Sarah Kim

I'm a Tech planning to upgrade to General next month and feeling overwhelmed by all the HF frequency privileges I need to memorize. The exam is 35 questions and I keep getting confused about which bands General class operators can use fully vs. partially. Any study tips for tackling the frequency privilege questions without just memorizing everything?

i run Log4OM as my main logger and like it quite a bit for dx and general stuff, the clublog integration and the real time propagation overlay are nice touches. havent really used it for contests much though so cant speak to that side of things. the WSJT-X hookup works fine for me but i did have to fiddle with the settings a bit on first setup, think there's a guide on the Log4OM groups.io if you search around.

1.4:1 is honestly fine, dont sweat it. most rigs are happy with that and youre not going to notice any real difference in performance compared to a perfect 1:1. if youre running barefoot or modest power it just doesnt matter. you can always trim a little off each leg if it bothers you and get it closer but i wouldnt bother.
the balun question is one of those rabbit holes that never ends on forums lol. short answer is a 1:1 choke balun or even just a few turns of coax wound up near the feedpoint will help keep rf off the coax shield and out of your shack. not strictly required but a lot of guys notice less rf in the shack interference once they add one. i use a ferrite choke on all my dipoles now just out of habit.
14 gauge stranded should be fine for that span as long as you have decent strain relief at the endpoints and the center. where people get in trouble is putting all the tension on the solder joint at the feedpoint. if you used an eye bolt or something to take the mechanical load separately from the electrical connection youll be in good shape.

yeah this is basically the same situation i was in about two years ago. what i ended up doing is running Log4OM as my main everyday logger and only firing up N1MM when im actually in a contest. the trick is you have to be disciplined about exporting your ADIF out of N1MM after the contest and importing it into Log4OM before you do anything else, otherwise you will absolutely end up with missing contacts or dupes when you go to upload to LoTW or whatever. its a little annoying but honestly once you do it a couple times it becomes second nature and takes like 3 minutes.
the WSJT-X integration with Log4OM is pretty solid, you just point WSJT-X at the UDP port Log4OM is listening on and contacts log automatically. only issue ive had is occasionally it misses one if WSJT-X is being weird but that doesnt happen often. N1MM for contests though, i wouldnt trade it, the bandmap and the way it handles multipliers once you get used to it is just faster than anything else ive tried for that purpose.

Thanks for the real-world data! I've been hesitant to make the jump due to cost, but seeing the actual performance difference helps justify it. The weight alone would be worth it for my backpack portable operations.

yeah i caught part of that opening too, was working 28.400 and logged about a dozen south american stations in maybe 45 minutes which for a wednesday afternoon is pretty decent. missed the ZL completely but a buddy of mine two counties over said he worked a couple JA stations which i was jealous of. solar flux has been creeping up again so im thinking we might get a few more of these before the month is out.
on the IC-905, ive been watching that one for a while. the 10ghz capability is what gets me even if the transverter approach adds cost and complexity. talked to a guy at a club meeting who said his dealer told him late next month is realistic but who knows. those things slip constantly. the 23cm and 13cm bands are still pretty quiet around here so it would be nice to have more people with gear that can do those freqs.
no idea which hamfest they were talking about on your repeater, there are like three or four in that region in the fall season. might be the one in Davenport but im guessing.

That's exactly the direction we need to go for EmComm. Starlink has proven itself in real disasters - FEMA deployed over 40 terminals after Hurricane Helene when 74% of cell towers failed. How's the G106 performing on 30/40m for NVIS coverage?

this is a great writeup, thanks for sharing. the hurry up and wait thing is SO real and i dont think anyone ever really talks about it in training. i've been through probably a dozen activations over the years and every single one has that quality. the key is staying mentally sharp during the slow periods so when things do pick up youre not caught flat footed
the served agency communication thing is also a constant challenge. a lot of emergency managers have rotated through and only have a vague idea what ARES even is or what we can realistically do in terms of throughput and reliability. some ECs put together little one-page briefing sheets for the EOC staff which helps. might be worth suggesting to your EC if he's open to it
sounds like you handled the HF piece well honestly. Winlink on a noisy 40m path during winter conditions with a cold laptop and stress is not trivial. good on ya

