Susan Davis

yeah your club guy is right about the visual thing, thats kind of the classic trap. you want your brain to associate the sound directly with the letter, not go sound -> dots and dashes -> letter, that middle step never goes away if you build it in from the start and it absolutely kills your ability to copy anything above like 5 wpm the method most people swear by now is Koch method, and honestly just go straight to lcwo.net, its free and its set up around that approach. the basic idea is you start with just two characters but you learn them at full speed, like 20 wpm, instead of learning everything slow. sounds backwards but it works because your brain learns the rhythm and sound of each character instead of counting dits and dahs. took me probably three or four months of doing 15-20 minutes a day before i felt like i was actually copying in my head instead of just reacting to sounds also look up the Morse Code Ninja stuff on youtube, that guy has a whole progression of files you can work through and its really well structured. just dont burn yourself out doing two hour sessions, short and consistent beats long and occasional every time with this stuff

so ive been trying to get into CW for about 3 months now and i finally feel like im sending something that resembles actual morse code, but the timing still feels really off. im using an old Bencher BY-1 paddle i picked up at a hamfest and a Winkeyer USB connected to my rig. the problem is when i try to send anything faster than like 15wpm it just turns into mush, like my dashes are running into the next character or something. i adjusted the weight setting in the software but i honestly cant tell if im making it better or worse. at lower speeds like 10-12wpm it sounds decent but the moment i try to bump it up everything falls apart. is this a keyer settings issue or is it just my paddle technique? i cant really tell from listening to myself if the issue is mechanical or software. any advice would be helpful, ive been at this for a while and its starting to get a little frustrating

just passed mine like three months ago. the math parts were what got me, some of the impedance matching and reactance calculations took me a while to wrap my head around but tbh i probably overstuddied. if you already have a decent grasp of general class theory you're not starting from zero. biggest thing i noticed after getting it was being able to work the CW portions of the bands more easily even though im not a huge CW guy, just felt like more room to move around if that makes sense

yeah the noise from nearby inverters is a real thing, had that bite us at a public service event, took forever to figure out it wasnt even our gear. your buffered battery plan sounds solid. one thing id mention on the Chameleon vertical for 40m, have you tried counterpoise wires even on pavement? i know it says no radials needed but in my experience on lower bands laying out even 2 or 3 quarter wave wires flat on the ground still helps noticeably. doesnt have to be buried or anything. might get you some of that signal you feel like youre missing without swapping the whole antenna setup

yeah i caught the tail end of that opening, was on 28.400 and suddenly the noise floor just dropped and signals started popping up. worked a LU station pretty easily which never happens on a random saturday for me. my antenna situation isnt great right now (long story, HOA stuff) so anytime 10 opens like that its kind of a treat because even my compromise setup can do something useful. on the icom thing, ive seen the same rumors floating around. someone posted what looked like a blurry photo of something on one of the facebook groups but honestly could have been anything. ill believe it when i see a real press release. though i will say if they do update the 7300 i might actually have a hard time not pulling the trigger, my current rig is getting a bit long in the tooth.

okay so i just got my technician license about three weeks ago and ive been trying to get on the local 2m repeater but i cant seem to get anyone to come back to me. i programmed in the frequency and offset fine i think, 146.820 with a -600 offset, but i read somewhere you also need a CTCSS tone to access most repeaters and i have no idea if i set that right or even what tone to use. i found the repeater on repeaterbook and it listed a tone of 100.0 hz but when i key up and say my call nobody responds. not sure if its a dead repeater, or if im not getting in, or if people are just not around. my radio is a baofeng uv-5r and i set the tone in the menu but honestly the menu system on that thing is a nightmare and i might have done it wrong. is there a way to test if youre actually hitting the repeater or am i missing something obvious here

i had almost the exact same thing happen with my first homebrew inverted V, ended up just using an LDG tuner between the radio and feedline and called it a day. not the most elegant solution but it works and i stopped obsessing over the numbers lol. what height are your end supports at? mine were dragging pretty low at first and i think that was absorbing some signal too

yeah just get on and make some noise, thats all there is to it honestly. i remember my first CQ WW i was terrified of doing something wrong and i think i made like 60 contacts total and was thrilled. nobody is judging you out there, everyone was new once one thing i'll say is keep an eye on the ARRL contest calendar and the WA7BNK contest calendar site, they list everything coming up with links to rules. there's also usually some SOTA summits that overlap with contest weekends which can be fun if you want to do a portable activation and also pick up some contest contacts at the same time. i did that once during a state QSO party and it was a blast even though my signal from the summit was only like 5 watts

