John Wilson

yeah the activity thing is the killer with JS8. i check in on the watering holes every now and then and sometimes its hopping and sometimes its completely dead. no real pattern i can figure out. one thing though — your G5RV at 30 feet is probaly fine for 40m but if youre having trouble hearing anyone it might be worth checking your noise floor in WSJT-X or the JS8Call waterfall. the 7300 is a great rig but i found mine was picking up a ton of hash from the shack computer until i sorted out the USB grounding. made like a 10dB difference on the weak signal stuff which is huge when youre trying to decode -18dB signals

That's pretty much exactly how my first one went too, though mine was supporting a triathlon which is obviously way lower stakes but still good practice. The read-back thing Dave mentioned is huge and honestly something I still have to consciously remind myself to do on a busy net. One thing that helped me a lot was getting into the habit of writing everything down even when it seems redundant. You think you'll remember that a message came in at 14:32 but then three things happen at once and suddenly you have no idea what order anything happened in. Our EC actually does a pretty good AAR after every activation which I wish more groups did — that's where I learned half of what I actually know about operating in an EOC environment.

yeah the delay thing you noticed is real, those sites dont all pull from the same nodes at the same time. DX Summit and DXwatch both tap into the AR-Cluster and CC Cluster networks but they refresh on different intervals and some spots get filtered before they even show depending on the source node. its not a huge deal for most operating but if youre trying to snipe a rare one on a pile it can matter. for android ive been using DX Toolkit for a while now and its pretty solid, not the prettiest thing but it stays connected and lets you filter by band which is really all you need. some guys swear by HamSphere or just running DX Monitor on a laptop next to the rig. QRZ's spot feed is fine for casual browsing but id trust it less when things get busy, it seems to lag behind when theres heavy traffic on the cluster.

ok so I passed my technician exam like three weeks ago and I've been reading through part 97 trying to figure out what I'm actually allowed to do. I get the basic frequency privileges but what I don't understand is the stuff about third party communications and also the business communications prohibition. like if I run a small side business doing lawn care and my buddy who is also a ham needs to coordinate something that happens to involve my lawn care stuff, does that count as business communication? I feel like the line is really blurry there and the actual rule wording doesn't help me much. also I saw something about obscured meaning and using codes to hide the meaning of your transmission being prohibited but encryption for things like control links is ok in certain cases? I might be reading that wrong. I dont want to do anything wrong obviously but its hard to know where the gray areas are

the arrow antenna is honestly all you need for the low inclination LEOs, people way overthink the antenna side of things when starting out. i ran the arrow for like two years before i built anything else and worked plenty of stations through AO-73 and SO-50. the hardest part is just pointing and tuning at the same time, some people duct tape the radio to the antenna handle which sounds ridiculous but actually kind of works for a single-band pass. what elevation was your pass? anything under about 20 degrees is gonna be rough just from path loss and horizon noise, the high passes are way more forgiving when you're still figuring out the doppler thing

haha the X thing gets everyone at first, xray is the weird one because nobody says xray in normal conversation. honestly there isnt a hard rule about when to use phonetics vs just the letter, its more situational. if the band is clear and youre just doing a quick exchange and conditions are good, most people just rattle off the letters. but if theres any qrm or the signal is weak or youre giving out your callsign for logging purposes then phonetics just make sense because there are too many letters that sound the same. B D E P T V all kind of blur together especially on SSB with a little noise. that guy probably wasnt correcting you, more likely he was just confirming what he heard by repeating it back phonetically. thats pretty common, dont sweat it. after a while you stop thinking about it and just naturally switch modes depending on conditions

