Lisa Chang

so i finally got around to finishing the DC receiver ive been piecing together for like 3 months. its based loosely on the NorCal design but i substituted a few parts because getting exact components shipped here takes forever. the audio is actually pretty decent on 40m, picking up SSB just fine once i got the VFO dialed in, but theres this weird heterodyne that shows up whenever i touch the enclosure or even just move my hand near the coil area. like i dont even have to touch it, just proximity sets it off. at first i thought it was a grounding issue so i redid all the ground connections on the main board and added a chassis ground strap but its still doing it. the VFO is wound on a T50-2 core and im using a 2N3904 for the oscillator stage. shield can might be the answer but i havent fabbed one yet. or maybe my layout is just bad. the board is ugly honestly, point-to-point on perfboard which probably doesnt help anything. anyone dealt with this before on a scratch built VFO? im wondering if i just need to bite the bullet and build a proper shield or if theres something else im missing before i go down that road.

With linear birds using SSB and CW modes providing anywhere from 20-50 KHz of bandwidth, I'm curious about proper frequency coordination on AO-73. I've noticed some operators seem to park themselves right in the middle of the transponder and stay there for extended QSOs, while others quickly move around to avoid interference. The benefits of more bandwidth and the ability for multiple users to make QSOs simultaneously should allow for better frequency management than the FM birds. What's considered good practice for frequency selection and QSO length on the linear transponders? I know maximum uplink power should be 5 watts to a 7 dBi gain antenna (25W EIRP), but are there any unwritten rules about frequency etiquette?

I'm planning to upgrade from General to Extra and wondering about the practical benefits. Amateur Extra Class privileges include all of the privileges given to Technician Class and General Class licensees, plus the use of all frequencies and modes on the HF bands. Achieving an Extra Class license grants access to all available amateur band frequencies, removing the limitations faced by General Class operators on the 80, 40, 20, and 15-meter bands. How often do you actually use those exclusive sub-bands, and is the contest advantage worth the study time?

oh yeah absolutely, happens to me every winter. i'll go like a month barely keying up then something will get me back into it — usually a contest or somebody posts a rare DX spot and i cant help myself. just leave the radio on in the background tuned to a busy frequency, sometimes you hear something interesting and it pulls you back in without even thinking about it.

I went to one of these last spring and ended up spending way more than I planned, came home with a whole box of ferrite cores and a vintage SX-28 receiver that I still haven't figured out what to do with. anyway hope you find your meter, those always go fast at the swap tables early on

oh man this was me like two years ago exactly. what helped me was stopping trying to build the perfect kit and just asking myself what do i actually need to operate for 72 hours away from home. for me that came down to a radio obviously, power, antenna, and the ability to log. everything else is nice to have. i ended up going with a used FT-817 as my go-kit radio because its small and runs QRP which means my battery lasts way longer, but honestly for emcomm you probably want more than 5 watts so maybe look at the 857 or even something like a used IC-706. the battery situation is huge though, dont skimp on that. i run a 20ah LiFePO4 and a small solar panel, fits in a rolling carry-on bag. the antenna i use most is just a linked dipole i made myself, maybe 15 bucks in parts. the pelican case guys are cool but a lot of that is for show honestly. a good Rubbermaid tote with foam padding works fine if youre just doing local ARES stuff. focus on being able to actually make contacts before worrying about looking professional.

So I finally got around to installing my FT-7900R in my F-150 after having it sitting on my desk for like 6 months just doing simplex around the house. Got the power leads run direct to the battery with an inline fuse, used 12 gauge wire which I think is fine for this radio, and mounted the main body under the seat with the control head up on the dash. Overall pretty happy with how it turned out except for a couple things. First thing is I'm getting some ignition noise on 2m, not terrible but definitely there when the engine is running. I grounded the radio chassis to a bolt on the firewall, thought that would handle it but it didnt really. The noise goes away completely when I shut the engine off so its definitely coming from something in the vehicle. Not sure if its the alternator or the injectors or what. Tried moving the antenna coax away from the power wires and that helped a little bit. Second thing is I mounted my NMO antenna on the roof but I ran the coax through the door jamb and I'm wondering if thats going to be a problem long term. It's got a bit of a pinch point. Tape it up real good or should I redo it completely through the firewall somehow. Running into any of these issues with your mobile installs? Radio itself sounds great on the repeater when it does work, just want to clean it up a bit.

i ran almost the exact same question past myself before a simcomm last fall and ended up bringing both — the battery as primary and the generator in the truck as backup. never touched the genny. honestly it was kind of reassuring just knowing it was there but in practice the lifepo4 handled everything fine and like you said the quiet is really nice especially if youre doing voice ops and trying to copy weak signals. one thing i didnt expect was how much the laptop sucked down compared to the radio. had a relatively modern thinkpad and it was still pulling like 45 watts under load. so factor that in if you havent already. might be worth running everything off a watt meter for an hour at home first just to see what youre actually dealing with before you commit.

