Jessica Williams

yeah i was in the same boat when i started, did all FT8 for the first year and just uploaded to LoTW and called it done. worked fine for DXCC purposes. eQSL i signed up for but honestly barely use it, feels like a seperate ecosystem and i couldnt really be bothered to maintain both. the paper card thing is kind of up to you but i will say when i finally got a card from a rare entity in the mail it hit different than just seeing a green checkmark on a screen. some DX stations especially the older ops really do appreciate getting a physical card back so if you worked that JA station on something interesting might be worth sending one. the JARL bureau is still pretty active i think. anyway just my two cents, LoTW first everything else is optional

roof NMO is the way to go if you can stomach it, honestly. i put one on my Tacoma about four years ago and yeah it felt terrible for about five minutes and then i just got over it and now i have a perfect ground plane and no complaints. lip mounts work fine dont get me wrong but you do give up something in the pattern and depending on your truck the connection can be a little fiddly over time for the coax run I went through the door jamb on mine, just tucked it under the weatherstripping all the way down and in through the kick panel. takes maybe 20 minutes and you'd never know it was there. firewall grommets on newer stuff can be brutal, some guys drill a new small hole but that feels like even more commitment than the antenna hole to me

yeah same situation here when i first started, i sat on our wednesday night net for like three weeks before i finally checked in and i was so nervous lol. the traffic handling part threw me off too at first — basically someone who has a formal message to pass to another station will say they have traffic and net control will deal with that after the regular check-ins usually. you dont need to do anything during that part unless its addressed to you. and honestly keying up by accident is not a big deal at all, ive heard it happen to plenty of people including some guys who've been licensed forever

oh man i went through almost the exact same thing when i put my FTM-300 in my jeep last spring. the RAM mount between the seats actually works pretty well once you get used to reaching for it, i eventually added a little extension arm so it sits a bit higher and i can glance at it without looking down as much. one thing nobody told me was to run the mic cable away from the power wires if you can, i had mine kind of bundled together under the dash and it was picking up all kinds of garbage. separated them and most of the noise just went away. also the FTM-400 has a built in DSP and some noise reduction settings in the menu, might be worth poking around in there if you havent already, though the default settings are honestly pretty okay for most situations

had almost the exact same issue last year. turned out my nearest igate was rx-only and the next closest two-way gate was just barely out of range for reliable decode on the return path. ended up setting up my own two-way igate with a pi and direwolf which honestly wasnt that hard and now i can actually use messaging. aprx works too if you want something a bit lighter weight on the pi.

Classic TS-590 issue! Voltage drop under TX load from poor power cables, corroded fuse holders, or loose connections causes reduced HF output while 6m often draws less current. Measure DC voltage at the rig's power jack during full-power CW transmission into a dummy load first.

yeah what he said about the greyline is spot on. i'd also add that wwv broadcasts propagation conditions at 18 minutes past every hour if you tune to 10 or 15 mhz — old school but i still do it sometimes just to hear a voice tell me the numbers lol. also the DX cluster on 14.225 area tends to get busy when europe is actually in so that's kind of a lazy way to know if a band is open without spending an hour calling CQ into the void

oh man i remember this exact wall, hit it right around 6-7wpm myself and was convinced i'd never get faster. the thing that actually helped me — and i know this sounds weird — was to stop practicing at my comfortable speed and instead listen to stuff way above what i could copy. like set your lcwo character speed to 20wpm even if your effective speed is still low. your brain starts learning the rhythm of the letters as whole sounds instead of counting elements. took me probably a month before it started clicking but when it did it really did click. also dont go back to the earlier characters, i made that mistake too. just keep pushing forward on Koch even when it feels hopeless. the repetition is doing more than you think even when it feels like nothing is sticking. and give yourself a break every few days, sometimes i'd come back after two days off and suddenly letters i was struggling with felt easier. no idea why that works but it does.

i mostly just use the QRZ one because im already logged in there checking callsigns anyway lol. but i did download an app called DX Toolkit a while back and that's pretty handy when im on the couch and just want to see whats happening on the bands without going to the shack. theres a few iOS apps that show cluster spots too but i cant remember the names off the top of my head, one of them had a map view which was kinda cool to see where spots were coming from geographically.

