Amanda Miller

HRO charges $120 for the mod and you keep your warranty - probably should have gone that route. The D1302 is only needed for certain firmware versions according to mods.dk database.

so ive been at this for about four months now and im kind of stuck. started learning CW back in the spring just for fun really, wasnt expecting to love it but here we are. got comfortable enough copying at 5wpm that i could decode most stuff in my head without writing everything down, felt pretty good about that. but now im trying to push past that and honestly its like hitting a wall. i tried just cranking up the speed on my Koch trainer but my brain just turns to mush above maybe 8 or 9wpm. someone at my local club told me to use the Farnsworth method where you keep character speed high but space them out more, and that did help some but im still not really making progress the way i was in the first couple months. i guess my question is - is this normal? did anyone else go through this plateau thing and actually get through it? and how long did it realistically take you to hit 20wpm? i keep reading these stories of guys who got there in like 3 months and i dont know if those people are just wired differently or what

Congrats on the first one, those are always memorable. The spotting thing gets everybody at least once, dont feel bad. Some folks even bring a second phone dedicated just to the POTA app so they can monitor spots and self-spot without fumbling around between apps while trying to log and operate at the same time. For your second one I'd say dont overthink the antenna too much — the end-fed works fine, but if you ever want to try 20m during the day you'll get a lot more contacts especially hunters from Europe if conditions are decent. I usually start on 40 in the morning then move up to 20 around midday. Also the 10 contacts minimum goes faster than you'd think once you're spotted, so sometimes I'll work a park for 45 minutes, pack up, and drive to another unit if they're nearby. Two activations in one day feels great. As for summits — SOTA is a totally different animal and the hike matters a lot. Start with an easy one if you go that route, some of those summit references look close on a map but the trail is murder. But thats just me being cautious, plenty of people do both POTA and SOTA same weekend.

What kind of waterproofing did you use? I'm planning the same upgrade but worried about leaks in my daily driver. Did you use any backing plate to distribute the load?

oh man this brings back memories, and not all good ones haha. i was exactly where you are probably around 1985 when i was studying for my novice. took me almost a year to get comfortable enough for a real QSO at 13wpm which was the requirement back then. but here's the thing -- the jump from 5 to about 10 felt impossibly slow and then somewhere around 10-12 it sort of... loosened up? like my brain stopped translating dits and dahs and started just hearing letters as sounds. that's when it started feeling less like work. what helped me most honestly was just tuning into actual QSOs on 40m and listening even when i could only catch maybe half of what was being said. real traffic sounds different from computer generated stuff and your ear adjusts. also dont be so hard on yourself, 4 months is nothing. some guys take a couple years to get to 20 and thats completely fine. the on air practice is really where it happens though, simulators only get you so far.

so ive been reading about moonbounce for probably two years now and last weekend i actually gave it a serious go for the first time. got a 2m setup with a pair of 9 element yagis stacked, running about 400w out of a TS-2000 into a pretty decent preamp at the feedpoint. the moon was up for a good window and i had WSJT-X running JT65B which from everything ive read is the right mode for this. here's the thing — i could see some traces on the waterfall that i think were echoes but honestly i couldnt tell if that was actual lunar scatter or just noise playing tricks on me. never heard my own echo which i was expecting to. made a handful of QRZ calls and got nothing back. so either my antenna system is not cutting it or im doing something fundamentally wrong with timing or maybe both. i know EME is not like a regular terrestrial contact where you just call CQ and wait, there's specific timing windows and the whole T/R sequencing thing. but im not totally sure im configured right in WSJT-X for EME specifically vs just regular weak signal. also curious what the minimum realistic antenna setup is these days — ive seen people say 4x9el is kind of the entry point but also ive read logs of guys working stuff with less than that. anyone done serious EME with a modest setup and actually gotten it to work?

1.8:1 on a first dipole is actually pretty solid tbh. ive built a few and my first one was like 2.4 before i figured out the wire wasnt actually the length i thought it was because i measured wrong lol. on the balun thing i used a mix 31 ferrite toroid from the local surplus place, wound maybe 10-12 turns of coax through it, and it killed the RF in the shack issue i was having on my end-fed. probably overkill for a dipole but it works great. the sloper shouldnt matter much for the resonant frequency, might shift it a tiny bit but nothing dramatic at those heights.

