Emily Thomas

honestly the extra segments on 20 are noticeably less crowded, at least on weekends when the bands are packed. during a contest you'll really notice it. but i think the bigger reason to get it is just the knowledge - working through the theory actually helped me understand why my antenna wasnt performing the way i expected, stuff about feedline impedance matching that i sort of glossed over before. the exam itself isnt as scary as it looks if you use HamStudy and just drill the question pool for a few weeks. some of the math you can sorta understand conceptually without being able to actually derive it, and thats good enough to pass. also if you ever want to be a VE or do any experimenting on the frequencies just below where Generals can go, youll want it. just do it, youll feel good about having done it

honestly for 40m a dipole at 45 feet is going to be pretty competitive with a vertical for most stuff you want to do. the takeoff angle at that height is somewhere around 40-45 degrees which isnt ideal for long path DX but for anything in the 500 to 2000 mile range its actually pretty solid, which is where most of the ragchewing happens anyway. the other thing nobody really talks about is noise. verticals in suburban areas can be rough depending on your neighbors. mine was picking up so much hash from switching power supplies and LED lighting that it was basically unusable on 40 and 80 unless I was running the preamp off. went back to the dipole and the noise floor dropped by probably 10 dB easy. that might not be everyone's experience but its worth thinking about if your neighborhood has a lot of that stuff going on. if you already have the wire and the tuner, id just put the dipole back up. you can always experiment with a vertical later but get something in the air first.

same boat as you were a few months ago, i just got my WAS certificate last week actually. totally do-able even with a modest setup. the thing that helped me most was just keeping LoTW synced after every session instead of letting months pile up, i made that mistake early on too. one thing nobody told me — some states are genuinely hard to work even on HF, Rhode Island and Delaware kept slipping through for me because theres just not that many hams there. ended up getting them both during a state QSO party which i highly recommend for filling gaps.

so ive been putting together a go-kit for ARES stuff and some general portable operating and im kind of going back and forth on the power situation. right now i have a 100ah LiFePO4 that runs my IC-7300 fine at home on receive but once i start transmitting at anything above like 50w it drains faster than i expected on longer activations. we had a 6 hour exercise last month and i was nursing it by the end. the obvious answer everybody says is just bring a generator but ive had bad experiences with RFI from cheap inverter gennies. tried a harbor freight one at a field day site a couple years ago and my noise floor went from S1 to like S6 on 40m which basically made SSB phone ops miserable. is that just a grounding issue or are some generators genuinely cleaner than others also on the antenna side im running a buddipole right now which is fine but its kind of a pain to tune for different bands and i feel like im spending half my setup time messing with it instead of operating. thinking about a end fed half wave with a 9:1 unun but not sure if that plays well on all bands without an auto tuner. anybody running something similar for rapid deployment stuff where you actually need to get on the air fast

yeah i was confused about this same stuff when i first got my general. someone in my club pointed me to DX Summit which is another one, i think its run by OH8X or something like that. anyway i ended up just having like three tabs open at once for a while which was kind of ridiculous lol. eventually i just picked one and stuck with it, i use the QRZ one mostly just because im already on that site checking callsigns half the time anyway so its convenient. probably not the most optimized approach but it works for me.

ok so ive been listening on HF for a few weeks now and i keep hearing and seeing all these weird codes and shortenings that i just dont understand. like QSL, QRM, QRZ, and then theres also stuff like 73 and 88 and DE and all that. is there like a master list somewhere or do people just kind of pick it up over time? i feel like everyone else just knows this stuff automatically and im sitting here googling every other thing i hear. also heard someone say QSB the other day and had no idea what was happening, thought maybe it was a callsign at first lol. im a tech class right now working on my general so maybe this gets covered more later but figured id just ask here

so i finally got my first summit picked out and im heading up W4T/SU-001 tomorrow morning. been chasing for about 3 months now and figured it was time to stop being a passenger and actually get up there myself. i have my KX2 and a linked dipole i built last month, tested it in the backyard and it seemed to work okay but obviously that's not the same as being on a windy ridge somewhere. my plan is to get there early enough to set up before the main activation window and try to self spot via the SOTA spotter app once im ready. i have a summit-to-summit contact list of chasers i know are usually around but honestly im not sure how long it'll take me to hike in — the trail notes say about 45 mins but i've never done this particular one. do i need to worry about alerting vs spotting? i posted an alert last night for around 10am local but if i'm late i dont want people waiting around for nothing. anyway any advice welcome, even dumb stuff i might be forgetting. i feel like i'm going to get up there and realize i left the coax at home or something

headphones. seriously. i never thought about it until i was trying to copy traffic in a noisy EOC with people talking on phones all around me and the speaker on my radio was basically useless. a basic pair of headphones or even earbuds with the right adapter made a huge difference. i think i paid like 8 bucks for a little 1/4 inch adapter at the hardware store and it changed everything.

