Emily Miller

yeah what the other person said about hamstudy is right but i'll add one thing -- dont skip the regulations questions even if they seem boring because there's a LOT of them on the test and they're actually pretty easy points if you just memorize them. stuff like what frequencies technicians can use on HF, power limits, when you have to ID, that kind of thing. it's all just rote memorization but it adds up fast. the electrical theory tripped me up a little when i was studying, i kept confusing myself on the parallel vs series circuit stuff. what helped me was watching a couple youtube videos on it rather than just reading. ham radio prep channel has some decent free videos that go through the whole question pool section by section if you learn better that way. anyway good luck, the test really isnt that bad once you've done a week or two of practice tests

i went from a ts-590sg to the 7300 and honestly still not sure i made the right call, the kenwood receiver is really really good and i miss some of the ergonomics. the icom touchscreen is great but sometimes you just want a physical knob for something and you end up poking around menus. different philosophy i guess. both solid radios though just depends what matters to you.

so this has been bugging me for probably three weeks now and im at the point where im just posting here because ive run out of ideas. my 7300 is transmitting fine, reports are good, power output looks normal on the meter, but the received audio has gotten really muddy and kind of muffled sounding. like if someone is on SSB it almost sounds like theyre underwater a bit. CW is fine weirdly enough, like i can copy CW no problem but voice modes are just rough. i already went through the menu and reset the AF filter settings back to default because i thought maybe i accidentally bumped something. didnt help. tried different headphones and the internal speaker, same thing on both. swapped out the USB cable too just in case something weird was going on there even though i dont think thats related. the radio is about 4 years old and has never been opened. no physical damage that i know of. just kind of gradually got worse over a few weeks rather than being a sudden thing. anyone dealt with something like this before?

so i finally got called up for an actual activation last weekend, not just a drill. county EOC needed backup comms for a flooding situation over on the east side and our ARES group got the call saturday morning around 6am. i've been doing the weekly nets and the SET exercises for about two years now and honestly was starting to wonder if any of it would ever amount to a real deployment. glad i kept at it though because when it actually happened i felt way more prepared than i expected. the ICS stuff they make you do, the IS-100 and IS-200 courses, i kind of rolled my eyes at all that paperwork stuff when i was going through it but having a actual incident commander to report to and knowing how to pass traffic in the right format made everything just... work. nobody was stepping on each other, information was actually getting where it needed to go. one thing that caught me off guard was how much time you spend just waiting and monitoring. i think i was expecting it to feel more hectic but mostly it was long stretches of listening and making sure you were ready when needed. also my jump kit which i thought was totally dialed in had like three things i wished i had and two things i never touched. gonna have to rethink that. anyway if anybody here is on the fence about joining their local ARES group or thinks the training is kind of tedious, i'd say stick with it. the repetition is the point i guess.

dont know what it is but the last few weeks ive just been spending way more time at the radio than i have in probably two years. been hitting 40m in the evenings mostly, just chatting with whoever i can find, nothing special. had a great ragchew last tuesday with a guy in montana who was running a vintage drake setup and we just talked for like an hour and a half about nothing in particular. maybe its the season changing or maybe im just tired of staring at screens for work all day but the radio feels different right now. more personal i guess. anyway just wondering if anyone else goes through these phases or if its just me being weird about it

so ive been using WSJT-X for a while now mostly for FT8 and it logs to its own adif file which is fine for casual stuff but i got talked into entering the ARRL DX contest this year by a guy at my club and now im trying to figure out what logging software to actually use for a real contest environment my buddy runs N1MM and swears by it, says its the industry standard or whatever for contesting, but i looked at Log4OM and it seems a lot more polished on the surface and handles general logging day to day better which matters to me since i dont want two separate programs for contest vs normal operation main thing im worried about is dupes and the real-time scoring stuff, i was watching someone run a contest station last field day and they had everything just populating automatically, rate meter, multipliers, the whole deal and im not sure Log4OM does all that to the same degree? also does WSJT-X play nice with N1MM if i want to do FT8 contacts during a contest that allows digital modes, i remember reading something about UDP port conflicts or something but i cant remember where running windows 10, IC-7300 if that matters

