Robert Johnson

yeah the ALC thing confused me too when i started on SSB. what helped me was just watching it while talking into a dummy load and adjusting mic gain until it was dancing around maybe the first third of the meter on normal speech and only hitting higher on loud peaks. once i stopped chasing full deflection all the time my audio reports got way better. one thing nobody mentioned to me for a long time — room acoustics matter more than you'd think. i was getting this weird hollow echo in my audio and it turned out my shack has a really reflective wall behind me and the mic was picking it up. threw a moving blanket over my bookshelf behind me and it cleaned up noticeably. probably sounds obvious but it took me forever to figure out

the band edge thing is real and its not just people being annoying. basically when you transmit SSB your signal isnt just sitting right on the frequency your dial shows — the actual audio sidebands spread out, so if you're on 7.300 which is the upper edge of the general segment, part of your signal is technically outside your license privileges. most people say stay at least 3 khz inside the edge to be safe, some say 2.8 but 3 is a comfortable buffer. 7.290 should be fine honestly, maybe whoever said something was confused themselves or your signal was a little wide. does your radio have any kind of filtering or processing cranked up? that can widen your transmitted bandwidth sometimes.

so ive been sitting on this for a while but i finally pulled the trigger and did the front end mod on my 7300 — the one where you swap out the input attenuator resistors and mess with the preamp bias a bit. not gonna lie i was nervous about voiding the warranty but the thing is like 4 years old now so whatever. the difference on 80m and 160m is actually noticeable, weaker stations that were kind of buried before are coming up a bit cleaner. not like night and day but definitely not placebo either, i A/B'd it against my buddies stock 7300 on the same antenna and yep something is there. 40m feels about the same honestly. the one thing i didnt expect is it seems a little more prone to intermod now when the band is busy, which i guess makes sense if youre basically turning up the gain earlier in the chain. havent had it be a real problem yet but something to keep in mind if you run without a bandpass filter. anyway curious if anyone else has done similar stuff to theirs or if there are other mods worth looking at — ive seen some stuff about the TX low pass filters but havent gone down that rabbit hole yet

so ive been running a single 40m dipole in my attic for about a year now and i want to add 20m and 15m without putting up more feedline. the obvious answer is a fan dipole but every time i read about them i get a different answer about whether the elements actually interact with each other or not. some guys say you have to retune everything because the elements detune each other, others say just cut them to resonance individually and hang them and youre fine. my situation is i dont have a lot of room to spread the elements very far apart, maybe 20-25 degrees between them at most because of where my support points are. attic install so im already dealing with some detuning from the roof structure. just wondering if anyone has actually built one of these and whether the swr ended up being manageable without a tuner on each band or if i ended up needing one anyway. at that point i might as well run separate antennas with a switch or just use a tuner on the 40m dipole for all three bands.

so i was just casually scanning around 28.400 yesterday afternoon and the band was just completely alive, like i havent heard it this good in years honestly. i worked a ZL3, couple of JAs, and even snagged a VU2 all within like an hour and a half on just 100 watts and my crappy dipole thats probably not even resonant where i think it is. solar flux index was sitting up around 190-something when i checked spaceweather.com and the K index was nice and low, 1 or 2 i think. im still pretty new to chasing DX seriously and im trying to understand this better — like is this just a temporary thing because we're climbing toward solar max or is 10m going to stay open like this for a while? and how do you guys predict when its going to be good? do you just check the flux every morning or is there some other way you're figuring out when to get on and point at europe or the pacific? also does anyone use those online band condition sites or is it mostly just getting on and listening to see whats there

yeah same thing happened to me when i first started lol, i was so nervous i gave my callsign like three times in a row without stopping and the net control guy definitely paused longer than necessary before coming back to me. now i just kind of smile thinking about it. you'll get comfortable with it quick, the regulars on most local nets are pretty patient with newcomers as long as you're trying.

