Sarah Anderson

so ive been trying to sort out the best place to mount an antenna on my truck for 2m/70cm and honestly its been more frustrating than i expected. i picked up a used Yaesu FTM-400 a few months back and its been great in the house on the desk but i want to get it actually mobile finally. the problem is my truck has a fiberglass bed cap/topper thing and a bunch of roof rails so finding a clean mount spot is tricky. ive seen people do lip mounts on the trunk edge but thats on sedans usually. i was thinking maybe a hatch mount on the back of the topper but then im worried about the coax run and ground plane issues since fiberglass is obviously not grounded. anyone run into this with a truck cap situation? wondering if a mag mount on the roof of the topper would even work at all or if id just be wasting my time. the radio itself is already mounted under the dash and wired to the battery so thats the easy part i guess

I'm a relatively new General class license holder and my local ARES group invited me to participate in the Simulated Emergency Test this Saturday. I've been practicing with my go-kit (FT-891 and battery setup) but I'm nervous about the real thing. What should I expect for my first SET exercise? Any advice for keeping calm under pressure when passing formal traffic messages? I know the basics of ICS-213 forms but worried about making mistakes during the actual drill. Thanks in advance for any wisdom!

ft991a here and love it. sure the 7300 gets all the love but the 991 does 2m/70cm too which is handy for checking into nets. the touch screen took some getting used to coming from knobs and switches but now i prefer it for band changes and stuff either way youre gonna be amazed at how quiet these modern rigs are compared to what youre used to

honestly the practice test method works better than you'd think. hamstudy.org is what most people use and it tracks which questions you keep getting wrong so you can focus on those. i was skeptical too but after like two weeks of doing maybe 20-30 minutes a day i was consistently passing the practice exams. the thing is a lot of the questions kinda explain themselves if you read the answers carefully, like the ones about electrical safety or band privileges start to make sense in context even if you're not sitting down with a textbook. that said if you want actual explanations the arrl technician manual is decent but its like 30 bucks and some people find it overkill for just passing the test. gordon west makes a study book too that a lot of people swear by, its more stripped down. really depends on how much you actually want to learn vs just pass and figure out the rest on the air.

so i just passed my technician exam like three weeks ago and im still trying to wrap my head around the band privileges. i know i have HF access on 10m but someone at my club meeting said something about phone vs CW and now im more confused than before. like is there a chart somewhere that actually makes sense or do i just have to memorize the whole part 97 thing. also someone mentioned i cant use certain modes on certain bands and i dont even know where to start with that. the ARRL band plan helps a little but it doesnt really explain the why behind any of it

so ive been on SSB for about a year now and i keep getting reports that my audio is either too bassy, sounds like im in a tin can, or just generally not great. im running an IC-7300 with the stock mic and i havent really touched the eq settings much beyond bumping the tx bandwidth a little. done some reading and everyone seems to have a totally different opinion on what the right settings are. mostly doing rag chews on 40m and occasionally 20m, not contesting or anything like that. i know the 7300 has that parametric eq built in but every time i mess with it i feel like i make things worse. also not sure if my mic placement is part of the problem — im probably 6-8 inches away from it which might be too far? honestly not sure what a baseline good SSB audio setup even looks like. anyone been through this and figured out a workflow that works