im in a similar boat went with the ft-65r about 6 weeks ago and its been pretty solid for hitting repeaters. build quality feels way better than the cheap stuff and the audio is loud enough that i can hear it clipped to my pack strap while walking. only thing i wish it had was a better stock antenna but thats easy to fix later

Great question! While it's always appropriate to use the standard NATO phonetics, DXers have their own set of phonetics. Most of the time I stick to the ITU phonetics, but I may use the DX phonetics for contests. The ITU phonetics for my callsign are "Kilo Zero November Romeo," but I'll often switch to "Kilo Zero Norway Radio," which is a syllable shorter. If the other operator is having trouble picking my callsign out of the noise, it sometimes helps to switch phonetic alphabets.

oh man i remember being exactly where you are, dont feel bad at all. so yes the CTCSS thing is almost certainly your issue. most repeaters these days require you to transmit a subaudible tone along with your voice before they'll open up the squelch and actually let you through. you can hear the repeater fine because you're just receiving, but to get the repeater to hear YOU and retransmit your signal, you need to be sending that tone. go back to repeaterbook and look up that specific repeater again, there should be a field that says something like PL tone or CTCSS and it'll be a number like 100.0 or 127.3 or whatever. then in your baofeng you need to program that into the TX CTCSS field for that channel. once you do that try keying up and you should hear the repeater's tail — that little blip or kerchunk sound after you let go of the PTT. that means you're in. then just say something like your callsign and the word monitoring and see if anyone comes back. welcome to the hobby btw, it gets way more fun from here

ok so i finally got my general ticket a few months back and ive been slowly figuring out HF. been making contacts and logging everything in WSJT-X and then pulling it into LOTW which took me forever to figure out but thats another story. anyway someone at my local club mentioned DXCC and said i should start working toward it and i looked it up on the ARRL site but honestly the way they explain it is kind of dense and im still confused about a few things. so from what i understand you need 100 confirmed contacts with 100 different "entities" which is not the same as countries, right? like some islands count separately and some territories and stuff. but how do i actually know which ones count? is there a list somewhere thats easy to read or do i just trust what LOTW shows me when contacts get confirmed? and the submission part, do you pay once and then submit updates later for free or is every submission a fee? i saw something about an annual fee situation but wasnt sure. also does it matter what band or mode or is any confirmed contact with a new entity just... a credit? sorry if these are dumb questions im just trying to understand before i get too deep into chasing stuff

the eu2200i is actually not bad rf-wise in my experience, ran one at field day a couple years ago and with decent grounding and a line filter on the output it was pretty clean. the bigger issue is like you said the idle noise for 6+ hours, fuel consumption isnt terrible but its still another thing to manage. honestly for an ic-7300 running at reasonable power levels your lifepo4 should be fine if you're not going full 100w the whole time. at 25-30w average you're probably pulling 8-10 amps depending on duty cycle, so 100ah gets you a long day easy. the truck alternator issue is real though, long term idling is rough on them and the voltage regulation isnt always consistent which can cause weirdness with some rigs. for the antenna, ive had really good luck with a 49:1 unun endfed for quick setups. yeah the purists will say the radiation pattern isnt as clean as a center-fed dipole but for emcomm you mostly care about getting on air reliably and fast. 30 feet of wire up 20 feet gets you usable on most bands 40-10. just make sure you have a decent counterpoise sorted out or you'll have rf on the coax and chassis which is a headache.

your list is pretty solid honestly, a lot of people forget the paper freqs thing and then wonder why theyre scrambling when their phone dies. the one thing i dont see that i would consider pretty critical is a headlamp or at least a decent flashlight IN the kit itself, not just somewhere in the house. you will work in the dark at some point if things go sideways and having to dig around for a light defeats the whole point. on the battery question, 40ah lifepo4 at low power HF you can realistically get a lot of hours, like if youre running 25-50 watts and not transmitting constantly you might be surprised. i ran a similar setup during a training exercise a while back and was fine for most of a day with moderate use. solar panel is worth it if you have the space, even a 100w panel and a basic charge controller doesnt add that much bulk and the peace of mind is real. i went back and forth on the second radio thing forever and eventually added a small handheld just for local comms/monitoring when my main rig is busy. not overkill in my opinion, its a different tool for a different job.

so ive been messing around with this idea for a while now and finally started putting something together on the bench. basically i want to use an arduino mega to handle all my antenna switching automatically based on band — right now i have a 40m dipole, a vertical for 20/15/10, and a loop thats kind of a wildcard. every time i change bands i have to physically reach over and flip the coax switch and honestly it drives me nuts especially during contests. the plan is to tap into the band data output from my rig (its an ic-7300 so it does put out band info over USB via CI-V) and have the arduino read that and trigger the appropriate relay. ive already got a 4-relay module sitting here and a handful of logic level converters. the tricky part im running into is getting the CI-V parsing right — the icom protocol isnt super complicated but its not exactly plug and play either. anyone who has done something similar with a PI or arduino and icom rigs, how did you handle the band data parsing? did you use a library or just write your own state machine? also a little worried about RF getting into the arduino and causing resets. ive seen that happen before with a different project and it was a nightmare to track down.

