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?

so ive had my 857 for a few years now and it's been solid but i keep seeing all these mods floating around and honestly dont know which ones are actually worth the time. did the mars/cap mod pretty early on just to open up the tx range and that was straightforward enough. but now im looking at the noise blanker mod and the AGC mod that W4UOA put together and im not sure if itll actually help on the bands im usually on (mostly 40m and 20m ssb, some 6m fm). also saw something about replacing the stock electrolytic caps on the PA board because apparently they go bad and cause all kinds of intermittent power output issues. mine hasnt had that problem yet but its probably a 2012 or 2013 unit so maybe its due. anyone actually done the cap replacement on a working radio preemptively or is that overkill the one mod i really want is better audio on rx because the stock speaker situation is just terrible but i know thats more of an external thing. anyway curious what mods people have actually done and stuck with vs ones that didnt make a noticeable difference

so ive been licensed for about 8 months now (technician) and i keep reading about CW and how a lot of older hams swear by it and i got kind of curious about trying to learn it. i dont have any background with it at all, like i genuinely dont even know the alphabet yet. i tried looking up some youtube stuff but theres so much out there and i cant tell whats actually useful versus just people talking about it. is there like a method that actually works for beginners or does it just take forever no matter what. someone at my local club mentioned something called koch method i think but i dont really know what that means. also do i need any special equipment to practice or can i do it on a phone or computer first before worrying about a key and all that

the difference between a good mag mount and a proper NMO hole mount is real but honestly for repeater work youre probably not going to notice it much unless the repeater is marginal. where it shows up more is on the noise floor, mag mounts can pick up more body noise from the car depending on the car. the coax routing matters a lot too, if youre running the cable through a door or window you're adding a potential noise source and also slowly damaging the coax over time. on a civic the roof is fine, plenty of people do center of roof mounts. trunk lip mounts are easier if you dont want to drill but you lose a bit because the ground plane isnt as clean. if you ever decide to do it properly id just go center of roof and use a good quality NMO mount with the right length pigtail. just take your time routing the coax and youll be happy with it. the install looks way cleaner too which is kind of satisfying after doing all that other work.

I just passed mine last month so im basically in the same boat as you were a little while ago. I used the ARRL technician manual and also the hamstudy site that everyone recommends and that combo worked really well for me. one thing I'd say is find a local club because they often run license classes and the instructors can answer questions in real time which helped me a lot with the antenna and propagation stuff I kept getting confused on. also the VE sessions through clubs are usually only like 15 bucks so even if you dont pass first try its not a huge loss, but you'll probably pass

so i finally participated in a simulated emergency test through our local ARES group and honestly i went in thinking i was pretty prepared and came out feeling like a complete beginner again, which I guess is kind of the point right we were doing a scenario where the EOC had lost all commercial power and internet and we had to pass health and welfare traffic through a net to a neighboring county. sounds simple enough on paper but when you're actually doing it with real message forms and real time pressure and someone is reading you a Winlink message over voice because the digital link went down... it's a different thing entirely the biggest thing that tripped me up was just the ICS stuff. like i know what ICS is, i took the FEMA courses online, but when the net control starts asking for your resource status and wants it in a specific format i completely blanked. also our group was using a mix of HF and VHF and there was this whole period where nobody could hear the HF net control and we burned probably 20 minutes just trying to figure out if it was a propagation issue or if he had equipment trouble. turned out he had accidentally bumped his mic gain down but we had no way to know that from our end anyway just wanted to share in case other newer folks are thinking about joining their local ARES or RACES group. definitely do it but also go in knowing youre gonna get humbled a little

so my buddy kept bugging me to try CQ WW with him this year and I finally said yeah sure why not. I have my general ticket and a pretty basic setup, IC-7300 into a dipole up maybe 30 feet, nothing fancy. I've done a little bit of Field Day before but only as a helper, never really operated the radio myself for more than a few contacts. honestly I dont really know what to expect with something like CQ WW. I've been reading about it and the exchange is zone numbers right? I looked up my CQ zone and I think im in zone 5 but I want to double check that. also is it worth jumping in even if you're just gonna be running search and pounce the whole time? I feel like I'd just be in the way of the serious contesters who actually know what theyre doing. any advice from people who've actually done it before would be great, especially for someone who's never really operated a contest from their own station

yeah the multi-tasking thing is real and nobody really warns you about it in the training sessions lol. i passed my tech like 14 months ago and joined ARES pretty much right away because that was the whole reason i got my ticket, but the monthly nets feel kind of abstract? like youre just checking in and calling it a night. actually being deployed somewhere even for something small is a totally different headspace. glad it went well for you, those runs are good practice events for sure

dont stress too much about it honestly, i was the same way when i got my general. just stay away from the very bottom of your phone segment and youll be fine. i think i read somewhere that the fcc looks at the suppressed carrier frequency for ssb so thats what you want to keep inside the band, but i might be slightly off on the exact technical details there so maybe double check that part. also just be aware that 40m at night gets really crowded with broadcast stations from overseas on certain parts of the band, which is partly why the band plan evolved the way it did in different regions. the iaru has region specific plans and north america is a bit different from europe so if you ever work dx on 40 you might notice guys operating in spots that seem weird from a us perspective

honestly you're not as far off as you think, at least for initial QSOs with the big gun stations. JT65B on 2m EME is doing a lot of the heavy lifting these days and there are stations running 4 x 19el arrays with a kilowatt that are actively hunting for small stations to work. your NF sounds solid which is actually half the battle on receive, and 500w is workable if your antenna has decent gain. the 17el yagi, whats the boom length and who made it? thats going to matter a lot. something like an M2 or a home brew based on DL6WU dimensions is going to be very different from a cheap commercial antenna with sloppy element spacing. if you can get your ERP up to maybe 300-400w equivalent into a antenna with 17-18 dBd youll show up in someones JT65 decode, especially during the big EME contests like the ARRL EME contest in the fall. i worked my first moon contact with a single yagi setup not too different from yours, took a while to find the right opportunity but it happened. the main thing id say is get on the logger at df2zc.de and start watching who is calling CQ on 144.120, youll get a sense pretty quickly of whos hearable from your location and which big stations to aim at first.

Did the front end mod on mine about 6 months ago and honestly cant say i notice much difference. Maybe slightly better on 20m but could be propagation who knows. The crystal thing is supposed to help with phase noise but ive never bothered with that one since you basically have to tear the whole radio apart