Sarah Thomas

the USB audio thing is really what gets people, i remember setting mine up and just kind of staring at the screen waiting for something to go wrong and it just... worked. my shack is pretty cramped so losing the Signalink on the desk was actually a meaningful quality of life thing not just a convenience. curious how you find the ergonomics compared to the 570, i demoed one at a hamfest a while back and the knobs felt a little lighter than i expected, nothing serious just different. also the AF and RF gain being concentric took me a minute to figure out. you get used to it fast though. the panadapter alone makes it worth it for casual band watching when im not actively in a pileup or whatever.

im pretty new too but from what i understand in contests basically everyone uses phonetics constantly because youre working stations super fast and sometimes through a pile up and theres no time to ask for repeats. heard someone say once that a missed letter in a contest exchange can cost you a point so people get real serious about it. outside of that context though i think most casual operating is pretty relaxed about it

oh man i went through this exact same thing when i was first getting into DX chasing, its a lot to take in. i actually just use the cluster feed inside WSJT-X now since im mostly doing FT8 these days and it kind of does the filtering for me based on what band im on. not sure if thats helpful if youre doing phone or CW though the app thing — i tried a couple on android and they were fine for just checking if something interesting is up when im away from the radio but i wouldnt use them as my main tool. cloudlog has some integration stuff if you use that for logging but thats probably a whole other rabbit hole

so ive been trying to work the linear transponder birds for a few months now, mostly AO-73 and sometimes IO-86 when its up, and i think i finally got a halfway decent pass yesterday but the doppler correction is still giving me grief. im using SDR# for the downlink and a separate VFO for the uplink and trying to manually tune both at the same time while watching the waterfall and honestly its a mess. i know gpredict can drive a rig with hamlib but ive never actually gotten that working end to end without something crashing or the offsets being weird. the pass was like 6 minutes and i managed to hear myself in the transponder for maybe 90 seconds of it before i lost the downlink. part of that might be antenna, im just using a handheld yagi for TX and a whip on the SDR dongle which is probably the problem. but also i think my uplink freq was drifting because i was using a cheap baofeng and the TX freq on those things is not exactly stable especially when it warms up. anyway has anyone got a smooth doppler correction workflow that doesnt require like four hands and three monitors. or is this just one of those things where you kinda have to suffer through it until it becomes muscle memory

so i finally got around to building my first real dipole from scratch instead of just buying one and i have to say the whole thing went smoother than i expected. been putting it off for like two years because i kept thinking it was going to be some complicated ordeal but really its just wire, a center insulator, and some patience. i used 14 gauge stranded copper from the hardware store, cut each leg to about 16.5 feet for 40m, and used one of those cheap SO-239 chassis connectors from amazon as the center piece bolted to a little piece of scrap HDPE i had laying around from another project. ran about 50 feet of RG-8X down to the shack. got it up in an inverted-V config off a 35 foot mast in the backyard. first SWR check with my antenna analyzer and i was sitting at like 1.4:1 right around 7.150, which is honestly better than i ever get with my store bought stuff. trimmed about 3 inches off each leg and got it down to 1.2:1 at 7.200 which is basically where i wanted it anyway. the whole build took maybe 2 hours including the time i spent looking for my wire strippers. anyway if anyones been hesitating to just build something, dont. its way more satisfying than buying one and the performance is identical or better in my experience. already thinking about doing a fan dipole next to cover 40 and 20 at the same time.

yeah what he said about the logs. also one thing i ran into with the 7300 and signalink combo - make sure your audio levels arnt clipping, i had the same symptom where the bar would fill up and look fine but the other end was getting garbage because i had the signalink dial cranked too high. the waterfall on the gateway side just looked like a blob. turned it down to like 40% and suddenly everything started working. might not be your issue but worth checking

I use JS8Call pretty regularly, mostly for our local ARES net actually. Once you find the right frequency and time it works really well for that kind of structured but still freeform communication. The HB heartbeat beaconing feature is genuinely useful for tracking who's around without anyone having to sit there actively calling CQ. Your SNR comparison question -- JS8Call in turbo mode is roughly comparable to FT8 sensitivity wise, but the normal and slow modes go quite a bit deeper. The tradeoff is throughput obviously, like you're not going to rag chew at -22 dB, itll just take forever. For emcomm purposes though where you might just need to pass a short message the slow mode is really impressive. I've seen it decode stuff that PSK31 would have no chance with. The activity thing is real though. Outside of a few dedicated frequencies and specific nets you can go a long time without hearing much. 14.078 USB seems to be the most active spot on HF in my experience, especially evenings.

im in the same boat you are basically, just passed mine last month. the hardest part for me was the stuff around op-amps and the oscillator questions, felt like i was just memorizing without really getting it. but you know what i passed anyway and honestly some of it did start to make more sense after i went back and read about it after the fact. dont overthink it, just use hamexam or qrz practice tests and youll be fine. the actual exam felt easier than the practice ones somehow.

