David Williams99

this is super inspiring, ive been looking at the QCX mini too but was nervous about the kit build since i haven't done a ton of SMD stuff. was there much surface mount soldering or is most of it through hole? also did you have to do much alignment or calibration after you finished it, that part sounds kind of intimidating to me

the NMO vs lip mount question comes up all the time and honestly for 2m/70cm local work either will get you on the air fine. that said the NMO really is better in the long run — cleaner ground plane connection, way more antenna options, and lip mounts have this annoying habit of developing rattles and sometimes corrosion under the clamp after a couple seasons. if you can stomach drilling one clean hole in your truck bed rail or roof, youll be happier. its not as scary as it sounds and there are good tutorials for doing it without ruining your headliner or anything. on the power cable — check what gauge came with the radio. most of the yaesu mobiles ship with something like 18 or 16 gauge which is honestly a bit marginal for a 50 watt radio at that run length. id strongly suggest going 12 gauge all the way to the battery with proper inline fuse as close to the battery as possible, like within 6 inches. keeps voltage drop down and avoids any weird RF noise issues from a marginal connection. good luck with the install, its a fun project

the oscillator chapter is where I lost my first study session too, not gonna lie. what worked for me was watching some of the old ARRL Handbook explainer videos on youtube and then going back to the manual — suddenly made more sense when i could see someone actually explaining it out loud. the math is mostly rearranging the same few formulas over and over, reactance, resonance, that kind of thing. once you get the feel for which formula they're probably asking about you can usually eliminate wrong answers even if you dont fully work it out. took me about two months of casual studying, maybe 20 minutes a day. passed first try. the extra privileges honestly feel good even if you dont use all of them right away, just knowing you have the full ticket is satisfying after you've been in the hobby a while

I had the same confusion when I started! The key is understanding that WIDE1-1 hits nearby fill-in digis first, then WIDE2-1 gets you the wide coverage. Avoid the old WIDE2-2 path - it causes unnecessary network traffic. Your TM-D710G should handle the path settings perfectly once configured correctly.

i dont know man, used to get on 40m almost every evening and lately ive just been sitting down at the radio and then just... not keying up. not sure if its burnout or what. propagation has been weird too which doesnt help. still love the hobby just feels like something is off. maybe i need a new project or something to get the motivation back

so ive been trying to figure out if its worth the drive this year, last time i went i think it was like 2019 or something before everything went sideways and it was pretty decent, got a good deal on an old Kenwood HT that still works great. wondering if anyone here has heard anything about how big it usually is these days, i know some of these regional fests have kind of shrunk down since covid and never really bounced back also the club is doing a swap meet the weekend after at the fairgrounds, different thing, just thought id mention it in case anyone local didnt know

microphonics near the vfo is probably the capacitors in your tank circuit. ceramic caps are notorious for that, especially the smaller values. if you havent already, swap anything in the vfo tuned circuit for NPO/C0G ceramics or silver mica if you have them, makes a huge difference. i learned this the hard way on a 20m cw transmitter i built last year, was picking up every vibration on the desk until i swapped out those caps.

so ive been licensed since 2019 and kept telling myself id learn morse code eventually and here we are lol. i started doing the cwops academy beginner course like two weeks ago and its going okay, im up to maybe 10-12 wpm copy on a good day but sending is a whole other story. my question is about keyers and paddles. right now im using a cheap single lever paddle i grabbed off amazon (the brand is something like longruner or whatever) and its just... not great. the feel is mushy and i keep squeezing the wrong contact or accidentally double-ditting when i dont mean to. i dont know if its the paddle, my keyer settings, or just that im still a beginner and my hands are bad at this. my keyer is built into my radio (ic-7300) so im not using a separate one. i have the weight set to like 40 and speed at 15 wpm which feels comfortable to listen to but maybe too fast for me to actually send cleanly. do i need to slow down more or just practice more with what i have before spending money on a better paddle. honestly not sure if upgrading the paddle would even help at this point or if thats just me looking for an excuse to buy gear

