Jennifer Walsh

went through this exact process last year. one thing i'd add — spend some time on RadioQTH.com before you apply, it lets you search available calls by district and filter by length and format. saved me a lot of time vs trying to guess what might be available through the FCC system directly. some of the 2x3 calls in less popular districts are still out there if you're not too picky about the suffix.

so ive been putting this off for like a year but finally cracked open the IC-7300 last weekend and did the extended transmit mod. pretty straightforward honestly, just the two diodes on the main board, took maybe 20 minutes once i had it on the bench with good light. now i can hit the MARS/CAP frequencies no problem which is the whole reason i did it. what i wasnt expecting is how much i ended up down the rabbit hole after that. started looking at the bandpass filter mods people have been doing and also saw some stuff about the ref oscillator replacement for better frequency stability. the TCXO upgrade looks interesting but im not sure its worth the cost for how i actually use the radio — mostly ragchewing on 40 and some digital on 20. like if i was doing serious weak signal stuff or FT8 contesting maybe, but for casual use i dunno. anybody done the ref oscillator swap on these? and also curious if anyone has messed with the audio filtering at all, i feel like the SSB rx audio could be a little less harsh on mine but that might just be my ears and the antenna situation more than anything with the rig itself.

so ive been wanting to try satellite work for a while and finally got a setup going, using an FT-818 and a pair of arrow antennas, one for 2m uplink and one for 70cm downlink on AO-73. managed to hear myself a couple times which felt insane honestly but heres what i dont really get — everyone says you have to constantly tune for doppler but when i try to do it manually during the pass i always seem to be chasing my own signal around and by the time i retune i've already moved again. is there some trick to this or am i just not fast enough yet. i tried the gpredict approach where you set it up to correct automatically but my radio isnt supported and i couldnt figure out the CAT control side of things also the inverting transponder thing still messes with me. so if i tune my uplink higher my downlink goes lower, right? i kept forgetting this mid-pass and making it worse. anyone have a simple way to think about this that actually sticks in your head

hey welcome to the hobby, dont stress too much about it. the CTCSS thing is probably fine if you programmed in 100.0 on the transmit side — just double check that you set it as the TX tone and not just the RX squelch, because on the Baofeng those are two separate settings and a lot of new folks mix them up. the menu is kind of a mess honestly. as for the pause, yeah there's kind of an informal thing where you wait a second or two after the repeater's courtesy beep before you key up. most repeaters have a tail and a beep to let you know the previous transmission dropped, so you wait for that. if you jump in before the beep you might step on someone who's about to come back. it's not a hard rule but people notice when you don't do it. took me a while to get the feel for it too. if you're not sure you're hitting it at all, try just keying up and saying your callsign and "testing" — someone will usually come back and let you know if they can hear you fine or if you're weak. most repeater folks are pretty chill about that kind of thing.

wild shot here but have you checked the mic connector? i had a dropout issue that turned out to be the PTT line on the mic connector going flaky, just enough resistance to occasionally drop PTT mid-over. was maddening to find. swapped to a different mic and the problem went away for two days then came back which told me it was the jack on the radio side not the mic itself.

haha i remember my first net checkin i totally fumbled my callsign and had to say it twice. nobody cared. the regulars on most local nets are pretty chill about new people figuring things out. just keep checking in and it becomes second nature real quick, i promise.

i did my first EME qso last winter with a 2x9el cross yagi setup and maybe 300w at the feedline and it took me like three weekends of trying before i completed anything lol. not gonna lie it was frustrating but when it finally worked i was pretty stoked. the logging software and getting WSJT-X configured correctly took me longer than the antenna work honestly, there's a bunch of settings that have to be exactly right for the timing and the doppler correction stuff or nothing makes sense on the waterfall. one thing nobody told me until after i was already set up is that moonrise and moonset windows are often better than when the moon is high because of the ground gain effect, basically the signal bounces off the ground in front of your antenna and adds a few dB. made a noticeable differnce for me anyway.

okay so i just passed my general and im trying to figure out where i can actually transmit on 40 meters. i've been reading the band plan stuff but honestly its kind of confusing because theres the FCC allocation and then theres like the ARRL suggested band plan and they dont seem to be exactly the same thing? like one says i can go down to 7.125 for phone but then i see people talking about 7.175 or whatever and i dont know if thats a rule or just a suggestion also i keep hearing about band edges and how you shouldnt operate right on them but nobody has really explained why. is it a rule that you stay off the band edge or is it more of a courtesy thing. i dont want to accidentally transmit out of band and get in trouble but i also dont want to be overly paranoid about it sorry if this is a dumb question, just trying to get this straight before i start making contacts