Lisa Rodriguez

yeah i did something similar a while back though i used an arduino mega as kind of a middleman between the radio and the pi, the arduino handles all the serial timing sensitive stuff and just passes clean data over USB to the pi. works great and means if the pi crashes or reboots the radio interface doesnt go down too. might be overengineering it for your use case but its been solid for me for about two years now

so we've got a county-level ARES activation drill coming up this weekend and i've been going back and forth on whether to bring the generator or just run off lithium battery packs. the drill is supposed to be about 6 hours of actual operating time, maybe a bit more if things run long like they always do. my main rig for this is an IC-7300 running at around 50-60 watts most of the time, not full 100W because we're mostly doing voice nets and some Winlink. i've got two 100Ah LiFePO4 batteries that i picked up last year and they've been solid but i've never actually run them for a full 6 hour stretch without any solar to top them off. done the math and it seems like it should be fine but real world is always different than paper. on the antenna side i'm thinking the 40m EFHW with the 9:1 unun up in whatever tree i can find, maybe 25-30 feet if im lucky. the site we're going to doesnt have great tree coverage from what i remember so i might need to bring the MFJ mast sections too which is another thing to haul. anyone done extended field ops without a genny and actually tracked their consumption? curious if 200Ah realistically gets me through without having to throttle back or take breaks. also open to antenna suggestions if the tree situation is bad as expected.

so ive been at this for about 8 months now. started from literally zero, couldnt even hear the difference between dit and dah at first, and worked my way up pretty slowly using the Koch method through the LCWO website. got to around 13wpm and things were going pretty well, felt like i was actually starting to hear letters as sounds instead of counting dots and dashes in my head which everyone says is the goal right. but now i feel completely stuck. ive been sitting at 13wpm for like 6 weeks and nothing seems to be moving. i practice every day, usually 20-30 minutes in the morning before work. im doing the code groups on LCWO and also trying to copy some of the slow speed nets on 40m but half the time i miss stuff and get frustrated. read somewhere that you should try practicing at speeds higher than your target to force your brain to adapt but when i crank it up to like 18 or 20wpm i just fall apart completely and cant copy anything useful. is this normal? did anyone else hit a plateau around here and how did you push through it. my goal is 20wpm eventually, not in a huge hurry but want to keep making progress

congrats on the upgrade first of all. ok so the FCC allocation is the actual legal limit, the ARRL band plan is a gentlemans agreement basically. you wont get fined for ignoring the ARRL plan but you might annoy people. the band edge thing is really important though — your signal isnt just at one frequency, when you transmit SSB you're producing a sideband that's roughly 3 kHz wide. so if you tune your dial to 7.300 on USB your signal is actually going from like 7.300 up to 7.303 which is outside the US allocation and technically illegal. most people leave at least 3 kHz of cushion from the upper edge, so in practice that means dont go above about 7.297 on USB. lower sideband is the norm on 40 phone anyway so you're spreading downward, but same idea applies at 7.175 on the lower end for generals. you want your whole signal inside the band not just your suppressed carrier frequency

the eu2200i is about as clean as small generators get but ive still seen it cause grief with sensitive receivers, especially on the lower bands. what helped me was keeping the generator as far from the operating position as practical — like at least 30-50 feet if the extension cord run allows it — and making sure the ground stake is good. also check that your coax shield is actually grounded at the operating end and not just floating, that caught me out once for what felt like forever before i figured it out. the battery idea is honestly not a bad one. i run a similar lifepo4 setup and just let the generator charge it while im operating, keeps the charging load off the radio circuit entirely. you do want a decent DC-DC isolator or at least a good filter choke on the charge line if youre running both at the same time. doesnt have to be complicated but worth doing. the 7300 is a pretty quiet rig on receive so you might be fine either way, just depends how bad the site is for noise pickup.

yeah the interference problem is real but it's honestly more manageable than the forums make it look. i ran SO2R for the first time seriously during ARRL DX CW last year with a pair of Elecraft K3s and some cheap bandpass filters from 4O3A and it wasnt perfect but it was workable. the key thing nobody tells you up front is that you dont have to go full 2BSIQ right out of the gate, that stuff takes actual practice with the SO2R More software or whatever you're using. just start by using the second radio passively, like when your run goes dead you flip over and S&P for a few minutes, bag a few mults you'd have missed, then come back. even doing it that way my score went up noticeably. the rate math works out pretty fast once you stop losing 20-30 minutes per band change just staring at a waterfall wondering where everyone went. the filter situation depends a lot on your antenna setup too. if your two antennas have decent physical separation and youre not trying to run 40 and 80 at the same time with dipoles 30 feet apart you might be surprised how okay it is with just the bandpass filters. worth trying before you convince yourself it cant work.

