Emily Davis

ok so i just passed my general a few months ago and ive been making contacts on HF and having a blast but now im trying to figure out this whole QSL confirmation thing and honestly its a bit overwhelming. like there are so many options and i dont really understand which ones matter for what. so i signed up for LoTW because someone at my club said thats the one you need for DXCC and i uploaded my logs from WSJT-X but its been like two weeks and i havent seen any confirmations come in. is that normal? do both sides have to be on LoTW or does it just happen automatically once you upload? also someone else told me eQSL is worth doing too but i looked at it and it seems kind of different, like you can make a fancy card design? and then theres actual paper cards which i think are cool but i have no idea how to get them or what the etiquette is around that. do people still actually send paper cards for digital mode contacts like FT8 or is that weird? i know im asking like five questions at once, sorry. just trying to figure out the whole system before i go too far down the rabbit hole without understanding whats going on

so ive been wanting to get into ham radio for a while now, mostly because my neighbor does it and it seems really cool, and also i live in an area that gets bad storms so i thought it would be useful to have another way to communicate. anyway i looked it up and theres like three different license classes and i honestly dont know which one i need or if i should just go straight for the highest one. i downloaded some app but the questions are kind of confusing especially the electrical stuff, im not really a technical person at all. does anyone have advice on how to study for the technician test or should i just try to find a class somewhere? also how hard is the actual test, like do people usually fail it the first time

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.

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

i was in the same boat not that long ago. what helped me was just keeping a little cheat sheet next to the radio for the first few months. honestly the ones i use and hear the most are QRZ, QSL, QTH, QRM, QSB, QRN, and QRP, everything else comes up occasionally but those cover like 90% of what you'll encounter in a normal ragchew or during a pileup. oh and QSO just means a contact or conversation, that ones everywhere too. 73 and 88 (88 is hugs and kisses, usually said to YLs) are technically not Q codes at all but everyone lumps them together. the ARRL website actually has a decent list if you can find it, and it gives the context for when theyre actually used which is more useful than just the definitions.

went through this exact process last year, took me like two tries to get something i actually wanted. first call i applied for someone else had also applied and they were an Extra so i lost out. second try i picked something a little less obvious i guess and it went through no problem after the window. the 18 days of waiting is kind of agonizing when you're excited about it lol but thats just how it goes. good luck finding something good in your district

i went rtl > rsp1a (older version of same thing basically) a few years back and yeah HF was the main reason. 40 and 80 are just way more usable. that said make sure you have a decent antenna because even the best SDR front end cant save you if youre on a crappy wire. i spent way too long blaming receivers when my feedline had a bad connector lol

so ive been chasing 3Y0 Bouvet for years obviously never worked it but last month there was a pretty juicy activation from a fairly rare african entity that i wont name just cause i dont want this to turn into a debate about the operation itself. anyway the pileup was absolutely savage, probably 400+ stations calling at any given moment on 20m and i was running maybe 500w into a 3 element yagi at 45 feet so not exactly a super station. what finally worked after about 3 hours of banging my head against the wall was a combination of things. first i totally stopped tail-ending because honestly i think that just buries you in the noise with everyone else doing the same thing. started listening really hard to where the DX was actually coming back and try to identify his exact split — he was listed as listening 5 up but was clearly favoring a narrow slice maybe 2khz wide within that. second thing was timing, i noticed he had this very consistent rhythm, come back to a station, get the exchange, send QSL 5nn TU and then there was almost exactly a 1.5 second gap before he started listening again. i started throwing my call in right at that gap, not when i heard TU but slightly after. also switched from a 1x4 callsign format to just sending my suffix twice which i know some people hate but in a big pileup the op is just pattern matching anyway. got through on the third attempt after changing tactics. probably helped that propagation did a nice bump on my path around 1800z too but i really do think the rhythm thing made the difference. curious if anyone else does this or has other tricks that actually work vs the ones that sound good in theory

so for general on 40m your ssb phone privileges start at 7.175 MHz and go up to 7.300, thats the US allocation anyway. the 7.125 you mentioned is actually still in the CW/digital portion for generals so yeah you'd want to stay out of there for phone. advanced and extra class guys get a bit more room down lower but as a general just stay above 7.175 for voice and youre fine. as for band edges, the reason people warn you off them is your signal has sidebands that extend above and below your dial frequency. on SSB upper sideband your actual transmitted audio goes UP from where your dial reads, so if you're sitting right at 7.300 your voice is spilling outside the allocation. most people say stay at least 3 kHz inside the edge to be safe, some say more if you have a wide filter or older radio that isnt super clean. just dont park on 7.300 and wonder why people are giving you grief