so ive been trying to learn CW for probably 6 months now and i feel like im completely stuck. started with the Koch method on lcwo.net and got up to about 5wpm copying pretty reliably but every time i try to push it to 7 or 8 it just falls apart completely. like my brain just stops processing and i miss everything after the first couple letters. ive been doing maybe 20 minutes a day which i know probably isnt enough but life gets busy. i really want to get to 20wpm eventually because id love to actually use CW on HF but it feels so far away right now. anyone been through this same wall and managed to get past it? what actually worked for you

so ive been trying to learn iambic mode B on my keyer for about three weeks now and honestly im more confused than when i started. i picked up a cheap set of paddles off ebay and wired them up to my radio's keyer input and it mostly works but when i try to squeeze both paddles at the same time to get that automatic dit-dah alternating thing going it just feels... wrong? like my letters are coming out mushy and i cant tell if its a timing issue or if my paddles need adjusting or if my fingers just havent got the muscle memory yet. i came from straight key which i used for about a year before anyone told me paddles were even a thing, so maybe thats part of the problem. my elmer says i should slow way down and i have, im sending at like 10 wpm on the keyer but it still feels unnatural. does it just take longer than three weeks to click? any tips from people who made this transition would be really appreciated

ok so ive been licensed for about 3 months now (tech) and ive been trying to get on the local 2m repeater but half the time nobody responds and im not sure if its my tone or just nobody is around. the club website says the repeater uses 100.0 Hz PL tone and i programmed that into my baofeng but sometimes i can hear people talking on it just fine and then i key up and nothing happens or people just dont respond. is there like a wrong way to use CTCSS or am i maybe transmitting the wrong tone outbound? i honestly get confused about whether the tone is for accessing the repeater or something else entirely. also saw something about the repeater being linked to some kind of network, echolink maybe? and i dont know if that changes anything. sorry if this is a dumb question, just trying to figure out the local scene

your fan dipole at 35 feet is probably limiting you more than the radio tbh. not saying the 7610 isnt a better rig because it clearly is, but ive seen guys wring amazing performance out of 7300s with good antennas and proper grounding. whats your noise floor like? if youre in a suburban area with a lot of QRM the roofing filter improvement matters a lot less than just getting the antenna higher or trying a different polarization

okay so the chart thing, dont do that, seriously it'll slow you down and you end up counting in your head every time which is a really hard habit to break later. the method most people swear by now is Koch method which basically starts you at a fast speed right away, like 15-20wpm character speed, but only two characters at a time until you can copy them reliably and then you add one more. the idea is your brain learns the sound as a whole thing instead of dit-dah-dah means M or whatever. LCWO dot net is free and does Koch training, i used that for the first few months and it actually works. G4FON also has a good trainer if you want something on your desktop. the other thing people mention is Farnsworth timing where the characters are sent fast but the spaces between them are longer so you have time to think, and then you gradually shrink the gaps as you get better. honestly just pick one method and stick with it for a few weeks before deciding it isnt working, cause thats where most people give up too early

linear transponders are a whole different animal compared to FM birds yeah. the thing most people trip over first time is the inverting transponder thing — AO-73 is inverting so if you move your uplink up, your downlink signal moves down. so you cant just set and forget the frequencies, you have to continuously chase both ends as the doppler shifts. a lot of guys just use one radio with doppler correction software and then manually tune the downlink on the second rig while transmitting short bursts to find themselves. 3-4 watts into a yagi should be workable but the transponder does have AGC and if the bird is busy with strong signals it can get competitive. try transmitting CW or just a short carrier first since that makes it easier to find your own signal in the passband. also double check your uplink and downlink freqs against the amsat frequency page because sometimes the bird drifts a bit from the published numbers depending on thermal stuff in orbit.

so i just passed my tech exam last week (finally) and im looking at getting my first handheld radio. ive been reading threads on here for like two months and honestly i feel more confused now than when i started. everyone seems to have really strong opinions and half the time the posts are from 2015 so i dont know whats still relevant. my main thing is i want something to hit the local repeaters, maybe do some simplex with a buddy who just got licensed too. nothing crazy. i keep seeing the baofeng UV-5R recommended everywhere as a starter but then just as many people saying to avoid it and spend a little more. i was also looking at the yaesu FT-60R because someone at my club mentioned it but that ones older right? and then theres the wouxun stuff and a couple others. budget is probably around 50-100 dollars, could stretch to 150 if it actually makes sense. i dont want to buy something twice basically. what would you guys actually get if you were starting over today