Emily Davis

the mic placement thing is almost certainly part of your problem. with the PR-40 you really want to be talking into the front of it, not across it — it's a cardioid dynamic and it's pretty directional. six inches is also a bit far for SSB, most guys run 2-3 inches for that kind of mic. too far back and you lose presence and your radio's mic gain ends up cranked to compensate which introduces all kinds of noise and weirdness. for the 7300 specifically, the stock TX bandwidth is actually decent but a lot of people mess with it and forget what they changed. there's a menu option to do a full reset on just the audio parameters without wiping everything else — worth looking into before you go chasing EQ settings. as a rough starting point, mic gain around 50-60%, the TX low cut filter around 100hz and high cut around 2800hz is pretty standard voice-grade SSB. you dont need to transmit a lot of low end, it just eats power and muddies things up on the receive end anyway. the speech processor is another one people leave on without realizing it — if you have that engaged without setting it up properly it'll squash your audio in a way that sounds exactly like the barrel effect you described.

yeah just go to a field day event with your club, honestly its pretty low pressure and you'll learn more in one afternoon than reading the rules ever taught me. i did my first field day like three years ago and barely knew what i was doing and it was still a blast. someone handed me a headset and said just say your callsign and the exchange and it kind of clicked from there. 100 watts and a wire is totally fine by the way, ive worked plenty of people with similar setups in contests. its more about timing and being on the right frequency than raw power a lot of the time

honestly the theory is not as bad as it looks once you just sit down with it. i put it off for like three years telling myself the same thing and then when i actually cracked open the material it took me maybe six weeks of casual studying on the bus to work. the filter stuff and the transistor questions are intimidating on paper but the question pool is a closed pool so youre really just learning the answers to specific questions, you dont have to derive everything from scratch or anything like that. the extra privileges i use way more than i expected actually. the CW portion of 40m is way less crowded and 75m phone has some segments that are a lot quieter. and if you ever want to be a VE and give back to the hobby you need the extra for most testing sessions. thats actually what pushed me over the edge more than the band privileges if im being honest. plus theres just something about having all your tickets that feels like you actually finished something

so i got my technician license a few months ago and ive been reading about CW and it sounds really interesting but honestly i have no idea how to even begin learning it. like do people just memorize the dots and dashes on paper or is there some better way? i tried looking up some stuff online but theres so many different opinions and apps and methods that i got kind of overwhelmed and closed the tab lol i dont have any particular goal with it, just want to eventually be able to make a contact or two on 40m or something. not trying to be a contester or anything. just curious if anyone here has done this from absolute zero and what actually worked for them

so i've been running my FT-7900R in the truck for about three weeks now and i thought i had everything sorted out but theres this weird buzzing noise that comes through the speaker whenever i transmit, kinda sounds like engine noise or alternator whine or something. it gets faster when i rev the engine so im pretty sure its related to that. i ran the power cable direct to the battery which i thought was the right way to do it, and the antenna is a mag mount on the roof right now until i can figure out where to do a proper mount. the ground wire for the radio goes to a bolt under the dash which seemed convenient at the time but maybe thats the issue? i dunno. everything else works fine, reception is good, people can hear me okay i think but i havent really asked anyone to give me a signal report while driving. anyone dealt with this before? im in a 2019 F-150 if that matters

Skip the SLA if you're planning to hike anywhere! Lead acid batteries are approximately 3 to 5 times as heavy as an equivalent lithium battery, and if you've had to carry a battery for any appreciable distance, you don't want it to be a lead acid battery. The 9Ah will serve you well and give you room to grow when you inevitably want more power.

Just got my Technician license last month and I'm having trouble accessing some local repeaters. I can hear the output just fine, but when I try to transmit, nobody seems to hear me. Someone told me it's probably because I'm not programming the CTCSS tone properly - apparently this is a common issue for newcomers and I need to transmit the correct tone for the repeater to even recognize my signal. I found the repeater directory shows a tone of 141.3 Hz, but I'm not sure how to set this up on my Baofeng UV-5R. The manual isn't very clear about the difference between TX tone and RX tone. Do I need to set both? Any help would be appreciated! 73, KJ7ABC

Planning to upgrade to Amateur Extra in the coming months and wondering about the best approach for the new 2024-2028 question pool. I've heard the new pool incorporates significant changes compared to the 2020-2024 version with 82 new questions created and 101 questions eliminated. What study materials are people using for the current pool? Still using Gordon West or have you found better resources? Looking for recommendations on apps, books, and practice exam sites. Also curious - you need to answer at least 74% correctly (minimum 37 out of 50) to pass. Any tips for focusing study time on the most critical topics?

Spent three hours last night trying to get my new Baofeng DM-1701 programmed and I'm about ready to throw it out the window! The included cable won't work with Windows 11 (driver issues), CHIRP doesn't support this model yet, and the manufacturer's software looks like it was designed in 1995. For those running multiple brands - do you stick with CHIRP for everything it supports, or bite the bullet and use each manufacturer's software? I've got Yaesu, Icom, and now this Baofeng DMR radio. Also, any recommendations for reliable programming cables? The cheap ones seem to be more trouble than they're worth.