so ive been interested in ham radio for probably two years now and i keep putting it off but im finally trying to actually do it. the problem is every time i try to figure out where to start i get overwhelmed. like theres the technician license and then general and then extra and i dont really know which one i need or if i should just try to get all three at once or what. someone at work told me to just download some app and memorize the questions but that feels like cheating somehow? i dont know. i guess im also not sure what the test is actually like, is it multiple choice, do you have to know morse code, how hard is it really for someone who has zero background in electronics. any advice would be helpful i just dont really know what im asking exactly

yeah the listening thing is underrated, most people treat pileups like it's first come first served but it's really more like reading a pattern. i spent probably 45 minutes just listening to FT5XO before i ever keyed up and by the time i transmitted i had a pretty good sense of their rhythm — how long they took to come back, where in the split they were fishing, whether they were doing partial calls or full calls. got through on like the fourth try. tail-ending is real but you have to be careful with it, if you're not actually catching the end of their transmission accurately you just sound like QRM. i've had better luck on CW than SSB for this because the timing is more predictable. on SSB pileups honestly sometimes just saying your callsign once clearly in the pause is more effective than anything else, the op is looking for something intelligible and if everyone else is a wall of noise a single clean call stands out. one thing i'd add — knowing the DXpedition operators matters. some of them have very specific habits, like some work strictly up 5 and some roam all over. reading their logs and past trip reports before they even go helps a lot, sounds nerdy but it genuinely does.

so this has been driving me nuts for the past couple weeks. picked up a used 7300 from a local ham who said it was 'working fine' but needed a cleaning. well it powers on, receives perfectly, but i cannot get more than about 20 watts out of it on any band. tried it on 40, 20, 10, 2m through a transverter, same deal everywhere. the power meter on the rig itself agrees with my external wattmeter so at least the display isnt lying to me. ive already checked the obvious stuff - ALC is not pegged, the RF power knob is all the way up, not in low power mode, mic gain is set normal. did the touch screen calibration thing just in case. nothing changed. also noticed the finals dont get particularly warm even when transmitting which makes me think its not a thermal protection thing kicking in. before i crack it open and start poking around, has anyone seen this specific symptom? wondering if theres a driver stage issue or maybe something upstream of the finals. or honestly could just be a bad PA board. really dont want to send it to Icom if i can help it, their turnaround times are brutal right now.

The ignition noise thing is super common and kind of a rite of passage honestly. Few things to try — first check that your antenna feedline shield is actually grounded well at the mount, a loose NMO mount is a surprisingly common culprit. Also if you haven't already, get a ferrite choke and put it on the power leads right at the radio, that cleans up a lot of stuff. Some guys swear by putting one on the coax too near the radio end. For the coax through the door jamb I would honestly redo it if you can. I did that on my old Tacoma and within a year had a short that took me forever to track down. Most vehicles have a grommet on the firewall that you can sneak a coax through if you're patient and have a good fish tape. Way cleaner and you'll sleep better knowing its not getting pinched every time you open the door. The FT-7900 is a solid radio by the way, been running one for probably 8 years now with no complaints.

i mess up all the time and just say whatever word pops into my head first lol. called it "Q as in... uh... Quebec" the other day and felt very proud of myself. but seriously i noticed on some of the digital nets people barely even bother because the audio is so clean. on SSB though especially DX contacts yeah you want the real phonetics or things get repeated a lot

Hey welcome to the hobby, nets are actually pretty simple once you do it a couple times. Basically the net control station will open the net, usually say something like "this is the such-and-such net, net control is [callsign], all stations wishing to check in please call now" or something close to that depending on the net. When they ask for check-ins you just key up and say your callsign phonetically, so like Whiskey 4 Alpha Bravo Charlie or whatever yours is. Sometimes they acknowledge you right away, sometimes there's a few others checking in at the same time and it can get a little busy. Just listen first before you jump in and you'll get the hang of the rhythm pretty quick. The special event stations yeah you basically just make contact like any normal QSO, exchange callsigns and signal reports, maybe a little chat, and then you log it. A lot of them have a specific QSL address or online log you submit to and they mail or email you the certificate or card. Some take a few weeks to come back. Definitely worth doing, I have a bunch of them framed in the shack.

