Mark Thompson

yeah Part 97 is genuinely painful to read the first time, you're not alone there. the ARRL has a decent breakdown in their license manuals but honestly the best plain english version ive seen is on the ARRL website somewhere under the regulatory section, or just google "Part 97 plain english" and a few ham blogs come up that walk through the main points without all the federal register language. on the third party thing — basically you can let an unlicensed person talk through your station to another amateur station in a country that has a third party agreement with the US. if the country doesnt have that agreement you generally cant do it. the list of countries is on the ARRL site too. as for talking to CB or GMRS folks, no, you cant do that, Part 97 is pretty clear that amateur stations can only communicate with other amateur stations except in emergencies. the one exception people sometimes bring up is RACES/ARES emergency comms but thats a whole other rabbit hole. the digital modes thing on HF as a tech — i think your friend was half right. techs do have some HF privileges but theyre pretty limited, mostly CW on a few bands and a narrow phone/digital slice on 10 meters. so its not that techs cant use digital modes at all its more that the sliver of spectrum you have access to is pretty small.

yeah i was in the exact same boat when i first got my ticket, the fcc documents read like they were written by lawyers for lawyers which i mean they basically were. there used to be a really good plain english breakdown on the arrl site but i cant remember if its still there or if they moved it. someone in my local club printed out a little cheat sheet for new hams that had all the tech privileges laid out by band, might be worth asking if your area has a club doing something similar. the elmers there will usually just tell you straight up what you can and cant do without making you wade through the cfr

had the exact same problem with my arrow a few years back. turned out one of the uhf elements had worked loose even though it looked tight. try wiggling each element while watching the swr meter, bet you'll find the culprit real quick

ok so i passed my general a few weeks ago and the sequential call i got assigned is fine i guess but its kind of long and im in a different district than where i actually live now so ive been looking into the vanity callsign process through the FCC ULS and honestly its more confusing than i expected from what i can tell you submit an application and then there's like a window period where other people can also apply for the same call and then after the window closes they do some kind of lottery if multiple people want it? or am i totally wrong about how that works. i found a couple of old posts online but they were from like 2009 and im not sure if the rules have changed since then also does it matter what class your license is when youre applying for a specific format? like can a general apply for a 1x2 or is that only for extras. i think i read something about that but i want to make sure before i get my heart set on a particular call that i cant even have yet sorry if this is a dumb question, i tried reading the actual FCC rules and my eyes glazed over pretty fast

Smart digipeaters filter duplicates based on WIDEn-N paths but may not handle older RELAY paths properly. Check if your local digi supports the newer algorithms - some older KPC-3+ units need firmware updates to handle current path standards correctly.

I've been comparing QSL methods for my DX contacts and wondering if anyone has done the math on bureau vs direct costs lately. The ARRL bureau rate is now $1.15 per ounce (about 10 cards) plus a $7 transaction fee, but direct mail overseas is getting expensive too. For those still sending paper cards: What's your preferred method for regular DX contacts vs rare ones? I'm thinking bureau for common countries and direct for new DXCC entities, but curious about your experiences with success rates and timeframes.

cant speak to all of that but the VARA free vs paid thing is worth knowing about if you haven't run into it yet. free version throttles your connection speed pretty noticeably, i ran it free for about two months before i finally just paid for the license and honestly the throughput difference is real especially if you're trying to send anything with an attachment. for just basic text messages free is probably fine but wanted to mention it since nobody told me for a while and i kept wondering why transfers were so slow

jump in, seriously. CQ WW SSB is actually one of the better ones to start with because there are SO many stations on the air that you'll have no trouble finding people to work even with a modest setup. the zones thing clicks pretty fast once you're actually in it — just download a zone map before the contest and keep it open on your screen. first time i did CQ WW i had no idea what i was doing and just went search and pounce the whole weekend, meaning i tuned around and called stations rather than sitting on a frequency and running. made like 200 contacts and learned more in those two days than in the previous six months of casual operating. use N1MM or even just a paper log if you want to keep it simple, submit your log afterwards even if your score isnt impressive — most people do it for the fun anyway and a claimed score helps the big guys with their multiplier counts. SOTA is kind of a separate thing, there's a SOTA on the air event and some crossover with other awards programs but it's not really the same as the big contest weekends. great activity though if you ever want to go portable.