so i finally did my first parks on the air activation last weekend at a state park about 40 minutes from my house, K-2345 if anyone's curious. been hunting other peoples activations for like 6 months now and kept telling myself i'd get around to doing one and i finally just did it. brought my FT-891 and a linked dipole i built from the sotabeams kit, ran it up between two trees with some paracord. setup took way longer than i expected, probably 45 minutes just to get the antenna sorted out because one of my tie-off lines got tangled and i was fighting it in the wind. by the time i got on the air i only had about 2 hours before i had to pack up and get back. made 12 contacts on 40m and 4 on 20m so i did get my 10 for a valid activation which was nice, but honestly i was hoping for more. a couple guys spotted me on the POTA website which definitely helped. i think my problem was i wasnt very confident calling CQ and kind of second guessed myself a lot on whether i was actually on a clear frequency before transmitting. anyway just wanted to share, it was way more fun than just hunting from home. already planning my next one, thinking about doing a 2-fer where two park boundaries overlap near me. anyone done those before, is it just one log submission or do you have to do two separate ones?

HamStudy is honestly all you need to pass, i went from zero to General in like 3 weeks using just that site. the way it tracks which questions you keep getting wrong is really useful. for the electrical formulas just learn ohms law and how to rearrange it and you can figure out most of the math questions from scratch instead of just memorizing answers, that helped me a lot more than trying to brute force the whole pool. the propagation section is genuinely interesting once it clicks, stuff about which bands do what and why is actually useful knowledge once you get on HF and start chasing DX. good luck with it, General opens up a ton

so the Tri-County hamfest is coming up and i havent been to one in like two years, last time i went i picked up a decent MFJ antenna tuner for like 20 bucks so im hoping for similar luck this time. does anyone know if theyre still doing the tailgate swap meet portion outside or did they move it all inside after that rain situation they had a few years back. also wondering if the club is doing a license exam session at this one, i think i saw something about it on their website but the page looked like it hadnt been updated since 2019

log4om has gotten a lot better recently, the v2 rewrite was a big deal. WSJT-X integration works fine, cloudlog-style features, looks decent. but yeah if youre contesting N1MM is still the standard, nobody at a serious multi-op is gonna run anything else the import thing should be ok but i'd test it on a copy of your logs first before you do anything permanent just in case

so ive been licensed for about 3 weeks now (technician) and everyone keeps telling me to just get a baofeng to start but then other people say thats a terrible idea and i should spend more on something better right away. honestly im kind of overwhelmed because i dont even fully know what features i actually need vs what sounds cool but ill never use. mostly i want to hit a couple of local repeaters, maybe do some simplex with my brother who just passed his tech exam too. we're not doing anything fancy. budget is probably around $50-100 but i could stretch to maybe $150 if it was really worth it. i keep seeing people mention the yaesu ft-60 and also the kenwood th-d74 but that last one seems way overkill for what im trying to do. anyone have thoughts? does dual band actually matter this early on or should i not worry about it

congrats on the build, QMX is a great little rig. to answer your antenna question -- yes, antenna absolutely matters more at QRP levels, probably more than anything else you can do. when youre running 100 watts you can kind of mask a mediocre antenna with brute force but at 4 watts every dB counts. that end-fed will work fine but if you can ever put up a dipole at a decent height or try a vertical with a good ground system you'll notice the difference pretty quick. as for which band to start on, 40m is solid especially for regional stuff and in the evenings. but honestly 20m during the day when conditions are decent is where QRP really shines for me, i've had contacts across the atlantic running 5 watts and it never gets old. just watch the propagation forecasts, when the bands are cooperating QRP feels like magic and when they're not it can be frustrating. stick with it though, you'll develop a feel for it.

yeah the HM-219 is pretty mediocre tbh, i swapped mine out for an Heil PR-781 and the difference was noticeable right away. that said i spent probably two weekends messing with the menus before i touched the mic so definitely rule out settings first like the other guy said. one thing i'll add is get someone you trust on the other end while you tweak, doing it blind by yourself is really frustrating and you'll just go in circles. find a local buddy or somebody on a club net who will give you honest feedback and just go through it systematically.