yeah the confusion is pretty understandable, there are two different things people mix up — the FCC part 97 allocations which are actual law, and the band plans which are just gentlemens agreements that ARRL and others publish. you're not going to get your license pulled for operating outside the band plan but inside your allocation, but people might get grumpy at you. for general on 40m you have phone privileges from 7.175 up to 7.300 MHz. so 7.250 is totally fine for you. the comment about being near the edge was probably someone being confused or maybe they were thinking about the old pre-2007 allocations before the FCC restructured things. used to be phone started higher up but that changed. digital stuff like JS8, FT8, all that tends to cluster in the lower parts of the band below where general phone starts, so you wont really be bumping into that unless youre down around 7.040 or so which you cant transmit on anyway as a general on phone. just keep a copy of the arrl band plan handy, the one on their website matches part 97 and notes where the band plans suggest things go.

yeah 40 has been all over the place for me too, though tuesday night i actually had a pretty solid run into europe around 0100z which i wasnt expecting at all. think the flux dipped again yesterday which probably explains the dead spells. azores is a nice catch though, what was the callsign if you dont mind me asking

ok so ive been licensed about 8 months now (general class) and everyone keeps telling me i should try a contest to really get my operating chops up. i did work a few stations during field day last summer but i was mostly just watching what the more experienced guys were doing at the club site, didnt really run my own thing. so im thinking about doing CQ WW this fall, maybe just the SSB portion since phone is more comfortable for me still. but i honestly have no idea how to prepare. like do i need special logging software, do i need to send in a log or is that optional, and does it matter what category i enter as a first timer. also heard something about SOTA activations counting toward some kind of award but im not sure if thats related at all or a totally different thing. any advice from people whove actually done these events would be really helpful. i have a modest setup, IC-7300 into a trapped vertical, living in a suburb so noise floor is pretty rough but workable.

yeah the ZL situation is pretty normal unfortunately, spots can be anywhere from 30 seconds to several minutes old depending on which cluster node the spot came through and how the network is propogating it. DXwatch is fine for casual browsing but if you want something a bit more real-time most people i know use a telnet cluster connection directly through their logging software. if you're on windows, Log4OM is free and has a pretty solid cluster window built in, or even just plain old DX4WIN if you can find a copy. the workflow that works for me is basically just keep the cluster filtered to bands that are actually open — no point watching 10m spots at midnight you know. and filter by mode too if you care about that. once you narrow it down it's way less overwhelming. DXwatch has filters on the site itself, look for the band and mode dropdowns at the top, took me forever to notice them when i first started using it.

I tried running Log4OM as my main logger for everything including contests and gave up after about two weekends. it's genuinely a great piece of software for day to day stuff, the QRZ lookup integration and the award tracking are really nice, but when you're in the middle of a sprint and need fast keyboard entry N1MM just feels faster. the macro system in N1MM for CW and the rate meter and all that, it's just built for the contest mindset in a way Log4OM isnt really trying to be i think the WSJT-X thing I handle by just letting WSJT-X keep its own log as the master for FT8 and importing to wherever else periodically. trying to make one program the single source of truth for all modes kind of breaks down when the programs all have slightly different ideas about what a QSO record looks like

yeah Q65 really did change things, i wont pretend otherwise. i made my first EME contact last year on 2m with a single 9el M2 yagi, an HL-350V running about 300w, and an MGF1302 based preamp at the feedpoint. nothing fancy. the key for me was getting the preamp as close to the feed as possible and keeping that coax run short, every tenth of a dB matters when youre talking about a signal that traveled 800,000 km roundtrip. on your elevation question, generally people say you want the moon above about 10 degrees to avoid most of the ground noise and extra path loss from the atmosphere, some guys push down to 5 degrees if they really need the window. depends a lot on your local horizon too. and you absolutely need to account for doppler shift, WSJT-X handles it automatically if you have your location and grid square entered right, dont skip that step or youll be chasing your tail. honestly just get on 2m EME Activity Weekend, there are a lot of stations running high power big arrays and even with a modest station you can work some of them if conditions are decent. thats how i got my first one in the log.

so my elmer basically pushed me into this and i finally caved and contacted our EC about joining the local ARES group. had my first net check-in last week and honestly it was a little overwhelming just because i didnt really know what i was supposed to be doing. like i checked in fine but then there was a lot of talk about ICS forms and served agencies and SET exercises and i was nodding along pretending i understood way more than i did. im a tech right now studying for general so i know my radio stuff reasonably well but the emergency management side of things is totally new to me. do most groups expect you to already have your ICS 100 and 200 done before you show up to stuff or is that something you work on together? and whats a SET exactly — i heard them mention it twice but didnt want to ask and look dumb on my first net. any advice from people who have been through this would be really appreciated. dont want to make a bad first impression with these folks

so ive been licensed for about 4 months now and i mostly do HF on 40m, sometimes 20m when the band is cooperating. i noticed some guys use the NATO phonetics every single time they say their callsign and some guys just say it normally. like i heard one guy just say his call letters flat out without spelling anything and nobody seemed confused. but then another time someone couldnt get their suffix understood and had to repeat like 4 times before going to phonetics. i guess my question is when are you actually supposed to use them? is there a rule about it or is it more of a feel thing depending on conditions? i tried using them but i always second-guess myself mid-callsign and end up mixing up Foxtrot and Fox or whatever and then i sound like an idiot. does it just come with practice or is there a trick to learning them faster