so ive been using WSJT-X for FT8 for about a year now and it logs to its own file which is fine but i keep meaning to get a proper logging program set up and i cant decide between N1MM and Log4OM and honestly every thread i find is either ancient or written by someone who clearly works for one of the developers or something my situation is i do maybe 3 or 4 contests a year, nothing serious, mostly ARRL CW stuff and occasionally a VHF contest when the band is doing something interesting. rest of the time its just ragchew and some digital. i want something that plays nice with WSJT-X so the FT8 contacts dont live in a totally separate universe from everything else from what i can tell N1MM is basically the gold standard if you live and breathe contests but its kind of overkill and the interface looks like it was designed in 2003 which it basically was. Log4OM looks nicer but ive seen people say the contest support is kind of an afterthought. anyone actually use both and have a real opinion that isnt just repeating what the websites say

yeah the priority system is real but for most people applying for a vanity it doesnt really apply unless youre in one of those special categories you mentioned. for a regular new ham wanting a nicer call its basically first come first served within the application window, and the window opens up 18 days after a call becomes available i believe. so its not quite a lottery but if a really desirable call opens up you can bet a bunch of people are going to be filing applications the same day and then yeah it kind of becomes luck of the draw among qualified applicants. and yes you can apply for calls in any district now, that changed a while back. you dont have to live in the 4 district to get a Kx4xx call or whatever. just make sure whatever call youre looking at is actually available — there are sites like AE7Q that let you search available calls and when they become available, that site saved me a ton of time when i was looking for mine. good luck with it, the process isnt too bad once you wrap your head around it.

Having trouble with N1MM+ and WSJT-X integration during contests - specifically the dupe checking isn't working properly and multipliers aren't being highlighted correctly. Using the standard UDP port 2237 configuration and followed the official setup guide. The contest mode is set to include DIGITAL modes and the WSJT Decode List window opens but the highlighting seems intermittent. Running IC-7300 with N1MM+ 1.0.9995 and WSJT-X 2.6.1. Have configured both the Mode Control page and WSJT/JTDX Setup page properly. Anyone else experiencing similar issues with recent versions?

the noise thing is real but its not the whole story. a vertical is omnidirectional which means it hears everything equally, including all the local noise sources from every direction. a dipole has those nulls off the ends so depending on where your noise is coming from it can help a lot. in a suburban lot i'd lean dipole just for that reason alone. that said 25-30 feet for 40m is not great, you're going to have a pretty high radiation angle which means less DX and more regional stuff. for ragchewing that might actually be fine depending on what distances you're working. if you're mostly talking to guys in your section or neighboring states a lower dipole does fine, it's basically a NVIS antenna at that height which honestly works great for that use case. the inverted-v version might also be worth considering if your center support is the tallest point, drooping the ends down gets them out of the way and the pattern isn't terrible. i ran one at about 28 feet for two years before i got my tower sorted out and worked plenty of stations with it.

so ive been at this for about 6 weeks now and can copy maybe 10-12 wpm on a good day but my sending is just embarrassing. im using a cheap single lever paddle i picked up on ebay and i wonder if thats part of the problem or if its just me being bad at this. the letters i mess up most are C and Y and anything with a bunch of dahs in a row, my spacing gets all weird. been using the K1EL keyer chip in a little kit i built and i think the settings are fine but honestly i dont really know what im doing with the iambic modes. someone at the club told me to try mode A instead of mode B but didnt really explain why. anyone been through this and come out the other side actually able to send decent code?

