Amanda Anderson

so ive been a Tech for about 8 months now and honestly i want to get on HF already. i can hear people on 40m with my buddies radio and it just sounds like so much fun. ive been looking at the question pool and some of it makes sense but a lot of the electrical stuff is going over my head like the calculations and stuff with impedance and reactance whatever that is. is the General exam actually hard or am i overthinking it? i did pass Tech on my first try but i felt like i barely scraped through. also does it matter what study material i use, ive seen people mention Gordon West and also hamstudy.org and i dont know which one is better or if i need both. any advice would help i just dont want to walk in and bomb it

so i finally got around to doing my first SOTA activation last weekend, summit was only a 4 point but figured id start small. packed my kx2, the random wire antenna, battery, and way too much other stuff i ended up not needing. hike took about 45 minutes which wasnt bad but man carrying that pack up the last bit of the trail with all that gear was rough. anyway got up there and the wind was absolutely brutal, couldnt get my linked dipole set up properly so i just threw up the random wire over a tree branch and it actually tuned up ok on 40 and 20. made my 4 contacts but it took way longer than i expected, the QSB was killing me and one guy i could barely hear kept trying to come back to me. ended up staying up there way longer than planned just because i was having fun. anyone else find that the first one is kind of a mess organizationally but still totally worth it? already planning the next one

Just passed my Extra last month using the new 2024-2028 pool! Ham Radio Prep and HamStudy both got their new materials out early. Took over 75 practice exams and found the actual test very easy. Don't let the theory scare you - build up your confidence with lots of practice tests first.

so i've only been licensed since march and ive been checking into the tuesday evening net on the local 2m repeater pretty regularly. last week i wasn't sure if the net control had called my callsign or someone with a similar one, so i just went ahead and gave my call and said i was checking in. turns out it wasn't my turn and apparently i stepped on someone. the net control was pretty nice about it but i could tell a couple of the other guys were a little annoyed. i guess my question is what's the proper thing to do when you're not sure if you heard your call? do you just wait it out and hope net control circles back, or is there some way to ask without being rude about it? i really don't want to cause problems on the net because everyone seems to know each other really well and i feel like the new kid at school every time i check in lol

RG-6 will work fine honestly, especially for receiving and even transmitting at reasonable power levels. The 75 vs 50 ohm mismatch sounds scary but a dipole at resonance is closer to 70 ohms anyway depending on height so you might actually get a better match than with RG-58. Your tuner will sort out whatever's left. Only real downside is RG-6 connectors are a pain — you'll need an adapter to go from F connector to PL-259 unless you can find PL-259 crimps that fit, which are out there. On the balun question — for a first build just skip it and see what happens. If you notice RF in the shack or your SWR changes when you touch the coax you'll know you need one. Lots of people run dipoles for years without baluns and they work. A choke balun made from winding the coax into a coil near the feedpoint costs nothing and helps but its not mandatory day one.

had almost the exact same thing happen with mine about a year ago, different cause though. first thing i'd check is whether the ALC line is getting a weird voltage from somewhere even when it shouldnt be - there's been a few cases where a leaky cap on the ALC circuit was essentially clamping output without the meter showing anything obvious. you can probe the ALC input on the PA board with a meter while transmitting and see if its sitting at some unexpected voltage. also worth checking is whether the bias on the final transistors is set correctly. if someone got in there before you and tweaked stuff they shouldnt have, bias could be way off and that'll absolutely kill your output without necessarily killing the radio. the service manual has the bias adjustment procedure and its not too bad if you have a current probe or can improvise one. the 7300 finals are RD70HVF1s if i remember right, fairly robust devices, probably not blown but could be limping. honestly the driver stage is worth looking at too before you go replacing finals. a weak driver will cap your output in exactly this way and driver transistors are way cheaper to replace. what does your ALC meter show when you key up?

3.5:1 at 7.1 with RG-8X over 50 feet isnt catastrophic but yeah i get why it bugs you. one thing that tripped me up early on is measuring at the wrong point — are you measuring at the rig end of the coax or right at the feedpoint? matters a lot especially with lossy coax since it kind of masks whats happening at the antenna. RG-8X isnt terrible but its not RG-213 either. also what are you using to measure, an antenna analyzer or just the rig's built-in SWR meter? because if its just the rig meter those can be... optimistic sometimes lol

dont feel bad at all, honestly everyone has that moment. i remember my first net check-in i accidentally said my callsign twice and then said "over and out" like i was in a war movie, my elmer never let me forget it. the basic format most casual traffic nets around here use is just callsign, name, and location, then whether you have traffic or just checking in for the roster. something like "W1XYZ, John in Springfield, no traffic" is totally fine for most local nets. some nets are more formal and the net control will actually tell you upfront what they want, so its worth just listening to a few check-ins before yours to get the pattern. ARRL nets can be a bit more structured but even those arent scary once you do it a couple times. the fact that you showed up and tried is honestly more than a lot of new hams do, so good on you for that.

