Sarah Anderson

welcome to the hobby man. i got my license like 8 months ago and i still mess up on the repeater sometimes so dont worry about it. the guys on most repeaters have seen it a hundred times and dont care. what radio did you order if you dont mind me asking

For modern rigs, digital is usually better for precision measurements and has better input impedance. However, I keep both - the analog is excellent for peaking adjustments and watching voltage fluctuations during keying. There are a few safety considerations to note when using a multimeter - the leads should be rated for at least the voltage being measured.

so ive been lurking on this forum for a while and finally pulled the trigger on building a QRP rig from scratch. went with a 40m CW transceiver based on the Pixie design, nothing fancy, just wanted to see if i could actually do it. soldering took me way longer than i expected and i had one of the toroids wound backwards which had me scratching my head for two days before i figured it out. anyway got it all together last weekend, threw up a random wire out the back window, tuned around 7.030 and just listened for a while. wasnt expecting much honestly, i mean its putting out maybe 500mw. but then i heard a station calling CQ from ohio and just went for it. took a few tries but he came back to me. i was genuinely shocked. running off a 9v battery on my kitchen table and making a contact two states over felt completely different than working DX on my big rig. the whole low power thing has kind of changed how i think about the hobby. like every db matters, your antenna actually matters, propagation matters — you cant just throw power at a bad situation. anyway wondering if anyone here runs QRP regularly and has tips for getting better at it, especially portable. thinking about taking it camping this summer.

Just upgraded to General a few weeks ago and starting to explore HF. I keep seeing people mention solar flux index and K-index numbers but I'm getting confused by all the different values. Current SFI is around 135-143, which seems decent, but how do I know if that's actually good for working DX on 20m? Also seeing K-index at 1 which people say is "very quiet" - does that mean good or bad for propagation? Any simple rules of thumb for a new HF operator?

The Extra-only segments are on 80, 40, 20, and 15 meters. On 40M for example, General voice is 7.175-7.300 MHz, but Extra gets 7.125-7.175 MHz as well. You get extra segments within those four bands that can make a big difference.

congrats on the ticket first of all. okay so the baofeng thing - your brother isnt wrong that they work, i know plenty of people who use them and have no issues hitting local repeaters. the faces people make are usually about build quality and the fact that they can be a little quirky to program, not that they're dangerous or anything. for just getting started and talking on local machines a uv-5r will absolutely do the job. that said if you want something that'll last longer and is easier to live with, the yaesu ft-65r is around $80-90 and its a solid step up. dual band, decent audio, much easier to program. if you want to spend more and get something you probably wont outgrow for a while, look at the yaesu ft-70dr which does fusion digital and analog both, or the kenwood th-d75a if you want aprs built in but thats more than your budget. honestly for where youre at right now i'd say either the baofeng to get started cheap, or the ft-65r if you want something that feels a bit more like a real radio without spending a ton.

Welcome to the hobby! Remember you must meet all FCC requirements as of the receipt date, including having the proper license class shown in the ULS. Since you just got General, double-check that it's updated in the system before applying. Good luck with your vanity quest!

I was terrified for my first net too! The NC will acknowledge those received and ask for any additions or corrections to call signs. If you stumble over your call, they'll help you out. Just speak slowly and clearly - you've got this!

ive been meaning to look into the local ARES group for a while now, just got my general last spring and wasnt sure if i had enough experience to be useful. does it matter that im still pretty new? i dont want to show up and be more of a liability than anything

yeah the ARRL net directory is where i'd start, been using it since i got my ticket last year. i found a couple nets through there that i check in to pretty regularly now. one thing i noticed is a lot of nets have a net control who posts a schedule reminder on their club facebook page or reflector so its worth hunting those down once you find a net you like, easier than trying to remember the time every week

yeah technician is definitely where you start, thats the entry level one. honestly it's not that bad at all. the question pool is public so you can just go to hamstudy.org and grind through the practice questions, most people pass within a few weeks of casual studying. the actual exam is 35 questions and you need like 26 right to pass. for finding a test session your best bet is to look up a local amateur radio club, most of them run VE sessions pretty regularly. some clubs also do them online now through zoom which is convenient if you dont have anything nearby. your neighbor being into it is actually a huge help because he can probably point you toward his club and maybe even drive you to the exam. the hardest part for most people is the electrical theory stuff but honestly if you just do the practice tests over and over it clicks eventually even if you dont fully understand why

