isnt ideal but its workable and the pattern difference from a flat dipole at that height vs an inverted V isnt going to matter for what youre doing. the 45 degree leg angle is fine, some people get weird about wanting 90 degrees included but ive had good results at 120 degrees included and even a bit less. the radial thing with a vertical always sounds manageable until youre out there on a saturday afternoon with a bunch of wire and a lawn mower problem waiting to happen. if you go that route you really want at least 16-20 radials on the ground to get it performing decently and even then youre fighting losses depending on soil. your soil sounds ok but still. the inverted V just works, its resonant, no matching drama if you cut it right, and you can always tweak the legs. id run it and see what happens before spending more time on it.

so ive been licensed for about 8 months now and i mostly do HF on 40m and sometimes 20m and i keep going back and forth on when im supposed to use the nato phonetic alphabet vs just saying the letter. like if someone asks me to confirm my callsign do i always spell it out with phonetics or is it just when conditions are bad or the other op asks for it also i noticed some guys just say their call once and move on and others do it phonetically every single time and i dont really know what the actual standard is. my elmer told me to just always use phonetics but then i hear plenty of people on the air who clearly dont bother half the time and nobody seems to care is there like an actual rule for this or is it just whatever the situation calls for

yeah what he said about the signal bandwidth is the key thing. i made that mistake early on, had my dial right on the edge and someone pointed out my upper sideband was technically out of the allocation. felt dumb but its an easy thing to miss when youre first starting out. the radios dont warn you or anything lol

yeah what he said about HamStudy, that site basically got me through it. i will say though some of the band plan questions tripped me up at first because as a tech you dont really think about all the different HF allocations. just make sure you actually learn which frequencies General class gets versus what Extra gets because there are a few questions specifically about that and i blanked on one of them during my actual exam, still passed but it was closer than id like to admit lol

so i've been a tech for about 8 months now and keep hearing people talk about cw and how great it is and i kind of want to learn but honestly have no idea where to start. i downloaded like three different apps and they all seem different and i dont know which approach is actually the right one. some people told me to just memorize the dots and dashes on paper and other people say thats the worst thing you can do. also is there a certain speed i should start at or does it matter? sorry if this is a dumb question i just feel like there's too much conflicting info out there

Looking for advice on a puzzling issue with my TS-590S. The rig produces full 100W on 6 meters but reduced output on all HF bands. All other functions work normally, and the radio passes self-test. I've verified my dummy load and power meter are accurate with another transceiver. This seems consistent with voltage drop issues under TX load from poor power connections, as HF bands typically draw more current than 6m. Has anyone encountered this specific failure mode? Planning to check DC voltage at the finals during transmission next. Any other troubleshooting suggestions before I tear into the RF deck?

congrats on passing the test. ok so here's the honest take -- if you're just hitting local repeaters and doing casual stuff, a baofeng UV-5R or one of the slightly newer variants will absolutely work and you'll have money left over. i know some folks here will argue with me on that but ive handed them to brand new hams at club events and they get into the repeater just fine. the front end overload thing is real but it mostly matters if you're near a lot of strong commercial transmitters or in a really dense RF environment. like if you're right next to a bunch of pager towers or something you might get some weird interference. for most people in a normal city it's not a huge deal day to day. that said if you can stretch to like 120-130 range, a used Yaesu FT-60 is a totally different experience. the receiver is noticeably better and the build quality is night and day. not trying to talk you out of the budget option but just something to consider if you think you'll stick with the hobby

so i heard the Tri-County fest is back this year, think its the second weekend in april but dont quote me on that. been a few years since ive gone and last time i picked up a pretty decent MFJ tuner for like 20 bucks so im hoping the swap tables are still worth going through. anybody else planning on heading out? wondering if its worth the drive from my end, its about 2 hours each way

so ive been licensed for about 6 years now and done a decent amount of HF DX but a buddy of mine at the club just worked his first EME contact on 2m last month and now im completely obsessed with the idea. ive been reading everything i can find but honestly the more i read the more confused i get about where the realistic entry point is these days. like i understand the basic concept, you bounce your signal off the moon, path loss is insane, you need a lot of antenna gain and usually some serious power. but what im not clear on is whether a single yagi setup is actually viable anymore or if you basically need a yagi array to work anything. ive got a decent sized lot and could probably put up a 4-yagi array on an az-el mount if i had to but that feels like a huge commitment before ive even made a single contact. also the whole JT65B vs Q65 thing, is Q65 pretty much where everyone is now? i was running JT65 for meteor scatter a while back so im somewhat familiar with the modes but EME seems like a whole different animal in terms of timing and how you structure a QSO. any thoughts from people who have actually done this would be really appreciated, im in the midwest so not sure how that affects things either.