Steven Kumar

so ive been at this for about 3 months now and i feel like im completely stuck. started with the koch method on lcwo.net and got through the first like 8 characters at 5wpm no problem but now i just cant seem to push faster without my brain completely falling apart. i know people say to just listen at higher speeds even if you dont understand it yet but honestly that just makes me frustrated and i end up giving up after like 10 minutes. my goal is eventually getting comfortable around 20wpm so i can actually have real QSOs on HF instead of just sending slow ragchews where the other guy is probably falling asleep waiting for me to finish a sentence. been licensed for about a year, general class, got a decent rig but cw feels like this whole separate mountain to climb. anyone go through this and actually come out the other side? what actually worked for you because im running out of ideas here

yeah 20 has been weird lately, some days its wide open and other days nothing. i did a POTA activation two weeks ago and had way better luck just dropping down to 40 after like 15 minutes. cold fingers are the worst, i started keeping a pair of thin glove liners in my pack just for logging and keying, helps a bit. congrats on the first one though

this is something i wondered about too when i first got started. i mostly use phonetics when i'm calling CQ on HF or if the other station asks me to repeat my call. on the 2m stuff around here most people dont bother. one thing i'll say is i've heard some old timers use totally random words and it drives me a little crazy honestly because you're sitting there trying to figure out if they said "D" or "B" and they used some word you've never heard. at least with NATO everybody knows what to expect

yeah same thing happened to me when i first started checking into nets, the silence after you unkey feels like forever even when its only two seconds. one thing that helped me was i literally wrote out what i was going to say on a sticky note and stuck it next to my radio before the net started. felt silly but it worked and after a few weeks i didnt need it anymore.

congrats and welcome. that feeling when someone actually comes back to you the first time is something you dont really forget. dont worry about the callsign thing, everyone fumbles it at first, ive heard guys whove been licensed 20 years still occasionally blank on it when theyre tired. the baofeng is totally fine to start on, dont let anyone pressure you into buying gear before youre ready. get comfortable on the repeater first, maybe look into what linked repeater systems are in your area if you want to reach a bit further. and if theres a local club, seriously worth showing up even once just to put faces to callsigns.

Great point about measuring across the band. I've seen too many hams tune for 146.52 and wonder why their repeater contacts on 147.9 are poor. It's a good idea to choose an aerial that has wide bandwidth of low SWR, even at the expense of small decrease in gain.

one thing i havent seen mentioned much is working the greyline windows. when i was going after a pacific one last year i basically built my whole schedule around the greyline timing at both ends and it made a huge difference — the pileup thins out because a lot of EU and NA stations just arent in the right window at the same time as you. yeah it takes some planning but if you can be one of 20 callers instead of one of 200 that math is just better lol. also the propagation tends to be stronger anyway so you're not fighting as hard.

so i finally did it after like two years of saying i was gonna get my license i actually sat down and studied for a few weeks and passed the technician exam last tuesday. got my callsign in the ULS like four days later which i heard used to take forever so that was nice. anyway i borrowed my neighbors HT, a baofeng uv-5r thing, and he helped me program in the local repeater. yesterday i just keyed up and said my callsign and this older guy came back to me and we talked for maybe 10 minutes about nothing really, just signal reports and weather and what radio i was using. felt kind of silly but also really cool? hard to explain. he was super patient with me fumbling through the exchange. i dont really know what im doing next, maybe save up for something better than the baofeng eventually. just wanted to share i guess since ive been lurking here forever

so ive been slowly working through the Experimental Methods in RF Design book for like two years now and i finally sat down and built a regenerative receiver for the 40m band. used a jfet design i found in an old QST article, wound my own coil on a pvc form with some 26 awg i had lying around. thing actually works which honestly surprised me my problem is the regeneration control is really touchy. i mean i can get it into oscillation fine and pull in SSB no problem but the sweet spot between just-below-oscillation and full on squealing is like a millimeter of pot travel. ive tried swapping the 100k regen pot for a 10-turn pot and it helped a little but not much. someone mentioned the tickler coupling ratio might be off — i used about a 4:1 ratio primary to tickler which i just guessed at. is there a better starting point for 40m or does it depend on the jfet im using also running it off a 9v battery right now and wondering if a cleaner regulated supply would help at all or if thats not really where the problem is

so ive been running Log4OM for about two years now and genuinely like it for day to day logging, the interface doesnt make me want to throw my keyboard across the room which is more than i can say for some other options. but every time contest season rolls around i end up having to fire up N1MM anyway because thats just what everyone seems to use and the integration with the contest exchange stuff is way better. my problem is keeping the two in sync — ive got dupes showing up in Log4OM after i import my ADIF from N1MM and it's not always catching them cleanly. also been playing with WSJT-X more lately and that adds another layer because now im juggling three different log files basically. WSJT-X writes to its own log, N1MM has its contest logs, Log4OM is supposed to be the master but honestly at this point i dont even know which one is the source of truth anymore. anyone else deal with this or am i just overcomplicating it. i know some guys just use N1MM for everything including daily logging but it always felt like overkill for a random tuesday afternoon 40m QSO

Grabbed the new repeater directory - the RepeaterBook integration is a huge improvement! Much more accurate than previous editions and the digital mode coverage is comprehensive. Also eyeing that Comet HFJ Mini Tripod for portable ops - looks perfect for POTA activations at 6.6 pound capacity.

the overpacking thing is so real, i did the same thing my first few activations. took me probably three or four before i figured out what i actually use versus what just makes me feel better having it in the car. now my go-kit is honestly pretty stripped down compared to what it used to be, a couple HTs, a mobile rig, some feedline and a portable antenna, batteries and a way to charge them. that covers like 90% of what i've actually needed in the field. the EOC assignments are good for getting your feet wet without too much chaos. shelter assignments can get a little more hectic depending on the situation, had one a few years back during an ice storm where the net traffic volume just kept climbing and it was hard to keep up logging everything properly. good experience though. sounds like your group has solid training which makes a huge difference when it counts.

