Robert Taylor83

ok so ive been licensed for about 3 months now (General) and i finally got a decent HT, a Yaesu FT-65 which i really like so far. anyway theres a 2m repeater listed in the RepeaterBook for my area and it shows a 100.0 Hz PL tone. i programmed that in and i can hear other people on it just fine but when i key up nobody responds and im not sure if im even hitting the repeater or just talking into the void. my question is — is the 100.0 tone the one i need to transmit, or is that the tone the repeater sends back to me? ive read a couple different things and now im more confused than when i started. also is there like a standard thing you say when you first get on a repeater? i dont want to be that guy who does it wrong

yeah 13 is the wall almost everyone hits, its super common and doesnt mean anything is wrong with you. what happens is below that speed you can kind of sound out letters in your head but to go faster you have to stop doing that and just recognize whole words and common patterns as single sounds. its a different skill basically and your brain needs time to rewire a bit. the pencil thing -- i'd say keep it but change what you write. instead of trying to copy every letter, just jot down key words, callsigns, numbers. let the filler words go. practicing with real QSOs is really good actually, better than random code in some ways because the language is predictable. you already kinda know someone's gonna say 599 or their name or QTH. that context helps your brain fill gaps. also try bumping your character speed way up, like to 20 or even 25wpm, but drop the overall word rate so theres longer gaps between words. farnsworth spacing its called. sounds weird but it trains your ear to hear faster characters without the panic of keeping up in real time. took me about 3 months to get from 13 to 18 doing that

so ive been messing with LEO sat ops for a few months now and finally got a decent enough setup to try AO-73. running a yaesu ft-818 for the uplink on 435 and a separate sdr++ on a v-dipole for the downlink around 145 mhz. tracking with gpredict which honestly works pretty well once you get the TLEs updated. the problem is i can hear the transponder passband fine, and i can even hear other stations working each other which is cool. but when i try to transmit i either cant find myself in the passband or i pop up way off from where i think i should be. ive got the doppler compensation running on gpredict and its supposed to be talking to my radio via hamlib but im not totally sure the rig control is actually doing anything. like the dial doesnt seem to be moving the way i expect during a pass. anybody run into this before with gpredict and an 818? wondering if its a hamlib config thing or if im just not understanding how the doppler correction should work on a linear bird. uplink and downlink doppler are obviously different frequencies and rates so im not clear on whether gpredict handles that automatically or if i have to set it up a certain way.

oh man the feeling of making a contact at QRP power is something else isnt it. i remember my first one and i kept thinking the other guy was going to say QRZ or ask me to repeat but nope just a clean exchange. kind of changes how you think about RF in general i cant really help much on the antenna question since im still figuring that out myself — i have a buddistick i've been experimenting with for portable but im not totally convinced its the best choice for low power, feels like it has a lot of loss. might just go back to a simple dipole hung from a tree or something

yeah the doppler thing on linear transponders trips everyone up at first. the trick is basically the opposite of what feels natural — you leave your downlink VFO alone and you move the uplink to find your signal. the transponder inverts the signal so as your uplink drifts one way the downlink goes the other, which is actually useful once you get your head around it because the doppler effects kinda cancel partially depending on the geometry of the pass. for AO-7 mode B your uplink is 432 and downlink is 145 so the doppler on those two bands is different enough that you really cant treat them the same. Gpredict can actually output doppler corrected frequencies if you have it set up to talk to your rig via hamlib, that helps a ton and takes most of the manual work out of it. even just having Gpredict open and manually nudging the uplink every 30 seconds or so is way better than trying to chase both at once. on your power question — 3-4 watts to a 3el should be enough to hit it on a decent pass, but near the horizon you might struggle. listen for other stations on the downlink passband first to confirm the bird is actually live, AO-7 has no battery so it only works when its in sunlight and it can go dark mid pass sometimes.

