Amanda Miller

dude i had almost the exact same experience on my first one lol. i was running a ft-891 at like 25w and still felt totally unprepared for people calling all at once. i think the silence before the pileup is just the hunters seeing your spot and getting to their radios, theres kind of a lag. now i know to just keep calling even if the first few minutes are quiet. one thing that really helped me was using a notebook with just three columns -- callsign, signal report, band. super basic but it keeps you from freezing up trying to remember what to type into an app while someones calling you. you can upload it all later.

so ive been spending a lot of time on 10 meters the past few weeks and honestly i forgot how fun this band could be. worked a bunch of South American stations last Tuesday with just 50 watts and my old dipole, signals were genuinely S9 on some of them. feels like we're really cooking now with the solar cycle picking up steam. also saw something on one of the email lists about Icom supposedly announcing a new HF rig but i cant find much solid info on it. anybody heard anything more specific? i saw a blurry photo floating around that might have been from some trade show but who knows if thats even real. not in any rush to upgrade but always curious whats coming down the pipe. on a totally different note, our local club is doing a special event station next month for the county fair, if anyone in the midwest is on 40m around that time keep an ear out for us. should be a good time even if the logging always turns into a bit of a circus with 6 people crowded around one laptop.

i was in your exact spot like 8 months ago and ended up going with the UV-5R just to get started. honestly for hitting repeaters its totally fine, i program mine with CHIRP which makes the whole thing way less painful than trying to do it manually. only thing i'd say is get the nagoya antenna, the stock one is pretty mediocre. total cost was maybe $35 and i've had zero real problems with it. but yeah if the budget isn't a concern the yaesu stuff does feel nicer. my buddy has a FT-70DR and im a little jealous of how clean it is. congrats on passing the exam btw

so ive been using N1MM pretty much forever for contests and it works fine, no complaints really, but i started getting into more casual operating and digital modes and someone at the club mentioned Log4OM for general logging and WSJT-X integration. now im wondering if theres any point trying to run both or if i should just pick one and deal with whatever compromises come with it. the thing is N1MM is obviously king for contests, i dont think thats even a debate, but outside of a contest weekend it feels like overkill and honestly the interface is kind of a lot when youre just poofing around on FT8 on a tuesday night. Log4OM looks a lot cleaner for day to day stuff and it talks to WSJT-X pretty smoothly from what ive read. but then i worry about having my log split across two programs or having to import/export ADIF every time i want everything in one place. does anyone actually run this kind of split workflow without it being a total headache? or am i overthinking this and should i just use N1MM for everything including the FT8 stuff

yeah i do the yagi on a tripod thing from the back of my jeep pretty regularly for sota activations and it works great. dont overthink the mounting situation, a cheap photo tripod and a mast clamp gets you there. i wouldnt bother trying to do it while actually driving though, the pointing thing makes it pretty useless unless youre stationary the tram 1185 is fine for what it is but if you want actual gain for simplex work the collinear still only gets you maybe 5-6 dBd at best and thats vertical polarization only. a 3 element yagi is probably around 6 dBd too but you can tilt it for cross-pol if you want to mess with satellite passes. depends what matters more to you

so ive been trying to get more into DX chasing lately and everyone keeps telling me to use the cluster networks but honestly its a little overwhelming. i set up an account on QRZ and i can see the logbook stuff fine but the spotting/cluster part i kind of stumbled into by accident and now im not sure if im using it the way people intend it to be used. basically what i do is open DXwatch in one tab and QRZ in another and just watch for spots to pop up on bands i care about, mostly 17m and 20m. when something interesting shows up i go tune to the freq and see if i can hear anything. sometimes i can, sometimes i cant. is that really all there is to it or am i missing something? feels almost too simple for how much people talk about clusters being this big important thing also i noticed there's like a ton of duplicate spots and some spots that are clearly way off frequency, do people just ignore those or is there a way to filter them? running an IC-7300 if that matters

oh man i remember that exact feeling, just kind of hovering over the PTT button for like ten minutes the first time lol. okay so the easiest way to find nets near you is the ARRL net directory, its at arrl.org and you can search by band and location. also repeaterbook sometimes has nets listed in the repeater info for local machines so worth checking that too. as for checking in, most nets the net control will say something like "is there anyone else who would like to check in" and you just wait for a pause and then give your callsign phonetically. some nets are more casual and some are pretty structured, the traffic nets especially follow a specific format but your local 2m club nets are usually pretty relaxed. just listen to a whole net first before you try checking in and you'll get the feel for it real quick. honestly net controls love when new hams check in, dont sweat it

the elevated radial thing can work but you really want them resonant and at least a few of them, 4 is probably the minimum before you start seeing real efficiency. the ground losses with just 2 elevated radials can actually be worse than a decent buried system depending on soil. that said i ran a homebrew vertical on my old QTH with 6 elevated radials at about 8 feet up and it did pretty well on 40, definitely pulled some EU stuff i couldnt hear on my dipole at the time. but honestly at 25 feet your dipole is what, maybe a third of a wavelength up on 40? getting it to 40+ feet would make a noticeable difference, not dramatic but real. if the tree is already there id try that first before tearing everything apart. a lot less work than building a vertical with a proper ground system.