so i finally pulled the trigger on a QCX mini kit after eyeing it for probably two years and i have to say the whole experience was kind of humbling in a good way. i've been licensed for about four years now but mostly just used commercial HF rigs so actually sitting down and soldering every component on that little board made me realize how little i actually understood about what was happening inside the black box the build took me a couple evenings, nothing too crazy, and i only had to troubleshoot one cold solder joint on the LPF section before it started working properly. got it aligned on 40m and made my first contact into ohio from here in illinois running maybe 3 watts and i wont lie i was pretty giddy about that. the other station gave me a 559 which honestly felt better than any 59 i've gotten running 100 watts i'm curious what other people have found for antennas when they're doing portable QRP stuff. i've been reading about end fed half waves and also random wires with a tuner but not sure what the tradeoff is for something you'd throw in a pack and hike out with. does the antenna matter even more at low power or is that just something people say

so ive been doing contests semi-seriously for a few years now, mostly single op on 40 and 20 during things like sweepstakes and the big DX contests, and i keep reading about SO2R and watching contest scores from the top ops and obviously theres a huge gap between what im doing and what they're putting up. i get the basic concept, youre running on one radio while S&P on another, multiplier hunting while keeping rate up on the run radio. but honestly the more i read about it the more it feels like the station building and the band switching and the antenna isolation headaches might be more trouble than its worth for someone who isnt going to be in the top 10 anyway. my current setup is an IC-7300 and a tribander at about 40 feet plus a dipole for 40. nothing fancy. to even do SO2R properly wouldnt i need two complete stations with decent antenna separation or some kind of bandpass filter setup? i looked at the Array Solutions stuff and the W3NQN filters and yeah okay those work but its a real investment. wondering if anyone here has done a half-baked SO2R setup that actually improved their score without going full contest station. or is this one of those things where you either do it right or you might as well not bother

yeah the NCS backup thing is such a common issue and honestly its one of those things that every group says theyll fix and then doesnt until it bites them again. we had almost the exact same situation a couple years back during a SET and it was kind of a wake up call. after that we started doing a thing where we rotate NCS duty every month even on just routine nets so more people get comfortable with it. made a huge difference the programming issue is real too. we actually have a standard template now that all our operators are supposed to load before any activation, includes all the simplex channels, CTCSS tones for the served agency repeaters, even a couple of the neighboring county freqs. somebody puts it up on the group website before each exercise. doesnt solve the human element but it helps sounds like your after action was productive though, thats honestly the most important part. ive seen groups do exercises and then not really do any honest debrief and just kind of pat themselves on the back. the ones that improve are the ones that actually talk about what went wrong

No dumb questions here, we were all new once. So the CTCSS thing — yeah you only need to encode it on your transmit side, meaning your radio sends that tone out to the repeater so the repeater knows it should open up and re-transmit what you're saying. You dont necessarily need to decode it on your receive side unless you want to squelch out other signals, but most people leave receive tone off so they can hear everything coming through. For the Baofeng specifically, you'll want to go into the channel settings (assuming you programmed it as a channel and not just VFO mode) and look for the T-CTCS option — that's the transmit tone. Set that to 100.0 and you should be good. The R-CTCS is for receive, just leave that off for now. As for talking over people — totally normal mistake honestly. What you want to do is listen for a few seconds after the squelch tail drops, which is that little blip or burst of noise you hear when someone lets go of the PTT. Some repeaters have a courtesy tone too, kind of a beep that tells you the channel is clear for the next person to go. Once you hear that, pause a beat and then you can jump in and identify yourself. Most folks on a linked system are pretty understanding with new hams, just say you're new and they'll usually walk you through things.

