Mark Thompson

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

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 the 40 meter thing might be outdated info or whoever told you that was maybe thinking of general class, i wouldnt count on 40m phone as a tech.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.

so i finally did it after putting it off for like two years lol. passed my technician exam yesterday at the library, the VE team was super nice and one of them let me use his HT to try calling on the local repeater right there in the parking lot. got a response from some guy about 12 miles away who gave me a 59 and we chatted for maybe 5 minutes. honestly didnt expect it to work that fast and i kind of froze up forgetting my callsign halfway through but he was patient about it.
anyway just wanted to say hi i guess. been lurking here for months reading about all this stuff and now im actually licensed. got a baofeng uv-5r coming from amazon which i know everyone has opinions about but its what i can afford right now. any tips for a brand new tech would be great

i went 7300 -> 7610 and the dual watch thing sounds cooler than it actually is in day to day use tbh. i mean it's nice but i dont use it as much as i thought. what I do notice is the band scope is faster and the overall feel of the radio is more solid but man the price difference is hard to justify if your antenna situation is limiting you more than the radio is, which at 30 feet with a fan dipole it probably is no offense

i had the same feeling about FT8 honestly. worked like 140 countries in a year and then just kind of... stopped caring? felt like watching a machine do it for me. tried PSK31 for a while which is more conversational but you really need decent conditions for it, the moment the band gets choppy its rough. JS8Call sits in a weird middle ground but i think thats actually what makes it interesting. havent tried 80m JS8 but i imagine itd be good for regional evening stuff, might fire it up this weekend and see whats happening on there

So ive been doing POTA for about a year now and someone at the club mentioned WWFF and i went down a rabbit hole last night reading about it. Looks like there's a nature reserve about 20 minutes from my house that's a valid reference, ONFF-something, and im thinking of heading out this weekend with the FT-891 and a linked dipole thrown in a tree.
My question is mainly about logging — do i need to use a specific app or logger for WWFF or can i just use paper and upload later? And does the contact count toward POTA too if the park overlaps? I think this one might be a dual reference situation but im not 100% sure how that works. Any help appreciated, dont want to show up and realize ive done something wrong halfway through the activation.

so ive been on HF for maybe 8 months now and i keep getting reports that my audio sounds muffled or like im talking through a sock. running an IC-7300 with the stock hand mic and i know thats probably part of the problem but ive heard guys running the same setup sound totally fine so im not sure where to start.
ive messed around with the TX bandwidth and the treble/bass settings in the menu but honestly i dont really understand what im doing, just kind of turning knobs and hoping for the better. compression is set to like 4 out of 8 which i picked randomly. i also noticed my ALC is bouncing around a lot when i talk, not sure if thats normal or if im overdriving something.
anybody have a baseline setup for SSB voice that actually works? or tips on mic technique because maybe im just doing it wrong from the start

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.

so ive been doing this thing lately where i just sit down with a coffee in the evening and spin through 40m and 20m without really trying to work anyone, just listening. heard some interesting stuff last night, couple guys doing a net i didnt recognize, some dx i probably couldve worked but was feeling lazy. its a weird kind of satisfying just being in the background i guess. anyone else do this or am i just getting old and weird about the hobby lol

so i've been noticing 10m and 12m actually opening up a bit more in the afternoons these past few weeks and i wasnt sure if i was imagining it or if the solar flux has genuinely been climbing. checked DXwatch this morning and there were spots all over the place for europe, which i havent seen reliably in a long time from my QTH in the midwest.
i know we're climbing toward solar max and all that but i honestly wasnt expecting things to pick up this noticeably this fast. worked a couple of EA stations yesterday on 10m with just my dipole running 100w and both were solid 59 contacts which felt almost surreal after years of that band being basically dead. anyone else seeing good openings lately or is my part of the country just getting lucky right now? also curious how people track solar flux day to day — i've been using the NOAA site but wondering if there's something better or more real-time

so ive been on HF for about 6 years now and lately ive been getting really interested in trying EME on 2m. i know the basics conceptually, signal goes up, bounces off the moon, comes back down, path loss is insane, you need either a big dish or a yagi array, and everyone uses JT65B or Q65 now. but actually sitting down and figuring out what i need to do a first contact is kind of overwhelming.
right now i have a IC-9700 which i know is popular for weak signal stuff, and a single 9el yagi on a push-up mast that i use for local ssb. is that even in the ballpark or am i way off? i see guys talking about stacked arrays of like 4x9 or 4x11 el yagis and moonbounce dishes and i dont know if thats what you NEED or if thats what the serious guys run. also is there a minimum power level or is it really just about the antenna gain?
any pointers would be appreciated, i feel like ive been reading about this for months and still feel lost