Amanda Thomas

I had almost the exact same situation a couple years back. went from a ground mounted vertical to an inverted V and thought something was broken for weeks. turned out my expectations were just off. the vertical really does punch harder on flat ground to the horizon, especially on 40 and 80. the inverted V grew on me for local and regional stuff though, NVIS is actually really useful for stateside work depending on where you are. one thing worth checking — how long is your coax run and did you account for any loss there. I had a dodgy PL-259 on mine that was dropping maybe 1-2 dB and I swore up and down the antenna was the problem.

Practice tests show exactly where you need to improve - I'd recommend taking at least 10 full exams, but focus extra time on those problem subelements. You're already in passing range!

not sure if this applies but i had a weird low power issue on a different radio that ended up being a cold solder joint on the driver stage, not even the finals themselves. symptoms were almost identical to what you're describing. worth a look under magnification if you have it before assuming its the transistors, saves you buying parts you might not need.

We started doing "Saturday in the Park" portable operations after our meetings and it's been a huge hit. Everyone brings their go-boxes and we just have fun making contacts while sharing techniques and gear.

12 contacts on your first try with an end fed in the trees and 20w is actually pretty solid imo. i struggled way more on my first one, kept second guessing my antenna placement and barely got 6 before i had to pack up. the WWFF hunters are out there for sure, especially on weekends. some of them monitor the spotting clusters constantly so if you self spot on wwff.rocks next time you'll probably get a pile up faster than you expect, even with low power. good luck on the second attempt

congrats on passing. dont sweat the baofeng programming stuff too much, once you get your codeplug sorted it just works. if you ever wanna try a simplex contact sometime hit me up, im in the midwest too judging by that callsign prefix. always good to work new hams

yeah what he said about the tape. i actually use a combination of coax seal putty and then a layer of self-amalgamating over the top, probably overkill but my last outdoor connector that I didnt seal properly was basically green soup inside after one winter so now im paranoid about it. one thing i didnt see you mention, are you running the coax away from the antenna at a right angle for at least a wavelength or so? if you just let it droop straight down from the feedpoint it can act as part of the antenna and mess with your pattern and potentially bring RF into the shack. most people use a 1:1 choke balun right at the feedpoint or at least a bunch of coax wound into a choke coil. for a first dipole its not going to make or break you but its worth knowing about for when you start wondering why the SWR is weird.

hey congrats on getting called up, that's a good sign your EC thinks you're ready. first thing i'd say is just reach out to your EC today if you haven't already and ask specifically what they need from you — are you running a net, logging, just being a second set of hands, what. every EOC setup is different and some have full stations already installed while others expect you to bring something. when i did my first activation years ago i showed up with my IC-706 in a bag for no reason because they had a dedicated station already wired in bring water and food for at least 6-8 hours even if they say it'll be short. it almost never is. notebook and pens, multiple pens. your ICS forms either printed or on a tablet. and honestly just be ready to mostly listen and observe the first time, there's usually an experienced op there and the best thing you can do is watch how they handle traffic and ask questions in the quiet moments. you'll do fine, the fact that you're nervous means you're taking it seriously which is exactly what you want

so ive been sitting on this for a while and finally decided to ask — been running my 7300 for about two years now and overall its great but ive been reading about the TX audio mods people do, specifically the one where you swap out the electrolytic caps near the mic input stage. some guys on another forum were saying it cleans up the low end and makes the audio sit better in a pileup. i honestly cant tell if that's placebo or if theres actually something to it. also separately i was thinking about doing the TCXO upgrade, mine does drift a little when it first warms up, maybe 20-30hz over the first 10-15 minutes. not a huge deal for SSB but i do some digi modes and FT8 especially it bugs me. is the Icom TCXO-3 the right one or has anyone used a third party option that worked out ok. the icom one is like 60 bucks which is fine if it actually fixes the drift but i dont want to open the rig up for nothing

im in almost the same situation, just did a mobile install in my Tacoma about a month ago with an IC-2730 so slightly different radio but similar deal. the battery direct run thing was the first thing my elmer told me to do and it made a noticeable difference compared to when i tried the fuse box first. you'll be glad you did it that way. one thing i'll mention just because nobody told me until i had already been on the repeaters a while — check if your local repeaters have a PL tone you need to set, took me embarrassingly long to figure out why nobody could hear me on one of them even though i could hear everyone fine

dont overthink the SDR piece, at least not for a first pass at remote ops. i spent way too long trying to get a fancy panadapter working remotely and honestly just having the rig audio and CAT control solid is 90% of the battle. RemoteHams has gotten a lot better in the last year or so with the audio codec stuff and if your home connection is decent you can run it pretty well. the internet linking question is kind of a separate thing depending on what you mean — if youre talking about linking into a repeater network or echolink type stuff thats a whole different rabbit hole than just remote HF operation. or maybe you meant something else, hard to tell from the post. either way id just get the basic remote working reliably before piling on more complexity, learned that the hard way myself after a particularly frustrating weekend in a hotel in Denver trying to work some DX through a half-broken setup that i never properly tested before leaving home

Been installing mobile antennas for 20 years - definitely 3/4" hole. The Larsen 2/70B is an excellent choice, very rugged. Don't forget to treat the exposed metal with primer to prevent rust.

yeah pre-announcing is basically essential for WWFF if you want a smooth run, especially for the 44 contact requirement. The WWFF groups on Facebook and also the wwff.us groups are pretty active and chasers will literally put your activation on their calendar. Post a few days out with the reference number, your planned frequencies and mode, and a rough time window. You'll have people waiting for you. Also self-spotting as soon as you're set up makes a huge difference — use the POTA app or just post to the WWFF spotting network directly. A lot of WWFF chasers watch both. Once you get spotted it usually snowballs pretty quick. 44 is totally doable in under 2 hours once you get the hang of the timing. Sounds like a great first activation though, that feeling of operating outside never really gets old for me even after doing dozens of these.

