Steven Kumar

honestly the math looks scarier than it is. theres only a handful of actual calculation questions and you can kind of learn to recognize the pattern without fully understanding the theory behind it. hamstudy.org is where i'd point you first, just grind the question pool until you're consistently hitting 85% or better on the practice exams and you'll be fine.
the electrical theory stuff like reactance and impedance, you dont need to be an engineer to get through the exam. just know enough to pick the right answer. i spent maybe 3 weeks studying on and off in the evenings and passed with room to spare. the privileges you get on HF are absolutely worth the effort, 40m especially is great once you have your General ticket.

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.

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

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?

so ive been messing around with remote station control for a while now, got a basic setup running at home where i can hit my IC-7300 over the LAN but i want to take it further and actually use RemoteHams to expose it to the internet properly. the SDR side is what im fuzzy on. i have an RTL-SDR dongle sitting on the same machine as my RRC-1258 and im not totally sure how to get that panadapter data streaming out alongside the audio without it turning into a total mess.
the RemoteHams client software supposedly handles all this but every time i try to configure the SDR server piece it either cant find the device or it just hangs on connect. tried reinstalling twice. running windows 10, the dongle shows up fine in SDR# and in SDR Console so its not a driver thing. has anyone actually got the full chain working where you have the rig control, audio and the SDR panadapter all going over a single internet connection? curious how much bandwidth that actually chews through too because im on a 25 up at the shack end.

Classic common mode problem. Get a Mix 31 ferrite choke right at the radio - 10-15 turns of RG-213 through a big toroid. Also check your USB cable shielding to the computer. Sounds like your station grounding is adequate.

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.

Have you considered using the existing sixteen 10-footers but adding sixteen more at different lengths? Mix of 1/4 wave on different bands can broaden the effective ground plane bandwidth. I use 8, 10, 12, and 16-foot radials on my multiband vertical.

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.