I use 2" wide copper strap from a sheet metal shop and it's definitely helped with RF in the shack. That said, properly placed 1:1 chokes at the transceiver output and outside the shack wall made a bigger difference than the grounding upgrades.

haha yeah that first qso feeling is real man. i remember mine, i was shaking a little and completely forgot to give my callsign at the end of the transmission. the other guy was super cool about it though. welcome to the hobby, it only gets more addictive from here, fair warning.

so this has been driving me absolutely nuts for the past month. I picked up an IC-7300 off a local ham who said it had 'minor issues' — yeah right — and the main problem is the output power just tanks randomly. like ill be running 100w into a dummy load, everything looks fine, then it'll just drop to like 8-10w for no reason and sometimes it comes back on its own after a few minutes and sometimes it doesn't. already pulled the finals and replaced both RD70HVF1 transistors, reseated everything, checked the bias and set it properly per the service manual. problem is still there. SWR isnt the issue, ive got it on a dummy load when testing so thats ruled out. ALC looks normal on the scope when its behaving but i havent caught it misbehaving while probing yet because of course. im starting to wonder if its thermal — like maybe a dry joint somewhere on the PA board that opens up when it heats up. or maybe the driver stage. has anyone seen this specific failure mode on a 7300 or know what to look for next. the previous owner definitely ran this thing hard based on the fan grill discoloration.

so ive been at this morse code thing for about a year now. started with the Koch method app on my phone and got up to around 13wpm pretty comfortably but now i just cant seem to push past it no matter what i do. i practice like 20-30 minutes every day, sometimes more on weekends. i can copy solid at 13 but the moment i bump it up to 15 everything falls apart and i start writing letters down instead of just listening and letting it flow. someone at the club meeting told me to just crank the speed way up like to 25wpm and listen even if i cant copy it, let my brain get used to the sound of the characters at high speed. another guy told me to not do that and just slowly work up 1wpm at a time and not move on until i can copy for 5 straight minutes without errors. both of these seem like they contradict each other and i dont know who to listen to. been at 13wpm for like 4 months now and its getting a little discouraging. anyone gone through this and come out the other side at 20 or better?

Been running mobiles for years and getting hung up on power output is a common rookie mistake. A 80 watt radio will not talk twice as far as a 40 watt radio. Focus on a good antenna system instead - that's where you'll see real performance gains. Heavy gauge wire directly to battery with proper fusing is the only way to go.

Check the RemoteHams forum - they have specific threads about SDR integration. The key is getting the virtual serial port driver working correctly first before trying to integrate with RCForb server.

im basically in the same boat as you, maybe a little behind actually — im at about 11wpm right now and have been for like two months. so i dont have great advice but wanted to say youre not alone in hitting this wall. someone on another forum told me to try listening to W1AW code practice transmissions even if i cant copy it all, just to hear the rhythm of real operating. havent done it consistently enough to say if it works yet tbh

so we ran a simulated disaster exercise Saturday, county-wide thing coordinated with the local ARES group and the emergency management office. I've done a few of these before but this one really opened my eyes to some gaps I didn't even know we had. The scenario was a major ice storm taking out power and cell infrastructure across about a third of the county. We had net control set up at the EOC and were supposed to relay health and welfare traffic plus coordinate resource requests between the shelters. Sounds straightforward right? Except nobody had tested whether the repeater at the fire station would actually hold up on generator power for more than a couple hours. Spoiler: it didn't, and we had to scramble to get simplex working which honestly should have been our plan A anyway. The other thing that caught me off guard was how much confusion there was about message formatting. Some guys were using ICS-213 forms, some were just passing informal traffic, and net control was struggling to log everything consistently. We talked about it afterward and most people agreed we need to standardize but nobody had really pushed for that before the exercise exposed it. Anyone else run into this kind of thing? Curious what lessons other groups have come away with from their drills, especially around message handling and backup comms when your primary infrastructure fails.

I use both - Log4OM for daily FT8/digital logging with excellent VOACAP propagation integration, N1MM+ specifically for contests. Most users combine tools (Log4OM daily + N1MM contests) rather than trying to use one for everything.

so ive been licensed about 8 months now and ive been making contacts pretty regularly, mostly on 40m and some 2m stuff locally. someone at the club meeting last week mentioned i should be uploading to LoTW but then another guy said eQSL is better for awards and then my elmer said paper cards are still important for some things and now im just totally lost about what i actually need to do here like do i have to do all three? is LoTW free? i went to the ARRL site and it looked kind of complicated to set up with the certificate stuff. and for paper cards do i need a QSL manager or can i just send them myself through the buro or whatever its called. i dont even know where to start honestly any advice appreciated, just trying to figure out what the normal thing is that most people do