had basically this exact same issue last year. turned out one of the igates nearby was running really old software and was dropping packets with certain path combos, which was a whole thing to figure out. but honestly before you go down that rabbit hole just try keying up a quick position beacon manually and watch aprs.fi in real time, give it like 30 seconds. if nothing shows up and you know the digi hit it, then yeah its the igate side thats broken somewhere in the chain.

i'm kind of in the same boat as you actually, been at it for maybe two months now. the app i ended up sticking with is called Morse-It and also been using the CW academy stuff from the ARRL, they have online classes and the instructors are actual hams who are really patient with beginners. the one thing i'll say is dont get discouraged when it clicks for some letters and not others, G and Q messed me up for like three weeks straight lol. also apparently listening to actual qso's on the air even when you cant copy most of it helps your ear get used to real sending which is different from the computer generated stuff

so i decided i want to get my technician license and i bought a book a few weeks ago but honestly i havent really cracked it open yet. a friend told me the hamstudy website is good but then someone else said just memorize the question pool and dont bother learning the actual material. i dont know which way to go with this. like is there actual stuff you need to understand or can you really just brute force the memorization and pass? the exam has 35 questions right? i just dont want to show up and completely bomb it, im not great at tests in general

JS8Call is genuinely fun but yeah you kind of have to go in with the right expectations. it's not like FT8 where you just open the software and there's 40 signals on the waterfall immediately. you do have to hunt a bit and honestly most of my contacts on there are guys i already know from other modes or from the JS8Call groups on the usual social media stuff the heartbeat feature is nice though, basically the software will auto-respond to certain queries even when youre not at the radio which feels weird at first but its actually pretty useful for store-and-forward type stuff. i've had messages sitting there waiting for me when i came back to the shack which is kind of a novelty PSK31 is not dead but it's definitely on life support. i'll still hear activity on 14.070 occasionally, usually when solar conditions are mediocre and guys are looking for something that works better than phone but dont want to deal with FT8. the decoding is more satisfying somehow, watching the text scroll in real time feels more like a conversation than a grid exchange

honestly at 80-90/hr SO2R is probably still worth it but the payoff is more about multipliers than raw rate at that speed. when your run frequency is cooking you really shouldnt be touching the second radio much at all, maybe just a quick scan to log a new mult if you spot one. the real value comes during the slow periods, like when 40 starts dying before sunrise and you're trickling calls — that's when you work the second radio harder and keep your overall rate up instead of just sitting there calling CQ into the void. the losing your run frequency problem is real and never fully goes away. some guys set a really short CQ repeat rate and just blast the call every 4-5 seconds so people know the freq is occupied. others just accept it as a cost of doing business. i've started dropping my power a tiny bit on the run radio when i go to the second radio just to stay in the exchange faster and get back before someone squats on me, not sure if thats actually helping or just superstition at this point

also worth checking your transmit audio level if you havent already. the D710 has a data output level setting buried in the menus and if its too hot the packets get clipped and nobody can decode them even if they're loud. i fought this for weeks before someone on a local net told me. even though youre seeing other traffic decode fine that just means your receive is good, doesnt say anything about what youre putting out

totally get the confusion, it threw me off too when i first started. short answer is you dont have to do all three, it really depends on what you want out of it. LoTW is pretty much the gold standard if you ever want to go after ARRL awards like DXCC or WAS, so keeping that one active is worth the hassle of setting up the certificate. eQSL is more casual, some people like it some dont, and a lot of DX stations dont use it at all so the confirmations can be hit or miss. paper cards through the bureau are kind of a whole thing on their own. its slow, like months slow sometimes, but some ops really love getting a physical card in the mail and honestly theres something nice about it. the ARRL bureau is outgoing only if youre a member and you do pay a small fee i think, but incoming cards they hold for you. if youre not in a hurry for awards just stick with LoTW for now and maybe do eQSL as a bonus. you can always add the bureau stuff later when you feel like dealing with it.

I had the exact same problem when I started. One thing that helped me was just completely ignoring the TX doppler correction at first and manually tuning the uplink by ear after I locked the downlink. Sounds backwards but it kind of clicked faster that way. The inverting part means if you go up on TX you go down in the passband on the downlink so once you internalize that it becomes more intuitive than trying to think about it mathematically in the middle of a pass. 34 degree max elevation is pretty solid for a first attempt honestly, that's plenty of time if you can get the workflow sorted. I'd also say try FO-29 if you get a chance, seems to have a bit more activity on weekends at least from what I've seen.