self spotting is totally fine, thats literally what the system is set up for. dont be shy about it at all. honestly once you get spotted the pile up will come to you pretty fast especially on a weekend morning, 20m should be hopping. just make sure your spot has the right park reference and your callsign is correct before you hit submit, ive seen guys spot themselves with a typo and then wonder why nobody shows up lol for frequency, just tune around and listen for a bit, if its clear give a quick QRL? and if nothing comes back youre probably good. dont stress too much about the exchange, its literally just signal report and your park number. hunters are patient, we've all had nervous activators and honestly we kind of root for you. good luck tomorrow

yeah and on top of that 40m gets complicated because of the shortwave broadcast stations that come in at night, especially from like 7.200 up. you'll sometimes find the bottom of the phone segment gets pretty crowded because guys are trying to avoid the broadcasters. just something to be aware of when youre picking a frequency

im in basically the same boat so not sure i have great advice but i found the G4FON trainer software really helpful for receive practice, and i heard somewhere that if you practice sending and receiving together instead of separately it helps your brain connect the two. havent fully tested that theory yet though. what keyer speed and weight settings do you have the kenwood set to? i had mine set wrong for weeks and didnt realize it.

your setup is totally fine for a first contest run, honestly. the IC-7300 is a solid radio and a dipole will get you plenty of contacts especially on 40 and 15 meters during CQ WW. dont worry about competing with the big guns, thats not the point when youre learning. my first time i just set a goal of 100 QSOs for the weekend and ended up getting way more than that because once you get in the rhythm it kind of takes over. the zone thing seems confusing at first but you pick it up fast, basically you're just logging the CQ zone of whoever you work and that counts as a multiplier. N1MM or Log4OM will track all that for you automatically so you dont have to think too hard about it. i'd suggest starting on 20m Saturday morning, there'll be a huge pileup of stations and you'll get QSOs fast which is encouraging. then wander around to 15 or 10 if conditions are good. have fun with it, CQ WW is one of those contests where even a modest station can have a really good time

i dont know man, ive had my radio on the desk for like three weeks and barely touched it. not sure whats going on with me. used to look forward to jumping on 40m in the evenings but lately i just turn on the tv instead. band conditions havent been great either which doesnt help. anybody else go through phases like this or is it just me getting lazy

yeah what he said about the length. also 8 feet for the ends is pretty low, close to ground like that can really pull the resonant freq down and mess with the feedpoint impedance too. if you can get those ends up higher even to like 12-15 feet you might see it shift and the pattern will be a lot cleaner. i built a similar inverted V last summer with the ends barely off the ground and it was a pain to get right, kept interacting with the fence

yeah you've got the right idea, the CTCSS tone is what the repeater uses to open its receiver — without it your signal gets in but the repeater just ignores it. so you definitely need to have the tone set to transmit (encode) when you key up. the encode+decode thing you mentioned is actually for your own radio's squelch, meaning your radio will only let audio through to your speaker if it hears that tone back. some people use that to filter out random noise but for just getting into a repeater you only need the encode side turned on. on the uv-5r it can be a little confusing — you want to make sure you're in the right menu, i think it's the T-CTCS option for transmit tone. set that to 100.0 and leave R-CTCS alone unless you want that decode filter. also double check you have the right offset programmed, 2m repeaters are usually plus or minus 600 khz. if the repeater is on say 146.940 the input is probably 146.340. good luck, repeaters are a great way to get started and most folks on them are happy to work a new ham.

Congrats on the upgrade! 20 meters is definitely your friend - try 14.200-14.230 for SSB during daytime hours. The 20m band is excellent for regional, national, and worldwide communication during favorable propagation. Your G5RV should work fine on 20. Start there and work your way to other bands as conditions change.

QRM is often used (incorrectly) as a noun but it's so common that everyone understands it. Technically QRM means "you are being interfered with" but we all say "lots of QRM." Start with QTH, QSY, QSO, QSL, QRZ - you'll hear these constantly.

dont stress too much about the open circuit thing, the finals in the 7300 will fold back way before anything bad happens. ive accidentally keyed into a disconnected antenna a few times and its been fine. that said the PTT lockout idea the other guy mentioned is still the cleaner way to do it. also you might want to look at using a schmitt trigger or just doing it in software with a deadband around the threshold values so if the voltage is like exactly between two expected levels it just stays put. i had a similar noise issue on my analog reads and putting a small cap on the input pin helped a lot too, like 100nF to ground right at the pin.

