Sarah Thompson

yeah the tech HF privileges are pretty limited but they do exist. for voice you can do SSB on 10 meters, specifically 28.300 to 28.500 MHz, so your club buddy was right about that. you also get some CW segments on 80, 40, 15, and 10 meters. the power limit for technicians on HF is 200 watts PEP on those limited segments, which is actually plenty to make contacts especially on 10 when the band is open.
honestly the easiest thing to do is just google the arrl band plan for technicians and print it out and tape it next to your radio. part 97 itself is kind of written in legalese and its not the most friendly thing to read if youre just trying to figure out where you can operate. the actual subpart B section 97.301 is where the frequency allocations are if you do want to read it straight from the source though.

i was in the same boat when i first got my ticket. what finally made it click for me was just downloading the arrl band chart and keeping it open while i was messing around with the radio. also worth knowing that the power limits are different for techs on some of those HF segments, i think 200 watts on some of them not the full 1500, so double check that too before you key up

Hawaii is just W6 so it counts as the same entity as the rest of the US for DXCC purposes — same with Alaska. But for WAS they obviously count as states so you still need them for that award. The entity thing trips a lot of people up at first, basically the ARRL has a list of current DXCC entities and it doesnt map 1:1 to countries at all, some small islands or territories count separately even if theyre politically part of a bigger country.
For lotw — yeah you set it up once and it tracks all your confirmed QSOs in one place, but you do have to apply for each award separately and pay the application fee when you're ready. The credits themselves accumulate automatically as people upload their logs and match with yours, you'll start seeing your totals go up without doing anything. I'd honestly just focus on WAS first since with 100w and a dipole you can do it on 40 and 80 meters without too much trouble, especially if you're patient and hit the bands when propagation cooperates. DXCC will come naturally as you work more DX anyway, you might be surprised how many entities you've already worked without realizing it.

im kind of in the same boat as you, been working on it since winter and the 10wpm mark is just brutal for me. one thing that helped me a little is just listening to actual on-air CW even when i cant copy most of it, like just running it in the background while im doing other stuff. not sure if thats actually doing anything scientifically but it feels like it keeps my ear at least somewhat engaged with the sounds. also LCWO dot net if you havent tried it, theres a word training mode that i think works better than random characters for getting your copying speed up

same boat here not too long ago, the Koch thing felt really slow and boring at first but it works. one thing nobody told me was to not skip characters even if you think you know them already, i skipped ahead and paid for it later lol. also try just listening to cw while you do other stuff, not trying to copy it just having it on in the background. sounds dumb but i think it helped my ear get used to faster speeds without the pressure of actually copying. G4FON's trainer is pretty good too if you want something offline.

yeah same experience here honestly. ft8 you call cq and youre getting decoded within like 2 cycles, js8call feels like shouting into a room that might be empty. i think the timing matters a lot more with js8call, like there are windows when people are actually around vs ft8 where theres always someone decoding 24/7.
10 watts into a dipole at 25 feet should be totally fine for it though, dont let anyone tell you you need more power for weak signal digital. ive worked dx on js8call with 5w and a compromised antenna, the mode is sensitive enough. its more a population problem than a propagation one

so ive been a general for about three years now and honestly i use maybe 10% of the privileges i already have. a buddy at the club keeps telling me to just go for the extra and get it done but every time i look at the question pool i kind of freeze up. the math stuff especially, like the stuff around transmission lines and impedance and all that, it genuinely looks like college coursework to me.
i guess my real question is do people actually USE the extra privileges in any meaningful way or is it mostly just a vanity thing at that point. like is there actually more activity on the extra portions of the bands or is it kind of dead down there. and also how long did it realistically take people to actually feel ready for the test, not just pass it by memorizing answers but actually understand whats going on

same boat as you were a while back and just want to say the filtering thing on DXwatch took me forever to find too. theres a little gear icon or settings somewhere that lets you set your prefix and it changes what shows up. made a huge difference for me once i figured that out.

so i finally worked up the nerve to check into the Tuesday evening 2m net our club runs and i think i messed up a few things. when the net control called for check-ins i just said my callsign and that was it, wasnt sure if i was supposed to say my name or location or what. then at one point i tried to make a comment after another station finished talking and i guess i either stepped on someone or the timing was off because net control kind of repeated the last guy's call again before acknowledging me.
nobody said anything mean about it and net control was nice but i just felt awkward after. is there like a standard way you're supposed to check in and participate in these things? i've read a bit about it but it's different actually doing it on the air for the first time.

