Emily Wilson37

okay so the big thing everyone will tell you and its actually true is dont learn it visually, like dont memorize dots and dashes on paper. your brain will try to count them and youll be stuck forever. the way that actually works is learning each letter as a sound pattern, like the letter K sounds like dah-dit-dah and you just kind of internalize it. look up the Koch method, theres a free program called LCWO dot net that does exactly this. you start with just two letters at like 20wpm and dont move on until you can copy them reliably. sounds weird but it works way better than starting slow and trying to speed up later. took me maybe 4 or 5 months of like 15 minutes a day before i felt okay getting on air, and my first QSO was a mess but the other guy was patient. just dont give up around the 3 letter mark cause thats where most people quit

so i passed my technician exam last thursday and just got my callsign in the ULS yesterday, KD9 something something i wont type it all out lol. anyway i was super nervous but i keyed up on the 147.315 repeater here in town and just said my call and that i was a new ham looking to make some contacts. two guys came back to me almost immediately which i was not expecting at all, had a little ragchew for maybe 10 minutes about what radio i have (baofeng uv-5r, dont judge me) and what i want to get into. one of them invited me to the club meeting next tuesday which is cool. honestly the hobby seems way more welcoming than i thought it would be, i was kind of dreading being the new guy who doesnt know anything but everyone was real patient with my terrible mic technique

so ive been licensed for about 4 months now and im still confused about when youre supposed to use the NATO phonetics vs just saying the letter normally. like if someone asks me to confirm a letter in my callsign do i always have to say Whiskey or whatever or is it fine to just say the letter W. i hear some people on the air just say letters and other people go full phonetic every single time and i cant figure out if theres a rule or if its just preference. also sometimes i hear people use non-standard ones like some guy said "Washington" instead of "Whiskey" the other day and i wasnt sure if that was wrong or just an old habit. is there an actual requirement or is it more of a courtesy thing

honestly the best thing i ever did was get on the dx side of a pileup, like actually being the rare station. did a small operation from a semi-rare entity a few years back and man, hearing what a pileup sounds like from that end changes everything about how you approach calling in. you realize real fast that the guys sending their full callsign at 30wpm in a CW pileup when the dx is clearly only pulling partials — that doesnt work. short, crisp, well timed calls in the right spot on the passband. thats all it is really. the dx operator is just looking for something they can grab onto and if your signal is clear and your timing is decent youll get through eventually even with a modest station.

Key steps for digital compliance: Use software that shows occupied bandwidth (like WSJT-X spectrum display)Check your radio's bandwidth settings - most modern rigs have built-in filtersRemember that as control operator, you're responsible for ensuring compliance with FCC rulesWhen in doubt, use established modes like PSK31 or FT8 which are well within limits

the preamp is honestly where i'd start before anything else. a low noise preamp at the feedpoint makes a bigger difference than you'd think — you're dealing with signals that are basically at the noise floor so every tenth of a dB matters. something with a noise figure under 0.5dB, masthead mounted, relay switched so your TX path is clean. after that yeah you want more antenna gain but even a single long yagi on 2m with a good preamp and JT65 you can occasionally work stations that have the big guns on their end. it wont be a lot of qsos but its enough to prove the concept and get you hooked. for scheduling check out the EME2 logger and also the chat on the on4kst moon chat, thats where people coordinate. most activity clusters around perigee when the moon is closer but honestly if youre patient you can find someone to work most weekends. W5UN and a few of the big EU stations run pretty regular skeds if you reach out.

yeah its definitely more of a vibe thing on local repeaters honestly. the NATO phonetics are really there for when conditions are rough or you're working someone you dont know well and clarity matters, like on HF or during a net or when youre trying to get a callsign across to someone who's barely copying you. on a local 2m machine where everyone knows each other most people just say their call straight or maybe phonetic it once at the start of a contact and thats it. the non-standard ones like using "Texas" for T you'll hear that a lot especially from older ops or people coming from a CB background, its not technically wrong but in an emergency or a formal net it can cause confusion because not everyone will catch it the same way. NATO exists specifically because those words were picked to be distinct from each other even in terrible audio, so like "Mike" and "November" dont sound anything alike even through static but something like "Mary" and "Nevada" might blend together. for casual ragchewing though nobody is gonna care