the queuing thing — yeah Winlink Express holds the message in your outbox until it gets a confirmed handshake from the RMS that the session completed. if the session drops before that happens the message stays in outbox and you can just try again. the CMS side doesnt get it until the RMS actually uploads it, so if you see it gone from outbox it almost certainly made it. almost. there have been edge cases where the session partially completed but that's pretty rare with Vara FM, more of a Pactor thing back in the day. for delivery confirmation there's no read receipt in the traditional sense but if you send to a winlink address you can request a delivery notification in the message settings, theres a checkbox somewhere in the compose window. wont help for sending to a regular email address though, those you just have to trust the system or ask the recipient. also for your dropped sessions on 2m, have you checked what the gateway's queue looks like? sometimes if a bunch of people are hitting the same RMS it'll time you out. Vara FM is pretty sensitive to audio levels too, worth running the Vara FM calibration if you havent already. the Digirig should be fine but the level coming out of the radio into it matters a lot more than people think.

So ive been a tech for a couple years and just upgraded to general last month, and ive been wanting to learn CW for a while now. Got myself a used Bencher BY-1 paddle off ebay and a little MFJ keyer, and i think i have it hooked up right but im not totally sure im setting the weight and ratio correctly. Like when i try to send my callsign it sounds kind of uneven, the dits feel too short or something. Also my iambic mode — im using mode B i think? — sometimes adds an extra element at the end when i release the paddles and i cant figure out if thats supposed to happen or if its a setting issue. I've been using the G4FON trainer on my laptop to practice receiving and im up to maybe 7-8 wpm copying random letters but i drop a lot of characters when there's numbers mixed in. Numbers just dont stick in my brain the same way. Is that normal at this stage or am i missing something with how i should be practicing. Anyway any tips from people who actually use CW on the air regularly would be really appreciated. I dont want to be that guy who calls CQ and sends garbage lol

Tried newer modes like Olivia and Contestia but less activity there. PSK31 still has decent activity and I encourage others to try keyboard-to-keyboard modes. Both have their place depending on your goals.

okay so ive been licensed for about 3 months now (technician) and i finally got a decent handheld, a Baofeng UV-5R which i know people have opinions about but its what i could afford. anyway i programmed in the local 2m repeater and i can hear people on it just fine but when i try to transmit nobody seems to hear me or respond. i checked the frequency and offset and those seem right but im wondering if its a CTCSS thing. the repeater directory listing shows a tone of 88.5 but i honestly dont really understand what that means or how to set it up properly on the radio. is the tone something i transmit, something i need to receive, or both? i feel like i must be missing something obvious here because everyone else seems to be getting in fine. also somewhat related — when i do eventually get on the repeater is there like a standard way to call out? i dont want to be that guy who just starts rambling without knowing the etiquette. i heard you're supposed to wait for the courtesy tone or something. any help appreciated

General class lets you operate on HF bands for long-distance communication and access to international amateur radio networks - these bands support worldwide contacts, especially during favorable propagation. You get access to over 80% of the Amateur HF band which opens up a completely different aspect of ham radio.

so i finally did my first SOTA activation last weekend, W4T/CN-001 up in the smokies, been putting it off for like two years because i kept overthinking the gear situation. ended up just throwing my KX2 in the pack with a 40m EFHW rolled up on a winder and a cheap fiberglass pole from ebay. total kit was maybe 5 lbs including the battery which was a 3ah lipo i borrowed from my son's RC car stuff lol conditions werent great, 40m was noisy as heck mid morning but i still managed 12 QSOs in maybe 25 minutes and got my 4 contacts for the activation. one guy spotted me on SOTAwatch before i even finished setting up which was wild, didnt expect that. 20m was a bit better later on but i was cold and just wanted to come down honestly anyway if anyones been sitting on the fence about doing one of these just go do it, the obsessing over antennas and watts is so much less important than just getting out there

buddipole on 40 meters, just make sure your counterpoise situation is sorted out before you get there because that thing can be finicky when you're rushed setting up and people are waiting on you. learned that the hard way at a public service event, took way longer than it should have to get a decent SWR on 40. on the generator question I dont have strong opinions but one thing worth considering is whether your exercise evaluators are going to ding you for fossil fuel dependency. some ARES groups have been moving toward renewable/battery-only as a resilience standard. might be worth asking before the exercise what the eval criteria look like.

My VE session is next Saturday and I'm getting nervous even though I'm consistently scoring 80-85% on practice tests. Need 74% to pass (26/35 questions for Tech, 37/50 for Extra) so I should be fine mathematically, but still anxious about the real thing. For those who've been there: Any last-minute review tips?What to expect at the actual test session?Common mistakes to avoid on exam day?Also heard you can take multiple exams in the same session to save on fees - worth attempting General too if I'm feeling confident?

Absolutely worth it! I upgraded to an IC-9700 last year and it's a game-changer for linear work. Software communicates with the transceiver via CAT control, allowing for automated frequency adjustments. Ham Radio Deluxe handles the inverting transponder math perfectly.