so ive been a tech for about 2 years now and mostly just do local 2m/70cm stuff, repeaters and some simplex, but ive been getting curious about HF and everyone keeps telling me to just get my General already. i downloaded the question pool and honestly some of it looks intimidating, like the stuff about impedance and transmission lines and all that. i passed the tech exam without too much trouble but i feel like General is a whole different thing. my question is basically, how long did it take you guys to study and what did you actually use to study? i found HamStudy.org and also there's that Gordon West book i keep seeing mentioned. is it worth buying the book or is just drilling the question pool enough? i dont really have a background in electronics, i work in IT so i get some of the networking analogies but the RF stuff kind of goes over my head. also once i actually get my General what bands should i even start on, like is 40m a good place to start for HF? sorry if this is all over the place im just trying to figure out where to start

so ive been messing around on 10m the past few weekends and getting some surprisingly decent contacts, like i worked a station in Brazil last Saturday with what felt like minimal effort on my end which honestly shocked me because i remember 10m being basically dead for years. my solar flux index has been hovering around 180-190 lately and the K index was pretty low that morning maybe a 1 or 2, so conditions were decent on paper i guess but i didnt really expect that kind of result with my setup which is just a modest dipole at about 25 feet. anyway im curious what other people are seeing on the higher HF bands right now. is this the solar cycle 25 peak everybody was talking about or are we still climbing toward it? i saw some predictions that said we might hit the peak sometime in 2025 or even push into 2026 but i honestly cant keep track of all the different forecasts. feels like every time i check the DXMaps website theres some interesting paths opening up that werent there a year ago. also been poking at 12m and 15m too with good results. just wondering if others are noticing the same thing or if i got lucky a couple times

so ive been messing with this for about three weekends now and i cant figure out what im doing wrong. built a simple center-fed dipole for 40m, each leg should be about 33.5 feet based on the 468/f formula, fed with about 50 feet of RG-8X down to the shack. got it up in an inverted-V config with the apex at maybe 30 feet off the ground which i know isnt ideal but thats what the tree allows. resonance is sitting around 7.4 MHz which is higher than i wanted, swr there is maybe 1.8:1 but down at 7.1 where i actually want to operate it climbs to like 3.5:1. my tuner handles it but something still feels off. i trimmed both legs the same length, connections look clean, balun is a simple 1:1 choke i wound myself on a FT-240-43 with about 8 turns. not sure if the balun is the problem or if i just need to add wire to both legs. anyone else dealt with this and what did i actually do wrong here

A short in the coaxial connectors may also be the culprit behind abnormally high SWR readings. Issues with the coaxial cables are often identifiable by eye, such as severe bends or pinches. You should know that it's essential to use 50-ohm coax for single antennas and 75-ohm for dual. When all else fails, sometimes it's necessary to replace the coax cable because there's a failure inside the line. RG58 isn't the greatest for VHF - consider upgrading to RG213 or LMR240 especially with a 15-foot run.

The gateways in the channel selector pull from a database that isnt always up to the minute accurate, yeah. Stations drop offline, sysops go on vacation, whatever. What i usually do is sort by last heard timestamp instead of just distance and pick something that was active in the last hour or two. Makes a big difference. Also the stalling after handshake thing — check your audio levels, that kills more Winlink sessions than anything else. Too hot on the TX side and VARA especially just falls apart. On the email question, yeah it works like regular email on their end. They can reply straight back and it routes through the CMS to you next time you connect and poll for messages. The one gotcha is attachments — keep them small, like under 120k or so if youre going over RF, otherwise it just gets ugly. For emcomm use its actually pretty solid once you have the path dialed in.

Just saw DX Engineering released several new amateur radio products for March 2026, including the latest repeater directory and some new test equipment. The ARRL Repeater Directory 2026 Edition is now powered by RepeaterBook with over 22,000 listings covering FM repeaters and digital systems like System Fusion, D-STAR, DMR, NXDN, M17, and P25. Also noticed they've been releasing 15 new products monthly since their 25th anniversary year including some interesting portable antenna accessories. Anyone picked up any of their recent releases? How's the build quality compared to previous years?

so ive been interested in ham radio for a while now, my neighbor has a big antenna setup and it got me curious. i looked it up online and theres like three different license levels? technician, general, and something else i forget. do i need to take a class or can i just study on my own and take the test. also how hard is the test actually, im not great at math or electronics stuff so im kind of worried about that part. any advice would be helpful i dont really know where to begin honestly

