Robert Johnson52

you mostly just pick them up over time honestly, but theres a handful you really do need to know early on or youll be lost. QRZ is probably the most common one youll hear on voice, it basically means "who is calling me" or sometimes just used to call CQ in a roundabout way. QSY means change frequency, QRT means youre shutting down or stopping transmission, QTH is your location. those four right there will cover a huge chunk of what you hear day to day. the 88 thing is kind of old school ham slang for "love and kisses" and its usually used between people who know each other well or sometimes toward a female operator, though you dont hear it as much anymore. 73 is best regards basically, not really goodbye specifically even though everyone uses it that way. and yeah 55 means good luck but almost nobody uses that one. the Q codes go way back to maritime and telegraph days so theres a whole long list of them but most are pretty obscure and you wont hear half of them in regular use.

yeah honestly 40 has felt off to me too lately but i chalked it up to my antenna situation since i just redid the feedline and wasnt sure if i made things worse. good to know its not just me maybe. i did catch a pretty decent opening last saturday morning around 0800 local and worked a few guys down in florida no problem so its not totally dead i guess just hit or miss

What kind of caps are you using in the oscillator? If theyre ceramic disc types they probably have terrible temp drift too which makes the whole problem worse. NPO ceramics or silver mica would be much better. Also where is the crystal mounted - if its right next to any heat generating components that could be part of your problem.

yeah the logging in Winlink Express is actually pretty useful, go to Tools then Session Log and you can watch what's happening in real time or review the last session. most of the time when i see that partial handshake and drop issue its either a timing problem with the TNC or the gateway is just busy and not responding because someone else grabbed it first. the RMS gateways only handle one connection at a time so if another station is using it youll just get nothing. the frequency offset thing is worth checking too. some TNC-X units have a calibration issue and if youre off even a little the gateway wont decode you right. theres a tone calibration thing you can do with a handheld tuner or even just listen to your own audio on another receiver. also double check your TX delay setting, too short and your radio hasnt fully keyed up before the TNC starts sending data. i usually set mine around 300ms and that seems to work on most rigs.

not overkill at all, ive seen guys do way more complicated stuff for less reason lol. i built something similar but i went with a raspberry pi zero W instead of arduino because i wanted it to be network accessible so i can switch antennas from the shack PC or from my phone if im out back doing something. runs a tiny flask server, nothing fancy, just a webpage with buttons that toggle GPIOs. the pi drives a ULN2003 darlington array to actually switch the relays because you dont want to sink relay coil current directly through the GPIO pins, they cant really handle it reliably. the noise thing is real though. took me a while to track mine down and it ended up being the 5v wall wart i was using for the whole setup was just noisy as heck. switched to a proper linear regulated supply and most of the interference went away. cheap switchers are terrible near radio gear, learned that the hard way.

just passed mine last month so pretty fresh in my memory. the exam itself felt pretty similar difficulty to Tech if im being honest, maybe slightly harder but not dramatically so. i used the Gordon West book and also did the practice tests on QRZ which i thought were decent. one thing i wasnt expecting is that once you pass you can actually operate HF on General privileges immediately, like before your license even shows up in the ULS database if a volunteer examiner signs your temporary cert. so dont wait around thinking you need the paper license first. get on the air as soon as you pass, thats half the fun of upgrading

yeah the two-logger approach is pretty much what most contesters end up doing honestly. N1MM is just hard to beat for serious contest operating, the bandmap integration and the multiplier tracking is on another level compared to anything else. Log4OM is great but its not really built for the pace of a contest. what i do is run N1MM during the contest, export the ADIF at the end, import into Log4OM and let it sort out the dupes on import. never had a serious problem with that workflow. occasionally a QSO shows up twice if i tested a few contacts before the contest started and forgot to clear the log but thats user error not a software problem. on the WSJT-X thing — N1MM does handle the UDP differently in some ways, like you have to be careful about which port WSJT-X is broadcasting on and make sure N1MM is listening on the same one. the default is 2237 i think but ive seen setups where something else grabbed that port. if you ever see N1MM not picking up the FT8 QSOs that's usually the first thing to check

