James Davis

ok so ive been licensed for about 3 months now (technician) and i finally got my baofeng programmed with the local 2m repeater in my area. the repeater listing on repeaterbook shows a 100.0 Hz tone and i put that in as the transmit tone. but sometimes when i key up i hear a weird squelch tail and other times nothing happens at all. like my signal goes out but i dont get any response and nobody acknowledges me or anything. i asked a guy at my club and he said maybe i have the tone on the wrong side — like im encoding when i should be decoding or something? i honestly got a little lost. also not sure about the etiquette here, like do i just say my callsign and wait? or do i say something specific. i dont want to be that guy who annoys everyone on the repeater lol. any help appreciated

so ive been running SO1R for probably 4 or 5 years now doing mostly CW contests, CQWW, SS, some sprints. my rates are decent, usually can hold a run freq pretty well and i know when to S&P vs run. been thinking seriously about setting up SO2R this year but im not sure the juice is worth the squeeze for where im at skill-wise. my main hang up is the timing piece. like i get the concept — while youre waiting for a response on radio 1 you're working a mult or a new Q on radio 2. but in practice it seems like the windows are so small and if you're not really quick with the interlocks and footswitch and all that, you just end up making a mess on both bands simultaneously and blowing contacts on both radios. ive watched some of the top ops do it on skimmer overlays and it looks almost unconscious for them, like they don't even think about it. is there a threshold of like single radio contest operating hours or score level where SO2R starts making sense to try, or did most of you just dive in and suffer through a few contests to get the hang of it? also wondering if the antenna isolation piece is as painful to sort out as people say. running an ic-7300 now but id probably grab a used K3 or something as the second radio. anyway curious what the learning curve actually looked like for people who made the jump.

Setting up my first serious SO2R station with K3 twins and MK2R+. Everything seemed to work fine during initial testing, but I'm having intermittent audio issues during contests. The headphone split randomly switches back to combined audio while I'm in the middle of copying an exchange on radio 2. This only seems to happen when radio 1 is transmitting, and the switching won't reverse until I stop the CQ. I've tested all cable connections and they appear solid. Has anyone experienced similar issues with SO2R controllers? I'm wondering if this could be an RF issue from the amplifier feedback, or possibly a timing problem in the control logic. Any diagnostics I should try before the next contest weekend?

The logging software makes a huge difference - try N1MM+ if you haven't already. With solar conditions at their peak, 2025 promises even better propagation so this is actually a great year to start! Focus on having fun over scores.

yeah what he said about the telnet cluster connection is the way to go once you get comfortable. i'll add that QRZ's spot page is fine but i find it a bit cluttered with all the other stuff on that site, i personally just bookmark dx.qsl.net for a cleaner look at spots. also worth knowing you can filter by band which is huge when 10m is popping and you dont want to wade through a bunch of 40m spots

i just did this like four months ago so pretty fresh for me. i used hamstudy dot org mostly and just drilled practice tests every night for maybe two weeks. honestly the technician test wasnt that bad, alot of it is common sense stuff and basic safety, the electrical theory parts tripped me up a little but nothing crazy. i think i studied maybe 10-15 hours total before i felt ready. one thing i'll say is dont stress too much about fully understanding every single question, some of it you just kind of memorize and the understanding comes later when you actually start using the radio. good luck with it

check if there's an igate near you that's set to RF-only gating or has a range filter. some igates wont gate packets from stations that are already heard by another igate, its the IS-to-RF duplicate prevention thing but it works both ways and can cause this exact symptom where youre being digi'd fine but never hit the internet. you can actually verify this by looking at the raw packets tab on aprs.fi for nearby digipeaters and see if your callsign shows up in anyone elses heard list.