ok so ive been licensed for about 4 months now and i keep seeing and hearing these Q codes and abbreviations and honestly half the time i have no idea whats being said. like i know QSL means like... confirming the contact? and QTH is location i think. but then people on the nets are saying stuff like QRM and QRN and QSB and i just nod along pretending i get it. and its not just Q codes either, theres all this other shorthand like 73 and 88 and OM and YL and DE and honestly it feels like learning a whole second language on top of already learning the radio stuff. is there like a good reference somewhere or do people just pick this up over time. also someone said QRP to me the other day and i wasnt sure if they were asking me something or just telling me about their setup

yeah im planning to be there, i go pretty much every year. they did bring some stuff inside i think but the tailgate is still happening last i heard. the club newsletter mentioned they're doing a fox hunt in the morning before the main event which sounds fun. parking was kind of a mess last time so get there early if you want a decent spot near the entrance

yeah i go every year, its honestly more about seeing people than the gear at this point lol. the swap meet has gotten a little thin the last few years but the forums are usually decent depending on whos presenting. think this year they have someone doing a talk on POTA activations which should be good carpool sounds fine to me, im up in the north end of town so if thats on the way for anyone hit me up

honestly Field Day was probably the best thing you couldve done first, even with someone next to you. the fact that you got actual contacts under your belt matters more than people realize. CQ WW is great but yeah the zone thing trips everybody up at first — i'd suggest just downloading a copy of the rules and a zone map and taping it next to your radio. after the first hour it starts to click. your ts-480 and a dipole is more than enough to make contacts, especially if you go in on saturday morning when the bands are fresh and everyones still warming up. dont stress about the score at all for your first one, just aim for like 50 contacts and see how it feels. the ARRL Sweepstakes is also coming up and some folks find the exchange a bit more forgiving to learn since its all domestic, might be worth a look before jumping into a worldwide event. either way just get on the air and have fun with it, the learning curve flattens out faster than you'd think.

so this has been driving me nuts for about two weeks now. picked up an FT-857D off a local swap, guy said it was working fine but honestly i think he just hadnt noticed the problem. receive on all HF bands is basically dead, like S0 noise floor and nothing coming through even on 40m which should be wall to wall signals here. VHF and UHF receive works perfectly fine which is what makes this weird. TX appears to work, hooked it up to a dummy load and the power meter shows normal output on all bands, SWR looks good. so its not a finals issue or at least doesnt seem like one. i swapped the antenna just to rule out the obvious and same result. also tried a second antenna feed line, nothing changed. my gut says its somewhere in the RX frontend on the HF side, maybe the bandpass filter switching or the preamp section but i dont have a schematic in front of me right now. anyone dealt with this on an 857? the shared TX/RX architecture on these always makes tracing stuff a bit annoying.

honestly the general exam isnt that bad if you put a couple weeks into it. the math sections look scarier than they are — most of it is ohms law stuff and some basic decibel calculations and theres really only a handful of those questions on the actual pool. i used HamStudy.org and just drilled questions every day for like two weeks during my lunch break and passed no problem. the regulations section trips some people up more than the technical stuff in my opinion. the HF privileges are totally worth it by the way. first time i made a contact on 40m after upgrading it was like a completely different hobby. good luck with it

yeah dont sweat it at all, nets are supposed to be welcoming especially for newer folks. i checked into my first net without even knowing what a traffic net was vs a casual ragchew net and ended up confused why everyone was being so formal lol. different nets have pretty different vibes so if you stick with it youll get a feel for each one pretty quick.

So ive been licensed about 8 months now and i'm starting to get confused about all the different ways to confirm contacts. I set up LoTW pretty early on because everyone kept saying thats the one that counts for DXCC and stuff, but then people keep mentioning eQSL and i signed up for that too and now i have like three different places i'm supposed to be checking and uploading logs to and honestly its a bit overwhelming. And then actual physical QSL cards on top of that. I got a few in the mail and they're really cool actually, like getting a little piece of radio history or something. But i dont fully understand the bureau system — do i need to send cards through my local club or can i just mail them directly? And is it worth printing my own cards or is that something most people just do for special occasions. Basically i'm just wondering what the day to day workflow looks like for people who've been doing this a while. Do you upload to all of them every time or just pick one?