Amanda Clark

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 this has been driving me nuts for about two weeks now. picked up an 817 off a guy at the club swap, worked fine at his place on the dummy load but when i got home and actually put it on a real antenna something felt off. checked it with my Bird and yeah, 40m is giving me maybe 0.8 to 1.2 watts depending on the frequency, everything else seems close to the rated 5w. 20m is fine, 80m is fine, even 2m and 70cm check out.
the previous owner says he never noticed but honestly i dont think he used 40 much. the ALC looks a little weird on 40 too, kind of sits higher than i'd expect before i even key up. not sure if thats related. i did the usual stuff, reseated the finals area, checked the band pass filter area visually and nothing looks obviously burned or damaged. voltage is good coming in.
anyone had something similar? wondering if its a PA transistor issue just on that band or maybe one of the LPF relays is flaky. i dont have a spectrum analyzer but i have a decent scope if thats useful here.

ok so ive been going back and forth on this for like two months now and i just need some real world input from people who have actually used both. im putting together my first real HF station and 40m is going to be my main band for now, maybe some 80m later. my lot is not huge, maybe 80 feet deep and about 100 feet wide, so a full size 40m dipole is going to be tight but probably doable if i run it at an angle.
the vertical option is appealing because i keep reading that they have a low angle of radiation which is good for DX, but then i also read that a dipole at even moderate heights can compete fine and doesnt need a radial field. i dont really have a great place to put a bunch of radials anyway, my yard is mostly concrete patio and some grass on the sides.
what did you guys actually find when you switched between them or tried both? im not chasing DX obsessively but id like to work some of it. mostly interested in domestic stuff and maybe some europe on a good night.

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

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

Hang in there! Took me about 60 days of twice daily practice to get above 25wpm head copy. The reflexes do come, but it's frustrating when you can't see daily progress. Try backing off to 15-minute sessions if 45 minutes is burning you out.

Hang in there! Took me about 60 days of twice daily practice to get above 25wpm head copy. The reflexes do come, but it's frustrating when you can't see daily progress. Try backing off to 15-minute sessions if 45 minutes is burning you out.