Honestly I just use N1MM for everything including day to day logging and people think im crazy but it works. The non-contest logging mode is underrated, most guys only think of it as a contest tool but ive been keeping my full log in there for years. WSJT-X talks to it fine over the network port. Only thing it really lacks compared to Log4OM is the award tracking stuff, like if you care about DXCC progress and visual maps and whatnot Log4OM is nicer for that. Duplicate merging is always going to be a headache no matter what combination you use, thats just the nature of juggling multiple programs. I'd just pick whichever one you want as the master log and treat everything else as secondary.

so ive been a ham for about 3 years now and I keep telling myself im going to put together a proper go-kit and then life gets in the way. well after watching what happened to some folks in the county over during that ice storm last february I finally got serious about it. right now I have an FT-891 I was thinking of using as the main rig, a 40ah lithium battery I picked up last year, and a random wire antenna with a tuner. I also threw in a notebook and some pencils because apparently that's old school but also apparently it matters when the grid goes down. what I dont have figured out yet is the power connections — I have a bunch of anderson powerpole stuff but I havent actually wired everything up cleanly yet. and I keep going back and forth on whether I need a second HT in there or if thats overkill for one person. also not sure about the case situation, I see guys with these beautiful pelican cases and I see guys with rubbermaid tubs and honestly both seem to work. is there a checklist someone swears by or is it more just figure out what you actually need for your situation? I feel like I keep reading conflicting advice online.

okay so ive been wanting to get my ham license for like two years now and i finally decided to just do it. picked up a baofeng a while back that i havent even touched because i didnt want to transmit illegally or whatever. anyway i downloaded the hamstudy app and its kind of overwhelming, like theres 423 questions in the pool and i dont really know if i should just memorize all of them or actually try to understand the material. a friend told me the actual exam only pulls like 35 questions from the pool but i dont know if thats right. also does anyone know how much of the tech exam is actually math because i am not great at math and that has been holding me back from just sitting down and doing this. any tips would be appreciated, been lurking here for a long time and you guys seem to know your stuff

Field Day is honestly where most people start and thats totally fine, but since you missed operating this year the next good one to try is probably the ARRL Sweepstakes in november. CW is first then phone a couple weeks later, and the phone weekend is really forgiving for newer operators because everyone is used to slower more deliberate exchanges. the exchange itself is a little weird at first — you send a serial number, precedence, callsign, check and section — but after about 20 contacts it becomes muscle memory. there are practice sheets floating around online that help. CQ WW is huge and can feel chaotic if you're not ready for it, lots of DX stations running crazy fast and the pileups get intense. nothing wrong with jumping in and just doing search and pounce to get a feel for it, nobody cares if you only make 30 contacts. your 7300 into a dipole will do just fine for getting started. the radio doesnt win contests, the operator does, and all that. SOTA is kind of its own thing yeah, its not scored the same way as a traditional contest but activators and chasers do log everything through the SOTAwatch site and there are awards for summits worked. worth looking into separately because it gets you outdoors which is its own reward.

ok so ive been licensed for about 8 months now and i still feel awkward about this. like i know the NATO phonetic alphabet, alpha bravo charlie etc, but i dont always know when im supposed to use it versus just saying the letter normally. on the local repeater people sometimes just say their callsign letters straight and sometimes they spell it out phonetically and i cant figure out if theres a rule or if its just preference or what. also sometimes people mix them, like theyll say the numbers normally but phonetic the letters? is that a thing or am i mishearing. i guess my actual question is, is there a standard for when you use phonetics or is it just whenever you feel like the other station might not copy you clearly

this is something i've been struggling with too so appreciate the post. one thing i read somewhere was about using a shorter callsign-style transmission — like just sending your suffix if the dx op seems to be catching partials? i tried it a couple times but felt kinda weird about it, not sure if thats actually accepted practice or frowned upon. maybe someone here knows. i dont want to be that guy in the pileup whos doing something annoying without realizing it.

so ive been using N1MM pretty much exclusively for a few years now and it works great for contests obviously, but i keep running into this issue where i want to use it for regular QSOs and casual operating and it just feels like overkill or maybe the wrong tool, like the interface is clearly built around running stations and S&P and all that contest workflow, not just sitting down on a Tuesday evening and working some DX on 17m and having it log nicely with notes and QSL tracking and all that a buddy of mine at the club has been using Log4OM v2 for a while and keeps saying it does both worlds pretty well, handles day to day logging with all the awards tracking and DXCC and everything but also has decent contest support, i havent actually sat down with it myself yet just seen it over his shoulder a couple times my other thing is WSJT-X obviously auto logs to whatever you point it at and i have it pointing at N1MM right now during contests which works fine, but when im just doing FT8 casually i kinda dont want to fire up N1MM just for that, so ive been running WSJT-X standalone and then importing the ADIF later which is always kind of a mess honestly anyone else juggle multiple logging programs or did you find one that handles all of this without being annoying? not looking to run two logbooks long term if i can avoid it