Amanda Clark

dont worry about it at all, everyone steps on someone when theyre starting out, even guys who have been at it for years still do it occasionally. the pause thing is just experience honestly, different repeaters have different delays too and if youve got a long tail on the machine you can get fooled into thinking someone stopped when they havent. as for the callsign question it really depends on the net and the net control. most formal nets want full calls every transmission just for the log, but a lot of the casual ragchew style nets are more relaxed about it. best thing you can do is just listen to what everyone else is doing on that particular net and follow their lead. if youre ever not sure just use the full call, nobody ever got in trouble for being too proper about it. and seriously keep checking in, the more you do it the more natural it feels.

yeah perfboard bites you every time with RF stuff, the ground paths are all over the place. i went through like four versions of a similar receiver before i gave up and just did ugly construction style, dead bug on a piece of copper clad. way better results honestly. the NE602 is a great chip but it does oscillator injection into everything if you're not careful about shielding. did you put the osc section anywhere near the audio? that'd do it. also 40m at night is rough for a direct conversion because of all the broadcast hash, you might just be hearing the band and blaming the radio lol

I use 3S Li-Ion packs with my KX2 - they start at 12.6V and I've seen them as low as 11.8V after a couple hours of operation. Your battery might have internal cell imbalance. Try a load test at home before your next activation.

the same guy on two bands absolutely counts as two QSOs, that confused me too when i started chasing. each band is a separate contact for the activation log. and yeah sotadata will reject stuff if the reference is wrong so good that you caught that before submitting. i chased a guy last month who had his reference wrong and it took forever to sort out. which radio were you running up there if you dont mind me asking, im trying to decide between a few options for when i finally try an activation myself

So I just passed my Technician exam last week and I'm trying to figure out what handheld to get first. I've been reading forums for like two weeks straight and honestly I'm more confused now than when I started. Everyone seems to have really strong opinions and half the time people are arguing about brands I've never even heard of. The main thing I want to do is hit the local repeaters and maybe do some APRS stuff eventually. Budget is maybe $60-150 range, I dont want to go crazy on my first radio in case this hobby doesn't stick for me. I keep seeing the Baofeng UV-5R come up constantly but also people saying to avoid it, then other people defending it. Also saw something about Yaesu and Kenwood but those seem more expensive. Is there a sort of middle ground that actual people use and like? Also does it matter a lot which one I get if I'm just doing local stuff for now? I feel like I'm overthinking this but I also dont want to buy something and regret it immediately.

ive done probably 30 POTA activations and a handful of SOTA and the one thing i always forget is snacks lol. bring more food than you think you need. also a portable charger for the phone, game changer. what antenna setup were you using, end fed halfwave or random wire? that can make a big difference in how fast you can set up and tear down when you're tired from the hike

I passed mine like 3 months ago so pretty fresh on this. I used hamstudy and also the Gordon West technician book which my uncle had laying around. The book was fine but honestly hamstudy alone probably wouldve been enough. Just do the practice tests over and over, like seriously just keep doing them. I think I took maybe 40 or 50 practice exams before I felt ready and ended up only missing 3 on the real one. 35 questions total and you need 26 right so the margin is actually not that bad. one thing nobody told me is bring a calculator to the session even though you probably wont need it, there are like 2 or 3 math questions about frequencies or something and its nice to have just in case. also the volunteer examiners are super friendly, i was nervous walking in but it felt totally low pressure

so i finally did my first activation last weekend, been chasing for about six months and figured it was time to actually get out there myself. picked a local summit that was only like a 2 point hill honestly but figured a low stakes one would be good to start with. threw the KX2 in the pack with my end fed and a little 4ah lipo and hiked up there saturday morning. everything was going fine until i realized i forgot the counterpoise wire at home. just... sitting on my workbench. spent about 20 minutes improvising something with a bit of wire i had in my kit bag and honestly it was a mess, SWR was all over the place. managed to squeeze out 4 QSOs on 20m before the weather turned and i bailed. i know you need 4 to qualify the summit so technically it counts but it felt kind of scrappy. one of the QSOs was with a station that came back really weak and i only got a partial call so im not totally sure that one logged right. anyway just wanted to share because it was kind of a comedy of errors but also i had a huge smile the whole time even when things werent working great. already planning the next one. does anyone else remember their first activation being kind of a disaster?

