Emily Wilson37

for moving resonance down from 7.080 to 7.050 you're looking at maybe 2 to 3 inches per leg, not more than that. the formula is a starting point and real-world stuff like height above ground and wire insulation always shifts things a bit. i'd add 2 inches each side, remeasure, repeat. way easier to trim than to splice back in. on the angle question, yeah flatter is generally better for radiation angle but at 45 degrees you're not completely killing yourself either. you'll lose a little gain compared to a flat dipole but honestly for 40m it still works. the bigger thing is getting the apex as high as you can, which it sounds like you already thought about. 35 feet is decent for 40.

yeah i caught that opening too, was running the KX2 portable from my backyard and managed to snag a German station on like 5 watts which made my day. 10m when its actually open is just something else, nothing really compares to it for that kind of skip. i remember cycle 23 being nuts for it and it feels like were slowly getting back toward something decent again, fingers crossed. on the Icom thing, i saw a blurry photo on one of the Facebook groups but couldnt make out much. someone in the comments was saying it might have remote head capability built in which would be interesting for mobile use, but who knows how reliable that info is. ill wait for a proper announcement before getting too excited, ive been burned before by the rumor mill on this stuff.

yeah the gateway thing tripped me up too when i first started. basically those RMS gateways are just other hams running the RMS Relay software on their end — Winlink the organization provides the CMS servers on the internet side but the RF access points are all volunteer operated. so if a gateway shows in the list but doesnt respond it could easily just be offline or the op is having issues with their setup. the list doesnt always reflect real time status super accurately. for your connection problems on VARA HF — what mode are you using, VARA or Winmor? VARA is way better in my experience but you need to make sure your audio levels are dialed in or you'll just get garbage. the IC-7300 has that built in USB audio which is nice but you still need to tweak the input level in VARA's settings so youre not overdriving it. too hot and the modulation goes to hell and nobody can decode you. id check the VARA FM vs HF thing too make sure youre running the right one for HF. also some of those gateways are VHF/UHF packet only and wont respond to HF modes obviously. double check the mode column in the RMS list before assuming something is broken.

had something weirdly similar on my 7610 last year, ended up being the TX monitor was misleading me and the audio was actually fine on the air lol. not saying thats your problem but worth having someone do a real recording of your signal before you go too deep into diagnosing it. kinda embarrassing how long i chased my own tail on that one. anyway if it IS a real issue the filter setting thing the other guy mentioned is the first place i'd look too

so im just spinning the dial on 40m, nothing going on really, picked up a couple guys chatting about fishing near 7.250 and listened for like 20 minutes. dont know why but i find that more relaxing than actually making contacts sometimes. been licensed like 6 years and i still get this way where i just want to listen and not transmit. anyone else do this or am i just weird about it

welcome to the addiction haha. i remember my first contest, i think it was actually ARRL Sweepstakes not CQ WW but same idea. i was so nervous to even call CQ that i spent the first hour just searching and pouncing on other peoples CQs which is totally fine by the way, thats what most new contesters do. you dont have to run a frequency if it feels too intimidating at first. Field Day is actually maybe a better starting point if you havent done that yet, its more of a community event and usually your club sets up somewhere and you can just show up and get on the radio with people who know what theyre doing. CQ WW is more serious but still very approachable. just make sure your logging software is set up before the contest starts, N1MM is free and most people use it. dont try to paper log a major contest trust me on that one

so ive been noticing 20m has been doing some strange things the past couple weeks. some days its absolutely dead in the afternoon when it usually opens up nicely to europe from here in the midwest, then other days its just wall to wall signals and i'm working stations i normally cant touch. checked the solar flux and it was sitting around 145-150 which honestly isnt bad at all, but the K index keeps jumping around and i think thats messing things up more than anything. had a really nice opening to japan on 15m last tuesday out of nowhere, like i wasnt even expecting it and just happened to be tuned up and heard JA stations coming in strong, worked 4 of them in about 20 minutes then it just kind of faded. is this normal for where we are in the solar cycle? feels like conditions are getting better overall but really inconsistent. anyone else seeing this kind of thing or is something wrong with my setup that im not accounting for

