Nicole Larsen

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

so ive been using N1MM for basically everything for the last few years, contests obviously but also just day to day HF logging. it works fine and i know it pretty well at this point but honestly the UI feels like its frozen in like 2005 and some of the non-contest stuff is kind of clunky to set up. a buddy at the club keeps telling me to try Log4OM and i finally downloaded it last week but havent had time to dig in.
my main thing is i run WSJT-X for FT8 and FT4 a fair amount, mostly for DXCC chasing, and i need whatever i use to talk to WSJT-X cleanly so the QSOs get logged automatically without me having to do anything manual. N1MM does this fine with the UDP thing. does Log4OM handle that just as well or is there weirdness with it? also does Log4OM even make sense to use during a contest or do people just switch back to N1MM for that
not trying to completely overhaul my setup if theres no real reason to, just wondering if anyone has actually run both for a while and has an opinion

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.

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

that thermal pattern is a real clue honestly. on the 7300 specifically there was some talk on the icom reflector a while back about the PA driver stage having issues when warm — i cant remember if it was a known batch problem or just a few units but worth searching. first thing id do is pull the top cover off and run it while watching for anything that looks like a cold solder joint near the PA board. sometimes you can see them if they're bad enough, little grey ring around the joint.
also check the finals arent running unusually hot. if somethings on its way out thermally the output can get flaky before it fails completely. you could try setting power to like 30 watts and see if the dropout still happens — if it clears up at lower power thats pretty telling.

so ive been messing around with this for a few weeks now and its getting somewhere but im hitting a wall with the relay timing. basic setup is an arduino mega controlling a bank of 8 relays to switch between antennas depending on which band the radio is on. im pulling the band data off the CI-V bus from my IC-7300 which honestly was the easier part than i expected.
the problem is when i switch bands quickly like during a contest or just tuning around, sometimes the relay fires before the CI-V data is fully settled and i get this weird half-second where the radio is basically connected to nothing or the wrong antenna. ive tried adding a delay() but that feels hacky and if i make it too long it just makes the whole thing sluggish. wondering if anyone has done something similar and how they handled the debounce or timing on the relay side. also considered moving to a raspberry pi for this since i could run a proper python script with threading but not sure if thats overkill for what is honestly a pretty simple task
current code is just basically polling the CI-V every 100ms and comparing to the last known band, then triggering the relay bank. nothing fancy. just feels like theres a timing problem somewhere i cant quite nail down

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

so i finally finished my first scratch built QRP rig, its a 40m CW transceiver based loosely on the Wilderness Radio SST design but i made a few changes along the way because i couldnt source a couple of the original parts. took me about 3 weekends spread over a month and a half to get it done.
the thing that surprised me most is how well 5 watts actually works. ive been licensed for about 4 years but always ran 100w into a dipole and kind of assumed QRP was for people who just wanted a challenge for its own sake. went out to a park last saturday with a wire antenna thrown up in a tree and worked 6 stations in like 2 hours, including one in ontario which felt pretty crazy for what is essentially a mint tin with a few toroids in it.
efficiency wise i was getting maybe 60-65% from the PA stage which i know isnt great, the IRF510 gets warm but not hot. wondering if anyone has played around with different transistors for the final or if its worth messing with the bias to squeeze a bit more out. also curious what antennas people are using for portable operation, i just used a random wire with a tuner but im thinking about winding my own EFHW transformer.

so ive been messing around with this for a few weeks now and its getting somewhere but im hitting a wall with the relay timing. basic setup is an arduino mega controlling a bank of 8 relays to switch between antennas depending on which band the radio is on. im pulling the band data off the CI-V bus from my IC-7300 which honestly was the easier part than i expected.
the problem is when i switch bands quickly like during a contest or just tuning around, sometimes the relay fires before the CI-V data is fully settled and i get this weird half-second where the radio is basically connected to nothing or the wrong antenna. ive tried adding a delay() but that feels hacky and if i make it too long it just makes the whole thing sluggish. wondering if anyone has done something similar and how they handled the debounce or timing on the relay side. also considered moving to a raspberry pi for this since i could run a proper python script with threading but not sure if thats overkill for what is honestly a pretty simple task
current code is just basically polling the CI-V every 100ms and comparing to the last known band, then triggering the relay bank. nothing fancy. just feels like theres a timing problem somewhere i cant quite nail down

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.

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

so i finally finished my first scratch built QRP rig, its a 40m CW transceiver based loosely on the Wilderness Radio SST design but i made a few changes along the way because i couldnt source a couple of the original parts. took me about 3 weekends spread over a month and a half to get it done.
the thing that surprised me most is how well 5 watts actually works. ive been licensed for about 4 years but always ran 100w into a dipole and kind of assumed QRP was for people who just wanted a challenge for its own sake. went out to a park last saturday with a wire antenna thrown up in a tree and worked 6 stations in like 2 hours, including one in ontario which felt pretty crazy for what is essentially a mint tin with a few toroids in it.
efficiency wise i was getting maybe 60-65% from the PA stage which i know isnt great, the IRF510 gets warm but not hot. wondering if anyone has played around with different transistors for the final or if its worth messing with the bias to squeeze a bit more out. also curious what antennas people are using for portable operation, i just used a random wire with a tuner but im thinking about winding my own EFHW transformer.

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?