so ive been licensed for about 8 months now and i mostly do 2m fm stuff locally but ive been getting into HF a bit and im noticing people seem to use the NATO phonetics way more on HF than on the local repeater. on the repeater people just say letters normally most of the time, like someone will say their callsign and just read off the letters without spelling it out phonetically. but then on 20m or wherever i hear everyone doing the full alpha bravo charlie thing every single time. is there like an actual rule about when you have to use phonetics or is it more just a convention thing? and also does it matter if you mix and match, like can you say november and then just say a regular K for the K in your call? i feel like ive heard people do that but i dont know if thats considered bad form or whatever

so ive been trying to get more into DX chasing lately and a buddy of mine mentioned using cluster spotting networks but honestly i kind of dove in without fully understanding how all the pieces fit together. right now i have the QRZ logbook open in one tab and DXwatch in another and im just kind of manually looking at spots and then switching over to log if i work someone. feels clunky but it kinda works i guess my question is, is there a better way to tie these things together or is this just how most people do it. i saw something about DX4WIN and some other logging software that can pull spots automatically but i dont really want to buy anything right now if i can avoid it. also are there any phone apps that are actually worth using for this stuff, i downloaded one called DX Alarm or something similar and it kept notifying me about spots that were already like 20 minutes old by the time i saw them so that seemed kind of pointless running a pretty modest station here, nothing fancy, just trying to figure out the workflow before i invest in anything

yeah we've done exactly this for a couple ARES deployments and the battery-primary with genny-for-topping approach works really well once you dial in the math. basically you want to know your radio's average current draw which on most 100w HF rigs running at maybe 50-60w output with a 50/50 duty cycle is somewhere around 10-12 amps continuous if you include the laptop and accessories. so your 100ah lifepo4 gives you a solid 8 hours of comfortable margin without touching the genny at all. the eu2200 is a good choice but honestly for just charging duty you dont even need to run it at full tilt. we usually let the battery drop to around 30% then run the genny for a couple hours to bring it back up. its quieter than you think at distance and the inverter generator type keeps the AC clean enough that a decent charger handles the rest. RFI from it has never been a real problem for us on 40m with the genny sitting 30 feet away from the antenna feedpoint. your mileage may vary on 80 but just orient the antenna away from it and use a good choke balun at the feedpoint and youre usually fine

the band privilege thing confused me too at first but once it clicks its pretty simple. basically as a general you get big chunks of the popular HF bands but the lower portions (the ones closer to the bottom of the band) are reserved for Extra class. on 40m for example you can operate phone starting around 7.175 and up to 7.300, techs dont get any of that at all except a tiny CW slice. 20m is similar, generals get most of it but Extra has a sliver at the bottom. the ARRL band plan chart is honestly the easiest way to see it visually, just google it and itll make way more sense than trying to read it in text. as for the electrical theory stuff, yeah you do need to know it for the exam but in day to day operating you mostly dont think about it consciously. that said understanding impedance and stuff like that actually does help when youre troubleshooting antenna problems or figuring out why your tuner is acting up. i wouldnt skip it, just try youtube for the basics, there are some good short videos that explain reactance way better than most books do. took me about 3 weeks of studying maybe 20-30 mins a day and i felt ready. dont overthink it, just run through the question pool on hamradiooprep or qrz practice exams until youre consistently hitting 80 percent or better and youre probably good to go.

so i finally did it after putting it off for like two years. passed my technician exam at the library near me, scored a 32/35 which im pretty happy with. got my callsign this morning actually, KD9 something something i wont bore you with the details haha. anyway i dont have a radio yet, been borrowing my neighbor's HT to listen around on 2m and it's been wild just hearing all the conversations on the local repeater. planning to pick up a used baofeng or maybe a yaesu ft-65 to start. not sure which way to go honestly. my neighbor says the yaesu is way better built but the baofeng is like $25 so. just wanted to introduce myself i guess, been lurking on here for months reading through old threads trying to figure out what im doing. hoping to eventually get into HF someday but for now just trying to get my first real QSO.

