David Davis41

so ive been sitting on doing the mars/cap mod on my ft-857d for probably two years now, kept putting it off because i was worried about voiding warranty which is kind of a joke since the thing is like 8 years old at this point. anyway finally cracked it open last weekend, it's literally just moving one jumper on the main board, took maybe 20 minutes including the time i spent double checking the diagram because i was paranoid. but thats not actually the main thing i wanted to talk about. while i had it open i went ahead and did the collins filter mod too, swapped in a 500hz CW filter in the IF and the difference on 40m at night is pretty substantial. crowded band conditions are just way more manageable now, i can actually pull out signals that were getting buried before. the filter itself was like 45 bucks from universal radio i think, installation wasnt bad if you're comfortable with a fine tip soldering iron. anyone else done any mods to theirs? curious if the audio filtering mods are worth it, ive seen some stuff about modifying the TX audio chain for better voice quality on SSB but i cant find a good writeup that isnt from 2009 and half the links are dead.

yeah the swr sounds fine to me, my first dipole was way worse than that lol. one thing i learned the hard way is that stranded wire from extension cords can stretch a little over time especially if its holding any tension, so just keep an eye on your connections at the feedpoint after a few weeks of weather. my center connector pulled apart once during a rainstorm and i didnt notice for like a month wondering why the band seemed dead

I went through this same rabbit hole last winter. ended up spending way too many hours on the VHF reflectors reading old posts from the pre-digital era trying to figure out what was still relevant and what wasnt. short version from what i gathered: system noise temperature is basically everything. like you can have a huge antenna and if your feedline loss before the preamp is bad youre throwing signal away. i picked up a Kuhne preamp for 2m, NF something like 0.4dB, and mounted it right on the boom and that alone made a noticeable difference on tropo before i even pointed at the moon. havent made an actual EME contact yet but ive decoded a few of the big EU stations on 144.174 which was kind of exciting just to see that working. my setup is two 9el in H polarization so still small by any measure. i think the honest answer to your question is get your noise floor as low as possible first, then worry about adding more antenna later. also make sure your Az/El rotators can do at least a few degrees per second or you'll spend half the moon window waiting for the antenna to catch up

honestly the extra exam is more about pattern recognition than actually doing math in your head. yeah there are some formula questions but if you use something like hamstudy or the arrl extra book and just grind through the pool for a few weeks most of it starts to click. i was terrified of the filter Q stuff and the smith chart questions but once you see the same question phrased four different ways you kind of just know the answer. the theory does actually help though, i wont lie. understanding why certain filter topologies behave the way they do made me way better at troubleshooting RF issues in my shack. like i actually understood what was happening when i had a feedline mismatch instead of just wiggling cables and hoping. the extra band segments on 40 and 75 are surprisingly less crowded too, at least in my experience. whether its worth it depends on if you want to actually dig deeper into the hobby or if youre happy where you are, both are totally fine answers

yeah post the schematic, hard to say much without it. but a few things come to mind -- 200mW from a single BS170 at 12V isnt actually that far off depending on how the drive level looks. those little mosfets are pretty sensitive to gate drive, too much and you saturate early and waste power as heat, too little and youre just not turning them on properly. what does the drain waveform look like if you have a scope? even a cheap one will tell you a lot. if you dont have a scope then youre kind of flying blind on RF stuff like this unfortunately. also your toroid winding counts matter a lot on 40m, even being one turn off can shift the filter response enough to cause some loss. did you verify the filter with anything or just wind it to the design values and hope for the best? i've done that plenty of times and usually it works out close enough but sometimes it doesnt

yeah ive done almost exactly this, used a nano for mine. the voltage mapping isnt too bad once you just do a big if/else if block with some tolerance on each side of the expected voltage — like if the voltage reading is between 180 and 220 (in raw ADC counts) treat it as 40m, that kind of thing. works fine in practice even if its not elegant. the hot-switching thing is a real concern though. what i did was add a small delay after detecting a band change before actually firing the relay, like 200ms or so, and also read the PTT line from the radio so the arduino knows not to switch if youre transmitting. you can usually grab PTT from the same accessory connector. took me an afternoon of fiddling but its been solid for like 8 months now. never fried anything. arduino is totally the right call for this over a pi honestly. the pi boot time alone would annoy you every time you powered up the shack. for something that just needs to read a voltage and flip a relay an arduino is perfect, simpler is better.