the theory isnt as brutal as it looks honestly. yeah there are some filter and impedance matching questions that take a little work to understand but once you get the underlying concept down a lot of the questions start to feel repetitive. i spent maybe 6 weeks going through hamstudy dot org every morning with coffee and by the end i wasnt just memorizing i actually understood most of it which surprised me.
your club friend is right about the band segments btw, during a big contest the general portions of 40 and 80 can get absolutely wall to wall while the extra portion still has some room. not empty but definitely less of a zoo. that alone was worth it for me since i do a fair amount of casual operating on 40 at night and it was getting frustrating fighting for space. the 160 meter privileges are nice too if you ever get into that band, and 60 meters has a few extra channels for extras i think, or maybe thats changed, worth double checking.
as for the personal achievement thing, yeah a little of that too but i dont think thats a bad reason. its the top license, might as well have it if youre serious about the hobby

I went through this exact same thing last year. ended up building a fan dipole with elements cut for 40 and 80 instead of going vertical and honestly kind of glad i did just because i didnt want to deal with the ground radial situation. my lot is pretty rocky and getting anything buried is a pain. but yeah if you have even halfway decent soil a vertical with a reasonable radial field is probably worth trying for dx. the low angle radiation thing is real, its not just theory. just dont expect miracles if your radials are short.

so i finally did my first WWFF activation last weekend at a state forest near me, KFF-something, i had to look it up on the wwff.us site and register beforehand which took me a bit to figure out but wasnt too bad once i read through it. set up my little linked dipole between two trees and ran about 40 watts on 40m mostly, got 44 QSOs in about 2.5 hours which i was pretty happy with for a first time out
my question is about the logging side of things — do i need to submit the log to both the WWFF database AND to adif.wwff.us or whatever it is, or is it just one place? i uploaded to LOTW already out of habit but i know thats separate. also i spotted myself on the POTA app by mistake lol, habit again, had to go find the wwff spotter. someone still came back to me who musta seen it on pota so whatever it worked out
also wondering if anyone has tips for finding good references that havent been activated much, im looking at some of the less popular state game lands around me and a few nature preserves but im not sure how to filter for ones with low activation counts on the directory

yeah the noise thing with generators at a public event is real, people always end up parking it in the worst spot and then someone complains. the eu2200i is at least tolerable but still. one thing we've started doing is using a small DC-DC converter setup so the radio gear is completely isolated from whatever noise the genny puts out on the line — had some RFI issues early on that turned out to be coming right through the power leads, not even radiated.
cant really comment on the CHA-250 specifically never used one but my general take on loaded verticals for HF field work is they're fine for casual operation but when it actually matters i want a resonant antenna. for ARES stuff where you might need to punch through on a bad band day i'd take the dipole hassle every time.

CQ WW is absolutely the deep end yeah, but honestly dont let that stop you from jumping in even if you just make a handful of contacts. nobody is judging your score, especially not a new general. the exchange for phone is literally just your signal report and your CQ zone so its not that complicated once you hear it a few times.
for warmup contests i'd look at the state QSO parties, theres usually a bunch of them in the sept/october timeframe before CQ WW phone rolls around. your own state probably has one and they tend to be lower pressure with simpler exchanges. also ARRL Sweepstakes is coming up in november which is a big domestic one — the exchange is more involved but its a really fun one to try.
SOTA is its own whole thing, separate from contesting really. its about activating summits and getting contacts from portable setups. some guys love it, some focus purely on contesting. i'd say try a contest first just to get your feet wet then see if the outdoor portable operating appeals to you later on.

so our ARES group has a county-wide exercise coming up and im trying to figure out the best way to power everything without relying on shore power. we'll be running an IC-7300, a small packet station on a separate laptop, and probably a 2m/70cm mobile rig for local coordination. rough estimate is somewhere around 30-40 amps continuous draw when the HF rig is transmitting which honestly is more than i expected when i added it all up.
my question is mainly whether to bring the Honda EU2200i I borrowed from a club member or just stack a couple of the 100ah lifepo4 batteries i already own. the generator obviously gives unlimited runtime but its loud and at the last exercise the EOC people got pretty annoyed about generator noise near the building entrance. the batteries are quiet but i dont know if 200ah is really enough for a full 12 hour activation, especially if we end up doing a lot of HF traffic.
also still havent settled on antennas. was thinking a NVIS setup with a 40m horizontal loop fairly low to the ground for in-state comms, and then maybe a buddipole or something similar for longer range if needed. anyone done something like this for a real exercise or actual activation and have opinions on what actually works vs what sounds good on paper

so i finally did my first WWFF activation last weekend at a state forest near me (KFF reference, not gonna bore you with the number) and honestly it went way better than i expected. set up my little linked dipole between two trees, ran about 25w on 40m and got a nice pileup going after spotting myself on pota.app — wait do WWFF folks use a different spotting system? i was using the POTA spotter out of habit and wasnt sure if that was the right move.
anyway managed 44 QSOs in about 2.5 hours which i think is enough to qualify the reference, but i cant find a clear answer on how many contacts you actually need. POTA is 10 to activate, is WWFF different? i thought i read 44 somewhere but that seems oddly specific and im not sure i didnt make that up.
also the logging — i used HAMRS on my phone for POTA stuff before but im not sure if it exports in the right format for WWFF. anyone gone through the upload process recently? the website confused me a little.