congrats on passing the test first of all. so the sequential callsign thing just means yeah, the FCC basically pulls the next available call from a pool based on your license class and call district when you first get licensed. you dont get to pick anything, it just gets assigned. thats why new techs end up with 2x3 calls most of the time. but the good news is you can apply for a vanity call pretty much right away, no waiting period tied to how long youve been licensed. you just go into the FCC ULS, find the vanity application section, and you can search for available calls and submit your preference. the catch is if you want a shorter callsign format like a 1x3 or 2x2 you have to be at least a general class, and 1x2 calls are extra class only. with a tech ticket your options for vanity are still 2x3 format but you can at least pick something more memorable. i went through this whole process a couple years ago and it was less painful than i expected, just take your time with the ULS interface because yeah its not exactly intuitive

went through the exact same thing when i upgraded. honestly what helped me was just listening for a few weeks before i ever transmitted on hf. you start to get a feel for where the dx pileups are and where the regular rag chew nets hang out. no chart really prepares you for just hearing how the band actually gets used day to day. one thing i'll add is the 7.200 upper edge for generals used to cause a lot of drama back before the band plan got revised, there used to be a notorious net that would park right there specifically to mess with people, look up 7.200 if you want a rabbit hole. anyway point being band edges attract weirdos sometimes so just worth knowing about

i cant speak to the 590 specifically but i went from an older icom to the 7300 last year and the waterfall really does change how you use the radio day to day. only thing id mention is the 7300 has been out a while now and theres rumors floating around about what icoms gonna do next in that price range, might be worth keeping an eye on that before pulling the trigger if youre not in a hurry anyway.

yeah i went through the same thing when i started. what clicked for me was just thinking about whether the other person could actually write down my call correctly if they had to. on a noisy 40m QSO at night, november versus mike sounds really different but N and M are almost the same in static. on the local 2m machine where everybodys full quieting it doesnt really matter. some contesters also drop phonetics mid-contest just to save time which always threw me off at first lol. just practice saying them until they come out naturally and you wont have to think about it

hamstudy.org is genuinely the best free thing out there for this, just use that and you'll probably be fine. the way it tracks which questions you keep getting wrong and drills you on those specifically is really helpful. i think i spent maybe three weeks on it, like 20-30 minutes a night, and passed with only a couple wrong. the technician pool isnt as scary as it looks when you first open it. the regulations stuff clicks faster than you think once you just start doing practice tests because youll see the same concepts show up over and over. dont try to memorize every answer cold, just do enough practice rounds that the right answers start to feel obvious. and honestly failing isnt the end of the world, plenty of people have to take it twice, but you probably wont need to

yeah im basically in the same boat, built a 20m dipole last spring and went back and forth on the balun thing for a while. ended up just winding one from a piece of mix 31 ferrite I ordered, worked out fine. your swr sounds good though. one thing I noticed with my inverted V is the legs want to droop more than I expected over time especially with any wind, worth checking your wire tension every few months if the ends are just tied off to stakes or something low.

this is making me think i should actually check my own battery before i show up and look like that guy with the dead gel cell haha. im pretty new to ARES stuff, just got my general last spring, and watching the SET from the sidelines made me realize theres a lot of procedural stuff i just dont know yet. like i understood the radio part fine but the net control scripting and the ICS forms and all that — it felt like everyone else had a shared language i hadnt learned yet. do most groups do any kind of intro training for newer members or is it mostly just learn by doing

so ive been chasing VP6R for like three weeks and kept getting nowhere. tried everything i thought i knew, calling on their exact frequency, calling right when the pileup seemed to die down a bit, nothing. just got buried every single time. what finally worked, and i feel kinda dumb for not doing this sooner, was actually listening to where they were pulling calls from in the split. like really listening. not just throwing my call out on whatever frequency i picked but watching where the DX station was actually going back to. i noticed they kept fishing around 4-6 up and people calling on 2 up were basically invisible to them. also started sending my call only once, maybe twice max, instead of just hammering it over and over. seemed counterintuitive but i think it made me stand out more when the frequency got a little clearer for half a second. got through on a sunday morning around 0200 local when the pileup had thinned out a bit too, which probably helped. anyway curious what techniques other people swear by because i still feel like im mostly guessing. is there some actual method here or is it just luck and persistence