so ive been doing single op contests for a few years now and consistently putting up what i'd call mediocre scores, somewhere in the 800-1200 QSO range for a full 48hr effort on SSB depending on conditions. I keep reading about SO2R and watch the top ops talk about it like its the obvious next step but i genuinely cant figure out if my rate problem is operator skill, my antennas, or just that im not running two radios. my current setup is an IC-7300 into a 3el yagi at 45ft for 20/15/10 and a fan dipole for 40/80. nothing crazy but its worked ok. the issue is im spending a lot of time just sitting there waiting for rates to pick up on a run frequency or S&Ping through dead bands. feels like there should be something smarter to do during that dead time. is SO2R actually going to fix that or is it more of a top-10% tool where you need the station infrastructure to back it up first? would love to hear from people who made the jump and whether it actually moved the needle on scores

so i've been licensed for about two years now and mostly just used a baofeng and then a used IC-7300 that i picked up last year. been reading about QRP forever and kept telling myself id get around to it. well last month i finally pulled the trigger on a QSX... wait no i mean i got a ubitx v6 kit from hfsignals and spent a whole weekend putting it together on the kitchen table much to my wife's annoyance lol anyway it actually works. like it really works. i made contacts on 40m with 5 watts running off a little lipo pack i had from an old drone project and i dont know it just feels completely different than cranking out 100w from the big rig. there's something about knowing you're getting through with almost nothing that makes it way more satisfying. took about 4 hours to get a contact but honestly that was part of the fun has anyone else gone down this rabbit hole? im thinking about taking it camping this summer and wondering what antenna people use for portable ops when weight actually matters. been looking at random wire stuff but not sure where to start

I passed my tech last spring with basically no background either, took me maybe three weeks of studying like 20-30 minutes a night on the hamstudy app. the electrical stuff felt weird at first but honestly for the exam you dont really need to deeply understand ohms law or whatever, you kind of just learn to recognize the question and know the answer. some people find that unsatisfying but it works lol. the RF safety section tripped me up a little so pay attention to that part, theres a handful of questions from it on the test and its easy to gloss over

so i dont know if everyone saw but Icom quietly pushed out a new firmware for the IC-905 last week, something like 1.30 or whatever the version number is, and supposedly it fixes some of the ALC issues people were complaining about on 10GHz. havent had a chance to load it yet because im still waiting on a part for my transverter setup but figured id mention it here since a few folks asked about it in the other thread. also wanted to share that 6 meters was absolutely wild last saturday morning. i was just sitting down with coffee and noticed the DX cluster lighting up around 50.313 and jumped on — worked like 12 or 13 stations in about 45 minutes including a couple down in florida which i dont usually hear up here. propagation just opened up out of nowhere, classic Es stuff. kids are out of school and ive been spending more time at the radio so the timing was perfect. if you havent been keeping an eye on the cluster lately its worth doing, season is definitely not over yet. anyone else notice conditions have been kind of unpredictable this summer compared to last year? feels like the openings are shorter but more frequent maybe. or im just imagining it

yeah coax length can definitely mess with your readings at vhf, the vna is showing you the transformed impedance through that 18 feet of rg8x and if the antenna isnt a perfect 50 ohm match at the feedpoint (and most homebrew yagis arent right off the bat) then what you see at the other end of the coax isnt what's actually happening at the antenna. measure right at the feedpoint if you can, even if its awkward to get up there with the vna. some guys use a short reference cable they've characterized first. that said, a 1.5 mhz shift high on 2m usually means your elements are a touch too short, not a measurement artifact. with aluminum tubing you also need to account for the diameter when calculating element length, thicker elements resonate shorter. what diameter tubing are you using for the driven element? the folded dipole spacing matters too. id start by checking the physical dimensions first before blaming the coax.

so ive been at this for about 3 months now and i feel like im completely stuck. started with the Koch method using the LCWO website and got up to maybe 5-6 wpm copying but every time i try to push it a little faster my brain just kind of freezes up and i lose the whole word. its frustrating because i can sit there and do 5wpm all day long without any real mistakes but the second i bump it to 7 or 8 i fall apart. i practice probably 20-30 minutes a day, sometimes more on weekends. been listening to the W1AW code practice sessions too which i heard is good. is there something specific im doing wrong or is this just one of those things where you have to grind through it and it eventually clicks? i really want to get to 20wpm someday, feels like a million miles away right now

