Karen Johnson

I used LCWO to learn the basics then joined CW Academy Level 2. LCWO at 20 WPM character speed and 5 WPM effective speed using Farnsworth timing got me started quickly. CW Academy is designed to be used with expert coaches to help you - the combination worked great for me!

the 857 is a solid choice but yeah the current draw is real, like 20 amps on transmit if youre running full power. for a go-kit a lot of people actually drop down to a dedicated VHF/UHF radio for local emcomm stuff and save the HF rig for when you really need it. depends on what nets you're actually expected to support i guess. im still pretty new to the emcomm side myself but what my elmer told me was to start simple — get one thing working reliably before you add complexity. so like just get a radio, a battery, and a way to charge the battery sorted out first, then worry about the fancy stuff later. i spent like two months researching antenna options before i even tested whether my basic setup actually worked, which in retrospect was backwards lol

so i finally got my ARES registration sorted out and did my ICS 100 and 200 like they asked and went to a few of the monthly nets to introduce myself. last weekend we had an actual activation for a pretty bad storm system that knocked out power across a few counties and our EC called everyone in to support the EOC and a couple of shelter sites. i have to say i was not really sure what to expect going in. id done some simulated emergency tests before but this was different, real traffic, real people needing help, lots of waiting around honestly followed by bursts of actual radio work. the net control at the EOC was really on top of things but at the shelter i was posted at we went like two hours with almost nothing to pass and then suddenly had a bunch of welfare traffic all at once. anyway im curious what other peoples first real activations were like. did you feel prepared or did you realize there were gaps. i felt pretty good about the radio stuff but i was not ready for how much just sitting and being available is part of the job, i kept wanting to do something and there wasnt always something to do. also brought way too much gear, next time im going lighter for sure.

honestly just show up, thats the biggest thing. every ARES group runs a bit differently depending on who the EC is and what the county needs, so your experience might be totally different from what someone in another state describes. ours is pretty laid back, we do a simplex net check, maybe work through an ICS scenario or practice sending Winlink messages, and then people hang around and chat. nobody expects you to walk in as an expert. bring your HT obviously, and if you have a portable antenna or a way to run off battery that helps, but its not required day one. the main thing they want to know is that youre reliable and willing to show up when it matters. ive seen plenty of guys with fancy go-kits who never show up for an actual activation, and newer folks who show up every single time rain or shine. guess who the EC calls first. just be the person who shows up and youll do fine.

I started with a Kent single paddle about 6 months ago and love it. Take it slow. Practice slow is the best advice I got. Try both single and dual lever to see which you like best - maybe visit a hamfest to test drive different models first.

You *must* enter the TX-CTCSS in order to open the repeater. You *can* enter the RX-CTCSS if there is one, but you don't have to - if you do, then your radio's squelch won't open unless that tone is received. For your Baofeng, look for the "T-CTCS" menu and set it to 141.3. Don't worry about receive tone for now.

Planning some POTA activations this spring and need a good portable paddle. I've narrowed it down to the CW Morse Pocket Paddle and the Begali Traveler Light. Both get great reviews but there's a $200 price difference. For those who've used both: is the Begali worth the extra cost for field work? I'm not looking for a precision instrument, just something reliable that won't break in my pack. Weight and size are importantOperating in variable weather conditionsBudget conscious but willing to pay for quality

i was in the same spot like eight months ago lol. i used the Gordon West technician book which my local library actually had a copy of, and also hamstudy like the other guy said. took me maybe three weeks of studying on and off in the evenings. honestly the hardest part for me was the electrical stuff, ohms law and that kind of thing, but theres enough of it that repeats in different forms that it starts making sense after a while. one thing nobody told me beforehand — bring a non-programmable calculator to the exam just in case even though you probably wont need it. and your ID obviously. i almost forgot mine

Break down information into the 10 sub-pools of questions, and flashcards are a great way to memorize. I made my own using Quizlet for the antenna types - dipole, Yagi, vertical, etc. Just making the cards helps retention.