yeah i was in the same boat when i started and honestly LoTW is worth the setup pain if you ever want to chase DXCC. i put it off for like a year and then when i finally sat down and did it it wasnt as bad as i thought, there are some good youtube walkthroughs that made the certificate part click for me i personally use all three just because why not, uploading an ADIF file to eQSL takes like two minutes and some people only check there. paper cards i mostly just keep from the ones i receive, i do send them out occasionally especially for first contacts with certain countries or if someones bureau card shows up in my mailbox, feels wrong not to reply to a physical card

yeah the self spotting thing tripped me up on my first couple activations too. i downloaded the SOTA Goat app and it works great when i have signal but half the summits i do the cell coverage is basically nonexistent. i ended up just texting my wife before i left the car and she spots me from home using the app, works really well as long as im roughly on schedule which... doesnt always happen when im scrambling up a hillside with a pack on haha. anyway nice work getting it done, 6 contacts is plenty to qualify and the first one is always the most stressful one.

so ive been a technician for about two years and just upgraded to general a few months ago and i always told myself id learn morse even though its not required anymore. well i finally bought a cheap set of iambic paddles off ebay and a little keyer and ive been practicing with the K7QO code course which everyone seems to recommend. heres my problem — when i copy audio im slowly getting better but when i actually key anything it sounds like garbage. like i know in my head what the letter should be but my hand doesnt cooperate. is this normal? i tried slowing the keyer way down to like 8 wpm but then i start counting dits and dahs in my head which i know is wrong. someone at the club said just push through it but that feels bad too. also not sure if im holding the paddle wrong or what, nobody at my club really does CW anymore. anyway any advice from people who actually went through this would be great. not trying to be a contest operator just want to make some actual QSOs someday

one thing nobody told me when i started on SSB — get someone to give you an actual on-air report while you make adjustments in real time. like have a local buddy on freq and just talk through your settings together. reading numbers off a meter only gets you so far, what matters is how it sounds at the other end. i spent weeks tweaking stuff based on ALC readings alone and it was only when my elmers club buddy told me i was sounding way better that i knew i actually fixed it. the 7300 monitor function helps some but its not the same as hearing yourself through another receiver across a real path.

so ive been on HF for about two years now mostly doing digital but lately been trying to get into SSB phone and honestly the reports i get back are not great. people keep saying i sound like im in a barrel or that theres a low hum behind my voice. im running an IC-7300 into a dipole and using the stock mic that came with the radio, the HM-219 or whatever its called. ive messed with the TX bandwidth settings a little bit and turned off the bass boost that was on by default but beyond that i dont really know where to start. i know the 7300 has a ton of audio processing options in the menus and ive read that people run very different settings depending on their voice. is there a good baseline to start from or is this just one of those things where you have to have someone on the other end giving you real-time reports while you tweak also wondering if the stock mic is the problem or if thats a rabbit hole im not ready to go down yet. i dont want to spend money on a new mic if the real issue is just my settings being wrong.

honestly same question when i started lol. i just kind of do it when i feel like the other person might not catch a letter, like over a noisy path or if someones just getting started and might not recognize my call. one thing i picked up though is during nets they usually want phonetics every time you ID, the NCS will often ask for it if you dont. took me a couple sessions to figure that out the embarassing way

yeah the tuning thing trips everyone up at first. the way i do it — and this works for me on AO-7 mode B anyway — is i just watch the downlink beacon and keep that locked in place by tuning my receiver, then i let gpredict handle the uplink correction automatically through rig control. the 847 handles split doppler pretty well if you set it up right in gpredict, theres a setting for it somewhere in the rig control dialog. the lag you're describing is real though. gpredict isnt doing true real-time doppler, its recalculating on a set interval. i think the default is like every 500ms or maybe a second. you can dig into the settings and lower that interval but honestly for most LEO passes the rate of change isnt so fast that half a second matters much except right at AOS and LOS when the doppler is swinging hardest. mid pass its pretty stable. just dont expect it to be perfect and you'll be fine