yeah theres no hard rule on local FM most of the time, people just do what works. the whole point of phonetics is when theres QRM or the signal is weak and letters start sounding alike, like B and D or M and N can totally blend together on a noisy HF path. on a clear 2m FM repeater with full quieting youre fine just rattling off the letters. but if you ever get into HF especially DX or contesting youll want the NATO ones down cold because everyone expects them and using the wrong ones just slows things down for everyone. as for the old timers using different words, yeah thats a thing. there used to be different phonetic alphabets before NATO standardized everything and some guys who got licensed in the 50s and 60s still say things like Abel Baker Charlie or use some mix. its not really wrong on a casual repeater but youd want to stick to NATO if youre ever working a net or doing anything more formal.

yeah the listening first thing is huge and most people skip it completely. i used to do the same thing, hear the DX and just start calling immediately without even knowing where the split was. wasted so much time. one thing that helped me a lot was paying attention to what the DX op is doing rhythmically. some guys work really fast, fire-and-forget almost, others take their time and fill in the log carefully. if you time your call to land right in that dead spot after they sign with the previous station theres a window of maybe half a second where you can cut through before the pileup crashes back in. its almost musical once you get a feel for it. missing that window by even a little and you're just adding to the noise again. also tail-ending works sometimes but its risky. if the op hears you stepping on the tail of the previous qso they might go QRT for a bit or just skip you on principle. some DX ops take that personally.

so ive been licensed about 3 years now and mostly just did local stuff and some casual HF but lately ive been getting really into DX and i think i want to actually go for DXCC properly. i have like 87 confirmed entities in LoTW already from just messing around so i figured why not actually try. my question is sort of about how the whole credit system works. i know you need 100 confirmed entities to apply for basic DXCC but i dont totally understand the difference between mixed, phone, CW, digital etc. like if i work a station on SSB and they confirm on LoTW does that count for mixed AND phone? or do you have to specifically apply for each one separately? and does the same QSO count toward multiple awards or do you have to work them again on each mode. also curious how people track this stuff. right now im just using the LoTW web interface which is kind of clunky. someone at the club mentioned DXKeeper but i havent looked into it yet. just want to make sure i understand the rules before i start grinding for it because i also want to eventually do WAS and maybe WAZ too and it would be nice to know if the same contacts carry over to those or if theyre completely separate things.

so ive been a Tech for about 8 months now and mostly just been doing local VHF stuff and some APRS but i keep hearing people talk about HF and honestly it sounds really cool, talking to people across the country or whatever. my buddy at the club said the General exam is not that bad but i dunno, some of the stuff i looked at online seemed pretty confusing especially the electrical theory parts. i guess my question is how long did it take you to study and what did you use to study with. i tried looking at the question pool but there are like 450 questions or something and i dont even know where to start. also once i actually have the General ticket what do i need to get started on HF, like do i need a completely different radio or can some of the handhelds do HF? sorry if thats a dumb question im still pretty new to all this

ok so ive been licensed about 8 months now and people keep talking about chasing DXCC and WAS and WAZ and i honestly have no idea how they all relate to each other or which one i should be going after first. like i understand the basic concept — work different entities or states or zones — but the whole credit submission thing has me totally lost. do i need to upload every QSO to LoTW or is paper QSL still a thing for these? and does it matter which mode i used? someone at my club mentioned mixed vs phone vs digital endorsements and now my head is spinning. just trying to figure out what the actual process looks like for a normal person who doesnt have a big station or anything fancy. running an IC-7300 into a wire antenna in the backyard if that helps.

