Emily Thomas74

The gauge of wire makes a little bit of difference in the bandwidth you get, but the difference between like 14 gauge and 16 gauge is really not significant. Your narrow bandwidth suggests the antenna is working but may need height adjustment. Try raising it to 50+ feet if possible - dipoles need clearance for optimal performance.

Just picked up a used Yaesu FTM-400XDR for my first real VHF/UHF mobile installation. The control head is pretty bulky and I'm struggling with placement in my 2019 F-150. Don't really want it front and center on the dash for theft concerns, but need to access it while driving safely. Thinking about mounting it in the overhead console area or maybe that little storage cubby below the climate controls. Anyone have experience with similar installs in newer trucks? How do you balance accessibility with keeping it somewhat hidden?

FT8. thats where everybody went. pull up WSJT-X and tune to 7.074 and youll see like 50 signals stacked up. kind of bittersweet honestly, i get it because it works great for weak signal stuff but the bands feel empty now if youre not running digital modes. i still fire up the mic on weekends though, some of us are still out there

The biggest incentive for upgrading to General is those increased HF privileges - if you're interested in emergency communications, having access to most HF bands is almost a necessity for passing traffic depending on propagation conditions. General opens the world of long-distance international communication using voice, CW, or digital modes.

yeah what he said about the processor order mattering is real. i made that mistake for embarrassingly long, had the mic gain cranked because i thought more input = more signal and the processor would sort it out. nope. you end up with garbage in garbage out basically. one thing that helped me that i dont see mentioned much — monitor your own audio with the 7300s built in monitor function at low volume while youre transmitting. its not perfect but you can hear a rough version of what youre putting out and it makes it a lot easier to catch obvious problems like popping on P's or if youre way too close to the mic. some people hate it because it throws off their rhythm when theyre talking but i got used to it after a while.

so ive been seeing some chatter on a couple other forums about Icom possibly dropping a new HF rig sometime this year, something to compete with the FT-710 maybe? nobody seems to have solid info yet but the rumor mill is spinning. anyone heard anything more concrete or is this just the usual pre-hamvention speculation that goes nowhere also completely separate topic but has anyone else noticed 10 meters has been open almost every afternoon this past week? worked a bunch of south american stations yesterday just running 50 watts into my dipole, signals were genuinely loud. feels like we're really hitting the peak of cycle 25 now and its kind of exciting if youre used to the band being dead like it was a few years back. my buddy who got his general last spring had never really seen a good 10m opening and he was pretty amazed there was also supposed to be some kind of special event station for a national park anniversary coming up but i lost the bookmark and cant find the callsign now. if anyone knows what im talking about please drop it here

So ive been licensed about 8 months now and i still havent figured out what the deal is with all these different confirmation systems. Like i understand the basic concept, you make a contact and then you confirm it somehow. But theres LoTW which the ARRL runs, and then theres eQSL which seems totally separate, and then obviously physical cards which some people seem really passionate about. I set up my LoTW account a while back and uploaded some logs but honestly im not sure if im doing it right because i barely get any confirmations back. Is that normal? And is it worth signing up for eQSL too or is that kind of redundant. Also do people still actually send paper QSL cards through the bureau or direct mail and if so whats the point when you have the digital stuff. Not trying to start a war or anything just genuinely confused about how all this works and what most people bother with these days.

For QRP levels, honestly I haven't noticed much practical difference between my single FT140-43 and the fancy commercial units. For QRP the answer is no regarding counterpoises too. Sometimes we overthink these things - a simple, well-built transformer beats a complex poorly-built one every time.

ok so ive been licensed about 8 months now and i still feel kind of awkward about this. like i know the NATO phonetics, alpha bravo charlie etc, but i dont always know when its the right time to use them vs just saying the letter normally. sometimes i hear guys on the local repeater just say their callsign letters straight without phonetics and it sounds totally fine, but then other times someone spells everything out phonetically and it seems like the right call. is there like an actual rule for this or is it just feel? i was giving my callsign on a simplex contact last week and the other guy asked me to repeat twice and i realized i probably should have gone phonetic from the start but i felt weird doing it mid-QSO. also on HF is it basically always phonetics or what

oh man dont feel bad at all, seriously everyone does something like that their first few times on a net. I remember my first check in i gave my call sign and then just went completely silent and the net control had to prompt me twice. its a little nerve wracking when you know other people are listening. traffic in the net sense usually means formal radiogram traffic — like messages following the NTS format that need to be passed to someone. most casual local nets you can just say "no traffic" or sometimes they'll ask if you have any comments or announcements and thats where you can say hey im new or whatever. but honestly every net runs a little differently so after a few weeks of listening you kind of pick up on how that specific one flows. the fact that you checked in at all is the main thing, nobody expects perfection from a first timer.