Understanding band conditions really enhances FT8 performance - I monitor real-time propagation reports and solar data to identify opening windows. During low solar activity, 40m and 80m work better, but higher bands become more effective during strong solar cycles. Greyline propagation has given me some incredible results.

so i finally did my first activation saturday, drove up to a summit about 45 mins from home, nothing crazy just a W4 summit worth 2 points i think. brought my ft-818 and a random wire i threw together last week, had no idea if the feedline situation was gonna work but it did. took maybe 20 minutes to get set up which felt slow but whatever. got 12 contacts in about 35 minutes, all on 40m SSB, one guy came back to me on 20 and gave me a signal report i wasnt expecting at all considering i was running like 5 watts. the whole thing was just really fun, way more fun than sitting at home calling CQ into the void. already looking at summits for next weekend tbh

this is really interesting to read as someone who just got their ticket a few months ago and has been trying to figure out if ARES is something i want to get involved with. i guess i always assumed the experienced operators had all this stuff figured out already. kind of reassuring in a weird way that even established groups run into basic logistical problems what license class do most of the people in your drills have? i'm still general and wasnt sure if that limits what i could do in an actual activation

so ive been licensed for about 3 months now (technician) and i finally got my HT programmed for the local 2m repeater. i can hear people just fine but when i try to transmit nobody seems to hear me, or at least nobody responds. did a radio check a couple times and crickets. someone at the club meeting mentioned something about CTCSS tones and that i probably dont have the right one set. i looked it up and i think i understand what it does — its like a subaudible tone that opens the repeater right? — but i have no idea how to find out what tone this particular machine uses. the repeater is listed on repeaterbook but there are like 4 different entries for my area and im not sure which one is actually active. also a separate thing, is there any kind of etiquette i should know before jumping on a busy repeater? i dont want to step on anyone or do something embarrassing. i searched around but most of what i found was pretty old and im not sure if it still applies.

RufzXP changed everything for me, its a callsign practice program and it sounds kind of boring but it pushes your speed automatically as you get better which is really motivating. also just listening to W1AW bulletins on shortwave even when i couldnt copy everything — just having real CW in my ears for like 20 mins a day seemed to help even when it felt like i wasnt understanding much of it

ok so i just upgraded from tech to general last month and im trying to figure out the 40 meter band. i know i have more privileges now but every chart i look at seems to show something slightly different and honestly its making my head spin a little. like i get that there are phone and cw segments but where exactly does the phone portion start for generals? and what about the band edges, ive heard people say you should never operate right at the edge but i dont fully understand why. is that a rule or just a suggestion kind of thing. also someone at my club mentioned something about a gentleman's agreement on certain frequencies but didnt really explain what that meant sorry if this is a dumb question just want to make sure im not gonna accidentally transmit somewhere i shouldnt be

so ive been doing sweepstakes phone and cw for a few years now and usually finish somewhere in the middle of the pack for my category. running single op single radio, nothing crazy, just the k3 into a 3el yagi at about 45 feet. last year i finally broke 1000 QSOs in SS CW which felt pretty good but i keep seeing the top scores from guys running SO2R and the multiplier counts are just insane compared to mine. ive got an old ic-746 sitting on the shelf doing nothing and ive been thinking about setting it up as a second radio. i know the basics of SO2R — run on one radio, S&P on the other, listen in your ear on the second while calling CQ on the first — but actually implementing it without causing a giant RF mess in my shack seems daunting. both antennas are pretty close together too, maybe 30 feet separation. is it actually worth trying to learn this mid-contest or should i just focus on getting my run rate up first? i feel like my rate drops off hard after the first few hours because i run out of guys to work and then just wander around doing S&P inefficiently. maybe thats the real problem i should fix

you've pretty much got it right actually — CTCSS on transmit is what opens the repeater, you dont need to set it on receive unless you want to squelch out other traffic on your end which is a personal preference thing. if the repeater is opening (you hear the tail or a kerchunk) then it's hearing you fine. the no-response thing is honestly just... timing. a lot of repeaters are pretty quiet during the day and people only really monitor. what i'd do is just call out during a commute window, like early morning or late afternoon, say your callsign and say you're monitoring or just listening around. something like "[callsign] listening" is totally normal and people will come back to you if they're around. don't be discouraged, some repeaters have a small regular crowd and it takes a bit before someone catches you. also double check your offset is going the right direction, some radios default to minus and some repeaters are plus depending on the band segment. worth a look if you haven't already.

