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

yeah that feeling you described is exactly it, i tried to explain it to my wife and she just looked at me like i was crazy lol. theres something about the limitation that makes every contact feel like you actually earned it. i've been doing SOTA activations with a tiny rig i half-built myself (its a mess inside but it works) and even just a few contacts from a summit on 5w is more fun than a whole contest weekend at home with a kilowatt. dont overlook just building a simple single band CW rig if youre into kit stuff at all, there are some really basic designs out there that are great for learning. the 4state QRP group has some good ones. anyway welcome to the rabbit hole, its expensive in a different way than normal ham radio lol

so i just passed my technician exam last week (finally) and everyone keeps telling me to just get a baofeng to start but then other people say that's terrible advice and i should get something better from the start. i honestly dont know what to believe. i mostly want to hit the local repeaters and maybe do some simplex with a couple of friends who are also getting licensed. budget is probably under $200 if possible but i could stretch it a little if it makes a real difference. ive been looking at the yaesu ft-65 and also the wouxun kg-uv9g but i have no idea if those are actually good or if im just falling down a youtube rabbit hole. any real world opinions from people who actually use these things would be appreciated

so i've been licensed for about 3 years now, mostly just do some ragchewing and the occasional net, but i finally joined our county ARES group back in the spring and last weekend was my first full simulated disaster exercise. they were doing a scenario where a major flood had knocked out most of the county's infrastructure and we had to relay health and welfare traffic between the EOC and a couple of the shelters they'd set up. i thought i'd be fine, i mean i know how to operate, i've logged probably a couple hundred hours on air by now. but man there's something completely different about trying to pass formal NTS-style traffic when someone is basically timing you and the net control is running 8 stations at once. i fumbled my first message pretty bad, had the wrong precedence on it and forgot to say the station of origin clearly. net control was patient but you could tell they'd seen this before with newer emcomm guys. the other thing that got me was the ICS stuff. like i understood in theory that you check in with the agency rep before you just start transmitting, but in the chaos of the drill i kind of just... keyed up. got a gentle correction on that too. lesson learned for sure. anybody else have stories from their first exercises like this? or even from real deployments where stuff didn't go the way you expected? feel like there's a lot of tribal knowledge in this hobby that only comes out when people actually share the failures, not just the wins.

the spare fuses thing is so real, i learned that the hard way during a ARES activation a few years back. had everything working great in the driveway and then a blown fuse on the power lead had me sitting useless for 45 minutes at an actual shelter. now i have a little ziplock bag taped inside the lid of my case with spare fuses in every size i use, a few anderson powerpole connectors already crimped, some electrical tape, a small multimeter, and a headlamp with extra batteries. sounds obvious but man you dont think about that stuff until you need it. for the tablet question, a lot of guys around here have gone to a surface pro or one of those windows tablets that can actually run the software. or honestly a raspberry pi setup can work if youre patient enough to set it up right. the tablet thing is nice because you can run it off a USB power bank for a good while. your thinkpad situation is rough though, maybe worth grabbing a replacement battery before the next thing comes up, they're usually like 20 bucks on ebay for older models.

the EU2200i should be fine for what you're describing honestly. i ran one at a 3-day SET last fall with an IC-7300 and an FT-991A both going, plus a small UPS keeping a laptop and a Pi-based winlink node alive, and we never saw it sweat. maybe 60-70% load at peak. the thing about the honda inverter gens is they throttle down when the load drops so your average fuel burn is way less than you'd expect. we went like 8 hours on maybe 1.5 gallons. that said yeah keeping a battery bank in parallel is just smart. we run a 100ah LiFePO4 with a DC-DC charger off the generator and it acts as a buffer and backup at the same time. means if the genny does hiccup or you kill it to move it you don't even notice at the rig. way cleaner than trying to hot-switch or scramble. on the antenna thing, yeah separate feedlines and 90 degree orientation will help a lot. we still put bandpass filters on both stations at our exercises just to be safe, especially if both stations might be on 40 at the same time. even 100ft apart on the same band you can still hear the other guy if the filters aren't there.

so ive been studying for my general and everyone keeps telling me i should learn CW even though its not required anymore. i get that its useful and some people are really into it but i honestly have no idea where to even start. like do you just memorize the dots and dashes on paper or is there software or what i tried looking it up and theres a bunch of different apps and websites and some people say learn it one way and others say dont do it that way, so im kind of confused which direction to go. someone at my club mentioned the Koch method but i dont really know what that is either. any advice from people who actually went through this would be helpful, im not in a rush just want to do it the right way i guess

yeah 10m has been something else lately. I'm an old timer and remember the last solar max and this is starting to feel similar. Got into a pile-up for a VP9 station last Thursday and the signals were just booming in, S9 plus on some of them. Propagation tools like pskreporter are showing paths that I haven't seen in probably 12 years or so. As for the Icom thing — I think you might be talking about the IC-905 stuff or maybe something newer, there's been some chatter on the reflectors about a possible update to one of their mid-range HF rigs but nothing confirmed that I've seen. Icom tends to be pretty quiet until they actually drop something so who knows. Keep an eye on their social media I guess, thats usually where it leaks first before any official announcement.

not a dumb question at all, this trips up a lot of new hams. so the short version is as a tech you get basically full privileges on 2m, 70cm, and the other VHF/UHF bands -- any mode, any power within the legal limits. for HF you get a slice of 10m for phone (28.300-28.500 MHz), some CW privileges on a few other bands like 40m and 80m but those are pretty narrow. digital modes on 2m are totally fine, nothing in Part 97 restricts you from running FT8 or JS8Call or whatever on VHF as a tech. the band plan stuff you saw is just gentlemens agreements basically, it's not law. the actual rules are in 97.301 and 97.305 if you want to look at the specific sections, they're painful to read but those two cover allocations and emission types. honestly just grab the ARRL tech manual or even just look at the license class charts they publish, way easier than staring at the CFR

okay so i just passed my technician exam last week and im trying to figure out what handheld to buy. ive been reading reviews for like two days straight and i feel MORE confused than when i started. everyone seems to have a strong opinion and half of them contradict each other. my main thing is i want to hit the local repeaters and maybe eventually do some simplex stuff. i dont really have a big budget, somewhere around $50-80 maybe stretching to $100 if it makes a big difference. i keep seeing the Baofeng UV-5R come up everywhere but then just as many people say to avoid it and get a Yaesu or Kenwood instead. i dont know if thats just brand snobbery or if there's actually a real difference for a beginner. also someone at my club mentioned i should look at dual band, which i think means 2m and 70cm? is that worth it or should i just get something simpler to start. genuinely have no idea what im doing here and any help would be appreciated

congrats on the activation, getting those 4 contacts is all you need and it sounds like you did great for a first time out. the logging time thing happens to everybody at least once, just estimate as close as you can and add a note when you submit, the database admins are pretty understanding especially if its only off by a few minutes for alerts i usually post mine the night before if i know the plan is solid, but a lot of people wait until theyre actually heading up and do a self-spot when they hit the summit. the alerts help chasers plan their day but dont stress too much if yours goes up last minute. and if you have cell signal on the summit sotawatch or the SOTA Spotter app makes self-spotting really easy. 40m can be rough depending on the time of day, a lot of activators try to hit the morning window before things get too noisy. sounds like youre already hooked though