totally get the confusion, i went through the same thing when i was starting to chase dx seriously. the short answer is they're mostly pulling from the same underlying network of cluster nodes so you'll see a lot of overlap between QRZ spots and DXwatch and the others. the difference is really in how they present the info and what filtering options they give you. DXwatch is actually pretty nice because you can filter by band and mode and it has that color coding for entities you need vs ones you already have if you link it to your log. QRZ's spot page is fine but i find it a bit cluttered personally. some people really like dx.qsl.net or dxmaps for visualizing propagation alongside spots. the telnet thing is worth it eventually especially if you get into contesting or serious dx chasing because it updates way faster than any website and integrates right into your logging software so you can just click a spot and it tunes your radio. but dont stress about it right now, the websites work fine for getting started and figuring out how it all works first

i just got mine last spring and tbh im still not sure i understand half the theory lol. but i passed so theres that. the 50 ohm impedance stuff and the filter questions were the ones that got me, i kept mixing up bandpass and notch filter responses on the diagrams. just kept drilling the question pool until i could recognize the answers even if i couldnt fully explain why. the extra HF segments are real though, i noticed it right away on 40 meters especially at night when things get crowded

honestly i was in the same boat when i started. the one that tripped me up forever was QRN vs QRM, i kept mixing them up. i just eventually remembered it as RM = man-made (the M) and RN = natural. probably dumb but it worked for me lol also QRO is the opposite of QRP, means running high power. you see that a lot in contest threads when people are debating whether someone was running legal limits

so i finally did my first solo activation at a local state park yesterday, K-2345 if anyone knows it, and it went... okay? i made 12 contacts which i know is enough to count but i kind of felt like i was fumbling around the whole time. my setup was a KX2 with a random wire thrown over a branch and i was running about 5 watts. the thing that confused me most was the spotting stuff. i spotted myself on the POTA app before i started and got a few hunters calling in pretty quick which was great, but then after like 20 minutes the pile kind of dried up and i wasnt sure if i should respot myself or wait or what. ended up just respotting and that brought a few more people in. is that normal? like how often do people typically respot during an activation also had one guy calling way off frequency which i couldnt figure out, kept hearing him underneath someone else and i think he might have been on the wrong vfo or something. didnt want to embarass him on air so i just let it go. anyway overall pretty happy with it but would love any tips from people who do these regularly

so i've been slowly piecing together a direct conversion receiver for 40m over the past couple months, mostly following Wes Hayward's stuff from Experimental Methods but modifying a few things based on what parts i had on hand. got it working last weekend and honestly pretty stoked about it, can hear SSB and CW just fine, selectivity is obviously limited but its a DC receiver so what do you expect anyway my issue is the LO leakage. i'm using a simple Colpitts oscillator running around 7.1 MHz feeding a doubly balanced mixer i breadboarded up with some 1N4148s and a couple of small toroids. the mixer seems to work but i can pick up my LO signal on another receiver sitting across the room, like a good 10-15 feet away. i know some leakage is basically unavoidable but this feels like a lot. my shielding is pretty minimal right now, just a tin altoids can for the oscillator section, not sure if that's the problem or if the mixer balance is off. anyone dealt with this before? the DBM balance is kind of fiddly to adjust and im not sure im doing it right tbh also separate question — whats the practical limit on image rejection with a direct conversion design, i know its fundamentally limited but trying to understand if what im seeing is normal

totally normal to be confused by this stuff at first, honestly even some folks whove been licensed for years get fuzzy on the details. the 10 minute rule is kind of the outer limit, not a target, so you dont need to be counting down a timer. in practice on a net youre going to ID at check-in and when you sign off and thats usually more than enough to stay legal because the exchanges are short anyway. the NTS traffic thing is its own whole world, those formal nets have their own procedures that can feel weird if youre used to casual ragchew or a simple info net. some of those ops are just very by-the-book and thats fine, it serves a purpose when traffic actually needs to get somewhere reliably. as for missing your check-in, waiting for the second call-round is the polite move yeah. most net controls will do a second pass specifically for folks who didnt get in the first time. jumping in mid-net can step on someone else if youre not careful, especially if the frequency is busy. just wait it out, net control usually appreciates people who dont cause chaos on the frequency