the short answer is part 97 is the law, the band plan is more of a voluntary thing the amateur community follows to keep things organized. so legally you just need to stay within the fcc allocations, but if you start calling cq in the middle of the cw segment on phone you're gonna have a bad time with people calling you lid even if its technically allowed for generals on 40m you got 7.175 to 7.300 for phone i believe, double check that. the cw and digital stuff is lower in the band. as far as band edges go yeah staying a few khz inside is just good practice, your signal has sidebands that extend beyond where your carrier is sitting, so if you're on ssb and you tune to 7.175 your actual transmitted signal is kind of riding right on that edge. most guys just stay at least 3-5 khz inside to be safe

8 degrees is rough, i wont lie. i dont usually even bother setting up for anything under like 15 honestly. you'll hear the bird fine but getting your signal in there when you're that far on the horizon is tough even with an arrow. keep trying, the higher passes are way more satisfying and you'll actually make contacts. also gpredict is free and way better than heavens-above for real time tracking once youre doing it more regularly

so ive been playing around with the online cluster spotting stuff for maybe a month now and im honestly not sure if im using it the way most people do. basically what i do is pull up DXwatch in one browser tab and QRZ.com in another and when i see a spot come in for something i want i try to look up the callsign real quick to see if it's a new entity for me before i even bother tuning there. feels a little clunky and i lose the spot sometimes before i can even get to the radio is there like a better workflow for this? i saw someone mention a phone app that combines cluster and logbook stuff but i forget what it was called. im running windows 10 and use WSJT-X for most of my digital work, occasionally SSB. my log is in Log4OM if that matters. just wondering how experienced guys handle this when they're seriously trying to work new entities

so ive been a tech for about a year and a half and i keep hearing people talk about how great cw is and i kind of want to learn it but honestly i have no idea where to start. like do people still use those cassette tapes or whatever, i know thats old school. i downloaded some app but i just sat there for 20 minutes feeling completely lost and closed it. i guess my main question is is there like a method that actually works for complete beginners or is it just one of those things where you grind it out until it clicks? i can already read the dots and dashes on paper but i know thats not really the point. someone at my club said to learn it by sound from the start and not bother with memorizing the patterns visually but i dont know if thats right either

Been running JS8Call-improved 2.5.1 for a few weeks and having intermittent PTT failures with my Digirig interface to an IC-705. Receiving works perfectly - decoding all traffic just fine - but TX randomly fails to key the radio. Checked all CAT settings against my working WSJT-X configuration (identical), tested different COM ports, even swapped USB cables. The issue seems specific to JS8Call as FT8 and WSPR work flawlessly with the same hardware. Using Windows 11, FLRIG for CAT control. Has anyone encountered this with the recent JS8Call-improved releases? Starting to wonder if it's a timing issue with the longer JS8 message format versus the fixed-length FT modes.

so ive had the 7300 for about three weeks now and figured id post something since i spent forever reading threads like this before buying. coming from an old TS-480SAT which i actually really liked but the panadapter situation was driving me crazy, always felt like i was flying blind on 40m during contests. anyway the waterfall on the 7300 is just... yeah its as good as everyone says. took me a day or two to get the reference level and range set where i wanted it but once you dial that in its really intuitive. SSB audio out of the box is decent, not amazing, i spent some time in the menu tweaking the TX profile and got it sounding a lot better. the built in ATU is pretty basic, wont match a terrible antenna but its fine for stuff thats already close. one thing nobody really warned me about is how deep the menus go. theres stuff in there i still havent figured out. the scope settings alone took me an afternoon. not complaining just saying dont expect to know the radio in a weekend. my shack is pretty simple, radio on a desk shelf, LDG tuner for the end fed, a old heil headset im probably gonna replace, runs into a 100ft wire out the back. nothing fancy but its been working fine. got a few nice DX contacts on 17m already which the 480 never seemed to do as well on for whatever reason, maybe just propagation timing who knows. anyone else using one with a noisy power supply? i noticed some hash on certain parts of the band and traced it to my cheap switching supply, switched to a linear and cleaned right up. probably obvious to most people here but took me longer than id like to admit.