so ive been messing with an RTL-SDR v3 dongle for about six months now and honestly its been pretty great for just learning the landscape, been doing ADSB, some ACARS, poked around the aircraft band a bit, even decoded some NOAA APT passes which was genuinely cool. but im starting to feel the limits of it especially on HF where i have to use the direct sampling mode and it just feels... not quite right? like the noise floor is all over the place and im pretty sure my cheap laptop is not helping things either. anyway ive been looking at either stepping up to the SDRplay RSP1A which i can get for around $120 or just biting the bullet and getting a HackRF One for like $300-ish. the thing is i dont really have a transmit need right now, im mostly receive only and just want better dynamic range and actually usable HF coverage. the RSP1A seems like the obvious choice for that but then ive read some stuff about the SDRuno software being a bit clunky and im already pretty comfortable with SDR# and CubicSDR. does the RSP1A actually work with SDR# still? i thought i saw something about a plugin but wasnt sure if it was still maintained. and is the HackRF receive quality actually as mediocre as people say for a $300 device, because that seems like a lot to spend for worse RX than a $120 dedicated receiver

the RSP1C is solid but just wanted to throw in — if you think theres any chance you'll want to transmit eventually or get into more advanced stuff, a HackRF might be worth considering instead. yeah its more expensive and the receive performance isnt quite as clean as the SDRplay for straight listening, but having TX capability opens up a ton of stuff. i use mine for everything from playing with WSPR beacons to testing antenna patterns. just depends what direction you see yourself going i guess.

ok so i just got my technician a few months ago and ive been on 2m mostly doing local repeater stuff. my question is about phonetics, like when do you actually use them vs just saying the letter normally. i hear some guys on the repeater just say their callsign normally like they would say a word, and then some guys go full NATO phonetic for every single letter every single time. is there like a rule about this or is it just whatever feels right also i noticed some older guys use different words sometimes, not the standard NATO ones. one guy said "baker" instead of "bravo" the other day and i wasnt sure if i heard him wrong or if thats a real thing. just trying to figure out the etiquette i guess

the 100ah lifepo4 should be fine honestly, especially on digital. i ran a similar setup at a simulated emergency test last spring, IC-705 instead of the 7300 so bit different draw, but i had a 50ah battery and was doing winlink and js8call for about 6 hours before i even thought about recharging. the 7300 pulls more on transmit obviously, maybe 20-22 amps at 100w, but if you're running 50w which is usually plenty for js8 it's a lot more reasonable. in receive you're looking at maybe 2-3 amps. rough math puts you well over 8 hours at moderate duty cycle so you should be in good shape without a genny at all depending on how often you're actually keying up. as for the generator question — i get the sticker shock on the honda but those eu2200i units are genuinely a different class of machine for this stuff. the inverter output is clean enough that i run it direct to my radio without a UPS in between, and the noise level matters a lot when you're trying to copy weak signals in a field environment. i tried a cheaper inverter genny once and the RF hash was a real problem, had to move it way further away and run a long extension. that said i've heard some guys have good luck with the westinghouse igen2500 so it might be worth looking at that one specifically if budget is an issue.

headlamp. seriously. i know it sounds dumb but i showed up to a deployment after a tornado came through, pitch black, fumbling around trying to set up with my phone flashlight while holding coax with my teeth. now i have two headlamps in the kit plus extra batteries and i will fight anyone who tells me thats overkill. also a laminated card with your frequencies, your net info, any local repeater stuff. when things get chaotic your brain goes sideways and having that right there saves you from blanking at the worst moment. i also started keeping a small notebook with my radio's menu shortcuts written out because i always forget how to get into the weird sub-menus on the 857 when im stressed.

