Sarah Brown

so this has been bugging me for a couple weeks now and im at the point where im just gonna ask because i cant figure it out. running a Mobilinkd TNC3 into my phone with APRSDroid, callsign is set correctly with the SSID (-9 for mobile), path is WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 which should be fine for my area. the TNC connects, i can see it decoding packets from other stations just fine, and when i key up it shows the little TX indicator in the app. but when i go to aprs.fi and search my callsign theres just nothing there. not even old packets. checked the RF output on my 857D and its definitely transmitting, the SWR is fine. i did notice that when i watch the received packets i can sometimes see digipeaters near me so theres coverage in my area for sure. one thing i should mention is i changed the comment field recently, not sure if that matters. also been using it on 144.390 obviously. anybody run into this before or have ideas what to check next?

yeah i had basically the same thing happen with my first homebrew wire antenna, the resonance came out higher than expected. someone on here told me the 468/f formula already has some fudge factor built in but it still varies depending on wire gauge and how close to ground your ends are and all that. i ended up cutting mine long to start and trimming down which worked better than trying to add wire later. one thing i will say -- did you use any kind of choke or 1:1 balun at the feedpoint? running coax straight to a dipole without any kind of choke can let rf come back down the outside of the coax and that can do weird things to your swr readings and also just generally cause rfi problems in the shack. i made a simple air core choke just by coiling like 8 or 10 turns of the coax at the feedpoint and it made a noticeable difference on my setup. not saying its your problem but worth trying if you havent.

yeah honestly when i was starting out i just memorized the NATO alphabet and used it every time no matter what, felt safer that way. some of the older hams on the local repeater nets are really particular about it and some dont care at all. i think on simplex or HF you really do want to use them because even a tiny bit of qsb can make a letter disappear. i still sometimes blank on a letter and say something dumb like november oscar tango alpha for no reason on a crystal clear local contact lol but whatever

lol i remember my first time keying up on a repeater my voice cracked like i was 13 again. took me like four tries to remember to say my callsign at the end. you'll get used to it fast, couple weeks and it'll feel totally normal

nice work getting it up. i did almost the exact same thing for my first antenna except i used some kind of mystery wire i bought at a hamfest and spent way too long trying to figure out why it kept changing resonance on me — turned out to be stranded steel inside, not copper. lesson learned. the coax seal stuff works but yeah its a pain when you need to get back in there. i use the self-amalgamating tape now too and honestly havent had any issues with it.

yeah this trips up a lot of newly upgraded generals, dont feel bad. the short version is your phone privelege on 40 starts at 7.175 MHz and goes up to 7.300 which is the band edge. the reason everyone says stay away from the band edge is that your signal has sidebands — if youre running SSB and you park right on 7.300 your upper sideband content is going to spill above the allocation and thats technically out of band. most people say stay at least 3 kHz inside the edge to be safe, so like 7.297 or lower to be comfortable. the lower part of 40 from 7.000 to 7.125 is CW only for US generals, and 7.100 to 7.125 you share with extra class on CW. digital modes like FT8 and JS8 tend to hang out around 7.074 which is within the CW segment but the FCC allows data/digital in there too so thats fine. the ARRL band plan is kind of a gentlemans agreement on top of what the FCC actually mandates, so if something is in the band plan but not in part 97 its more of a courtesy thing than a rule. but most people follow it anyway to keep things organized

honestly i just picked most of it up from listening for a few months before i ever transmitted. QRN bugged me for a while because i kept confusing it with QRM but eventually it just clicked. one thing nobody told me early on was that a lot of hams also use abbreviations that arent technically Q codes at all, like OM means old man which is just any male ham, YL is young lady for any female operator regardless of age, and XYL is ex-young-lady meaning wife lol. also FB means fine business like thats good or great, and de is just the word from in CW usage so like if someone says W1XYZ de K5ABC theyre saying this is K5ABC calling W1XYZ. its a lot at first but dont stress it too much, you pick it up faster than you think once youre actually in QSOs

anyone else notice JS8Call taking forever to decode signals the past few weeks? im running 2.2.0 on win10 and it used to be pretty snappy but now it sits there for like 30-40 seconds before showing anything. tried rebooting, checked cpu usage seems normal. running it with wsjt-x at the same time and wsjt decodes FT8 just fine so i dont think its my rig maybe something with the latest windows update? or did i mess up a setting somewhere

I started with a UV-5R three years ago and still use it regularly. Those 128 channels held all my local repeaters, NOAA weather, and even some aviation frequencies I like to monitor. Once you get comfortable and want to explore more bands or travel frequently, then consider upgrading to something with more memory.