so I just got my general ticket a few months ago and ive been making contacts pretty regularly now, mostly on 40m SSB and some FT8. people keep mentioning QSL cards and LoTW and eQSL and honestly I'm not totally sure what the difference is or which ones I actually need to bother with. from what I understand LoTW is run by the ARRL and its the one that counts for DXCC and stuff like that? and eQSL is a separate thing that not everyone accepts for awards? and then physical cards are just... a tradition thing or do they actually matter for certain awards too? I set up a LoTW account last week and uploaded my logs but I have zero confirmations so far. do most people just not bother confirming on there or does it take a while? I'm also seeing people ask for my QSL info when we're in QSO and I dont really have cards yet, is that a big deal if I just say I'm on LoTW? sorry if this is a dumb question, just trying to figure out the whole confirmation ecosystem I guess

yeah what he said on the NMO. i put a mag mount on my jeep when i first started and regretted it almost immediately, scratched up the paint a little too which was annoying. did the drill and mount a few months later and its been solid ever since. the FTM-400 is a great radio btw, you'll love it once its in there

I just got my tech about three months ago so this is pretty fresh for me. I used hamstudy too and also watched some of the hamradioprep youtube videos when I hit stuff I didnt understand. the videos helped me actually get why certain things are the way they are instead of just memorizing answers, which I think helped it stick better for the actual test. took me maybe 2.5 weeks studying on and off before I felt good about it. one thing I'll say is dont overthink the electrical formulas, like ohms law and the power calculations, just write them down on a little card and drill them a few times and you'll be fine. good luck

yeah the chameleon MPAS Lite is a solid choice for that kind of setup, ive used one at a few public service events. one thing i'd add — if the parking lot situation means you're on asphalt or concrete, make sure you're thinking about your ground situation with that antenna. i had a really frustrating afternoon once where i couldn't figure out why my SWR was all over the place and it turned out the tripod was just floating with no real RF ground reference. threw down like 4 radials on the pavement and taped them flat and it cleaned right up. probably not news to you but worth mentioning since it bit me once. on the power thing i mostly agree with whatever the other guy said, two batteries plus solar is the low-drama answer. generators are fine but it's one more thing that can fail or run out of gas at a bad moment during an actual exercise evaluation.

so this has been bugging me for a couple weeks now. my 857 is doing something weird where on 40m i'm only getting maybe 20-25w out when i've got it set to 100w. every other band is totally normal, checked it with my wattmeter on 20, 15, 10, even 6m and they're all within a few watts of where they should be. 40 is just... sad. i did the usual stuff first, checked the antenna, swapped cables, ran it into a dummy load to rule out the feedline. still the same deal. SWR on the meter looks fine so its not folding back from that. ALC is behaving normally as far as i can tell. i'm thinking it might be the low pass filter board or one of the finals is getting flaky on that band specifically but i honestly dont know where to start with it. anybody pulled one of these apart for something like this? i have the service manual but some of those board layouts are a headache to trace through.

yes absolutely submit the log, always. even a handful of QSOs helps the log checking process for everyone else and honestly nobody cares what your score is, we were all first timers once. i remember my first CQ WW i think i made like 40 contacts over the whole weekend and thought i was terrible but the next year i had way more fun because i kinda knew what to expect. the zone thing clicks pretty fast once you're in it, basically ITU zones divide the world up differently than DXCC entities so you can work the same country but different zones count as separate multipliers. there's a zone map on the CQ WW website that's worth printing out or at least having open on a second screen. your 7300 and G5RV combo will work fine honestly, conditions have been decent lately with the solar cycle doing its thing. just search and pounce for a while before you try to run a frequency, especially as a new contester, running is exhausting and you'll learn the exchange format way faster just hunting around first.

so anyway ive been building this direct conversion receiver for 40 meters over the past couple months, been using the ugliest ugly construction youve ever seen, just manhattan pads thrown on a piece of copper clad and soldered together wherever things line up. the VFO is a colpitts running around 7 mhz and it locks up pretty decent, drift isnt terrible after warmup maybe 100-200 hz over 20 minutes which i can live with for SSB. the problem is the audio coming out of the LM386 stage is kind of buzzy and distorted especially on stronger signals. ive got a bypass cap on pin 7 and the usual stuff on pins 1 and 8 to set gain, but something isnt right. also picking up a fair amount of 60hz hum even running off a 9v battery which is weird. the RF frontend is just a simple bandpass filter and a diode ring mixer which i breadboarded first and it worked great but now that its soldered up the audio is just rough. anyone dealt with LM386 audio issues in homebrew receivers? wondering if its oscillating or if my layout is just causing problems. i can post some pictures of the board if that would help diagnose