Michelle Brown

so ive been trying to learn CW for about 3 months now and i feel like im totally stuck at 5wpm. i can copy most letters fine when theyre sent slow but anything faster than maybe 6 or 7 and my brain just falls apart. i start missing letters and then i panic and miss more letters and it just snowballs from there. ive been using the LCWO website which everyone seems to recommend and i do the Koch method lessons but i feel like i hit a wall. my elmer told me to just listen to a lot of code even if i cant copy it all, like just let it wash over you, but honestly that feels a little weird and i dont know if its actually helping or if im just wasting time. is there a specific way people practice that actually works for building speed? like should i be doing short sessions every day or longer ones a few times a week? also at what point do people usually start trying to copy real QSOs on the air instead of just practice material

yeah the band plan stuff trips up a lot of new techs. short answer is you do get some 10m privileges — you can do CW on 28.000-28.300 and then SSB and other stuff in the 28.300-28.500 segment. outside of that you're not supposed to be transmitting on HF as a tech. the ARRL has a frequency allocation chart thats way easier to read than the actual part 97 text, i'd just grab that. as for enforcement — the FCC doesnt have a ton of people actively monitoring every frequency all the time but that doesnt mean nothing ever happens. they do investigate complaints and the ham community itself will sometimes report stuff. i wouldnt rely on the idea that nobody's watching. just stay in the right segments and you're fine, its not that hard once you get the chart in front of you

yeah what he said about the low end is real, i had the same problem when i first got on ssb and someone on a net finally told me bluntly that i sounded like i was calling from underwater lol. took me a while to find the right menu on my radio but once i rolled off some of that bass it was way better apparently. one thing i'll add is just monitor yourself when you can — plug headphones into the monitor jack if your rig has one and actually listen while you talk. sounds obvious but i went like a year without doing this and had no idea what i actually sounded like on air

so ive been licensed about 3 years now and mostly just done local stuff, some nets, a bit of contesting here and there but nothing serious. lately ive been getting really into DX and somebody at the club mentioned DXCC and now i cant stop thinking about it. i think i have maybe 40 or 50 entities already confirmed just from casual operating but i never really tracked it properly so honestly i dont know for sure. my question is basically — is there a smart way to start chasing this more intentionally? like should i be focusing on getting the easy ones locked down first on multiple bands, or just grab whatever i can whenever propagation lets me. also how does the whole LoTW thing work for credit submission, i have an account but ive never actually submitted anything for an award. do i need to wait until i hit 100 confirmed or can i kind of track progress along the way. any advice appreciated, feels like theres a whole side to this hobby i havent explored yet

ha yeah the first one is always a little chaotic, dont sweat it. i think most of us have that story about showing up on the summit and realizing something is missing or wired wrong. i once got all the way up a 6000ft peak in Colorado and realized i hadnt charged the battery pack. just sat there staring at the rig for a solid minute. what helped me was making a laminated checklist that lives in my pack permanently, not just a checklist i make fresh each time. antenna, feedline, adapters, battery, logbook, key or mic depending on what mode, and so on. sounds overly simple but when youre tired from the hike up and excited to get on the air your brain does dumb things. 7 contacts to qualify is all you need, thats a successful activation any way you look at it. the W6 in the log is a nice bonus too. once you get a few of these under your belt the setup gets way faster, i can have my linked dipole up and be calling CQ in under 10 minutes now most days.

so ive had this thing for about three weeks now, coming from an old TS-480SAT that i ran for like six years. figured id share some thoughts since i spent way too long reading reviews before buying and none of them really answered my actual questions. first thing — the waterfall display is genuinely useful and not just a gimmick like i thought it might be. being able to see propagation open up on 17m in real time while im working 20m is something i didnt know i was missing. the touchscreen takes some getting used to, especially for menu diving, but after a week it feels pretty natural. RF direct sampling is the real story here though. the noise floor on this thing compared to the 480 is noticeably different, like I can actually pull out signals i would have just written off as noise before. 40m late at night is a whole different experience. only gripes so far — the stock microphone is pretty mediocre, i swapped it out for my old SM-50 almost immediately. and the fan kicks on more than id like during long digital sessions, not loud but you notice it. nothing dealbreaking. anyway if anyones on the fence about the 7300 and running older gear, the jump is probably worth it. curious if anyone else made a similar upgrade and what their experience was

so ive been listening on HF for a few weeks now and i keep hearing and seeing people use these weird three letter codes that start with Q and i honestly have no clue what half of them mean. like QSL, QRN, QSB, QRM... theres so many of them. i looked some up but then theres also all these other abbreviations people use in CW and even just in regular conversation on the bands that arent Q codes at all, like 73 or 88 or ES or whatever. is there like one place that lists all of this or do you just kind of pick it up over time? im a tech right now studying for general and nobody in my local club really explained this stuff, they just kind of assume you already know it all.