the ALC thing is huge and most people ignore it for way too long. if your ALC is riding high constantly youre basically clipping the signal and it sounds like garbage on the other end even if your S-meter looks fine to you. on the 7300 specifically i'd back off the mic gain until the ALC is just barely kissing the first couple bars on peaks, not slamming it. beyond that, the stock mic on the 7300 is honestly not terrible but it is pretty mid-heavy and can sound a bit nasal depending on your voice. the built in TX equalizer on that radio is actually pretty decent — i spent maybe an hour one evening with a buddy on the other end giving me reports while i tweaked it and it made a noticeable difference. boosted a little in the low mids around 200-300hz to get some warmth and rolled off a bit of the upper mids where it was getting harsh. nothing dramatic, small adjustments. compression is a whole other rabbit hole. a little goes a long way on SSB. too much and you start sounding like a buzz saw, which ironically makes you harder to copy not easier. i run maybe 2-3dB of compression on mine and leave it there.

honestly i just use Log4OM for everything including contests now and stopped bothering with N1MM. i know thats probably heresy to the serious contest crowd but for the smaller contests i do its totally fine. the contest modules in Log4OM have gotten a lot better in the last couple versions. probably not ideal if you're doing CQWW and trying to squeeze every rate advantage but for like a state QSO party or a weekly sprint its perfectly workable. the WSJT-X logging just works, never had dupe issues with it. you do want to go into the settings and make sure Log4OM is set as the primary logging destination in WSJT-X and then it just shows up in real time. only thing that bugged me early on was the cabrillo export for contest submission felt a little fiddly but i think thats been patched since then

12 wpm on a paddle when you're just starting is actually probably fine for the keyer speed, the issue most beginners have is muscle memory just isn't there yet. your brain knows what letter you want to send but your thumb and finger dont cooperate. honestly the best thing i did when i learned was just spend 20 minutes a day doing nothing but individual letters over and over, not trying to send words, just get the feel of each character until it felt automatic. the iambic squeeze stuff clicks eventually but it took me probably 2-3 months before i stopped thinking about it consciously. as for mode A vs B, at your stage it really doesnt matter, pick one and stick with it. most people end up on mode A but youll find experienced ops who swear by both. dont let that be a thing you overthink right now.

so this has been driving me nuts for about two weeks now. my 7300 suddenly decided it only wants to do about 18-22 watts regardless of what i set the RF power to. doesnt matter if im on 40m or 10m, SSB or CW, just caps out around there. the ALC meter looks normal, not pegged or anything weird, and ive already factory reset the radio thinking maybe some setting got corrupted somehow. thing is it happened kind of gradually i think? like i noticed i wasnt getting the signal reports i used to and then actually put a wattmeter on it and yeah, way down from 100w. the finals maybe? i really dont want to ship it to icom because last time that took like 6 weeks and cost more than i expected. wondering if anyone has seen this before or has an idea where to even start poking around before i give up and send it in.

yeah the short answer is you dont have to do all three but a lot of us end up doing at least two of them over time. LoTW is really the one you want if you're chasing any ARRL awards like DXCC or WAS, the ARRL runs it and its free to use once you get your certificate set up which admittedly is kind of a pain the first time but you only do it once. eQSL is separate and some people swear by it, its a little more casual and has its own awards system but a lot of serious DXers dont bother with it. i use it mainly because some of the guys i work dont do LoTW and at least i can get something confirmed that way. physical cards are honestly kind of a hobby within the hobby if that makes sense. i still send and receive them for special contacts, like if i work someone rare or a nice /P operation or whatever. but i stopped doing it for every single contact years ago, the postage especially internationally gets expensive yeah. a lot of people use the bureau system through their national society which is way cheaper but slower, can take a year or more to get a card back sometimes. if you're just starting out id say get comfortable with LoTW first and worry about cards later for the ones that actually mean something to you

ive been wanting to do this exact thing but i keep putting it off because i built my QRP rig from a kit and im honestly not confident its putting out a full 5w. like i have no way to verify it without a wattmeter which i dont have. does anyone just go for it without measuring or is that dumb