Check that JTAlert isn't running simultaneously - N1MM and JTAlert can't share the same UDP port. Also verify both programs are using port 2237 in their respective settings. I had the exact same problem last month.

so ive been running a hustler 6BTV for about 3 years now and it's been fine, does what it does, but i always kind of wondered what i was missing on the lower bands especially 40 and 80. finally got around to putting up a fan dipole last weekend with legs cut for 40 and 80, fed with a single run of RG-8X into the shack. honestly the difference on 80 is pretty noticeable, not like night and day but signals that were borderline on the vertical are definitely more readable now. 40 feels about the same maybe slightly better but i think that's because my vertical ground radials on that band were actually decent. the fan dipole is only about 25 feet up which isnt ideal i know, but its what i had to work with given the trees in my yard. anyway i know this isnt exactly scientific and my sample size is like two evenings of operating but curious if others have done similar comparisons or if there's something obvious im missing about why one would be better than the other in certain conditions. also the SWR on the 80m legs is sitting around 1.4:1 at resonance which i think is fine but it wandered up toward 2.5:1 toward the band edges which i wasnt really expecting.

honestly the jump from general to extra felt bigger to me on paper than it did in practice. i was really worried about the math sections, the LC circuit stuff and the reactance formulas, but when you actually sit down with the material it starts clicking faster than you'd expect especially if you've been operating for a few years because you already have context for a lot of it. as for whether the theory is worth learning vs just memorizing, i'd say do both kind of at the same time. like don't try to deeply understand every single question but when something comes up that you actually want to know, go down that rabbit hole. the transmission line stuff especially stub matching and standing waves, that actually helped me troubleshoot some feedline weirdness i had going on. so it wasnt just test material for me the 40m extra portion is surprisingly nice btw, less qrm down there most evenings. that alone was worth it for me after a while

That S meter flickering when you key the other radio is probably just pickup from the shack environment, i wouldnt read too much into that. The symptom you're describing, dead receive with TX still working, on the 7300 specifically that often points to the antenna switching relay or the RF board front end. The relay coil can take a hit from a surge and it'll stick in the wrong position or just stop switching altogether. Before you dig into the board, grab a multimeter and check if you're getting continuity through the relay when it should be in receive mode. There's a test point accessible without full disassembly if you pull the top cover. Also worth checking the input bandpass filter area, lightning surges love to pop the small signal diodes in there. You'd see it as a dead short or open across what should be a clean filter. Icom's service manual for the 7300 is floating around online, the RF unit section is what you want. Good luck, these radios are repairable if you take it slow.

so ive been on HF for about two years now and i feel like my SSB audio has always been kind of mediocre. not terrible but nobody ever really compliments it either. been doing some reading and theres a LOT of conflicting info out there about what actually matters for good SSB audio quality. like some guys swear by speech processing and crank it up, other guys say keep it off entirely or barely touch it. ive got a 7300 and the built in processor is decent i think but i honestly dont know where to set it. right now im around 4-5 on the mic gain and maybe 2-3 on the processor, just kind of guessing. also the mic situation — im using the stock icom hand mic which i know isnt great but ive heard everything from "just get an SM-50" to "any dynamic mic is fine just set it up right" to "you need a condenser or forget it." so which is it. and does ALC matter as much as people say, because mine seems to bounce around a lot on voice peaks and im not sure if thats normal or if i somethings wrong. just trying to get cleaner audio without spending a ton, any practical tips appreciated

Check if your CAT polling rate is too fast - some rigs get overwhelmed. I run 500ms intervals on my 9700 and it's rock solid now. Even a few degrees error in elevation prediction can kill your signal strength.