yeah the timing thing is real. i also read somewhere that calling slightly off the common calling frequency within the split can help, like if everyone is piling up on 14.025 split 5 maybe try calling on 14.026 or 14.024 because the op might sweep across and pull you out of the noise easier. works sometimes, not always obviously. tbh my biggest issue is i get nervous and start calling too fast on cw and my sent speed goes up when im excited which is dumb. i run normally at like 18-20wpm but during a big pileup ive caught myself sending 28+ which is counterproductive when the op might be running at 22. gotta match or go slightly slower than what they're sending.

i was in the exact same spot like eight months ago lol. ended up going with the baofeng just to see and yeah it works but i did eventually get a ft-65r and the difference in audio clarity on the repeater is noticeable. people actually stopped asking me to repeat myself. so if you can swing the extra $40 or whatever it is i'd just go straight to the yaesu and skip the middle step i took

yeah i went through basically the same thing a few months ago. gpredict doppler control is great but the first time i used it i had the CAT cable settings wrong and it was correcting the wrong VFO lol so nothing made sense. worth double checking which VFO its actually controlling. and the manual yagi thing — i mean it works but your arm gets tired fast and a wobbly antenna during a 10 minute pass is rough. i ended up just zip tying mine to a camera tripod with a cheap pan/tilt head and its way more manageable even if its still manual

congrats man, that first qso feeling is something you never really forget. i still remember mine, it was on 40 meters back in 2009 and i was shaking the whole time trying to remember the phonetic alphabet. welcome to the hobby, its a good one on the radio question — the baofengs are fine to get started, dont let anyone give you too much grief about them. once you figure out what kind of operating you actually like doing youll have a better idea of what you really want anyway

so i finally did my first WWFF activation last weekend, went out to a state forest about 45 minutes from my house that had a valid KFF reference and honestly it was way more fun than i expected. set up my buddistick on a little folding table near a trailhead, ran about 4 watts on FT8 and also did some SSB on 40m. managed to get 44 QSOs in about 3 hours which i know is more than enough for the activation to count. my questions are kind of scattered so bear with me. first, do i need to log the exact KFF reference number in every log entry or just include it somewhere in the upload? i used HAMRS for logging on my tablet and im not 100% sure where to put it. second, does anyone know if the hunter confirmations happen automatically once you upload to ADIF or do the hunters have to do something on their end too. and third — and this might be a dumb question — if part of the area i was in technically overlaps with another reference, do both count from a single activation or do you have to specifically activate each one separately. anyway the whole experience was great, saw a red tailed hawk land about 20 feet from me while i was in a pileup which was pretty surreal. definitely doing more of these.

so we have a countywide ARES exercise coming up in about 5 weeks and i've been tasked with putting together a portable comms kit for one of the outlying sites, basically a park pavilion with no shore power. been doing this for a few years but honestly our group has always just kind of winged the power side of things and it's caused problems before, generator ran out of fuel at a bad time during the last SET, that kind of thing. my plan right now is to bring the IC-7300 for HF backup comms and a TM-V71A for local VHF/UHF. antenna wise i'm thinking a linked dipole for HF strung up between a couple of masts, maybe 40/80m since those are the bands the state net uses, and a jpole or small yagi for the V/U side pointed toward the EOC about 12 miles away. for power im torn between running a small inverter generator like the Honda EU2200i or just going full battery with a LiFePO4 pack. the exercise is supposed to run about 8 hours. my rough math says the 7300 on receive plus TX at maybe 50% duty cycle plus the V71 and some laptop time is maybe 15-20ah? but im honestly not confident in that estimate. anybody done something similar and know what your actual consumption looked like over a full day

so ive been a general for about two years now and i keep going back and forth on whether to bother with the extra. i mostly do HF on 40 and 20m, some SSB some digital, and honestly the general privileges have been fine for what i do. but i keep hearing people say you should just get it done, and then other people say the theory questions are way harder than the technician or general stuff and its kind of a grind to study for. what i dont really understand is how much of the extra exam is like actual theory you have to internalize versus stuff you can just memorize from the pool. some of the questions ive seen look pretty involved, like filter design and stuff about transmission lines that i genuinely dont understand the math behind. does anyone actually understand that stuff going in or do most people just learn the answers also the privileges thing — is the extra HF subband access actually useful in practice or is it pretty empty up there most of the time

so i heard through the club that the Tri-County hamfest is happening again in March, pretty sure its at the same fairgrounds as last year. was thinking of loading up the car and heading over early to get first crack at the swap meet tables. last time i found a barely used 706 for way less than i expected so im hoping lightning strikes twice lol. anybody else planning on going or know if the club is doing a group meetup beforehand like they did in 2022