the compression thing you're describing is pretty much exactly right — past a certain point you're not gaining average power you're just clipping transients and making yourself sound like youre transmitting through a tin can. on the 7300 specifically i found anything over about 8dB on the comp meter starts to introduce audible artifacts, and most people on the receiving end describe it as harsh or distorted even if your ALC looks fine. the mic position thing is real and massively underrated. i spent an embarrassing amount of time tweaking EQ settings when moving the mic about 3 inches further back and slightly off axis cleaned up more sibilance than anything i did in the DSP menu. the SM-50 type cardioids are pretty sensitive to plosives if you're dead on axis at close range. try 15 to 20cm off to the side a bit and see what happens before you buy anything new. one thing worth doing if you havent already is get someone to record your signal off the air with a SDR and send you the file. your own monitoring chain will lie to you more than you'd think, especially if you're using the built in monitor in the 7300 which has some processing on it that doesnt perfectly represent what's going out.

yeah 10m has been surprisingly good lately, solar cycle 25 has been outperforming a lot of the predictions which is pretty cool to see. flux in the 170-180 range will definitely get 10m going especially in the afternoons your time if youre in North America and there's any kind of south american or transatlantic path open. the way i think about it roughly is anything above 150 and 10m is worth checking regularly, above 200 and it can be open almost all day. the K index is kind of a separate thing — that's measuring geomagnetic disturbance and when it spikes high (like 4 or 5 and above) it can actually knock out HF propagation even if the flux is great. so you want high flux AND low K index ideally. there are days where the sun gives and the magnetosphere takes away, which is frustrating. DXMaps and the DX cluster are your friends for real time stuff, you can actually see the spots rolling in and get a feel for where the openings are before you even key up

honestly 1.8 is totally workable, most rigs will tune that no problem and youre not losing that much power. the coax without a drip loop worries me more long term, ive ruined two runs of coax that way. just a simple U-bend before the connector going up and duct tape it or whatever, takes five minutes. also what are you using to measure SWR, a standalone meter or the rigs built in one? the built in ones on some radios can be a little optimistic or just kinda vague in my experience.

ok so I've been interested in ham radio for like a year now but never actually did anything about it. my neighbor is a ham and he's been bugging me to get licensed and I finally decided to just do it. problem is I have no idea where to start. like do I need to buy a radio first? do I study first? is the test hard? I looked at some of the question pool stuff online and some of it looks pretty confusing especially the electrical theory parts. I'm not totally clueless about electronics but definitely not an engineer or anything. any advice on how to approach this would be really helpful, I dont want to spend months studying if I dont need to

okay so ive been wanting to get my technician license for a while now and i finally decided to just do it but honestly i dont even know where to begin. a buddy of mine said just memorize the question pool but that seems like a lot and i feel like id forget it all by test day anyway. is there like a specific study guide people actually recommend or do most folks just use those practice test websites? i downloaded the arrl handbook from somewhere but it seems way too advanced for what i need right now. also how long did it take you guys to feel ready, like are we talking a few days or more like a month of studying

so ive been licensed for about 8 months now (general) and kept hearing people talk about CQ WW and Field Day and SOTA and honestly had no idea what any of it meant for the first few months. finally sat down and did some reading and now im kind of excited but also totally overwhelmed. like i understand the basic idea of contesting but i dont really know how to actually prepare or what to expect when i tune around during CQ WW and suddenly the bands are just wall to wall signals. my setup is pretty modest, ic-7300 into a G5RV up maybe 25 feet, so im not gonna be a superstation or anything. but i heard even low power stations can have fun and make a bunch of contacts. is that actually true or do you kind of just get buried? also whats the deal with SOTA, is that a contest or more of an operating activity because it seems different than the others. and Field Day — is that something i should try to join a club for or can i do it solo from home? any advice welcome, just trying to figure out what i should prioritize for the rest of this year

yeah what he said about recording yourself with an SDR is the move, i didnt realize how bad i sounded until i actually did that. was kind of embarassing honestly one thing i'd add is the mic choice matters more than people admit. the stock element in a lot of boom mics is kind of middling. i switched to a Heil PR-781 element in my old boom arm and it was a noticeable difference, more focused midrange and less handling noise. not saying go spend a ton of money but if the element is mediocre the EQ can only do so much also just... talk across the mic not directly into it if you're getting plosives and breath noise. sounds obvious but a lot of people are basically eating the thing

okay so ive been running APRS for about 6 months now and the tracking side works fine, my position beacons are hitting the network and i can see myself on aprs.fi no problem. but when i try to send messages through the TNC to another station they just dont seem to arrive. the other guy can see my position beacon but never gets the message packets. im running a TM-D710G into a Kantronics KPC-3+ and feeding into APRSIS32 on the PC. the messages show up in the software as sent and i can see them in the raw packet stream going out, but no ACK comes back and the other station says nothing arrived. ive checked the path settings and im using WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 which should be fine for my area. digipeaters are clearly hearing me because the position stuff gets through. anybody run into this before? starting to wonder if its something specific to how the KPC-3+ is handling the message format or maybe a SSID thing im missing

