Robert Kowalski

repeaterbook.com is what basically everyone uses for road trips, you can filter by state and it has an app too which is handy when youre actually driving. i usually export a chunk of repeaters for whatever states im passing through into a CSV and load them into the radio the night before. little tedious but worth it.
also seconding the alternator whine thing, had that exact same problem when i first installed mine and it drove me crazy for weeks lol

yeah that sitting and waiting thing is real and honestly it never fully goes away. i've been doing ARES stuff for going on 12 years now and you still get those long stretches where nothing is moving. the temptation is to start chatting or checking your phone or whatever but keeping that discipline on frequency is actually part of the job even when it feels like nothing is happening.
sounds like your EC had things organized well. a lot of the time a smooth activation looks boring from the inside and thats exactly how its supposed to go. the messy ones where youre constantly busy usually mean something upstream isnt working right. your instinct to just stay quiet and monitor was correct, unless you were told to check in on a schedule just listen and be ready. good first activation honestly, you learned the right lesson early.

so ive been sitting on doing the mars/cap mod on my FT-857D for probably two years now, just never got around to it. finally pulled the trigger last weekend and honestly it went smoother than i expected. basically just moving a couple diodes on the main board, took maybe 20 minutes once i had the radio open and could see what i was doing.
what prompted it was i wanted to be able to monitor some freqs just outside the normal ham allocation and also mess around with NVIS stuff for our local emcomm group where we sometimes need a little flexibility. not gonna lie the service manual on that radio is actually pretty decent once you find the right revision, some of the older ones floating around dont have the right board layout diagrams.
while i had it open i also reseated the finals heatsink because ive read a few places that the thermal compound from the factory isnt great and mine was definitely dried out and crumbly. put some decent MX-4 on there. hard to say if it made a measurable difference in output but it certainly cant hurt and the radio runs a little cooler i think on long digital mode sessions.
anyone else done mods to theirs? curious if theres anything else worth doing to this radio while i have the confidence and tools out. i know people talk about the fan mod for continuous duty stuff but im not sure if i need it for my use case.

also worth checking — is the repeater even active? i spent like two weeks messing with tones on a repeater near me and eventually found out it had been off the air for like a year, still listed on repeaterbook but nobody updated it. try looking up if theres a local club that runs it and see if they have a website or anything. some areas have a linked system too where multiple repeaters are connected together and sometimes the linking does weird things with tones depending on which node youre hitting. but yeah the TX tone thing the other guy mentioned is definitely where to start.

I just did my first SET last month and had the same worries. Bring extra paper, spare pencils, and don't forget your callsign book for phonetics. The experienced operators are super patient and helpful during the exercise. Once you learn the basics, practice by teaching others what YOU have learned!

so i finally took the plunge and built one of those QCX mini kits from QRP Labs. been putting it off for like a year because i was nervous about the SMD stuff but honestly it wasnt as bad as i thought. took me two evenings and it fired right up on 40m, which apparently doesnt always happen so i felt pretty lucky.
anyway its putting out about 4 watts which i guess is normal for that kit. ive been making contacts but mostly just within a few hundred miles. i know QRP is supposed to work much farther than that and i see people talking about DX contacts running like 2 watts so im wondering if my antenna situation is just killing me. right now im using a wire dipole in the attic which i know isnt ideal. would it make more sense to focus on getting a better antenna situation outside before i worry about anything else with the rig itself? or is there something i should check in the setup first
also curious if anyone has recommendations for what bands are best for QRP when youre just starting out with it. 40 seems active but i dont know if thats the right choice for daytime vs nighttime or what

im in basically the same boat, been a Tech for like 18 months and just signed up to take the General next month at a hamfest. the question pool thing is real, a lot of the actual exam questions are pulled directly from the published pool so if you know the pool you're in decent shape. i've been using an app called Ham Radio Prep or whatever, its fine. some of the electrical theory questions are a bit wtf at first but they kind of explain the concepts in the app too.
what got me motivated was finally hearing some DX on a friends HF rig and realizing i was just sitting there listening and couldnt do anything about it lol

ok so ive been licensed about 8 months now and ive been slowly learning about DX chasing and all the different awards out there. i get that DXCC is the big one everyone talks about, confirmed countries and all that. but then theres WAS which is all 50 states and WAZ which is the zones thing? i think? and i keep seeing people on here mention chasing credits like its a job and i honestly dont fully understand how it all fits together.
like is there some logical order to go after these or do people just pick whatever sounds fun. i worked a station in japan last week on 20m which was pretty exciting for me, first real DX contact, and now im kind of hooked on the idea of actually going for some kind of award. my setup is just a modest wire antenna and a 100 watt radio so im not expecting miracles but figured id ask before i spend a bunch of time going in the wrong direction.
also do you have to pay for all of these or are some free. seems like every award has a fee attached

the waterfall addiction is real lol. i did the same thing for the first week just tuning around watching signals pop up. good radio, i've had mine since maybe 2019 and only issue i ever had was a firmware thing that got patched. make sure you're on the latest firmware if you havent already checked.

so i finally got around to building a simple 40m dipole out of some #14 stranded wire i had laying around in the garage. cut each leg to roughly 33.5 feet, which i calculated from the old 468/f formula, and fed it with some RG-8X i had on hand. the center insulator is the part im not super confident about though. i just used a piece of scrap PVC pipe about 6 inches long and drilled holes through it to tie off the wire and attach the coax braid and center conductor. it seems sturdy enough but im wondering if there's a better way people do this or if the pvc will cause any issues long term, especially with UV exposure out here in arizona where things just kind of disintegrate if you leave them outside too long.
also the SWR came out around 1.4:1 at 7.150 which honestly surprised me, i expected to have to trim more. the whole thing is kind of an inverted V shape with the apex at about 35 feet up in an oak tree and the ends coming down to about 8 feet off the ground. running it into an old TS-570 and the tuner barely has to do anything which feels like a win.
anyone done anything clever for center insulators on homebrew dipoles? i see people talking about using SO-239 chassis connectors directly on the insulator which seems like a cleaner solution but also seems like it might let moisture in around the connector over time

so i finally took the plunge and built one of those QCX mini kits from QRP Labs. been putting it off for like a year because i was nervous about the SMD stuff but honestly it wasnt as bad as i thought. took me two evenings and it fired right up on 40m, which apparently doesnt always happen so i felt pretty lucky.
anyway its putting out about 4 watts which i guess is normal for that kit. ive been making contacts but mostly just within a few hundred miles. i know QRP is supposed to work much farther than that and i see people talking about DX contacts running like 2 watts so im wondering if my antenna situation is just killing me. right now im using a wire dipole in the attic which i know isnt ideal. would it make more sense to focus on getting a better antenna situation outside before i worry about anything else with the rig itself? or is there something i should check in the setup first
also curious if anyone has recommendations for what bands are best for QRP when youre just starting out with it. 40 seems active but i dont know if thats the right choice for daytime vs nighttime or what

General class lets you participate in HF contests and special events exclusive to General and higher licensees. The contest action is where HF really shines - you'll work more DX in a weekend contest than months of casual operation. Plus you get access to more than 83% of all amateur HF frequencies.

I just did my first SET last month and had the same worries. Bring extra paper, spare pencils, and don't forget your callsign book for phonetics. The experienced operators are super patient and helpful during the exercise. Once you learn the basics, practice by teaching others what YOU have learned!

Same problem here with WSPR operations - really hurts extended propagation testing. Updated to latest WSJT-X and disabled the TX Watchdog setting but still having issues. 73