David Williams

the low end thing is absolutely true, cutting below maybe 200-300hz on SSB makes a noticeable difference in intelligibility, especially on a crowded band. the IC-7300 has a TX bandwidth filter in the menus, i think its under Set > Tone > TX Bass Cut or something like that, been a while since i poked around in there. you can also use the parametric EQ in the radio to notch out some of the boominess. for mic gain, what i do is watch the ALC meter while talking at normal conversational volume. you want the ALC just barely moving, like occasionally kissing the edge of the ALC zone. if its pegging or staying pinned the whole time youre way too hot and youre going to have splatter and compression artifacts that sound like garbage on the other end. the stock mic on the 7300 actually isnt bad but people tend to drive it too hard. get someone on a repeater or a local friend on HF to give you audio reports while you adjust in real time, thats really the only way to do it properly.

so ive been going back and forth on this for probably two months now and i need someone to just talk me off the ledge or push me one way. my situation is a small suburban lot, maybe 60 feet usable in the backyard, HOA that technically says no antennas but the neighbors dont care as long as its not obvious. i currently have a trapped vertical which i put up last spring and honestly it works okay but 40m has been disappointing — like im getting out but not nearly as well as i expected based on what people say about verticals and low angle radiation and all that. i keep reading that a dipole at even 30 or 40 feet will outperform a vertical on 40m for most practical purposes, especially if your ground isnt great. and my ground is definitely not great, i havent done any radials to speak of, just the four that came with the antenna kit. so part of me thinks im blaming the wrong thing. but the other part says a dipole at 40 feet on 40m is pretty compromised too since thats only about a third wavelength up. anyone run both and actually done a real comparison, not just theoretical? im not trying to work dx necessarily, mostly domestic stuff, some nets, maybe the occasional contest. space is the limiting factor more than money at this point.

so ive been a general for about two years now and i keep telling myself im gonna upgrade but every time i look at the extra question pool i just kind of close the browser and go do something else lol. like some of this stuff, the filter theory and the transmission line calculations and whatever, i genuinely have no idea where to even start. i didnt go to school for electrical engineering or anything like that, im just a guy who got into radio because my uncle had a station in his basement. i guess my question is do i actually need to understand all the theory to pass or is it more like just memorize the answers? and also is the extra even worth it at this point, like what do i actually get that i dont have with general? i know there are some frequencies but i never really felt limited honestly. just trying to figure out if its worth the effort before i commit to studying

yeah this is super common and honestly 6 weeks isnt that long even though it feels like forever when youre in the middle of it. the thing that made the biggest difference for me was just forcing myself to listen at a higher speed even when i couldnt copy it. like set your character speed up to 15 or even 20wpm but keep the farnsworth spacing wide so there's plenty of time between characters. your brain starts learning to hear the letters as sounds instead of counting dits and dahs and thats really the whole game right there also 20-30 minutes a day is fine but consistency matters more than duration i think. i made way more progress doing 15 minutes every single day than when i tried to do hour long sessions a few times a week. just keep at it, the plateau usually breaks when you least expect it

Direwolf has a built in igate function if you want to just run your own, that way you dont have to rely on someone elses infrastructure. I did this when i moved out to a more rural area and the nearest igate was like 30 miles away. you just need a decent internet connection and you configure the IGSERVER line in your direwolf.conf to point at one of the rotate servers. took me maybe 20 minutes to get working and now my packets show up on aprs.fi no problem. downside is obviously you need the pi to stay online but sounds like you already have that setup anyway.

My first QSO was on HF actually, I jumped straight to General after passing Tech like a week later. Got a random station in Florida on 40m and I honestly froze for a second when he came back to me. Ended up fumbling through a signal report and forgot to say 73 at the end. But hey it counted. Baofeng to start is totally fine, just dont let anyone talk you out of getting a real radio eventually when youre ready to do more than local repeaters.