so i finally finished putting together a MTR-3B kit over the past few weekends and honestly i was not expecting it to actually work on the first power up but it did, made a contact into ohio from pennsylvania on 40m running maybe 3 watts and i was pretty stoked about that. the whole thing just amazes me that you can do that with basically nothing. anyway i do have some questions. im getting what sounds like a little bit of receiver hiss or maybe background noise that i didnt expect, not sure if thats just the nature of the radio or if i did something wrong in the build. also the battery situation is confusing me a little — right now im using a 3s lipo i had sitting around from an RC hobby thing and it seems to work but i dont know if thats the right call long term. anyone run these on lipo and had issues? and one more thing, whats a good way to get spotted without a phone or internet out in the field, i know SOTA activators manage it somehow but i havent figured that out yet.

yeah you pretty much had QRM and QRN right, QRM is interference from other man-made signals like another station bleeding over or someone keying up nearby, and QRN is natural stuff, lightning crashes, static from weather that kind of thing. QSY is definitely change frequency, you'll hear that one a lot especially when someone wants to move a contact to a less busy part of the band. the ARRL publishes a Q code list and its in the back of the handbook if you have one, also just searching "Q codes list" will get you a dozen decent pages. honestly though most of the common ones you'll just absorb after a while. QTH is your location, QSL is confirm/acknowledge, QRZ means whos calling me or sometimes people use it wrong to mean who is that. QRP means low power which a lot of guys run intentionally. 73 is best regards basically, old telegraph thing, and 88 is love and kisses which you mostly hear used between operators who know each other or sometimes a husband and wife team. de just means from, so like W1ABC de K4XYZ means K4XYZ is calling W1ABC. dont stress too much about sounding clueless, everyone was there once and most hams are pretty patient with new folks

the UDP thing for WSJT-X does work but heads up that if you have both Log4OM and something like JTAlert running you have to daisy chain them, WSJT-X can only send UDP to one address at a time so JTAlert has to forward to Log4OM or vice versa. tripped me up for a bit when i first set it up because i was getting duplicate logs or missing QSOs entirely also worth mentioning the adif import from your old logs is usually pretty clean, i brought in like 8 years of logs from various sources and only had a handful of weirdly formatted entries that needed fixing

haha i did almost the exact same thing, said 73 like halfway through my first contact because i panicked. been licensed about 8 months now and i still get a little nervous calling CQ on HF but repeater stuff feels totally normal now. congrats on passing btw

so i passed my general about a year ago and ive been slowly working on CW ever since. started at 5wpm with the Koch method and honestly that part went pretty smoothly, was actually having fun with it. but somewhere around 13wpm i just hit this wall and i cant seem to break through no matter what i do. im practicing maybe 20-30 minutes a day with the G4FON trainer and i can copy most letters fine when im relaxed but the second i feel any pressure or try to push the speed up even a little bit i just fall apart and start missing stuff. feels like my brain just cant keep up and then i panic and miss even more. its a really frustrating cycle honestly. anybody been through this? how did you actually get from like 13 to 20wpm? im starting to wonder if theres something fundamentally wrong with how im approaching this or if its just one of those things that takes way longer than people say it does

so ive been putting this off for like a year and finally just did the mars/cap mod on my IC-7300 last weekend. mostly because i wanted to be able to tx on some of the EMCOMM frequencies that fall just outside the normal ham bands without having to do a whole song and dance every time. the mod itself is pretty straightforward, just a couple jumper pads on the main board, but getting the bottom cover off without scratching anything is honestly the most stressful part. anyway the thing i wanted to mention is that after i did it, i noticed the ALC behavior seems slightly different when im operating near the band edges. not sure if thats psychosomatic or if the TX path actually changes a little when the expanded coverage is enabled. the audio reports i've gotten are still fine so maybe im just paranoid. also had to redo the power calibration on a couple bands because i think i bumped something while i had it open. anyone else done this and noticed anything weird afterward? or have any other mods worth doing while the thing is already open? ive seen some stuff about the heat management and adding a small fan mod but wasnt sure if thats actually necessary for casual HF use.