400 feet of coax lmaooo i feel this so hard. i brought like a full shack worth of stuff to my first POTA activation too and just left half of it in the car because i couldnt carry it. the minimalist thing really does work better for field ops once you let go of the idea that you need all the redundancy. also 40m was rough last weekend, signals were all over the place here in the midwest so 6 qs on a bad band day isnt bad at all

the flat EQ thing is almost certainly your problem, or at least a big part of it. SSB doesn't need anywhere near the bass response you'd want for music or even FM — that low end just eats up your power budget and makes you sound boxy. what i do on my 7300 is roll off pretty aggressively below about 200-300 Hz and also cut a little around 400-500 if the voice sounds muddy there, then give a gentle boost somewhere in the 1.5k-2.5k range where speech intelligibility actually lives. the exact curve depends a lot on your voice and mic though, so you kind of have to get someone to give you honest reports while you tweak live. also that mic from a bundle is probably part of it. not saying you need to go spend $200 on an Heil but a halfway decent dynamic like an SM58 element or even one of the Heil HC-4 capsule mics makes a noticeable difference. the default mics that come bundled with stuff tend to be pretty mediocre honestly.

checking in with nothing to say is completely normal and honestly thats kind of the whole point of a lot of these nets — just to know whos around and active. nobody expects you to have traffic every week. net control will just say thanks and move on, no big deal at all. the timing thing is tricky on FM because you cant always tell if someone else started transmitting at the same time you did. best thing is to just wait like a full second after you think the frequency is clear before you key up. and if you do step on someone by accident just say sorry and let them go first, happens to everyone. the regulars on that net have definitely done it a hundred times themselves they wont think twice about it. with an HT and an attic jpole you might genuinely be missing some of what net control is hearing from other stations too, so that could explain why it feels like people are talking when you thought there was a gap. might be worth just contacting net control directly off net sometime and explaining you're new, most NCS folks love that and will keep an ear out for you.

ran an X510 for about 3 years before switching to a GP-6 and honestly the difference on 2m was noticeable but not dramatic, maybe a couple db real world which is still a full S unit so not nothing. the bigger thing i noticed was 70cm performance — the X510 always felt a little soft up there to me and the GP-6 seemed punchier, though i never actually measured it so take that for what its worth. wind loading on the GP-6 is real, thats not just spec sheet stuff. i had mine on a pushup mast and after one bad windstorm the whole thing was canted about 15 degrees. moved it to a proper 1.5 inch pipe mount with a decent base and its been solid since. for a chimney mount id make sure your straps are in good shape and maybe add a third one if you only have two. midwest wind can get sketchy and that antenna is basically a sail once you get above maybe 20 mph sustained. if youre 35 miles out with terrain honestly you might get more bang for your buck pointing a small yagi at that specific repeater instead of trying to squeeze it out of a collinear, but i get it if you want something omnidirectional for everyday use.

You can apply anytime after you get your license, no waiting period. The 18 month thing is how long your vanity call is good for before renewal. FCC processes vanity apps in batches every couple weeks so it takes about a month usually to get approved. As for fees yeah they went up this year to like $35 i think, used to be free back in the day but those times are long gone unfortunately.

yeah i ran a DIY setup for a long time, probably close to three years, before switching most of my stuff over to the RemoteHams ecosystem. the main thing i noticed is the audio latency handling is just better out of the box — my homebrew thing using mumble was okay but i was always tweaking jitter buffer settings and it still wasn't great on marginal connections. RemoteHams seems to have done more work on that side. on the SDR remote question — the way i understand it when you're using an SDR on the host end the SDR remote software is basically doing the demodulation server side and sending compressed audio to the client, so the bandwidth requirements are actually lower than you might think. its not streaming raw IQ data across the link which is what i was afraid of at first. that said i havent run it with a pure SDR setup myself, my remote end is still an IC-7300 so take that for what its worth. the server dependency thing is real. ive had maybe two or three outages in a year that i can attribute to their infrastructure and they were short but yeah it happened. for casual operating its totally fine, if youre doing something time critical like a scheduled net or a contest it could be annoying. direct IP connections do work around that but like you said you need a stable address on at least one end, i use a DDNS service on the radio end and it works fine most of the time.