Okay so the LoTW thing is definitely worth the hassle of setting up even though yeah the certificate process is annoying the first time. Once you get through it though it basically runs itself, you just upload your ADIF from WSJT-X every now and then and it matches up automatically when the other station uploads too. For FT8 contacts especially it works really well because a lot of those operators are already on LoTW. eQSL i have set up too and i do use it but you're right that most of the big awards like DXCC wont count it. Its fine for just having a record and some people really like the digital card artwork. I wouldnt skip it but id definitely prioritize getting LoTW working first if DXCC or WAS is something you're interested in eventually. As for paper cards, honestly it depends on the person. I still love getting them in the mail, theres something about holding a card from like a station in the Azores that just feels different than clicking confirm on a website. But the cost adds up if youre requesting cards via the bureau or direct. I'd maybe wait until you have some contacts that really mean something to you before going that route.

Think of it this way: An inverted linear transponder reverses the ordering of frequencies between input and output. The Doppler shift shifts the input and output frequencies the same way, and so there is some cancellation due to the reversing effect of the transponder. This makes manual tuning much easier compared to non-inverting transponders.

yeah cut long and trim is definitely the move, i cut one to exactly calculated length my first time and it resonated about 40khz high and i had to splice in more wire which was a pain. also if you're using stranded wire the velocity factor is essentially 1.0 so the formula works fine, some people get confused because they think wire has a VF like coax does. one thing i'd add -- wind a few turns of the coax on a piece of PVC pipe right at the feedpoint if you dont have a proper balun. it's not perfect but it knocks down common mode current enough to make a noticeable difference. i did this on my first 20m dipole and it worked fine for over a year before i bothered building a proper choke balun.

so i've been putting off building one of these for like two years now, always told myself i'd get around to it, and last month i finally just ordered a QCX mini kit from QRP Labs and sat down and did it. took me about three evenings spread over a week, my soldering isnt the greatest but i followed the instructions pretty carefully and honestly the whole thing just worked first time i powered it up which i was NOT expecting. been running it portable a couple weekends now, just hiking out to a local park with a random wire thrown up in a tree and the little rig running off a small lipo pack. made a contact into michigan last saturday with like 4 watts on 40m and the other guy gave me a solid 579 which honestly felt like a bigger deal than any of the contacts i've made with my 100w base station. there's something about the whole low power thing that makes every contact feel a lot more satisfying, not sure how to explain it. anyway wondering if anyone else has been doing QRP portable stuff and has tips on antennas for field use. i've been reading about end-fed half waves and wondering if those are worth the hassle compared to just tossing a random wire up

congrats on the first activation, that feeling of getting your 10 and knowing the park counts is pretty great isnt it. the guy coming back multiple times was probably just a hunter who wanted to make sure you got his callsign right in the log, sometimes they'll call again if they think the exchange was rough or if they werent sure you copied them correctly. totally normal, dont read too much into it. on the logging question i personally use a small paper notepad for everything while im operating and then transfer it all into HAMRS or ADIF later when im back at the car. i find trying to type on a phone while youre also doing the radio thing just splits your attention too much, especially when you start getting a little pileup going. some people are great at it but i never got the hang of it. as for spotting yourself, yes you really should spot on POTA.app every time you move bands or even just to refresh your spot if its been 30 minutes or so. hunters are watching those spots constantly and if youre not on the map youre basically invisible. some will find you by scanning around but most are working off the activator list.

so i was just doing my usual morning check on pskreporter and noticed a huge cluster of 6m spots across the midwest and into the southeast, logged like 14 states in about 45 minutes which is more than i usually get in a whole week on that band. not sure if its an Es opening or what but the spots were showing some pretty long haul paths too, saw a few Caribbean stations showing up around 0900 local which got my attention fast. also heard a rumor that Icom is doing some kind of announcement next month, somebody on the reflector was talking about a possible successor to the 7300 but i have no idea if thats just wishful thinking or if theres actual substance to it. would not surprise me, that radio has been out for a while now and the market seems ready for something new. anyway if youre on 6m keep an eye on the DX clusters this week, conditions seem really favorable right now