yeah the linked dipole tangles are a rite of passage honestly, i went through the same thing my first few activations. what i do now is wind each link section separately onto a little piece of cardboard before i pack it, keeps things from turning into a bird nest. and yeah bring a separate battery bank just for the phone, learned that one the hard way too after nearly getting stuck on a ridge in the dark

dont be too hard on yourself, literally everyone does something awkward their first few check-ins. the double you caused probably wasnt even that bad, those happen to experienced ops all the time especially on repeaters with a little bit of tail or a weird timeout. the pause thing is kind of feel but a general rule of thumb ive always gone by is wait for the repeater to drop (you'll hear the tail or the courtesy tone if it has one) and then give it maybe another beat before you key up. on a busy net with a lot of stations that still doesnt guarantee you wont step on someone but it helps. the real trick is just listening to how the regulars do it for a few weeks and you start to get the rhythm of that specific net. they all have their own little quirks honestly. also saying your name and location is just local custom, not every net does it. some just want callsign and signal report. your net control will usually tell you at the start what info they want in the check-in but its easy to miss if youre nervous and not catching every word.

so ive been doing contests for a few years now, mostly single op on 20 and 40, and my rates are decent but i keep hitting a wall around 150-160 qso/hr during the good runs and then it just falls off when the band gets crowded or i need to find mults. been reading a lot about SO2R and watching some of the webinars from the big guns and i get the theory — keep radio 1 running on a run frequency and use radio 2 to hunt mults or grab a second frequency on another band for when the rate dies. but honestly setting it up looks like a pain. the audio switching alone seems like it would drive me nuts, and i havent even thought about the bandpass filter situation yet. my current setup is a K3 and an IC-7300 sitting there mostly unused, so i technically have the hardware already. i use N1MM+ for logging. has anyone here actually made the jump to SO2R from a similar starting point and was it worth it for the kind of contest where you're not trying to win the world, just improve your score and have more fun during the slow periods? or is this one of those things where it only really pays off if you're seriously competing for a plaque?

congrats on the general. the 40m phone thing is straightforward once you see it laid out — generals get 7.175 to 7.300 for SSB and the extra class folks have everything from 7.125 on up. so just stay above 7.175 for voice and you're fine. the "edges of the band" comment your club guy made is probably more of an operating practice thing than a strict legal requirement, like some people get touchy about operating right at 7.175 because you can accidentally splatter into the tech/general CW portion if your rig isn't clean. not a regulation exactly but worth being aware of. on the power question — 1500w PEP is the max for HF in most situations, that's your Part 97.313 limit. the 200w thing applies to certain bands like 30 meters specifically, that one's capped at 200w by international agreement so the FCC built it into Part 97. also 10 meters above 28.5 has some restrictions depending on sunspot activity... actually no wait that's not a rule that's just a practical thing. anyway point is read 97.313 carefully, it breaks down the exceptions band by band. you're probably fine just running normal power on 40.

yeah i did almost exactly this setup about two years ago, went through like three different relay boards before i just built my own with proper optoisolation between the arduino side and the relay side. made a huge difference. the pi for logging is actually not that crazy if you have it there anyway, i have mine running a little flask server that my logging software can hit over the local network to pull antenna info. but honestly if your just starting out get the switching working clean first, adding the pi before you have the basics solid just gives you more stuff to debug at once.

so ive been licensed for about 4 months now and i notice everyone on HF uses the nato phonetic alphabet like alpha bravo charlie etc when they're giving their callsign or spelling something out. my question is is this actually required or is it just like a convention people follow? i asked my elmer and he kind of gave me a wishy washy answer about it being standard practice but didnt really say if the FCC requires it or whatever also i've heard some old timers use completely different words sometimes like they'll say something other than the standard ones and i cant always tell what they're saying. is there a reason for that or are they just doing their own thing im using a baofeng on 2m mostly right now but i want to get into HF so trying to learn the right habits before i do

yeah low passes are rough, i had the same issue for a while. one thing that helped me was just running the SDR panoramic display so i could see the whole passband at once, you can actually watch the doppler slide in real time and it makes it way more obvious when youre actually hitting it vs just guessing. if youre already doing that and still not seeing your signal then maybe the uplink antenna pointing is off? i chased a problem like that for like three weekends and it turned out my elevation readout was like 8 degrees off because of how i had the sensor mounted, totally embarrassing but there it is

im basically in the same boat as you, tech for 3 years and just started the general pool last month. the electrical theory i just brute forced honestly, like i looked up enough youtube videos that eventually some of it clicked but for the questions i really couldnt wrap my head around i just memorized the answer. probably not the right approach but whatever it works for passing the test lol havent taken mine yet, scheduled for next saturday so fingers crossed