Ashley Wilson

i took mine like two months ago and was also really nervous about the electrical questions lol. what helped me was just doing the practice tests on hamstudy in exam mode instead of study mode so it felt more like the real thing. by the end i had seen most of the questions so many times i just knew the answers without even having to think about them too hard. the actual session was pretty low key, the VE volunteers were all really friendly and it didnt feel scary at all once i got there. i passed with a few questions to spare so just trust the process i guess

so i've been running a FT-7900 just kind of loosely sitting on my passenger seat for like two years, which i know is terrible, and i finally broke down and did a real install this past weekend. got a RAM mount bracket sorted out under the dash and ran the power direct to the battery with an inline fuse on both leads like youre supposed to. also finally put a proper NMO mount through the trunk lid instead of that magnetic antenna i'd been using. few things caught me off guard. first, routing the coax was way more of a pain than i expected, had to partially pull back the trunk weatherstripping and feed it through a rubber grommet i made myself because i couldnt find the right size at the hardware store. second, the voltage drop i was seeing before just disappeared once i had clean power from the battery, the RF noise from the alternator i'd been fighting for months is almost completely gone now too. i think my cheap power connection before was acting like a ground loop or something. anyway if anyone is on the fence about doing this properly, just do it. took me most of saturday but it was worth it. the radio just feels solid now, transmit audio reports are way better too according to the guys on the local repeater.

so ive been messing around with this for a few weeks now and i think im overcomplicating it. basically i have an old yaesu g-450a rotator and i want to drive it from an arduino instead of the manual controller. the idea is to eventually tie it into my logging software so it just follows the beam heading automatically when i work a dx station. i got the basic H-bridge motor driver wired up and i can turn the thing but the feedback pot is giving me grief. the voltage divider math isnt matching what im actually seeing on the analog pin, and i think its because the pot in the rotator isnt a clean linear taper. or maybe im just reading it wrong. ive got a 10-bit ADC so theoretically i should have plenty of resolution but the readings jump around like crazy especially when the motor is running. has anyone done something similar with a raspberry pi instead? i was thinking maybe a pi would be easier since i could run hamlib directly on it and just write a python script. but then again the arduino response time is probably better for the actual motor control. maybe both? pi for the logic and arduino as a hardware interface? i dont know, starting to feel like this rabbit hole has no bottom.