I upgraded to Extra last spring and honestly the exam was easier than I expected after using HamStudy for a few weeks. the harder theory questions like the stuff on op-amp circuits and oscillator design I just made sure I understood the basic concept behind each one rather than brute forcing the answer. took me maybe 6 weeks of casual studying. the band privileges were the main reason I did it too. that little sliver on 75 meters where a lot of the nets I wanted to join were operating, I could hear them fine as a General but couldnt check in. kind of annoying. solved that problem immediately after passing so yeah worth it for that alone if nothing else

ALC barely moving when you're speaking is actually a big clue yeah. on the 857 if the ALC is low it usually means the driver isn't being told to push hard enough, or the driver itself is struggling. first thing i'd do is check your DC supply voltage under load — key up on 40m into the dummy load and watch what the supply voltage does. if its sagging below like 13.5 you might just be starving it and everything else is fine. these rigs are surprisingly sensitive to voltage drop especially if you're running off a switcher that's getting old. if voltage holds up fine then yeah you're probably looking at driver transistors. the Q1011 area on the PA board is where i'd start looking but honestly without a scope you're kind of guessing. there's a service manual floating around online that has the test point voltages, worth pulling that up before you touch anything inside.

so I've been interested in ham radio for a while now mostly because my neighbor does it and it seems pretty cool. I finally decided to just go for it and get my technician license but honestly the whole thing is kind of overwhelming. I looked up the question pool online and there's like 400 something questions and I dont even know what half the words mean. is there a good way to study for this or do I just memorize everything? someone at work said theres apps for it but I dont know which ones are actually worth using. also how hard is the actual exam, like should I be worried about it

yeah what he said about the acks is spot on. also just double check your MYCALL is set correctly on the radio and not still on the default or something goofy, ive seen that trip people up before. and WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 is fine for mobile, some people actually trim it back to just WIDE1-1 in denser areas to reduce congestion but that shouldnt be why messages fail entirely. if youre near a fill-in digi it should still get out.

On my 2017 F-150 I went through the firewall on the driver's side, there's a factory grommet that already has some wires going through it but there's usually enough room to poke an RG-8X or LMR-240 through if you use a smooth piece of wire to guide it. I used a coat hanger to fish it through and it wasn't too bad, maybe 20 minutes of fiddling around. The tricky part is finding it from the engine bay side — it's kind of up and to the left near where the brake booster is, hard to describe but once you see it it's obvious. Also if you're going permanent eventually I'd ditch the mag mount and look at a lip mount for the roof or drilling for a NMO. The mag mount will slide around on the highway and scratch up your paint over time. But you probably already know that, just saying for when you're ready.

the antenna situation always bites people. you pack the radio, you pack the coax, and then you show up somewhere and realize your only antenna is a mag mount that needs a metal roof and youre in a parking lot or a field somewhere. i keep a cheap roll-up jpole and a telescoping whip in mine just for that reason, takes up almost no space. also and this sounds dumb but bring snacks and a water bottle. ive been at activations where we sat there for 6 hours with nothing because everyone assumed someone else handled food. not exactly radio gear but its part of being operational. oh and a phone charger, external battery bank, that kind of thing. your radio might be all set but your phone dies and now you cant look anything up or coordinate with the served agency folks.

not done it myself but a guy in our club built something like this with a raspberry pi instead of arduino, mainly because he wanted a web interface so he could switch antennas from his phone while sitting in the shack. overkill maybe but it was pretty slick. he used GPIO pins through a relay board from amazon, the whole thing cost him like 20 bucks in parts. i think the pi approach makes more sense if you want logging or any kind of network integration, arduino if you just want something dumb and reliable that turns on when power comes up and does its thing. both are fine really depends what you want out of it

nice work getting out there. i did my first one earlier this year and had similar issues with the spotting thing, felt like i was just calling CQ into the void for a while before someone spotted me and then suddenly it was busy. the tablet issue in cold weather is real too, i now bring a little paper log as backup every single time just out of habit. better safe than having to dispute your own activation lol