Sarah Wilson

oh man i went through exactly this about two years ago. came back after a long break and felt like i had never touched a paddle. honestly the best thing i did was just drop the speed way down, like embarrassingly slow, maybe 12 wpm, and just send random QSOs to myself for like 20 minutes a day. the muscle memory comes back faster than you'd think but only if you're not fighting the keyer constantly.
on the mode A vs B thing — a lot of people genuinely cant feel the difference unless they're doing really squeezed iambic technique where the timing of releasing the paddles matters. if you're not doing that it probably wont matter much either way. try mode A and just forget about it for now.
the BY-1 is a solid paddle, i wouldnt blame the hardware. maybe check your contact gap and tension though, sometimes a used paddle has been messed with and the contacts are inconsistent. can cause exactly the kind of doubling you're describing if the contacts are bouncing.

yeah the band privilege chart on the arrl site is way better than trying to read the actual FCC text. i spent like two hours on part 97 before i just looked up a chart and it took five minutes. the coworker thing though, i would just not do it, not worth the hassle if someone files a complaint even if you think it was innocent

so i was just doing my usual evening thing, checking 50.313 out of habit mostly because 6m has been pretty dead here in the midwest for weeks, and suddenly the waterfall just lit up. like completely filled with signals. i was working stations in florida, georgia, a couple in texas, even got a weak one from somewhere in new england which honestly surprised me given my setup is just a 5 element yagi at about 25 feet.
looked it up and apparently theres been some kind of sporadic-e opening running most of the week. i missed the first couple days of it but caught some good runs thursday and friday evening. logged about 40 new grids in two sessions which for me is kind of a big deal since im still chasing WAS on 6m and this knocked out a few states i was missing.
also saw some chatter about the new IC-705 firmware update that supposedly tweaked the FT8 receive sensitivity a little, anyone actually tested that or is it just placebo? i havent updated mine yet, little nervous to mess with something thats been working fine.

I'm just getting into contesting and this sounds amazing! Are you planning to share the Python scripts? Would love to learn how you're handling the antenna switching logic — do you have automatic band plans programmed in?

haha yeah the first time I jumped on HF it sounded like people were speaking a completely different language. you kind of do just absorb most of it over time honestly. the ones you'll hear constantly are QSL (acknowledged / confirmed), QTH (your location), QRM (interference from other stations), QSB (signal fading), QRN (static noise), QRZ (who is calling me), and QRT which means you're shutting down or leaving the air. those right there will cover probably 80% of what you hear in casual rag chewing. 73 is just the classic signoff meaning best wishes or regards, goes back to telegraph days. 88 is like love and kisses, mostly used between friends or romantically involved operators, you'll sometimes hear it said kind of tongue in cheek between guys just being goofy. there used to be a whole Q code book and the ARRL handbook has them all listed but honestly just hang around and they sink in pretty fast.

so i finally got fed up with manually logging everything during contests and started messing around with a raspberry pi zero w i had sitting in a drawer. been about three weeks now and honestly i dont know how i went this long without doing something like this.
the basic idea was to have it pull the frequency and mode data from my ic-7300 over USB using the CI-V interface, then auto-populate fields in my logging software. sounds simple enough but getting the serial stuff to play nice on the pi took me way longer than i expected. turns out there were some baud rate issues i kept overlooking — the 7300 defaults to 9600 and i kept setting the script to 115200 like an idiot, spent probably two evenings on that before i noticed.
anyway once that was sorted i started adding stuff. got a small 2.8 inch TFT display showing band, mode, and a running contact counter. added a little python script that queries the DX cluster via telnet and flags when a callsign i work matches a new entity on my DXCC list. its not polished at all, the code is kind of a mess, but it actually works most of the time.
thinking about adding an arduino nano to handle some button inputs for things like switching antenna ports on my manual switch without getting up — maybe run it over I2C to the pi. has anyone done anything like that, mixing the pi and arduino together in a station project? curious if thats the right approach or if im overcomplicating it

oh man i remember my first one, it was a 5k charity run and i was so nervous i basically triple checked my radio every five minutes before it started. honestly the best thing i can tell you is that having an experienced operator next to you is huge, just watch how they handle things and dont be afraid to let them take the lead on anything youre unsure about. nobody expects you to be perfect on your first activation.
the thing that helped me most was just writing down the net control callsign and the frequencies on a little notepad i kept in my pocket, basic stuff but when youre standing in the cold at 7am your brain does funny things. also make sure your radio is fully charged the night before and bring a spare battery if you have one. the actual event usually feels way less stressful than you think its going to once things get rolling, theres something about having a job to do that settles the nerves down pretty quick.

so ive been licensed for about 8 months now and ive been making contacts pretty regularly, mostly on 40m and some 2m stuff locally. the whole QSL card thing is starting to confuse me a little. like i understand the basic idea, you confirm you made a contact with someone, but i dont really understand why there are so many different ways to do it and whether i need to do all of them or just pick one.
i signed up for LoTW because someone at my club said thats the one you need for DXCC and i uploaded my logs and some stuff matched up which was cool. but then someone else mentioned eQSL and said its totally different and some people only use that one. and then theres still actual physical cards which honestly i kind of love the idea of but it seems like a lot of work to manage.
do most people just do LoTW and call it day, or is there a reason to do all three? also does it cost money to get cards printed and send them internationally because that seems like it could add up fast

so ive been running APRS for about 6 months now, mostly just tracking, and that part works fine — i can see my station on aprs.fi no problem, digipeating seems to be working and my packets are getting out there. but i started trying to use the messaging side of it and i cant for the life of me get messages to actually go through to another station. sent like 4 or 5 messages to a buddy of mine who runs a Kenwood D72 and he never got any of them. he can see my beacon but messages are just gone.
im running a TM-D710G with the internal TNC, path set to WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 which i thought was pretty standard. im in a pretty decent coverage area, there's an igate like 8 miles from me. wondering if its a path issue or maybe something with how i have the messaging configured on the radio itself. the manual for this thing is not exactly helpful.
anybody dealt with this before? its frustrating because the tracking works perfectly so i feel like im close but missing something obvious

so i finally participated in a full simulated emergency exercise with our local ARES group and i honestly had no idea how different it is from just working the radio in your shack. we were doing a simulated flood scenario where the county EOC lost all normal comms and we had to stand up a net and pass welfare traffic for about 3 hours with changing conditions thrown at us by the exercise coordinators.
first thing that humbled me was my go-bag. i thought i had everything dialed in but like 20 minutes in i realized i had forgotten a way to actually mount my HT antenna properly so i was just kind of holding it up with one hand while trying to write with the other. and the logging, oh man, dont even get me started. i was using paper logs and my handwriting under stress is apparently terrible, the net control could barely read what i was sending back.
the experienced guys made it look so easy. one of the elmers in our group was running a mobile rig off a small battery bank and he had this whole system for organizing message forms that i want to steal for myself. anyone else have stories from drills or real deployments where something unexpected taught you a lesson? im trying to build a better system before the next exercise in the fall.