I'm in almost the exact same boat, just started learning CW about 3 months ago. The Farnsworth thing the other guy mentioned is legit, it made a huge difference for me. I was using the LCWO website which lets you dial that in pretty easily. One thing nobody told me — apparently the cheap ebay paddles can have really inconsistent contact gaps and that makes it way harder to learn good timing because you're fighting the hardware. I'm not saying you need to spend a lot but if it feels physically weird to use maybe check that the contacts are adjusted right. There should be stuff on youtube about setting paddle gap. Mine was way too loose out of the box and i didnt realize for weeks.

I'm finally taking the plunge into SO2R operation and need guidance on configuring N1MM Logger+ for my asymmetric setup. Primary station: IC-7610 with KPA-500 amp driving Force-12 C-31XR at 60 feet. Secondary station: IC-7300 at 100W into a 40m vertical. Planning to use the 7610 primarily for running stations and the 7300 for S&P and multiplier hunting during CW contests. Main question: Should I configure both radios symmetrically in N1MM so either can be the run station, or optimize the configuration for this asymmetric approach? Also struggling with band filter requirements - the K3LR articles mention never operating SO2R without proper filtering, but what's the minimum viable setup for getting started?

As someone still learning, I use Ham Morse app set to play QSOs while taking a shower, then check how much I copied when I get out. Also put a CW app on your phone and run it anytime you're alone - when walking or stuck in traffic, read signs and license plates out in morse code! Every little bit helps build those reflexes.

so ive been a ham for about 3 years now and mostly just done SSB but ive always wanted to learn morse. got myself a cheap set of paddles off ebay and my radio has a built in keyer so i figured now is the time to actually commit to it. my question is about the iambic keyer modes - mine has mode A and mode B and i honestly cant figure out what the difference is supposed to be or which one i should start with. ive watched a few youtube videos but they kind of assume you already know what youre doing. also my timing feels way off, like i know the characters at like 5 wpm but everything turns to mush when i try to send with the paddle. is that normal at first or am i doing something fundamentally wrong any tips from people who actually went through learning this would be really appreciated. feels like im all thumbs right now

yeah this got me once too. turned out i had accidentally set the wrong SSID when i was poking around in the menus. was beaconing as W1XYZ-9 but the TNC was listening for messages addressed to W1XYZ-7 or something like that. aprs.fi showed me just fine because it picks up any packet from that callsign but messages were addressed to the wrong suffix so the radio just ignored them. double check all your SSID settings match up end to end.

so ive been with our local ARES group for about 8 months now, went through the ICS courses and all the SET exercises but next weekend is the first time weve been called up for an actual deployment. county emergency management wants us at the EOC for a pretty significant flood watch situation and my EC just confirmed were going to have at least two operators there plus a couple at the shelter sites. I guess my question is mostly just... what do you actually DO during a real activation when its not a drill. like i know the basics, net control, traffic handling, logging everything, but theres something different about knowing its real. anybody been through their first one and have advice on what caught them off guard. I have my go bag ready, brought my IC-7300 once to a drill but thinking a VHF/UHF setup might be more practical here since were mostly doing simplex and repeater work between sites. trying not to overthink it

so ive been noticing 17m and 20m acting really strange the past couple weeks. some days i can work europe all morning no problem and then the next day its like the band just doesnt exist. i know solar flux has been kinda up and down but i cant figure out the pattern. checked pskreporter and there are signals out there, just not making it to me i guess. been doing this about 3 years now and i feel like i should have a better handle on how propagation works by now but honestly it still feels like black magic sometimes. anybody been tracking the flux index and noticing anything specific or is this just normal variation i should stop worrying about

part 97 is genuinely a slog to read through, i dont think anyones gonna argue with you there. there are some good summaries floating around, the gordon west study materials have a pretty readable version of the key rules if you can find those. just dont rely on random reddit posts because ive seen some really wrong info out there about what techs can and cant do

so ive been messing around with remote station control for a while now, got a pretty solid setup at my home QTH running a IC-7300 and a remote desktop solution that works ok but honestly the latency has been killing me on CW especially. figured i'd look into RemoteHams since a few people in my local club mentioned it but i cant find a whole lot of real-world info about combining it with an SDR frontend and then linking that over the internet to another node or repeater system. the basic idea i had was using something like an RTL-SDR or maybe a proper SDR like an Airspy on the receive side at the remote end, feeding into the RemoteHams client on my end here at the house, and then using some kind of echolink or IRLP style linking for the tx side when i actually want to transmit. is that even how people are doing this or am i completely overthinking it and the RemoteHams software just handles all that already the main thing i care about is getting decent audio latency for voice and being able to actually use the waterfall remotely without it being a slide show. running about a 50mbit connection on the home end and the remote site has about 25 up so that shouldnt be the bottleneck i think