yeah the mult vs rate tradeoff is something you just have to feel out over time honestly. early in a contest when rate is high, i almost never leave my run freq for anything except a dead-certain new mult that i know wont come back. like if its a zone or entity i need and the band might close, sure, but if its just a state i'll work eventually anyway i stay put. the thing that helped me most with SO2R was setting a hard rule for myself — radio 2 gets exactly one call attempt, maybe two if propagation is sketchy, then i drop it and go back to focusing on the run. no rabbit holes. Win-Test has that interlock stuff but i found i had to also just discipline myself separate from what the software does. the software keeps you from transmitting on both simultaneously but it doesnt keep you from mentally wandering off, thats all you. also make sure your headphone switching is set up so you can monitor radio 2 in one ear without it dominating. some guys go full SO2R with both ears split and i just cant do that, one ear on the run one ear loosely on radio 2 at lower volume works better for me mentally.

that's a really good writeup, thanks for sharing. the 'hurry up and wait' thing is so real and i dont think any training exercise really prepares you for it. i've been doing ARES for about eight years and activations are still kind of the same rhythm — long stretches of nothing and then a burst where you really earn your ticket. the j-pole in the window trick is solid by the way. ive done that at shelters before and you'd be surprised how well it works even from a ground floor. some guys show up with massive go-kits and antenna masts and spend half their time setting up while you're already on frequency. one thing id add for anyone reading this who's thinking about joining — get your ICS-700 done too if you havent. some served agencies are starting to require it and it's only like two hours online. makes you look more prepared when you show up and honestly it does help you understand where radio fits in the bigger picture of how these events are managed.

There's no time limit but most finish in 15-45 minutes - don't rush. Yes, you can retake immediately if needed, but you'll pay another $15 fee. Take your time and double-check answers you're unsure about.

yeah i was in the exact same boat like six months ago, its honestly kind of nerve wracking the first few times. what helped me was just listening to the net a few times without checking in first so i could get a feel for how that specific group runs things before i put myself out there. every net has its own vibe. also dont stress about stepping on someone, they know it was an accident. most net ops have heard it a thousand times

honestly the thing i use most that i never expected to need is a small spiral notebook and a couple sharpies, not just regular pens. when youre outside in rain or weird conditions fine point pens skip and you look like an idiot trying to write down traffic. also zip lock bags, i have a whole stack of them in mine. sounds dumb but they save everything when it rains. as for HF, depends what you want the kit FOR. if youre doing ARES or RACES work locally the HT and a spare battery is probably fine, but if you ever want to be self-sufficient for more than a day or if local infrastructure is down and you need to reach someone further out then yeah having some HF capability is worth it. the KX2 is a great choice for that, it doesnt add that much weight honestly. i run a KX3 in my kit and yeah it adds a bit but ive used it when repeaters were down after a bad ice storm and it was the only way i was getting through to EOC. one more thing — dont forget a way to charge everything. usb power bank is fine but think about how youll recharge THAT if powers out for 3 days. solar panel even a cheap one is worth having somewhere in the kit or at least in the car.

so ive been running an old TS-590SG for about four years now and honestly it was a great radio, no real complaints, but i kept seeing people rave about the 7300 and the price dropped enough that i figured why not. picked one up used in pretty clean condition and been running it for maybe three weeks now. first thing i noticed is the waterfall display is just... way more useful than i expected. i always thought it was kind of a gimmick when i saw screenshots but actually having it in front of you while youre tuning around 40m at night is a different experience. you can just see where the activity is without scanning around forever. that part sold me fast. the receiver feels a little different from the Kenwood — hard to describe, not better or worse exactly, just different. on weak signal stuff on 80m i feel like the 590 might have had a slight edge but im not doing rigorous A/B testing here, just vibes mostly. the built in ATU is fine for what i need it for. one thing thats mildly annoying is the menu system takes some getting used to. not bad just different. also the fan kicks on more than i expected even at lower power but i run it in the shack so not a big deal. anyway not really a question just figured id share since i see this comparison come up a lot. happy to answer stuff if anyone has specific questions about going from the 590 to the 7300.

Been secretary of our local ARC for 3 years now. Attendance is down to maybe 8-10 regulars out of 40+ members. Same old show-and-tell, business meeting format is getting stale. Thinking about doing a homebrew night or maybe a POTA presentation. What's working for your clubs these days?

