Ashley Wilson27

honestly i thought the same thing before i upgraded and then i just did it on a whim after studying for like three weeks with hamstudy. the exam itself is harder than general for sure, the phase angle stuff and the filter questions tripped me up a few times in practice. but here's the thing — once i actually dug into why those formulas work instead of just memorizing answers, i started understanding my radio way better. like i finally got what my rig was actually doing when i was tuning an antenna. the 20m extra segment is also less crowded which sounds dumb but during a contest its actually kinda nice. i dunno man i dont think youll regret it, worst case you learn some stuff

i just passed mine like two months ago so maybe i can help lol. i used the gordon west book which my dad had from years ago but the question pool was outdated so make sure whatever book you get matches the current pool, i think the current one runs through 2026 or something like that. i did hamstudy every day on my lunch break for about three weeks and that was enough. the ohms law questions werent as scary as i thought, just memorize volts equals amps times resistance and you can figure out most of them. good luck with it

honestly it's not that bad, i was in the same boat last year. i used ham study dot org almost exclusively and just drilled questions every night for maybe 3 weeks, probably an hour or so before bed. the electrical theory questions are a little annoying but you can get away with memorizing the formulas even if you dont totally understand the underlying math, at least for passing the test. ohms law and a few resonance formulas is really the worst of it. the propagation stuff is actually kind of interesting once you get into it, like learning why 40m works so well at night for domestic contacts vs 20m being more of a daytime DX band. that part clicked pretty fast for me. as for privileges, yeah you have to wait for the FCC ULS database to update before you can legally operate on the new bands, usually takes a day or two but sometimes faster. your VE session will usually tell you to check it before you key up. good luck, seriously just start doing practice exams and youll know when youre ready

1.8 on a first dipole is pretty solid tbh. my first one was reading like 3.5 and i had no idea what i was doing wrong for weeks, turned out i measured from the wrong end of the coax lol. what radio are you running it into? if its got a built in tuner it'll flatten that right out.

drilled my 4Runner about 8 years ago and never looked back. the difference in receive on weak signals is noticeable, not huge but real, mostly because you finally have a solid ground plane doing what its supposed to do instead of relying on magnetic coupling through paint. the noise issue you mentioned almost certainly goes away with a proper NMO because the cable isnt flexing around a door seal anymore picking up ignition garbage. if youre going 5/8 wave on 2m just make sure you account for the gain pattern because the takeoff angle is lower and that actually works against you in some hilly terrain where the repeaters are up high. for flat areas and highway driving its great. i use a larsen NMO150/450 and its been on the truck through heat and cold with zero issues, the connector is solid and water hasnt been a problem with the standard grommet kit.

I've been using digital modes like FT8 and PSK31 for better reliability, especially focusing on 20m and 17m during the day. Watch for brief high-band openings during solar flux spikes - 12m and 10m can surprise you even when conditions look poor. Real-time monitoring is key!

so ive been putting together a go-kit for the county ARES group and we have a deployment exercise coming up next saturday and im trying to figure out the power situation once and for all. right now i have a 100ah lithium battery (the bioenno one) and a 30w solar panel but the exercise is supposedly going to run 18+ hours with multiple stations and i honestly dont know if thats going to cut it. the other option is dragging out my honda eu2200i which i love for camping but it feels like overkill and also noise discipline is a thing the IC keeps harping about. we're going to be running an IC-7300 on HF and probably a couple VHF portables for tactical, plus a laptop for winlink. just trying to figure out what people actually do for extended field deployments because everything i read is either 'solar is king' or 'just bring a genny' with not much in between. also on the antenna side i was thinking my 40m EFHW on a 31ft fiberglass mast but the IC keeps saying we need to be on 80m for the net control link and i dont have a great solution for that at a random field site. any thoughts on that part too would be helpful.

yeah what he said about the cables is so true lol. i also want to add — dont forget actual paper. like printed frequency lists for your local nets, ICS forms if your served agency uses them, maybe a laminated card with your own call sign and serial number if youre doing Winlink stuff. sounds dumb but when youre tired and stressed you forget everything. i keep mine in a clear binder in the bag. also a sharpie and some zip ties have saved me more than once

i have the M2 LEO pack and honestly for satellite work its perfectly fine. yeah if you put it on a vna and compare it to a dedicated antenna on each band you'll see the dual band isnt quite as clean but in actual use i havent noticed it being a problem. AO-91 and AO-92 work fine, linear sats are a bit more challenging but thats more about the antenna pointing than the yagi itself. the bigger thing for me was just having one antenna to deal with during a pass. trying to swap antennas mid-pass while also running the radio and tracking the satellite manually is a headache. one dual band beam connected to a duplexer and youre just focusing on operating. for casual sota satellite work id say go dual band and dont overthink it.

the ground plane thing is probably hurting you more than anything else. perf board on HF is rough, RF just does whatever it wants without a solid ground reference. ive built a few DC receivers and every time i went back and added even a partial ground plane by soldering braid or copper tape on the bottom things improved noticeably. that said the SBL-1 has around 6-7dB conversion loss which adds up fast when your preamp gain isnt great. a 2N3904 at HF can be kind of mediocre depending on your bias point and matching. if you have a BF998 or even a J310 FET sitting around those tend to work a lot better as a front end on 40m. the NE602 swap might help but keep in mind it has its own noise figure and dynamic range issues — its not magic, just different tradeoffs. id fix the ground situation first before changing the topology

so ive been paying more attention to solar flux lately trying to figure out when to actually bother getting on HF. been using a couple of the online tools to track SFI and K-index but honestly i still dont really understand how to read what im seeing well enough to predict anything useful. like yesterday the SFI was up around 165 or so and i figured 10m would be ripping but i heard basically nothing from europe when i was on around 1400 UTC. then i took a break, came back at like 1700 and worked 4 stations in spain and one in italy without any issue. so what am i missing here. is there some other factor i should be looking at or am i just timing it wrong. i know gray line is a thing but i thought that was more of a morning deal also noticed the K-index jumped up to 4 yesterday evening and things got pretty noisy on 17m which i sort of expected, but 20m seemed totally fine? that felt backwards to me. still learning how all this fits together