so ive been a tech for about 8 months now and keep hearing people talk about cw and honestly it sounds really cool but i have no idea where to even start. like do you just memorize the dots and dashes on a chart or is there a better way. i tried looking it up and theres like a million different apps and websites and i dont know which ones are actually worth using vs just garbage. also how long does it realistically take to get to where you can actually have a qso, not looking to be super fast just enough to actually use it. any advice would help, im kind of overwhelmed by all the options

so ive been running FT8 for about a year and a half now and honestly it scratches the DX itch fine but theres something that started feeling hollow about it after a while. like yeah i worked 140 countries and the waterfall looks cool but its basically just an automated exchange, you're not really talking to anyone. a buddy at the club mentioned JS8Call and i installed it last weekend and started poking around on 40m. the concept makes sense to me — its built on the same weak signal encoding as FT8 but you can actually type messages back and forth, slower but workable. had a 20 minute QSO with a guy in Georgia (the country, not the state) running 5 watts into a dipole and the signal was way down in the mud on regular SSB but JS8 was decoding fine. my question is — does anyone actually use JS8Call regularly or is it kind of a ghost town on most bands? i checked pskreporter and there seem to be spots but not a ton of activity compared to FT8. also wondering if there's some setting im missing because my auto-relay stuff doesnt seem to be working right, messages are going out but not getting forwarded the way i expected. not trying to abandon FT8 just want something with a little more actual communication going on. PSK31 used to be that for me before FT8 kind of ate the digital world.

Log4OM with WSJT-X is actually pretty solid in my experience, i was suprised how easy it was to set up compared to what i expected. the cloudlog integration stuff is nice too if you care about that. for contests though i wouldnt even try to make Log4OM work, N1MM just does things the other programs cant touch when it comes to real time scoring and the band change rules and all that. i just accept that my contest QSOs live in N1MM and everything else goes into Log4OM and once a month or so i merge the ADIF over. its not elegant but it works well enough that i stopped losing sleep over it.

same boat as you a few months ago lol. what helped me was just listening to the net for like two or three weeks before I ever tried to check in. you start to get a feel for the rhythm of how net control runs things and then when you do jump in it doesnt feel so foreign. some nets also have a net preamble at the start where they explain the format which is super helpful if you catch it.

ran into this exact thing last winter. ended up just keeping N1MM as my contest logger and Log4OM for everything else, the import after the contest is mildly annoying but its not that bad. the UDP stuff with WSJT-X and Log4OM works fine for me on windows 10, just had to make sure the port wasnt being blocked and that i wasnt accidentally still pointing WSJT-X at N1MM from a contest the weekend before lol. caught that one after wondering why nothing was logging for like 20 minutes

so ive been running my 7300 stock for about two years now and honestly its been fine but i kept reading about the front end mod where you bypass or swap out the input filter components to squeeze a bit more sensitivity out of it especially on the higher HF bands. finally took the plunge last weekend and did the mod i found on that one guy's site — you know the one with all the icom teardowns. results are... honestly mixed? i'm definitely hearing more on 10 and 12 meters but i also feel like the noise floor came up a tiny bit on 40 which is where i do most of my work. could be my imagination or could be i just stirred something else up when i had the thing open. solder work looked fine when i put it back together, no cold joints that i could see. anybody else done front end work on the 7300 or similar radios? wondering if the tradeoff is worth it or if i should have just left well enough alone. also curious if theres a recalibration you're supposed to do after, the write-up i followed didnt mention anything but im second guessing myself now.

so its like 9pm local and ive been parked on 40m for the past hour just spinning the dial and honestly its kind of depressing tonight. heard a couple of guys ragchewing down around 7.250 but the noise floor here is just brutal right now, some kind of line noise from up the street i think. anyway not really a question just kind of venting i guess, this hobby has a lot of these nights where you just sit there and nothing really clicks. does anyone else get into that zone where you dont really want to make a contact but you dont want to turn the rig off either? its like comfort radio or something. my wife thinks im nuts sitting in the shack just listening but theres something about it i cant really explain to someone whos not into this stuff.

i had the same thing with a BY-1 and what i found out was one of the contact screws had gotten slightly loose from transport and the gap was inconsistent depending on how hard i squeezed. worth checking that everything is snug before assuming its a keyer timing issue. also the icom built in keyer is fine but if you ever want to go down a rabbit hole, the Winkeyer USB is kind of the gold standard for feel and a lot of contest guys swear by it for smoother iambic operation. not saying you need it just saying theres a whole world there if the bug bites you again

The ARRL has a detailed band plan for US hams showing allocations within each band. For 20m voice, stay in the phone segment from 14.150-14.350 MHz, but most experienced hams try to stay at least a few kHz inside the band edges.