John Wilson

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.

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.

so ive been licensed for about 3 years now and mostly just did local stuff and some casual HF but last month something clicked and i got really into DXing. worked about 40 entities in the last few weeks alone which felt amazing but now im trying to figure out how the actual DXCC program works and i feel like im reading the rules in circles
main thing im confused about is the QSL side of it. like i understand you need confirmations but do i need paper QSLs or is LoTW sufficient for submitting credits? i've been uploading everything to LoTW but wasnt sure if thats enough or if i still need to collect physical cards too. also does every contact need to be on a different band or entity or is it one per entity total regardless of band
also started looking at WAS and WAZ at the same time because why not right. WAZ seems more forgiving zone wise but WAS is brutal if you dont have a decent antenna for some of the rarer states (looking at you Rhode Island and Delaware, never seem to hear anyone from there on 40m)
anyway any advice from folks who've gone through this would be great, feel like im drinking from a firehose right now

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

so ive been a tech for about a year and finally upgraded to general last month, been thinking about trying cw but honestly have no idea where to even begin. i downloaded a couple apps and tried doing the alphabet thing where you learn each letter one by one but it feels like im just memorizing patterns and not actually hearing the code if that makes sense. like i can do dit dah in my head but when i hear it played back i cant recognize anything in real time. is that normal or am i doing something wrong? someone at the club mentioned the koch method but i dont really understand what that means in practice. do people still use morsecode trainer or is there something better now. just feel like im spinning my wheels

im in the same boat honestly, just got my general a couple months ago. what helped me was finding an old copy of the technician and general study guide and just re-reading the regulatory sections even though i'd already passed, because the exam questions kind of force the rules into a context that makes them easier to remember. also qrz has a frequency allocations page that someone put together that breaks it down visually and i found that way more useful than staring at the tables in the actual CFR. still confusing sometimes but at least its a start

so i finally did my first solo activation last weekend at a state park about 45 minutes from my house, K-4567 if anyone knows it. been hunting from home for a few months and kept telling myself id get out there and actually do one, and i finally just did it. threw the EFHW up between two trees, ran 100w on FT8 for a little while then switched to SSB because i wanted actual contacts not just computer contacts if that makes sense.
got my 10 pretty quick on digital and then spent another hour on phone picking up maybe 8 or 9 more which honestly surprised me, i expected it to be harder. a few people gave me signal reports and then just disappeared without logging which was a little frustrating but whatever.
my questions are -- does it matter what order i put the park reference in when i call on SSB, like do i say the K number before my callsign or after? i've been saying it after but someone on the air told me i was doing it wrong. also is there a way to know if my activation will actually show up on the POTA website, like is there a delay or do i need to submit something first?

the radial thing is real and it matters a lot, im not gonna sugarcoat it. ive had verticals that were basically useless until i got a decent ground system under them. like genuinely couldnt understand why i was getting beat by guys running 100w into dipoles until i laid down about 30 radials and suddenly it started making sense. the gap and similar no-radial designs are a bit different because theyre elevated and use a counterpoise arrangement but even those benefit from some attention to the feedpoint situation.
at 25 feet your dipole is kind of in that awkward zone where its high enough to not be a total disaster but low enough that youre not getting the low-angle radiation you want for dx. if i had to pick between a low dipole and a vertical with a modest ground system id probably lean vertical for 40m dx, but honestly if you can squeeze even another 10-15 feet out of your dipole that changes the math pretty quick. what supports do you have to work with?

so ive been on HF for about two years now mostly doing FT8 and just recently started getting into SSB phone and honestly the audio coming out of my rig sounds way better than what people are telling me they hear on the other end. running an IC-7300 with the stock mic and i know i know everyone says ditch the stock mic but even before i do that i want to make sure im not doing something dumb with the settings first.
the main complaints ive been getting are that im either too bassy or sometimes people say im cutting out on peaks. ive got the compression on because i thought that helped with readability but maybe thats the issue. also my RF power is at 100w into a dipole, ALC looks fine to me but i honestly dont fully understand what the ALC meter is actually telling me when it starts bouncing around a lot. any thoughts from people who have actually dialed this stuff in would be appreciated, not looking for a whole tutorial just some pointers on where to start

I'm upgrading my phone soon and wondering what everyone's using for DX spotting on mobile these days. I've been trying the DX Spots app but missing some features compared to desktop web clusters like DXWatch. Anyone finding good mobile solutions that can alert me to spotted call signs? Looking for something that covers all bands including 4M, 2M, 70CM for VHF/UHF work.