ok so i just got my general license like two weeks ago and im trying to figure out the 40 meter band but honestly the more i read about it the more confused i get. like theres the FCC allocation and then theres the ARRL band plan and they dont seem to be the same thing? and then someone on a net told me to stay away from the band edges but didnt really explain why i guess my main question is, if the FCC says i can operate somewhere does that mean i should? or is there like an unwritten thing where certain parts of the band are for certain modes and people will get mad if you set up a phone contact in the wrong spot. also what does it mean when people say dont transmit right on the band edge, is that a legal thing or just a courtesy thing sorry if this is a dumb question, just dont want to step on anyone or do something wrong when im still learning

JS8Call is definitely more alive than PSK31 at this point but yeah the activity can be pretty thin depending on time of day and band. 40m is probably your best bet, try around 7.078 MHz and just let it run for like 20-30 minutes before deciding the band is dead. the decoding is different from FT8 because it uses longer transmissions and is more tolerant of drift so sometimes what looks like noise is actually someone coming through. audio levels matter a lot, i usually aim for the waterfall showing peaks around -20 to -30 dB or so and make sure youre not overdriving the input or youll get all kinds of garbage decoding. the thing i like about it is you can actually have a back and forth that feels like a real QSO and not just a log entry. not for everyone though, some guys just want the contacts and thats totally fine

honestly for tropo specifically the directional gain matters a lot but dont underestimate the takeoff angle thing either. a collinear on a high enough hilltop with clear horizons can punch surprisingly well because you basically get the terrain doing the work for you. but if youre hearing guys you cant work, yeah, thats pretty much the antenna — the yagi would close that link budget gap. i use a 4 el tape measure yagi for 2m portable stuff, its kind of a classic design at this point and the weight is almost nothing. its not the highest gain thing ever but packs into a bag and takes like 5 mins to set up. probably worth trying before you commit to anything fancier

Welcome to ARES! Yes, you'll need to complete those 5 online courses to officially join - but don't let it overwhelm you. Start with ICS-100 as it's a great place to start and teaches the basic structure of incident command. The courses are free and you can take them at your own pace.

i just did this like two months ago lol, upgraded from tech after being one for almost a year. honestly i studied for maybe 10 days just using hamstudy and passed fine. the questions about like, impedance matching and stuff i just kind of memorized the answers for and figured id learn what it actually means later once i had a radio. the HF thing is kind of overwhelming at first tho ngl, i got a used IC-7300 off QRZ classifieds and spent the first week just figuring out the menus. but making my first 20m contact was pretty cool, worked a station in florida from ohio which felt like nothing but still

im in a similar boat, just got my general last year and started thinking about this after we had some bad storms this spring and our county EOC was apparently a mess because nobody could get their equipment working properly lol. anyway what helped me was just packing everything i thought i needed, then doing a practice run in the backyard and timing how long it took to get on the air. you find out real quick whats missing or what doesnt actually work the way you thought it did. also headlamp. seriously. i forgot mine the first time i did this and it was dumb.

oh man yeah the 13-15wpm wall is absolutely a real thing, you're not imagining it. i hit it too and i asked around and apparently a lot of people do. what helped me more than anything was forcing myself to just receive on the air even when i couldnt copy everything. like actually tuning around 40m at night and trying to pull calls out, not worrying about getting the whole QSO. your brain starts to recognize patterns and common words and after a while things like CQ and 73 and QTH just come automatically without thinking about individual letters. also and this might sound counterintuitive but i actually backed the speed up for a while. not all the way back to 5wpm but like dropped to 10 and focused on getting really clean copy with zero mistakes before pushing again. the other thing that made a huge difference was the farnsworth timing if youre not already using that, where the characters are sent at 20wpm but theres extra space between them. trains your ear for fast characters while giving you time to process. lcwo does this i think. anyway dont give up, 20wpm is totally reachable you're not even that far off

this is making me want to actually finish my ubitx that's been sitting on the bench for like 8 months. life keeps getting in the way but reading stuff like this reminds me why i got into this hobby. good on you for actually taking it outside, i feel like a lot of people build things and they never leave the shack.

yeah i had something almost identical last year with my remote setup, different software but same symptom. turned out to be my ISP doing some kind of traffic shaping on UDP after a sustained connection that hit a certain duration threshold. basically if you hold an active UDP stream open for more than like 20 minutes some consumer routers and certain ISPs just quietly drop the state table entry and the packets start going nowhere what i did was switch the server to use a slightly lower audio bitrate which reduced the packet rate enough that it stopped triggering whatever threshold was causing it, and also put a small keepalive ping on a separate TCP channel. not sure if RemoteHams has a config option for that specifically but worth digging through the server settings. also check if your router at the remote site has a UDP timeout setting in the firewall config — my old Asus router had it buried in the advanced NAT options and it was set to something stupid like 30 seconds