Switching to simplex mid-exercise is no joke, especially if operators havent practiced it much. We did an exercise maybe three years ago where the simulated scenario was a complete repeater failure and half our team didnt even know the calling frequencies off the top of their heads — they were all just used to keying up on the machine. So now we dedicate at least one net a quarter to simplex operations only, just to keep that muscle memory there. Kind of boring but when you actually need it you're glad you did.

ha yeah the Q codes can be a lot at first. so they go back to the old telegraphy days, like way before voice was even a thing, and operators needed short ways to say common stuff over CW without tapping out whole sentences. QRM means interference from other stations, QRN is natural static and noise, QSB is when your signal is fading in and out, and QRZ is basically asking who's calling or who's there. QSL just means confirmed or acknowledged, yeah you got it right. the 73 thing is just a traditional sign off meaning best regards, no idea why 73 specifically, its just always been that way. OM means Old Man which sounds rude but its just how hams say fellow operator or buddy, doesnt matter how old you actually are. YL is Young Lady and thats what you call a female ham, XYL is ex-young-lady meaning wife. i know some folks take issue with the YL/XYL thing these days but its pretty ingrained in the hobby. theres a whole list of Q codes, probably like a hundred of them, but honestly most people only ever use maybe 15 or 20 regularly so dont worry about memorizing all of them

yeah the filtering thing is the real wall most people hit first. you need bandpass filters on both radios, ideally something like the 4O3A or ICE filters, not just a simple low pass. if you're running HF on both simultaneously the IMD from your own transmitter will basically deaf the receiver on radio 2 unless you have real band isolation. some guys also use separate antennas for each radio which helps enormously, like one beam and one vertical, just so you're not feeding RF back through a shared feedline as for the workflow, when i'm doing it i basically treat the run radio as the primary and dont touch it except to hit F1 every 8-10 seconds or whatever your rhythm is. radio 2 is where your attention actually goes between those CQ cycles. you tune around, find a dupe-free mult or a new station, log it, and you're back before the next response hopefully. the hardest part honestly isnt the technical setup its the mental discipline to not blow your run because you got distracted chasing something on radio 2. takes a few contests before it clicks. you'll lose rate the first time or two but stick with it

Great question! 5 watts to 7 dBi antenna (25W EIRP) is typically max recommended, but lower power works well too. Start low and only increase if you can't hear yourself clearly on the downlink.

im in the same boat built mine about 6 months ago and had the twisted connection thing happen to me, started getting like 2.8:1 SWR on a good day after maybe two months. pulled it down and the connection had basically oxidized into nothing. soldering fixed it immediately. also dont use regular electrical tape outdoors it just peels off, the self amalgamating stuff is way better like you said or that scotch 33+ at minimum.

As someone running modest power, if you're a little pistol running 100 watts to a wire, smart timing can help level the playing field. The key is when it's time to call, give your full call sign once - then stop and listen again. Patience and discipline matter more than raw power.

Field Day is a great place to start for sure, our club does it every year and we always have room for new folks to sit down and get some contacts, nobody cares if you mess up the exchange or lose the frequency or whatever. much lower pressure than a big DX contest that said dont count yourself out of CQ WW either. i was surprised how many stations came back to me when i was running low power. the DX stations are hungry for contacts and zone multipliers so they'll dig you out of the noise if you're even close to copyable. just make sure your logging software is set up before the contest starts, N1MM is what most people use and theres tutorials on youtube that helped me a lot when i was figuring it out

so this has been bugging me for a couple weeks now. i've got a kenwood TM-D710G hooked up and my position beacons are showing up fine on aprs.fi, digipeater is picking me up and everything looks normal from that end. but when i try to send messages to another station — my buddy about 30 miles away — he never gets them. and same thing in reverse, he can send to me and i dont see anything coming in on the radio display. we're both showing up on the network so it's not like we're deaf to the digi. i checked the path settings and im using WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 which should be fine for our area. the rig is set to the standard 144.390 and the TNC is definitely active because the beacons go out. just the messaging part that seems completely dead. anybody dealt with this before or have an idea what im missing here

that's really good to hear man. i've been sitting in on the training nets for our group for maybe 3 months and sometimes it feels like we're just going through the motions, like will this ever actually be used. good to know the repetition pays off. what radio were you running at the shelter, were you on HT or did you bring a mobile rig?

the lifepo4 math sounds about right but i'd bump up your estimate a little if you're doing any significant digital. js8call or winlink with a 100w radio on FT8 duty cycle can easily pull 15-18 amps just from the radio alone when transmitting. two 100ah packs should still cover you but dont cut it too close — you really want to avoid pulling these below 20% if you can help it, especially in cold weather. we ditched the generator entirely at our last exercise and ran a 200ah lifepo4 with a small 100w solar panel as a trickle source since it was a clear day. worked great, totally silent, and the net control guy actually commented on how clean the audio was compared to previous years when everyone had generators running nearby. think there was some RFI from the old genset honestly. on the antenna — i've used both. the EFHW is hard to beat for speed but if you know you're going to be jumping between 40 and 80 for real traffic handling, the linked dipole is worth the extra 10 minutes. tuner on an EFHW on bands it wasn't cut for can be kinda iffy depending on your feedline situation.

yeah i switched from flat to inverted V last spring mostly because i lost my far support in a windstorm and was too lazy to put it back up. been running the V since then and honestly cant tell much difference for the kind of operating i do which is similar to you, mostly midwest and east coast from here in ohio. i think people overthink this stuff sometimes. both work, both get out, just put it up and get on the air