James Wilson

im in pretty much the same boat, just getting into CW for the first time and the iambic modes completely confused me for the first month. ended up just watching a bunch of videos slowed way down to see what my hands were actually doing. one thing that helped me was using the straight key practice mode for a couple weeks before going back to the paddle, just to get my ear back in sync with what correct timing sounds like before i tried to be clever with squeeze keying.

so ive been messing around with APRS for a few months now and i think i finally have a handle on the basics but the path settings are still kind of baffling me. im running a TM-D710G with a mag mount on the car and using WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 which i thought was the standard recommendation but im seeing my station show up on aprs.fi sometimes and then completely disappear for like 20-30 minutes even when im moving around in an area i know has decent digipeater coverage. i checked and the digipeaters near me are definitely active, i can see other stations getting gated fine. is there something about the transmit interval maybe? im currently set to every 30 seconds which felt right for mobile but maybe thats too aggressive and im getting blocked somewhere? also not sure if my symbol is set correctly, im using the car symbol but i read somewhere that matters for how some igates handle things. tried searching the archives but got a lot of conflicting info from like 2009 that may or may not apply to how the network works now. any help appreciated

For a backyard setup with space constraints, definitely go vertical dipole over trying to fit radials. If you can't lay down a spider web of radials, dipoles are often better choices. The performance difference is significant - I've compared them side by side and the vertical dipole consistently outperforms a compromised ground plane system.

yeah i had the same disappointment when i got mine. the hackrf lacks front end filtering and has pretty low power output too. if youre just scanning stick with the rtl-sdr or maybe look at an airspy or sdrplay hackrf is cool if you want to play with signal analysis or need that 6ghz coverage but for everyday monitoring it kinda sucks compared to dedicated receivers

so i just upgraded to general last month and im trying to figure out where i can actually operate on 40 meters. i know there are parts of the band i wasnt allowed on as a tech but now im confused because ive been looking at different band plans and they dont all say the same thing. like the arrl chart shows one thing and then i see other charts online that look different and i cant tell if those are just suggestions or actual law or what. also someone at my club mentioned something about staying away from the band edges and i didnt really understand why. like if my license says i can go down to 7.025 or whatever, why wouldnt i just operate right there if thats where my privileges start? is this an fcc thing or just a courtesy thing people do? sorry if this is a dumb question, ive been searching around and getting more confused the longer i look