the antenna isolation question is the real thing you need to solve first, everything else is technique you pick up over time. i ran without proper bandpass filters my first SO2R attempt during the ARRL 10m contest and basically made both radios useless on adjacent bands. microHAM or Array Solutions filters are the usual answer, expensive but you only cry once. some guys DIY the filtering with good results but you need to know what you're doing with coax and toroids. workflow wise, yeah the classic approach is run on radio 1, use radio 2 to find your next run freq or pick off mults while you're waiting for the pile to answer. the tricky part is training your brain to copy a callsign on one ear while your other ear is already on the S&P radio listening for something useful. takes a few contests to not completely fall apart at 120/hour. i'd say start in a slower contest where you have breathing room, not a sprint where the exchange is already compressed and everything moves fast and honestly - better antennas beats SO2R almost every time for raw rate. SO2R really shines for mult hunting late in a contest when your run rate drops off and you need to pick up those last few states or zones without leaving your run frequency

This is a test please ignore

so i finally decided to stop being lazy and just build a dipole instead of buying one, figured how hard can it really be. grabbed some 14 gauge solid copper wire from the hardware store, cut both legs to about 16.5 feet each for 40m, and hooked it up with a SO-239 chassis connector i had in the junk box. center support is just a piece of PVC i drilled holes through, nothing fancy. got it up about 25 feet in an inverted V config tied off to my garage peak and two trees. fed it with maybe 50 feet of RG-8X i had lying around. here's the problem though — SWR at 7.150 is reading like 3.2:1 on my meter. i expected it to be a little off but not that much. trimmed maybe 4 inches off each leg and its now sitting around 2.8:1 which is better but still way off from what i thought i'd get. resonance seems to be wandering around too, like it changes depending on the weather almost. not sure if its the feedline, the connections at the center piece, or if i just screwed up the length calculation somehow. using the 468/f formula which i thought was standard. anyone dealt with this building from scratch or have i just made some dumb mistake somewhere

As someone new to both contesting and POTA, I started with mobile apps and they're great for learning. The ADIF import/export works seamlessly and GPS auto-calculates your gridsquare which is perfect when you're still figuring things out. You can always add N1MM later for serious contest work.

Built mine last month - stick with the 4053 CMOS switches, they work great. Got mine from Digikey, avoid the cheap Chinese clones as they have higher Ron resistance. The SI5351 module is fine, bare chip won't make much difference at HF.

IRLP requires a dedicated Linux computer and has specific hardware requirements, but it's rock solid once set up. The big advantage is that users control connections with DTMF tones from their radios - no need for computers or apps. Setup is more involved initially, but maintenance is minimal.

Start simple! The QRPGuys Bayou Jumper with the Soup'er Up'er board is a great first build - single band, good docs, and you'll learn a lot without getting overwhelmed.

so i finally did my first summit activation last weekend up on a local peak, nothing crazy just a 2 pointer but man i was not prepared for how much fun that was. packed way too much gear obviously, brought the kx2 and my linked dipole and a whole backpack full of stuff i didnt even touch. took me like 45 minutes to get the antenna up because the trees were spaced weird and i kept dropping my throw line. but once i got on 20 meters the pile up was actually real, like people were actually waiting to work me, never had that happen before. made 12 contacts in about 20 minutes and then battery was getting low because i forgot to charge it the night before like an idiot. still counts though, qualified the summit and everything. already planning the next one, thinking about trying a harder peak and maybe bringing the 40m dipole too since it seems like the lower bands do better in the afternoon

honestly the General pool isnt as bad as people make it sound. the electrical theory stuff can look scary but most of it is the same concepts from Tech just gone a little deeper. if you understood ohms law and basic circuits for Tech youre not starting from zero. what worked for me was just doing HamStudy.org every day for like 20-30 minutes. they track which questions you keep missing and hammer those. i think i studied maybe 3 weeks before i felt solid and passed with only a couple wrong. the propagation stuff actually got interesting once i started understanding why 40m goes long at night and stuff like that, made it feel less like memorizing and more like actually learning something useful. the part that tripped me up was some of the operating procedures and the band plan questions, just stuff i hadnt thought about much as a Tech who mostly just did repeaters. worth paying attention to those sections.

Do a proper install, power off the battery directly. Do NOT tap into existing vehicle wiring, and for the love of God and all things holy, do NOT use cigarette lighter sockets. For antenna mounting, try a mag mount first on the roof center - you'll be surprised how well it works compared to other locations.