congrats on the first activation, that feeling when you hit your 4th contact is pretty hard to beat. for the logging -- yeah you'll want to enter the summit reference manually when you upload to SOTAdata if you're doing it from a paper log. the reference wont auto-populate from a plain ADIF file, at least not in my experience. just make sure you have it written somewhere before you head up, i keep mine on a little card tucked in the front pocket of my pack along with my callsign card just in case. the self-spotting thing without cell service is trickier but totally doable. a lot of activators use APRS to send spots if they have an HT that supports it, or you can ask one of your chasers to post a spot to SOTAwatch on your behalf once you make contact -- which sounds like what that guy was offering to do. some people also pre-spot themselves the night before and just try to be on frequency around the time they said. not perfect but it gets chasers listening at least. welcome to the addiction by the way, it only gets worse from here

so ive been chasing DX for probably 8 years now and pileups have always been my nemesis. like i know the theory, listen first, time your call, use split properly, all that stuff. but knowing it and actually doing it when theres 400 guys calling are two different things. what finally clicked for me was really paying attention to where the DX station is actually listening and not just where people assume he is. i run a K3S into a 2el yagi at about 45ft and honestly the radio isnt the problem, its patience and ear. i started noticing the DX would work a guy, then shift maybe 1-2 kHz up after each QSO — not always but often enough that if you just sat glued to where everyone else is throwing their calls youre invisible. also stopped calling every single time. now i listen for 3-4 cycles, figure out where he pulled the last few stations from, then plant my call right there. my QSO rate on rare ones went up noticeably. worked 3D2CR last month first call which literally never would have happened before. anyone else have techniques that actually moved the needle for them? curious if the timing thing or the listening-for-shift thing is widely known or if im just late to figuring out what the elmers already know

not sure if this helps but i had a similar thing going on and it turned out my paddle gap was way too tight so i was accidentally triggering extra dits sometimes. could be worth checking. also 20 min a day is solid, dont give up on it

bring snacks lol. seriously nobody tells you this but you might be standing in a parking lot for 6 hours and the catering is not for you. also sunscreen if its an outdoor thing. i learned both of those the hard way at a marathon event last year the radio stuff will sort itself out, just listen more than you talk and you'll be fine

don't feel too bad about it, everyone does that at least once. nets can vary a lot depending on whether its a directed net or an open one. in a directed net — which most formal nets are — net control is basically running the whole show and you wait until they specifically call for check-ins or ask if anyone has traffic. you really shouldn't key up unless NCS opens the floor or calls you by callsign. open nets are more casual and closer to a roundtable where anyone can just jump in when there's a pause. the trick is learning to read which kind you're in, and listening for a good 2-3 seconds after someone finishes before you transmit, just to make sure the exchange is actually done. that pause is your friend. if you're ever unsure just listen a bit longer than feels comfortable and you'll usually figure it out pretty fast.

7.225 to 7.300 is general phone privileges on 40m so 7.250 should be totally fine for you. whoever told you that might have been confused themselves or maybe there was some other issue going on, hard to say without more context. it happens, some folks on the bands are a little territorial for no good reason. as for the chart thing, the ARRL publishes a band plan that honestly is way easier to read than the actual part 97 text. just google ARRL band plan and pull up the PDF. it color codes everything by license class which makes it a lot clearer. the part 97 version is technically the authoritative one but unless youre trying to understand the exact legal wording you dont really need to read it that way. once you look at the ARRL version a couple times it starts to click.

The tension thing is real — most beginners set it way too light thinking it'll be easier and then you end up with exactly what you're describing, accidental contacts everywhere. I'd tighten it up a bit until you feel a definite click when you close each paddle. Not stiff, just... deliberate. You should have to mean it when you touch that paddle. Also for the squeeze keying, dont try to do it until your individual dit and dah timing is solid. A lot of people jump into iambic mode before they're ready and it just adds confusion. Try switching your keyer to mode A if it isnt already, some people find that a little more forgiving when they're learning. The 7300 keyer is decent, you can play with the weight setting too which adjusts the ratio of dit to dah length — sometimes even a small tweak there makes a big difference in how things feel. And yes, head copy is absolutely the goal. Writing it down is fine for now but you want to get to the point where you're a word or two behind what you're hearing, not a letter at a time. Just takes time honestly, dont stress it.

i was in the exact same spot about a year ago lol. what helped me was just picking one and sticking with it for a while before worrying about the others. i started with eQSL because the interface made more sense to me and i got a bunch of confirmations pretty quickly which was motivating. then i figured out LoTW later once i actually cared about awards. still havent really gotten into paper cards but i kind of want to, theres something cool about getting an actual card in the mail from some station in Japan or wherever.

the interference thing is real and its the first thing you have to solve before worrying about anything else. if your antennas are close together and you try to TX on both at the same time youre gonna have a bad day, the front end on the 7300 especially doesnt love that. most serious SO2R guys run bandpass filters, the 4o3a or dunestar ones are the usual recommendations, and you interlock the PTT so only one radio transmits at a time. the station interlock is kinda the whole foundation of making it work without blowing up receivers. as for the learning curve yeah its real but its not like impossible. i did my first SO2R attempt at arrl dx cw a few years back and honestly the first four or five hours i was slower than i wouldve been on one radio because i kept screwing up which vfo was which. but by the end of the contest i was running 40 on one radio and sniffing for mults on 15 with the other and it felt pretty natural. n1mm has decent SO2R support built in now, the audio switching stuff in particular. just go into it expecting to sacrifice rate early in the contest while your brain adjusts