Excellent point! I learned this lesson during Hurricane Ida when a PL-259 connector failed on my main antenna. Now I carry spare connectors, barrel adapters, jumper cables, and a basic multimeter. Don't be the guy who gets shut down over a simple problem!

so ive been licensed for about 4 months now (technician) and i finally upgraded to general last week which im really happy about. ive been listening to a local 2m net on tuesday nights for a while and i think i want to check in this week but honestly im a little intimidated. like what if i say the wrong thing or step on someone or forget the procedure mid-sentence and everyone just hears dead air. i know the basic format from listening — net control calls for check-ins, you give your callsign phonetically, you say if you have traffic or just checking in. but is there anything else i should know going in? also is it weird to just check in and not really have anything to say? i dont want to waste everyones time but i also want to participate. any advice from people who have done this a lot would be really appreciated

so i've been wanting to get into ham radio for a while now, my neighbor has a big antenna setup and it got me interested. i downloaded a few apps and found the question pool online but honestly its kind of overwhelming. like there's 426 questions or whatever and i dont know if i should just memorize all of them or actually try to understand the material. i've been using hamstudynow or whatever its called but i feel like im just clicking through without retaining anything. is there a specific study guide people recommend or do most people just grind the question pool until the exam. also how long did it take you guys to actually feel ready

i just passed mine like three weeks ago and i was in the same spot as you. the filter stuff and the op-amp questions tripped me up at first but honestly a lot of it started making sense once i stopped treating it like memorization and just tried to understand what was actually happening in the circuit. youtube helped me a lot, there are some guys who explain the bandpass filter stuff way better than any book ive tried to read. the exclusive Extra segments are real and i noticed right away on 75 meters there was actually room to have a conversation, which sounds dumb but its true. go for it, the exam isnt as bad as it looks when you first open the book

not to derail but whats your coax situation at the hilltop, is it weatherproofed well? asking because i had an X500 that looked fine for a year and then i started noticing weird SWR readings and turns out moisture had crept into the connector at the antenna end and was just slowly wrecking everything. ended up with like 3dB extra loss i didnt even realize i had. self amalgamating tape and then regular electrical tape over it made a huge difference once i resealed it all. just something to check before going down the yagi rabbit hole, make sure you're actually getting what you think you're getting out of the current setup first.

I use two Android apps: Morse Trainer from Wolphi and Koch Morse Trainer Pro - both offer variable character speed, word speed, Farnsworth timing, and practice duration. Morse Trainer's ability to read user-generated text files is invaluable - if text is comma separated, words play randomly.

Been experiencing intermittent audio dropout issues with WSJT-X 2.7.0 and my FlexRadio 6600M after Windows 11 updates. PTT works fine but TX audio connection gets lost after several hours of operation, while RX audio continues working. This seems to be related to Windows power management - specifically when monitors go to sleep. Has anyone found a permanent fix beyond disabling screen savers? Current workaround: Restart WSJT-X or toggle DAX audio settings. Running SmartSDR 3.8.20 with latest DAX drivers.

so i finally got around to building a simple 40m dipole out of some 14 gauge stranded wire i had laying around in the garage. cut each leg to roughly 33.5 feet based on the 468/f formula and fed it with some RG-8X i had left over from a previous project. center insulator is just a piece of white PVC i drilled and ran the wire through, nothing fancy. the swr is sitting around 1.4:1 at 7.150 which honestly isnt bad for a first try but something feels off when i transmit. the signal reports im getting on 40m are decent enough but on 20m with the tuner its just... i dont know, feels like im fighting it more than i should be? the tuner gets there but it takes a while and the readings seem to jump around a bit. antenna is up about 25 feet in an inverted-v configuration, apex tied to a tree. i used no-ox on the connections and soldered everything at the feedpoint. maybe the coax length is doing something weird? its about 67 feet of RG-8X which i think might be a half wave on some band but i cant remember if that matters for unbalanced feed or not. anyway has anyone else had this kind of experience going from a resonant band to using a multiband tuner setup on a simple dipole? wondering if i should just cut a fan dipole instead or throw up a random wire

same tbh. been meaning to get on for a SOTA activation for like two months now and just havent. life gets busy. i think solar conditions being kinda meh lately doesnt help either, fewer contacts means less fun means less motivation, its a whole cycle

same thing happened to me when i started, i had like four tabs open and had no idea which one to actually watch lol. i ended up just sticking with DXwatch because someone here recommended it and it works fine on my phone too. the QRZ lookup i use separately just to check callsigns and see if someones confirmed before i chase them. kind of use them for different things now without really thinking about it

i just passed mine last month so this is pretty fresh for me. i used the gordon west study book which a lot of people at my local club swear by, it goes through each question and explains the why behind the answer which helped me actually retain stuff instead of just guessing. that said i also did a ton of practice tests on hamstudy closer to the exam. took me about three weeks but i was only doing maybe 30 mins a day so you could probably do it faster if you really committed. dont stress too much the test really isnt that bad

Keep losses BEFORE the preamp at absolute minimum - every tenth of a dB counts! Your 150W will work fine, but get the best preamp you can afford and mount it right at the antenna. Consider even a 9-element yagi around 11dBd gain can work EME if everything else is optimized.