our club does a meetup breakfast saturday morning at a diner nearby if you want to tag along, we usually post the details on our repeater before we leave. its a good way to meet people and honestly thats half the reason i go at this point, the gear shopping is fun but running into guys you only talk to on the air is pretty cool

Built my own Z-match and honestly the efficiency difference is marginal in real-world conditions. The first requirement of a good QRP antenna is efficiency - most verticals with short physical length guarantee low radiation resistance and net efficiencies of 10-40%. Fix your antenna system first!

yeah same thing happened to me lol, i tried to have like a whole conversation with net control during a directed net and they were very polite but i could tell i was holding things up. now i just say my call and 'no traffic' and save any questions for after. its actually kind of a nice ritual once you get used to the format

30 feet is probly part of it too for 40m, ideally you want closer to a half wavelength up but i know thats not always possible. i had mine at like 25 feet for years and just kind of accepted that certain paths were gonna be rough. still worked a bunch of dx though so dont give up on it

yeah what he said about bidirectional igates is exactly it, took me forever to figure that out too. also one thing that got me -- the D710 has a separate setting for whether its listening for ack packets or not, if your message sends but you never get an ack it just keeps retrying and eventually gives up. might look like it sent but the other station never saw it. Xastir should be sending an ack automatically if it got the message so if youre not seeing that come back then its definitely a path issue somewhere in the middle

the hackrf transmit thing is kind of a trap honestly, output power is like 10-15mW on a good day and the spurious emissions are not great so its not really useful for anything serious. i have one and mostly use it for replay attack stuff and poking at ISM band things, not really radio monitoring. for WSPR and HF utility listening just get the RSP1A, pair it with a decent antenna and SDRangel or even just SDR# with the right plugins and youll be happy. wsjtx plays nice with it too if you want to do digital modes properly down the road.

honestly for something like this i'd probably still just use the arduino, pi is nice but you're adding linux boot time and a whole OS layer to something that really just needs a fast deterministic loop. unless you want to add like wifi logging or a web interface or something then sure the pi makes sense. one thing i ran into when i built mine — the stepper motor noise was getting into the receiver something awful. had to add filtering on the motor driver lines and run the whole thing off a separate supply. might be worth thinking about early before you get too far into the build

congrats on passing. once your call comes through dont just stick to the repeater, HF is where it gets real interesting. even on tech you can get on 10m and 6m which can be suprisingly active when the bands cooperate. the baofeng will do fine for local stuff but eventually youll want something a bit more solid for the repeater if you plan on doing anything with APRS or linked systems. anyway good luck and dont be shy about jumping in on nets, thats how you actually learn to operate properly

so ive been running an old TS-570 for like 8 years and honestly it still works fine but i kept reading about the 7300 and watching youtube videos and i just caved and bought one used off a guy in the next county over. paid $850 which felt high but everything on qrz classifieds was going for more so whatever. anyway first impressions — the waterfall display is genuinely useful and not just a gimmick like i assumed. i was skeptical because i figured id just use it for a week and ignore it but i actually catch signals on it before i even hear them in the passband which is kind of wild. the receiver feels cleaner than the 570 on 40m which is where i spend most of my time, less noise floor or at least it seems that way, might be placebo. the touch screen takes getting used to and i keep accidentally changing the filter width when im trying to tune around. probably a me problem. but overall im pretty happy with it. anyone else make a similar jump from older Kenwood or Yaesu to the icom SDR stuff and have thoughts on the adjustment period

Congrats on your new license! If the FCC doesn't receive your payment within 10 days, your application will be "set aside" and won't be processed. This applies to your initial license, not just vanity calls. Don't wait - pay it now to avoid having to resubmit everything.