N1MM is really the only sensible choice for serious contesting imo, the telnet cluster integration and the rate meter alone are worth it. Log4OM is great software but its not really built around the contest workflow the same way. that said i havent tried the newer versions of Log4OM so maybe it got better. for WSJT-X during contests i just accept that im switching modes and deal with the logging manually if i have to, FT8 in a contest always feels a bit slow to me anyway compared to running CW

that 10-15 range is genuinely the hardest part for most people, you're not alone there. what helped me was forcing myself to just listen and not write anything down for a while. i know that sounds counterintuitive but when you're trying to write every letter you're still kind of spelling things out in your head instead of hearing words as whole units. took me a while to trust it but once i stopped transcribing everything and just tried to get the meaning the speed started to come more naturally. also the farnsworth method thing where you hear characters at full speed but with longer gaps between them - if youre not already doing that i'd start there. lcwo lets you set character speed and effective speed separately. bump the character speed up to like 18-20 even if your effective wpm stays where you are. your ear gets used to what fast code actually sounds like and then closing the gap isnt as big a jump. took me probably another 3-4 months to go from 12 to 20 comfortably but i wasnt practicing every day either so your mileage may vary.

went through basically the same confusion when I started doing emcomm stuff with my group. one thing that helped me was just watching the Winlink Express session log in real time while a transfer happens — you can actually see the handshake steps go back and forth and it becomes pretty obvious when something fails versus when it completes cleanly. sounds dumb but just watching it for a few sessions made the whole RMS/CMS relationship click for me. the TM-V71A should work fine for this, ive seen people run solid Vara FM with that radio. one gotcha is making sure youre not accidentally keying up on the input of a repeater instead of the simplex gateway frequency, i did that embarassingly for like two weeks before someone told me

Your path loss calculation is close. EME signals will be weaker at apogee compared to perigee as distance is more. The 261dB figure assumes perfect conditions - add another 2-3dB for practical scenarios. Don't attempt EME when antennas point coincidentally at Moon and Sun. Galactic noise is definitely your enemy on 70cm.

Congrats on passing Tech! HamStudy.org has excellent flash cards and practice tests with explanations - I used it daily for 3 weeks. Focus heavily on antenna theory and propagation, those killed me on my first attempt.

yeah the cooling on the 857 is pretty marginal for sustained TX. i did a fan upgrade on mine about three years ago, just sourced a 12v fan with a higher flow rate and wired it to run at lower voltage most of the time with a small resistor in line so it doesnt sound like a jet engine at idle, then direct 12v when the temp gets up there. pretty simple mod honestly and the thermal behavior is noticeably better. i also added a small heatsink to the PA module itself, theres just barely enough clearance if you keep it thin. the preamp mod you're thinking of might be the one where you piggyback a MAR or similar MMIC on the front end, ive seen it done but never tried it myself. my stock RX on the 857 has always seemed fine for what i do so never felt the urge.

yeah the relay boards from amazon are basically fine for the switching part but the problem is usually the shared ground between the arduino side and the coil side. those cheap 8-channel boards technically have optoisolation but a lot of them the isolation is pretty garbage in practice, the ground planes are still connected through the pcb if you look closely. what you want to do is actually cut the trace or use the JD-VCC jumper if your board has one and power the relay coil side from a separate supply — not from the arduino's 5v rail. that alone usually cleans up a lot of the noise. also 18 inches from the 7300 is probably too close. i keep my whole automation box in a separate enclosure on a shelf below the desk, like 3 feet away, and run shielded cable to the antenna switch. even then i had to add ferrite chokes on the serial USB cable before the clicking went away completely. the USB cable acts like a little antenna and just dumps the switching transients right into the PC audio chain which then gets into your rig through the sound card interface if youre using one of those.

so ive been meaning to get into satellite work for a while and last weekend i finally just did it. grabbed my arrow antenna and the ft-818 and went out to the backyard. been tracking passes with gpredict for about a month just to get a feel for the geometry before actually trying to operate. first couple passes i was just listening, and honestly hearing the linear transponder was way more exciting than i expected. you can really hear the doppler shift if the pass is anywhere near overhead, like the whole downlink just slides down as it goes past zenith. i knew about it theoretically but hearing it in real time is something else. actually made a contact on the third pass which i was not expecting at all. guy was running a big az-el setup somewhere in the northeast and his signal was rock solid the whole arc. mine was drifting around because i was trying to hand-track and work the split and not drop the antenna all at once. its a lot to manage solo. main thing i want to ask — how much does the uplink frequency correction matter when youre running low power? i was trying to manually compensate the doppler on the uplink but im not sure if i was doing it right. the 818 doesnt have satellite mode so its all manual. does it matter that much at 2.4w or does the transponder just pull it in?

As a newcomer, this is really helpful. Should I monitor the APRS frequency before transmitting to avoid interference? I'm setting up my first mobile station and don't want to contribute to the congestion problem you're describing.