I went last year for the first time and honestly didnt know what half the stuff was lol. but the people were really friendly and someone spent like 20 minutes explaining to me how a dummy load works which was cool. definitely going again even if i dont buy anything

I was in the exact same spot about 8 months ago and ended up going with the Yaesu FT-65R on the recommendation of someone at my local club and honestly havent regretted it. feels solid in the hand, battery life is good, and it just works without a lot of fuss. the menu isnt as confusing as some others ive messed with. one thing i wish someone told me eariler — join a local club if you havent already because half the time someone will let you borrow or try out their HTs before you commit to buying anything. saved me from making a couple decisions i think i would have second guessed

totally fine to jump in late on most casual nets, the net control will usually appreciate you saying something like your callsign followed by "late check-in" or "traffic only" depending on what the net format is. just wait for a pause and key up with your call, a decent NCS will work you in. ive been running our wednesday night net for going on six years now and honestly late check-ins happen all the time, nobody thinks anything of it. some more formal nets or traffic nets have stricter rules about this but a general 2m ragchew or info net is pretty relaxed. worst case the NCS says hey we already closed check-ins, but thats rare. most people just want more participation not less.

JS8Call is a different beast than FT8, like fundamentally different purpose. FT8 is basically a automated contact machine, you log the exchange and move on. JS8Call lets you actually type back and forth, slow but it works deep into the noise. the thing is yeah the activity is lower but that's kind of by design, it's not trying to compete with FT8 for pile-up style operating. for ARES stuff it actually makes a lot of sense because you can relay messages, do store-and-forward, query other stations, stuff that FT8 literally cannot do. i keep it running on a separate rig on 40m during the day and honestly i see more activity than you might expect once you're on the right frequencies, check the JS8Call info page for the calling frequencies because a lot of people stick to those. PSK31 is mostly dead yeah, i fire it up occasionally on 20m and find something but its nothing like it was. rtty contest weekends are still fun though if you havent tried those

im kind of in the same boat, been hovering around 12 for like two months lol. one thing i started doing recently is listening to actual qso recordings instead of just the trainer software and that helped a bit because real ops dont send perfectly and you get used to different fists. there's some good stuff on the lcwo website and i think there's a podcast called 'morse code ninja' or something that has practice files at different speeds. havent made it to 20 yet myself so cant really say how long it takes but figured id mention what helped me get unstuck a little

ok so ive been licensed about 8 months now and people keep mentioning DXCC and WAS and WAZ in the same breath and honestly i cant figure out if these are all separate things you chase independently or if theres some kind of order you're supposed to do them in. like do most people start with WAS since its all domestic and then work outward or does it matter at all? i'm running a modest setup, IC-7300 into a G5RV in the backyard, and i've worked maybe 40 states so far just casually. someone at my club meeting last week said i should start logging seriously if i want credits to count but i wasnt sure what that even meant in practice — do i need to apply through LoTW right away or can i go back and get cards for contacts i already made? sorry if this is a dumb question, just trying to figure out where to put my energy

so ive been on HF for about two years now and i feel like my SSB audio has always been kind of mediocre. people can hear me fine but ive gotten a few comments that im a bit muffled or bassy, and i know from monitoring my own signal that something's off but i cant quite nail down what. running an IC-7300 with the stock mic, which i know isnt exactly a studio condenser but it shouldnt sound terrible either. ive been reading about things like the mic gain vs compression relationship and i honestly think i had those set wrong for a long time. had the mic gain cranked way up and the compression doing a lot of heavy lifting and apparently thats not great. brought the gain down to where ALC is just barely kissing the top end of the range and turned the compression way down and honestly it does sound cleaner now but still not where i want it. is there a sort of standard approach people use when dialing in SSB audio or is it really just trial and error with someone on the other end giving you reports. feels like theres a lot of variables and im not sure which ones actually matter most