ok so i just upgraded from tech to general last month and im trying to figure out where i can actually transmit on 40 meters. i looked up the FCC part 97 allocations and also found the ARRL band plan and they dont seem to match up exactly and now im more confused than before i started looking. like the FCC says generals get phone privileges starting at 7.175 but then i see people talking about the gentlemans agreement and staying away from the dx window around 7.175-7.200 and some guys on the local repeater were saying something about band edges being dangerous and you should never operate right at the edge. is that a real thing or are they just being overly cautious? i dont want to accidentally transmit somewhere im not supposed to or step on a dx pileup or whatever also what does LSB vs USB matter here, does the 7.175 start point mean the carrier frequency or the edge of the actual signal because i feel like that could matter

timing is honestly like 80% of it in my experience. you want to be transmitting right as he finishes the last exchange, not before, not a second after everyone else piles on. theres kind of a rhythm to how a good dxpedition op works and once you lock onto it it gets way easier. some of the big ops will work a steady 3-4 contacts a minute when the pile is cooperative and you can almost set a watch to it. the other thing i do is listen to which part of the split spread hes pulling from. if he works three guys in a row all from around up 7 then i move there. people treat the split like a lottery when its actually more like reading where the fish are biting. your waterfall trick is exactly right. also keep your audio narrow, maybe 250hz or so, helps cut down the noise from adjacent signals so you can actually hear his partial calls clearly. had a situation last year with a FT5 operation where i finally cracked it just by being patient and not spamming my call — let a couple cycles go by without transmitting, then came in clean.

A few things to check — first make sure your offset direction is set correctly. On 2 meters, most repeaters use a negative 600 kHz offset, meaning your radio transmits 600 kHz below the output frequency you're listening on. On the UV-5R this isn't always set automatically when you manually enter a frequency, so double check that in the menu. It can be a little buried. Second, the CTCSS tone needs to be set as your transmit tone, not your receive tone. Some people accidentally set it on the receive side which would mean your radio only opens its squelch when it hears that tone coming back, but it wouldn't affect whether the repeater hears you. The repeater is looking for that 100.0 Hz subaudible tone on its input, so yours needs to be transmitting it. And yeah, coverage could genuinely be the issue too especially with a stock rubber duck antenna on an HT in a flat area. Sometimes it just takes driving to higher ground or getting outside away from buildings to know for sure. Try finding someone locally on the air and ask them to listen for you — most folks are happy to help a new ham troubleshoot this kind of thing.

so ive been licensed for about 3 years now and mostly just did ragchews and a little contesting here and there but last fall i started actually paying attention to what entities i was working and logging them properly and man this whole DXCC thing is a rabbit hole i wasnt prepared for i think im sitting around 87 confirmed right now through LoTW which honestly felt like a lot until i started reading about guys with 300+ and realized im basically just getting started lol. my question is about the mixed vs phone vs digital endorsements — does it make more sense to just go for mixed first and then worry about the mode-specific ones later or should i be tracking all of them from the beginning. i have been doing a mix of SSB and FT8 and some CW (not great CW but trying) so im guessing mixed is the easiest path to the first certificate also how do people handle the QSL situation for entities that dont do LoTW. i had a few bureau cards come in recently that filled some gaps but the wait was like 8 months which was kind of surprising even though everyone told me to expect it

the exam is definitely more involved than tech but its not as bad as the study guide makes it look. i just used HamStudy dot org and did practice tests over and over for like 3 weeks, maybe 20-30 minutes a day, and passed without really fully understanding everything i was answering. the electrical stuff does trip people up but you dont need to deeply understand it, you just need to recognize the right answer when you see it. the question pool isnt that huge. as for HF privileges, generals get a pretty solid chunk of 40m, roughly 7.175 to 7.300 for phone which is where most of the ragchewing happens anyway. extras get the lower portion down to 7.125 but honestly youll have plenty to work with as a general. 40m is a great starting band, especially at night when it opens up and you can hear stations from all over the place without much effort. just be prepared for the noise floor if you're in a suburban area, that was the thing that surprised me most when i first got on HF.

so i've been licensed about 8 months now and i still get kind of confused about when i'm supposed to spell things out with phonetics versus just saying the letter normally. like if someone asks for my callsign i just say it normally but then sometimes the other person spells theirs back to me using nato phonetics and i feel like i should be doing that too but also it feels weird to say "whiskey" and "kilo" when i could just... say the letters is there like an actual rule about this or is it just a custom thing people do. i mostly operate on 2m fm and HF SSB if that makes any difference. also sometimes i try to use phonetics and i blank on one of the letters mid-sentence which is embarassing

im in basically the same boat as you, got my ticket in the spring and ended up going with the Kenwood TH-D74A which was wayyyy over what i planned to spend but i wanted the APRS and D-STAR built in and i just kind of went for it. probably not the smartest move financially lol but i dont regret it. the display is really nice and it actually received a packet from the ISS on my first try which was cool. if i were doing it more sensibly i'd probably have started with something cheaper for a few months first just to figure out what i actually use vs what i thought i would use

yeah what he said about the bass, that fixed my audio when i was having the same issue last year. also worth checking if you have any ground loop stuff going on, i had this weird hum baked into my transmit audio for like two months before i figured out it was the laptop i had sitting next to the radio. wasnt obvious at all until someone recorded my signal and sent it back to me.