yeah the frequency drift thing is real and most people completely ignore it. i noticed the same pattern on the 3Y0 operation a few years back, the op was slowly walking up the band maybe 200-300hz at a time and then resetting. guys who figured that out were getting through way more consistently than the crowd who just parked on the obvious spots. the other thing i swear by is not calling every single transmission. a lot of guys are just mashing the key constantly and the ops can hear that, it turns into noise. i'll skip every second or third pass, let the pile thin a tiny bit, then throw in a clean sharp call. works better than hammering away. also helps to send your call just once, clearly, not twice. the DX station heard you the first time or he didnt, sending it again in the same transmission just muddies things. power helps obviously but honestly technique is probably 70% of it once youre above like 100 watts into a decent antenna. ive worked rare ones running 100w into a dipole that guys with a kw and a stack couldnt crack. timing is everything.

park activations with tiny rigs are so much fun, i do it pretty regularly now with my KX2 but started out with homebrew stuff not too different from what youre describing. one thing i'd say is bring way more wire than you think you need, seriously. and a fishing pole or some kind of mast makes a huge difference vs trying to find the right trees. also snacks. this is not negotiable

the gateway distance thing — yeah go with the hilltop one even at 28 miles, line of sight is everything on 2m. a clear shot at 30 miles beats a marginal path at 10 any day of the week. you can check the gateway's recent activity in Winlink Express, it'll show you last connection times and if its been active you're probably fine. on the message routing, once your session completes the CMS sync happens automatically, you dont have to do anything. whatever you've queued in your outbox gets pushed to the CMS and from there it routes like normal email. the WL2K addressing is only needed if you're sending to another ham on the winlink system, if youre sending to a regular email address you just use that directly. worth double checking your callsign is registered on winlink.org too if you havent, sessions will kind of half-work without it but messages dont always get delivered right. for HF and VARA — honestly just get VARA HF set up even if you dont use it right away. its free, way better throughput than Winlink's older modes, and when you eventually want to reach a gateway when local VHF is down or youre out of range it's already there. soundcard interface is all you need if you have a radio with audio out.

VARA FM vs packet is kind of situational honestly. If your gateway is close and the path is clean VARA FM will smoke packet for throughput, but packet tends to degrade more gracefully when conditions arent great. I run both depending on what im doing. For emcomm drills i actually prefer knowing packet will get through even if its slow rather than VARA dropping the session halfway through a welfare message or whatever. One thing worth doing is setting up your own RMS Relay at home if you really want to understand how the message handling works end to end. You dont need to be a gateway sysop, relay mode lets you at least forward messages locally and it teaches you a lot about how the whole system fits together. Might be overkill for what your asking about but it helped me stop treating it like a black box.

Low voltage, especially when transmitting, can cause radios to exhibit all sorts of strange behavior. The microprocessor may not function correctly, leading to bizarre displays, loss of external control, and incorrect response to controls. Low voltage can also result in low power output or poor RF stability. Check your DC cables first - they're usually the culprit.

yeah part 97 is rough to read cold, dont feel bad. the ARRL has a band plan chart that basically lays out what each license class can do and it's way easier to follow than the actual regulation text. just google arrl band plan and it should come up, it color codes by license class which helps a lot. for the tech HF stuff — you get a small slice of 10 meters for phone, i think it's 28.300 to 28.500 MHz, and then some CW privileges on other bands but not phone. the 40 meter thing might be outdated info or whoever told you that was maybe thinking of general class, i wouldnt count on 40m phone as a tech. power limit on HF for techs is 200 watts PEP from what i remember but double check that. third party traffic is basically about passing messages to or from someone who isnt a licensed ham, like if your buddy wants to say hi to his mom in another country through your radio. theres rules about which countries allow it and which dont. its not really something you need to stress about right away unless you're specifically trying to do that.

yeah done almost exactly this with a T2X rotator a couple years back. the pot thing — you definitely need a voltage divider, dont wire it straight in. what i did was put a 1k resistor in series with the pot and then tap the wiper through another resistor to ground to form a proper divider that keeps everything under 5v. you'll want to map() the ADC readings in your sketch to get degrees out, takes a bit of calibration but once its done its solid. the pi + arduino combo works great for this kind of thing. i run hamlib on the pi side and have a small flask app that exposes an endpoint, arduino just listens on serial for azimuth commands and sends back position. latency is completely fine for satellite tracking, gpredict talks to hamlib and the whole chain works. only gotcha is make sure your serial baud rate is high enough and you flush the buffer properly or you get stale position readings which will drive you nuts trying to debug.