Welcome to the hobby! There's even a question on the Technician exam about this - not being able to access a repeater whose output you can hear. Most likely it's the CTCSS setting. Try using CHIRP software to program your radio - much easier than the keypad method.

so ive been running FT8 for about a year now on 20m mostly with 10 watts into a wire dipole up about 25 feet and it works fine, make contacts all over the place no problem. but lately ive been reading about JS8Call and people keep saying its better for actual communication vs just signal reports and grid squares. so i fired it up last weekend and yeah its definitely different, like you can have a real conversation which is cool but i spent like 45 minutes calling CQ and only got two responses and one of those guys just sent a signal report and vanished. my question is basically is JS8Call just way less popular than FT8 or is there something about how im calling that isnt working. im on 14.078 which i think is the right dial freq. running about 8 watts. decode seems fine, im seeing plenty of activity on the waterfall. just not getting called back much. also wondered if PSK31 is even worth bothering with anymore or has everyone moved on from that

14 contacts is solid for a first time, i think i got like 6 on mine and was thrilled lol. what was your antenna height roughly, just curious because ive been going back and forth on whether to bother trying to get it higher or just accept whatever the trees give me

dont be embarrassed at all, everyone goes through this. honestly the best thing you can do is just listen to a few nets before you jump in, which it sounds like you already have been doing so youre already ahead of most people. the net control will usually say something like "are there any further check-ins" or "net is now open for check-ins" and thats your window. you just wait for a pause and then say your callsign nice and clear — phonetics can help if the band is noisy. some nets want name and location, some just want the call, usually net control will tell you at the start of the net what they want. if they dont say, just your callsign is fine and theyll ask for more if they need it. honestly most net controls are happy to have new people check in and theyll work with you if youre not sure what to do. the tuesday night guys on our local net are super chill about it. just go for it next week, worst case you fumble a little and everyone moves on in about 4 seconds

this is making me realize i probably should actually join my local ARES group and not just keep meaning to. i got my general a while back and i always figured emcomm stuff was kind of above my level but reading this it sounds like even experienced people are learning things. what does a typical exercise like this look like for someone whos newer, like would i just be totally lost or is there a role for people still getting their feet wet

so i finally did my first POTA activation last weekend at a state park about 45 mins from my house. been putting it off forever because i kept thinking my setup wasnt good enough but honestly i just threw the KX2 in a bag with my end fed and drove out there. set up on a picnic table took maybe 20 minutes and worked 15 contacts in like an hour and a half on 20m. got a few on 40 too before the band went to garbage in the afternoon. the hardest part was honestly just finding a spot where i could hang the antenna without being in someones way. also a ranger came over and asked what i was doing and i just explained it and he thought it was pretty cool, no problems at all. cant believe i waited this long to do this

RG-58 on 70cm is gonna hurt you, thats probably a big part of it. the losses on that band with RG-58 over any real length add up fast and you can get weird reflected power behavior especially if theres any slight damage to the coax. if you ran it through a door seal theres a really good chance you kinked or compressed it somewhere even if it looks okay from the outside, any sharp bend or crush point in the coax will mess with the impedance and you'll see exactly what you're describing, readings that shift when you flex or touch the cable. i'd swap it out for LMR-240 or at minimum RG-8X and route it more carefully, try to avoid the door seal entirely if you can. some people use a thin flat coax made for door/window routing, Comet and a few others make them, they're not perfect but way better than crushing regular coax in a door jam. also double check that your mag mount has a decent ground plane, on a modern truck with a lot of plastic and composite the ground situation can be surprisingly bad even when it looks like it should be fine.

yeah the 7760 has been a long time coming. i handled one briefly at Dayton last year — well it was more like a display unit behind glass so not super useful but it looked and felt solid. the build quality on that series is always good from Icom. my concern would be the software side of things, Icom's RS-BA1 stuff has been a bit hit or miss depending on your computer setup and i'd imagine the remote operation side of the 7760 has some of that same ecosystem baked in. might want to keep your expectations tempered until the first real batch of user reviews trickle in from people running it day to day. and yes totally agree on 10 meters, worked a JA station on Thursday with like 25 watts it was almost embarrassing how easy it was. good time to be a ham honestly

dx summit and dxwatch are pulling from a lot of the same cluster network nodes so you'll see mostly the same spots, sometimes with slightly different latency. i bounce between both just cause sometimes one loads faster for me lol one thing that helped me a lot was filtering the spots by band so im not scrolling through 40m spots when im set up on 17. both sites let you do that. also if you're on 8 months you might not have your log set up yet but honestly even a free ADIF logger helps you remember what you already worked so you're not chasing dupes

The automatic nature bothered me at first too. But think of it this way - you're still making the antenna decisions, band choices, and timing. The computer just handles the protocol, like how your phone handles the cellular handshaking.