so ive been putting this off for like two years because i was nervous about voiding warranty and all that but the warranty expired anyway so i went ahead and did the expanded TX mod on my IC-7300 last weekend. the one where you jumper the two points on the main board to unlock the out of band transmit. pretty straightforward honestly took maybe 20 minutes including finding my reading glasses. anyway after that i also went down a rabbit hole and ended up doing the internal speaker upgrade too, swapped in one of those aftermarket 4 ohm units that a few people have talked about on here before. the stock speaker is kind of tinny and the replacement does sound noticeably fuller on received audio at least on SSB. hard to say if its placebo but my wife even said it sounded better and she has zero interest in radio so that felt like a real data point. what mods have other people actually found worthwhile on their rigs vs the ones that sound good on paper but dont really move the needle in practice? i keep seeing people talk about the ref oscillator mods for better frequency stability but honestly at HF i cant tell if that matters unless youre doing WSPR or something really narrow

honest answer? with that antenna setup you probably wont notice enough difference to justify it. the 7610's receiver advantage really starts to show when youre dealing with strong adjacent signals and your antenna is pulling in a lot of signal. with a vertical and a dipole youre already filtering out a bunch of noise before it even gets to the front end so a lot of that dynamic range headroom never gets used. i made the jump from a 7300 to a 7610 about 18 months ago and yeah the dual watch is genuinely useful and the panadapter feels snappier to me but i also went from a dipole to a 2el wire yagi around the same time so its hard to separate what made what difference. if i had to do it over with your current antenna situation id probably put the money into the antenna first and revisit the radio question later. or just wait and see if icom does something new in that price range.

honestly you kind of touched on the main thing already — it depends what you want to do with the confirmations. LoTW is run by the ARRL and its what counts for DXCC and a lot of the major awards so thats the one most serious DXers and contesters really care about. the TQSL certificate thing is annoying to set up the first time but once its working you basically just upload your ADIF log file after each session and forget about it. eQSL is kind of a mixed bag. it does have its own awards program and some people use it a lot, especially in Europe ive noticed, but youre right that it doesnt count for DXCC so if thats a goal for you it wont help much there. i still use it just because its free and easy and occasionally someone confirms there that never bothered with LoTW. paper cards are honestly just fun and a tradition. i still send them for special contacts — like a new country or a really memorable QSO — but i dont bother for every contact anymore. the bureau is cheap but slow, direct mail is faster but costs a few bucks each time once you add the return envelope and IRCs or a couple dollar bills for foreign stations. a lot of people just do LoTW for the awards and paper for the ones that actually mean something to them personally.

so ive been using Log4OM for general logging for about two years now and i really like it for day to day stuff, the integration with WSJT-X is pretty solid once you get the UDP ports sorted out. but every time a contest rolls around i feel like i should just switch over to N1MM because thats what everyone seems to use and i dont want to miss out on the multiplier tracking and stuff. my question is does anyone actually run both at the same time or is that just asking for trouble with the UDP ports conflicting. i tried once and Log4OM kept grabbing the WSJT-X traffic before N1MM could see it. or maybe i had something misconfigured, honestly not sure. the contest last weekend (ARRL DX CW) i just ended up using N1MM standalone without WSJT-X which was fine but im trying to figure out a cleaner workflow for when i want to do FT8 during a contest like the state QSO parties where it counts

oh man i remember that exact feeling, 13 was my wall for like four months. what finally broke it for me was switching away from random letter groups and just listening to actual english text at a speed that was slightly uncomfortable — like 15wpm with maybe 20wpm character speed using farnsworth spacing. the idea is your brain learns the sound of whole words instead of spelling out letters one at a time. once i stopped trying to think "dit dah dit" and just started hearing "R" as one sound things clicked a lot faster. also the copying on paper vs in your head thing — honestly i think copying in your head is the goal but paper is fine as a crutch while you're building up. the problem with paper is you tend to lag behind and then panic when you fall behind, whereas if youre just mentally copying you stay in the moment a bit better. just my experience anyway. keep at it, 20wpm is absolutely not some magical unreachable thing, it just takes longer than everyone expects