Yeah I've noticed the same thing from here in colorado. Been spending more time on 40 in the evenings instead. Actually worked some good european stations on 40 around 0200z last week which was nice

ok so i just got my technician license last month and ive been trying to use the local FM repeaters but i keep hearing people talk but when i transmit nobody seems to hear me. i looked up the repeater info on repeaterbook and i see there's an offset and something called a CTCSS tone listed, like 100.0 hz or whatever. my radio is a baofeng uv-5r and i think i set the frequency right but im not sure if i set the tone correctly or if its even on at all. can somebody explain what the tone actually does and why repeaters need it? like is it just to keep the repeater from opening up on noise or is there more to it? and how do i know if my radio is actually transmitting the tone vs just not doing it. also is there a difference between CTCSS and DCS because i see both mentioned sometimes and honestly its a bit confusing sorry if this is a dumb question, still figuring all this stuff out

oh man i remember being exactly where you are, it felt overwhelming at first but once you just start submitting stuff and see the credits tick up it becomes kind of addicting honestly. one thing i wish somebody had told me early on is to make sure your LoTW certificate is set up correctly with the right callsign and the right dates, i had a mismatch early on and lost credit for like a dozen contacts that never matched properly also dont sleep on the lower bands for chasing new entities, 40 and 80 meters at the right time of day opens up stuff that 20 meters never will. thats kind of how i got hooked, stayed up late one night and worked a station in the Indian Ocean on 40 that i never would have caught otherwise

So I upgraded to General about three weeks ago and got my sequential callsign assigned, which is fine but its kind of a mouthful and honestly just not very memorable on the air. I started looking into the vanity call process and I think I understand the basics but there are a few things that are tripping me up. From what I can tell you submit through the ULS on the FCC site, pick your preferred callsign from whichever pool you're eligible for, and then there's like a filing window where other people can also apply for the same call. After the window closes if nobody else applied you just get it, but if multiple people applied it goes to whoever has some kind of preference based on license class or whether you held the call before or something like that. Is that right? I feel like I read like five different explanations and they all contradicted each other a little bit. Also I read somewhere that 1x2 and 2x1 calls are only available to Extra class, is that still the case? I'm General so I'd be looking at a 1x3 or 2x2 format I guess. Just want to make sure I'm not wasting my time applying for something I'm not even eligible for. Been using AE7 lookup tools trying to find something decent thats not already taken but the pickings are slim in my district.

the hum almost certainly is your wall wart, those switching supplies are terrible for sensitive receiver front ends. try a 9v battery or a proper linear regulated supply and i bet it drops way down. for the hand capacitance issue thats almost always a shielding problem — your VFO needs to be in its own shielded enclosure, even just a tin can works. the colpitts sitting next to the NE602 is definitely not helping, oscillator leaking straight into the mixer. seen this exact setup before and usually a chunk of copper flashing bent into a little box around the VFO section cleans it right up. the microphonics are a little harder to fix after the fact honestly, partly just the nature of dead bug construction. some people use a little dab of silicone on components that ring but your mileage may vary with that approach.

I've been working through the Koch method for about 6 weeks now and I'm stuck around lesson 15 on LCWO. Practice about 45 minutes daily in short sessions, character speed at 20wpm, but my effective speed is crawling along at maybe 6-7wpm. Above 10wpm can only be done by reflex, and slow code is a deadly trap - so they say - but I'm not feeling those reflexes develop yet. Anyone else hit this wall? How long did it take you to break through to comfortable 12-15wpm copying?

yeah the award system can feel like a maze at first but it really does click eventually. so basically LoTW handles credits for DXCC, WAS, and WAZ all from the same QSO data — you just need to make sure your log uploads are correct and the other station also uploads their side. thats the part people dont realize, both stations have to upload to LoTW for the confirmation to count. for DXCC youre working toward 100 confirmed entities, WAS is all 50 US states confirmed, and WAZ is all 40 CQ zones. they really do overlap a lot especially on 20m which is probably why someone told you to just keep logging everything. most of your DX contacts will count toward DXCC and WAZ simultaneously if theyre in a different zone. you dont apply until you hit the threshold — 100 entities for basic DXCC, all 50 states for WAS — but the credits accumulate in your LoTW account as confirmations come in. 40 entities in 8 months as a general is honestly pretty solid. keep at it and dont stress too much about the mechanics, it starts to make sense once you have a few hundred QSOs in there.