congrats on your first activation, 34 contacts on a first outing is really solid especially if conditions werent cooperating. to answer your question — it's 44 unique callsigns, so duplicate contacts from the same station dont count toward your total unfortunately. a lot of activators dont realize that at first and it can be a bit deflating when you recount but 34 is still a great start and youll hit 44 next time no problem. as for WWFF vs POTA the programs are run independently and have slightly different rules, the contact thresholds and logging requirements arent always the same. WWFF references tend to be more internationally focused and some references overlap with national parks programs in other countries. the park to park thing — in WWFF it's called a flora fauna to flora fauna contact (or something close to that) and yes it does count toward your 44 but the main thing is it also gets logged on both ends which is kind of cool. worth checking the WWFF operating guidelines PDF on their main site, its pretty readable and clears a lot of this up.

ha i did the exact same thing on my first day, keyed up right in the middle of someone else's exchange. mine was on a net too which made it even more awkward. welcome to the hobby though, it gets way less nerve wracking after the first few times

ran an RSP1A before the B came out, and before that had an RTL-SDR for a couple years. the difference in dynamic range is real, not imaginary. near strong broadcast FM stuff you'll notice it pretty quick especially if youre trying to work anything in the 160-10m range on HF. the RSP1B added the notch filters for MW and FM broadcast and that alone made a noticeable difference for me on 40m at night when the AM broadcast band is going crazy. SDRuno is honestly fine, its gotten better over the years but i mainly use it with SDR# via the ExtIO plugin just because im used to the interface. GQRX works too if youre on linux. the API is solid and most of the major software supports it now so you wont be locked in. that said if youre happy with the v4 for trunked scanning and NOAA there might not be a huge urgency. where youll really notice the RSP1B is HF and anything where you've got a strong nearby signal killing dynamic range. if thats bothering you now then yeah its worth the jump, if its not really an issue then save the money.

so ive been licensed about 8 months now and ive gotten like three different answers on this from three different people at the club. the FCC rule is every 10 minutes during a contact and at the end, i get that part. but what about on a net? like the net control already said my callsign when he acknowledged me, does that count? do i still need to say my full call at the end of my transmission every single time? and then theres the thing about phonetics — some guys at the club insist you always use standard ITU phonetics, no exceptions, and then ive heard other people on the air using like made-up fun phonetics and nobody seems to care. is there an actual rule about that or is it just a best practices thing i guess my bigger question is how strict are people really about all this in everyday operating vs what the rules technically say. i dont want to be that guy who does everything wrong but i also dont want to be annoying about it either

our club is actually doing a presentation there this year about APRS so if you see the LVARC table come say hi. we're always looking for new members and honestly hamfests are like the best place to just talk to people without feeling weird about it lol

congrats on the first successful kit build, those QCX minis are really solid little rigs. i built the full size QCX a few years back and had a similar experience, just works out of the box once you get the alignment done right. for the knob issue i just grabbed a random larger aluminum knob off amazon that happened to fit the shaft, made a huge difference. the tuning sensitivity you can actually adjust in the menu if i remember right, there's a setting for the steps per encoder click or something like that — worth digging into the manual for that part because mine was also way too twitchy at first. for portable ops i use mine with a 3ah LiFePO4 and a random wire with a 9:1 unun, whole setup fits in a medium sized stuff sack. you can run for a long time on those batteries at 5 watts, like seriously the math on it is really favorable. have fun with the parks stuff, that's where QRP really shines in my opinion.

so i've been doing ARES stuff for about two years now but this was my first time actually participating in a full SET (simulated emergency test) where our county EOC was actually involved and they had real staff there pretending to need our help with shelter comms and resource tracking. i thought i was pretty prepared honestly, had my go-bag dialed in, knew my frequencies, had backup power sorted out. what i did NOT expect was how chaotic the net control situation got when two different people thought they were running the net at the same time. like nobody's fault really it was just a coordination breakdown at the start and it took probably 15 minutes to sort out who had actual authority. we lost a lot of simulated time on that. also my logging was way behind because i was trying to do too much at once — handle traffic AND keep an accurate log. should have had a dedicated logger with me. the thing that stuck with me most though was when they threw in a curveball around hour three — simulated that repeater went down and we had to shift to simplex. half the team wasn't sure what our backup simplex frequency was supposed to be. we had it written in our plan but nobody had it memorized or easily accessible. so that's something i'm pushing for us to fix before the next exercise. anyone else been through stuff like this? what are the lessons that surprised you the most when you actually got into a real drill or deployment?