recount those toroid turns, seriously. i built a 7mhz lpf once and was off by two turns on one winding and the thing was passing harmonics like it wasnt even there. grabbed my antenna analyzer and the rolloff was way off from what the design said. fixed the turns and suddenly everything looked right. probably not your whole problem but if your filter isnt right the scope is going to show you a mess regardless of what the amp is doing. whats your cutoff frequency supposed to be and do you know what core you used

im in basically the same boat as you actually, tech for 18 months and just started looking at the general pool last week. the electrical theory part is what threw me off too. some of the questions about impedance and reactance feel like they came out of an engineering textbook which is a bit much someone in my local club told me to just use the Gordon West book along with the question pool and not overthink it. havent taken it yet but thats my plan for the next month or so. would be curious to hear how it goes for you if you end up taking it soon

so ive been chasing XT2 for like three years, kept missing them every time a pedition went out. this last one i actually broke through and worked them on 20 and 17 so im pretty stoked about that. wanted to share what finally clicked for me because i spent way too long doing it wrong. the biggest thing i changed was stopping calling on the DX's exact frequency. sounds obvious but when youre excited you just jam the key and go. i started really listening to where the operator was actually coming back — most of the good ops are working 5 up, 7 up, sometimes spreading 5 to 10 depending on how nuts the pile is. once i figured out they were consistently pulling calls from around 7 up i just parked there and waited. took maybe 20 minutes of patience but i got through. timing was the other thing. i used to just call continuously and that's apparently the worst thing you can do. now i wait until i can hear the end of their QSO, let a beat go, then call once or twice and shut up. the ops seem to notice a single crisp call way more than the wall of noise. also running 500w into a 4el yagi helps, not gonna pretend antenna and power dont matter, but i know guys with modest setups who break pileups faster because their timing is just better. anyone else have techniques that work consistently? i feel like i finally found a system but im curious what others do, especially on 40m where the pileups get really savage

yeah that feeling is totally normal and honestly i think it means youre taking it seriously which is a good sign. my first activation was a marathon and i thought itd be easy but the sheer amount of coordination traffic caught me off guard, way more than any net practice had prepared me for. you start second guessing every readback. what helped me was just reminding myself that the ICS structure exists for a reason — your job is a defined role with a defined scope, you're not expected to know everything thats happening in the whole operation. just handle your piece cleanly and pass accurate traffic. if you're at a shelter site the job is usually pretty straightforward, its the EOC positions that tend to get more hectic. ask your EC which assignment you'll have ahead of time if you dont know already. one thing nobody told me before my first go: bring snacks and a way to charge your radio that doesnt depend on finding an outlet, even if they say power will be available. learned that one the hard way.

Congrats on the first one, those four contacts feel like a huge deal when youre sitting there on a cold windy summit wondering if anyones gonna hear you haha. Spotting is honestly the biggest thing, dont wait on it. The moment you set up throw yourself on SOTAwatch or use the SOTA Spotter app if you have signal. Chasers are literally sitting there watching the spots page waiting to pounce, they want to work you. A cold call on 20m with no spot is rough especially if youre not running much power. Also worth trying 40m in the morning or late afternoon depending on your region, 20m can be hit or miss for close-in stuff. And if you have a way to do 2m FM even just locally, even a handheld into a j-pole or something, thats a great way to pad your contact count fast especially if theres an active local club in the area.

i just passed mine last month and yeah some of those questions are weird like who actually calculates the reactance of a network in their head while operating lol. but the extra band segments on 75/80m and 20m are genuinely worth it if you contest at all. cw portion of 40m too. i mostly just memorized the pool tbh, took me like 4 weeks of studying on lunch breaks. dont overthink it just start doing practice exams and youll figure out which areas you actually need to work on

To answer your second question - yes, the vanity fee is separate. The $35 vanity application fee is in addition to other licensing costs. But you can't apply for a vanity until you already have a callsign assigned anyway, so get this initial payment done first!

I'm kind of in the same boat as you, just getting into the QRP thing. built a pixie kit off amazon a while back which was basically useless but it got me interested. the QCX mini is on my list. did you find the toroid winding instructions pretty clear or did you have to look up a video or anything? that part always stresses me out a bit.