yeah the jump is noticeable, not gonna lie. i ran an RTL-SDR v3 for about a year before picking up an RSP1A and the difference on HF is real — the noise floor is lower, the dynamic range handling is way better when youre near strong signals, and the 12-bit ADC vs the 8-bit in the RTL stuff actually matters more than i expected. that said your antenna situation matters a ton too so both things are true at once. i had a crappy wire strung through my attic and even with the RSPdx i was still fighting noise until i got the antenna outside and away from the house wiring.
for WSJT-X integration the SDRplay works fine with the virtual audio cable approach, some people use SDR-Console with it which has pretty decent CAT integration if you want to tie it to logging software. SDRangel is powerful but yeah the learning curve is steep, i gave up on it twice before it finally clicked. if your primary goal is HF digital modes and general shortwave the RSP1A is probably the right call at that price point.

so ive been a tech for about 2 years now and honestly mostly just been doing 2m/70cm stuff, some APRS, occasional simplex chats. i decided i want to get into HF finally and started looking at the general pool questions. some of it makes sense, some of it really doesnt and im not sure if its just me not understanding the material or if the actual questions are just kind of weirdly worded.
like the propagation stuff i get mostly, but the regulations questions are killing me. specifically around the phone privileges and which bands i can actually use once i pass. is there a simple breakdown somewhere of what i actually gain vs what i had as tech? i know techs get some HF but its pretty limited. also how hard is the actual test compared to tech, i feel like the tech exam wasnt too bad but people keep telling me general is a big step up and now im second guessing myself
using hamstudy.org right now and just grinding through the question pool. any advice on what to actually focus on would be helpful, some of these electrical questions feel like overkill for what i actually want to do

not a dumb question at all, i was confused by the same thing when i started. so the basic DXCC award is mode and band agnostic — meaning all your confirmed entities regardless of band or mode go into one pool for the basic mixed award. once you hit 100 confirmed entities you can apply and pay the fee on the arrl website. but here's the thing, lotw doesnt automatically apply for the award for you, you have to actually go into your account and submit the application. the credits are sitting there waiting, you just gotta pull the trigger on the application.
the band-specific awards like 160m dxcc or 10m dxcc are separate things you chase on top of that, and yeah those do require 100 confirmed on that specific band. Heard Island is a tough one to get confirmed so thats a great get. WAS and WAZ work a bit differently too so dont mix those up in your head — WAZ is zones not entities, took me a while to figure out the difference honestly.

welcome to the rabbit hole haha. I only just got my basic DXCC last year and the admin side was confusing me too at first. one thing that helped me was joining the DX club in my area, they had an elmer who basically walked me through the whole LoTW setup in one afternoon. worth checking if theres one near you.
also dont underestimate what you can work with an IC-7300 and a dipole, I worked my 100th entity on similar gear. some of it is just being there at the right time and knowing when the good propagation windows are for different paths.

CQ WW is actually a fantastic first contest in my opinion, yeah it gets pretty crowded especially on 20m Saturday morning but thats kind of part of the fun. the exchange is dead simple — signal report and your CQ zone, thats it. zone 4 or 5 for most of the US depending where you are. once you've sent it a few dozen times it becomes muscle memory.
for software i'd really suggest not doing paper if you can avoid it. N1MM+ is free and pretty much the standard for contesting, it handles dupe checking automatically which saves you a ton of headache. takes maybe an hour to get the basic setup going before the contest weekend. there are some youtube walkthroughs that are pretty decent.
and yeah SOTA is a whole different animal, its more of an award program with an ongoing points system, activators go to summits and chasers work them from home. there are SOTA specific events occasionally but its not tied to the major contest calendar really. some people do activate during Field Day which is its own weird thing — more of a public service / emergency preparedness exercise than a pure contest even though there's scoring involved.
just jump in honestly. even if you only make 50 contacts your first CQ WW you'll learn more in one weekend than months of casual operating.

43 on your first activation is really solid, nice work. i remember my first one i was so nervous i kept fumbling the callsigns and asking people to repeat. the hunters really are forgiving though youre right about that. i use a similar setup, kx3 with a linked dipole i made myself, and 40m is almost always the money band for me in the afternoon. what were you running for power?