yeah that RPM-varying whine is almost certainly alternator noise getting into either the power leads or the coax shield. the first thing id do honestly is add a ferrite choke right at the radio on the power leads, like snap-on types work fine for this, nothing fancy. also check that your power cable isnt running parallel to any factory wiring for long runs because that can couple noise in too. the door seal coax routing is probably contributing at least a little since youre not getting a great shield connection at the entry point. if you can get the coax in through the firewall thats almost always cleaner. for the mag mount ground plane issue on trucks with plastic stuff yeah its real, the NR770HB will work but youre not getting ideal performance. a lip mount or a hole mount through the roof would be a big improvement but i get that its a bigger commitment. start with the ferrites and see how much that cleans things up first before you go drilling holes anywhere

yeah what he said about the speech processor is real, that thing can wreck your audio fast if you just flip it on and leave it. i did the same thing when i first got my 7300 and spent like three weeks thinking my mic was defective lol one thing that actually helped me was finding someone local on a repeater who was willing to do a simplex HF sked just to give me honest audio reports while i tweaked things in real time. way more useful than random contacts on 40m where people are usually too polite to tell you the truth or they're dealing with their own QRM and cant really evaluate your audio properly

the chart memorization thing is basically the worst way to start, you'll just end up counting dots and dashes in your head which slows you down forever. the method that worked for me and honestly most people i know is Koch method — you start with just two characters at full speed, like 20wpm, and you only add new ones when you can copy the current set reliably. sounds counterintuitive to start fast but it forces your brain to hear the sound as a whole character instead of decoding it piece by piece. LCWO dot net is free and does this pretty well, also Just Learn Morse Code is a desktop app some guys swear by. the other thing i'd say is dont try to do an hour a day when you're starting out, like 15 minutes consistently beats an hour once a week by a lot. it took me maybe 4 or 5 months of pretty casual practice before i could actually pull calls and exchanges out of the air, so it's not instant but it's not years either

With my FlexRadio, the audio level bar should just touch 0 dB on peaks, never over. This puts the average solid bar a little below the 0 dB line. If you're running an amplifier, keep it even lower to avoid amplifying distortion products.

had the 991a for about 3 years now and really like it. the all band thing is nice since you dont need a separate 2m/70cm rig. waterfall display is decent and the dsp works pretty well. only complaint is the fan gets loud when you run 100w for a while but thats probably normal

yeah the rhythm thing is huge and honestly its something most people skip completely. ive worked a lot of rare ones over the years and the single biggest mistake i see is guys just hammering away without ever listening. you get a feel for it after a while — some ops work strictly by region, some go by suffix, some just fish in the pile randomly. if you can figure out which one youre dealing with its way easier to time your call. the other thing that helped me a lot was dropping power slightly when things were really congested. sounds counterintuitive but when youre running 500 watts into a pileup with 400 other guys doing the same thing you're just adding to the noise floor for the DX op. sometimes pulling back to 200 and having a clean signal with good timing beats just screaming at max power. not always but sometimes. depends a lot on propagation too obviously. nice catch on the 3B8, those dont come around super often.

yeah 40 has been weird for me too, though i caught a good opening to europe last thursday around sunset and worked a few stations pretty easily. think it really depends on the time and your local noise floor. my neighborhood has gotten so much worse for rfi since everyone started putting in those led streetlights. its like trying to listen through a blender sometimes

yeah the 6m opening last week was something else, i caught the tail end of it on wednesday morning before work and even that was impressive. worked a couple of stations down in Florida from here in Minnesota which doesnt happen all that often this time of year. my neighbor who has been a ham for like 30 years said he hasnt seen Es propagation that consistent in a while. on the IC-905 thing i saw a post from someone over on QRZ who said they got a tracking number from their dealer but it was for just the base unit without the 10GHz module, apparently those are still backordered separately. which is kind of annoying if youre specifically wanting the microwave capability. not sure if thats still the case now but worth asking your dealer before assuming you'll get the full setup right away.

so i just passed my technician exam last week and im starting to look at handheld radios and honestly its a lot. ive been reading reviews for like three days straight and i feel like i know less than when i started. everyone seems to have a strong opinion and half the time theyre contradicting each other. my main use case would be local repeaters, maybe some APRS stuff eventually, and just general learning. i dont really have a budget in mind yet but id rather not spend a ton on something until i know i actually like the hobby. i looked at the baofeng uv-5r because its cheap but then people say the build quality is bad or it'll interfere with other stuff, and then someone else says its fine for a beginner. also looked at the yaesu ft-65r and some icom thing but i honestly cant tell if im paying for features i wont use for years. what would you actually buy if you were just starting out and didnt want to make a dumb mistake right away

I think the modern approach is more nuanced than the old "rate vs mults" dichotomy. When you get a good rate going on one radio, go ahead and disregard the second radio and concentrate on running the pileup. With experience, you'll be able to handle a big pileup on one radio while S&P on the other, but if you're having a hard time dealing with two radios at any time, just concentrate on one.