had basically the same symptoms on mine a while back. ended up being the PA bias drifting way out of spec. icom sets those finals pretty carefully at the factory and if the bias trim pot creeps over time the output just quietly drops. before you go poking at the driver stage i'd check the PA bias first, its a much easier starting point and you wont need to unsolder anything. the service manual does have the procedure for it, its tedious but straightforward if you have a decent dummy load and a power meter you trust. mine was reading almost 20% low, adjusted it back and i was right back at 100w. that said if the bias checks out fine then yeah it could be a driver transistor starting to degrade. the 7300 uses a two-stage setup before the finals and ive seen the driver stage go soft without completely failing. you'd want to inject a known signal level and trace through to see where you're losing gain. but honestly try the bias thing first, saved me a lot of time.

dont overthink the bag itself too much to start. i made that mistake and spent more time buying pelican cases and labeling things than actually practicing getting on the air quickly. the best go kit is the one you actually know how to set up in the dark under pressure lol. just practice deploying it in your backyard a few times before any real event.

Working on a multi-band QRP CW transceiver using Si5351A clock generator for VFO/BFO. Getting excellent frequency accuracy but seeing thermal drift of about 100Hz over first 10 minutes of operation. Using temperature compensation in software but curious what others have tried for hardware solutions. Considering adding a small fan or heat sink to the Si5351 module. Has anyone tried mounting the clock generator remotely from the main board to isolate it from PA heat? Running about 5W output on 20/40m using IRF510 finals. Current drift: ~100Hz in 10 minutesTarget: <20Hz drift for CW workUsing Adafruit Si5351 breakout board

i went two years ago and honestly wasnt that impressed with the vendor tables but the eyeball QSOs made it worth it. met a guy running SOTA activations out of the same county i live in and had no idea. those random conversations are half the reason i still bother showing up to these things

New to digital modes but researching gateway options. The free VARA version has speed limitations and no P2P connections, while the paid version ($69 for both HF and FM) removes restrictions. Is the license fee worth it for gateway operations versus sticking with free packet radio?

ok so ive been wanting to get into ham radio for a while now and my neighbor who has a big antenna setup told me i should just go for the technician class first. i downloaded the question pool PDF from the ARRL website but honestly its just overwhelming, like 400+ questions and i dont even know what half the words mean. do people actually memorize all of these or is there a better way to go about it. ive heard some people say just use the HamStudy website and others say get the actual book. i work nights so i only have maybe an hour or two during the day to study and im trying to take the exam sometime in the next month or so. any tips from people who actually went through this recently would be helpful, especially if theres stuff on the exam that trips people up

yeah the confusion is totally normal, the terminology gets muddy fast. so basically a digipeater just grabs the packet off RF and rebroadcasts it on RF — it never touches the internet at all. this is how someone out in the field with a handheld gets their position relayed further than their radio can reach on its own. the igate on the other hand hears those RF packets and pipes them up to the APRS-IS network so they show up on aprs.fi and stuff like that. running both on the same hardware is pretty common actually, lots of people do exactly that with direwolf. you just configure both functions in the direwolf.conf and it handles it. the thing is whether you SHOULD run a digi depends heavily on your local RF environment. if you're in an area that already has good digipeater coverage you could actually cause more harm than good by adding another one — you'd be creating extra RF congestion and potentially causing collisions. pull up aprs.fi and look at what's actually being heard by the digis near you and whether there are coverage gaps. if you're in a city with 3 solid digis already, probably just stick with igate only. if you're on a hill and can see terrain that isn't being covered, then yeah fire up the digi function.

i just upgraded last month so this is pretty fresh for me lol. honestly the hardest part for me was the operating procedures stuff weirdly, like i kept mixing up which frequencies are phone vs cw vs digital segments in the band plans. the math didnt bother me that much but i did have to look up how to do the ohms law and power calculations a few times before they stuck. one thing i will say is dont underestimate how different HF actually feels compared to 2m. i borrowed a friends radio before i even passed the test just to listen around and it was kind of overwhelming at first, lots of noise and you have to learn how to tune around and figure out whats actually a signal vs static. but once i got my ticket upgraded i got on 40 meters with a dipole i threw up in the backyard and made my first contact like the same weekend, so it does come together pretty fast once you just jump in

Been using PoLo for 6 months now - love the GPS auto-detection of nearest park. Way better than manually searching park refs. The dual spotting to POTA and WWFF is a killer feature.