ok so i just upgraded to general and i'm trying to figure out 40 meters but the band plan stuff is kind of confusing me. like i know there's a difference between what the FCC actually allocates and what the band plan says but i dont really understand how that works in practice. my friend told me to stay away from 7.125 to 7.175 or something like that because of some international thing but i cant find a clear answer on why. also i keep seeing people say dont operate right at the band edge but nobody explains what bad actually happens if you do. is it just an etiquette thing or can you actually get in trouble

yeah the question pool thing is real, the FCC basically publishes all the possible questions ahead of time so theres no secret surprises on the exam. HamStudy.org is honestly where id point you first, its free and it tracks which questions you keep getting wrong so it focuses on those. the spaced repetition thing actually works pretty well. 30-45 minutes a day is plenty, most people pass in a few weeks doing less than that honestly. some of the stuff like ohms law you actually want to understand because it helps the answers make sense but a lot of the band plan stuff is just pattern recognition after a while. dont stress too much about propagation for the tech exam, theres not that much of it and its pretty surface level

so ive been running FT8 for about a year now and yeah its great for racking up contacts and all that but honestly after a while it feels like youre just exchanging signal reports with robots. i started poking around JS8Call last month and its a completely different animal. like you can actually type to someone and have a conversation, the latency is a bit rough but for weak signal stuff it really shines. my question is whether anyone here regularly uses JS8Call for nets or rag chewing because i cant seem to find a lot of activity on the frequencies i've been checking. tried 14.078 a few times and heard a handful of stations but nothing like the wall of signals you get on the FT8 portion. wondering if im just on at the wrong times or if the mode never really took off the way some people hoped it would. also for context im running an IC-7300 into a trapped vertical, pretty modest setup but FT8 works fine so the rx should be decent enough. just trying to figure out if JS8Call is worth investing more time into or if i should just accept that FT8 is what it is and move on

yeah 10m has been stupid good lately. i worked like 14 countries in a single afternoon a couple weeks ago just messing around, wasnt even trying to run a pileup or anything. the solar flux being up over 200 makes such a huge difference it's almost unfair compared to the low years when 10m felt completely useless. for tracking conditions i'd suggest keeping an eye on the WWV broadcasts on 2.5, 5, 10, or 15 MHz, they give you the solar flux and A/K index numbers every hour. also N0NBH's propagation page is pretty good for a quick visual snapshot. DXmaps is solid for seeing whats actually open right now in real time, which is sometimes more useful than trying to predict it. honestly for evening openings like what you're describing, a lot of that is F2 propagation doing weird stuff near the solar max, it doesnt always follow the textbook rules which is part of what makes it fun to chase.

im in almost the exact same boat lol, been chasing DXCC since last spring and its kinda addictive. one thing i didnt realize at first is that LoTW credits only count if BOTH sides upload — so you might have worked someone but if they never upload their log you wont get the credit even if you did. QSL cards direct or through the bureau are the backup for that. took me a while to figure out the bureau system but its cheap and eventually stuff comes through. WAZ is another one worth looking at down the road, working all 40 CQ zones. some zones are way harder to find activity in than others but its a cool way to think about the world differently on the bands.

honestly the best advice i got was from an old timer in our club who said just go to one activation with basically nothing and see what you wish you had. sounds counterintuitive but you learn real fast what matters. i showed up to a county exercise with my radio and power supply and realized i had no way to log, no headset, and forgot my mic. never made that mistake again. my kit now fits in a rolling toolbox from harbor freight, took a while to get there though. the 991a is a great radio for this by the way, very versatile. just make sure you have a way to program it quickly if you need to change to a different repeater on the fly, some people keep chirp loaded on a little laptop or even a raspberry pi setup but thats maybe getting ahead of yourself right now.

yeah i tried something like this a while back with a pi 3 and an IC-7300. never got the zero to behave reliably enough for anything real time honestly. the 3 or the 3A+ is way more stable for this kinda thing if you have one lying around. the zero is fine for like a slow data collector but CAT polling every few hundred milliseconds starts to cause issues in my experience.

i passed mine back in march and literally just used the hamstudy app for like two weeks. dont overthink it. the math questions look scary but there really arent that many and once you see the same ones a few times you just remember the answer. i was also worried about the electrical theory stuff but honestly most of it is pretty surface level for the tech exam, not like you need to design a circuit or anything.

yeah hamstudy is what most people use now, just keep doing practice exams over and over. i think i studied for maybe 2 weeks before i felt ready. the impedance and propagation questions are a little weird at first but they repeat a lot so you start to just remember them. good luck, General is totally worth it