Jessica Davis18

yeah what he said about the bandwidth setting, that tripped me up too when i first got mine. also one thing nobody ever mentions is where youre positioning the mic relative to your mouth — straight on vs slightly off axis makes a surprising difference on these dynamic mics. talking slightly off to the side of the capsule tends to reduce the boominess and plosives. might sound like audiophile nonsense but it genuinely changes reports im getting. worth trying before buying anything.

Building a shortened 20m dipole for my attic space, total length only 24 feet. Calculated 8.5μH loading coils positioned 6 feet from center feed. Using 14AWG THHN wire on 2-inch PVC forms, 15 turns per coil. Getting decent resonance at 14.1MHz but wondering if I should use a 1:1 balun at feedpoint? With the shortened elements and loading coils, I'm concerned about common mode currents. Currently seeing 1.3:1 SWR but antenna analyzer shows some reactance. Anyone tried similar loaded dipole configurations with/without baluns?

Recently upgraded to General and just got my first HF rig (IC-7300). I've been getting reports that my audio sounds muffled and hard to copy on 20m SSB. I'm using the stock mic with default settings. What are the key audio adjustments I should focus on first? I see lots of menu options for TX EQ, compression, bandwidth settings but don't want to make things worse. Any guidance for a newcomer to HF phone operation would be appreciated.

so ive been licensed for about 4 months now and still not totally sure on the phonetics thing. like i know the NATO alphabet, alpha bravo charlie etc, but when exactly are you supposed to use it. some guys on the local repeater just say their call sign normally and nobody seems to care, but then ive heard other people spell out every single letter every single time no matter what. is there an actual rule or is it just kind of a judgment call. also someone told me you're supposed to say your call using phonetics every time you key up but that seems like overkill especially on a busy net where everyone already knows who you is

so i dont know if anyone else has been paying attention but 10 meters has been absolutely wild the last few weeks. im hearing stations from all over the place, worked a few South American guys last tuesday afternoon without even trying, just had the radio on in the background while i was doing other stuff and suddenly PSKreporter is lighting up like crazy. also saw the announcement that Icom dropped some info about a new HF rig, supposedly a smaller form factor kind of thing aimed at portable ops? havent seen a full spec sheet yet but there was some chatter about it on one of the Facebook groups. not sure how credible it is but a couple people seemed pretty confident it was legit. anyone seen anything more concrete on that? anyway the solar flux has been hanging up around 200+ lately which probably explains the 10m stuff. if you havent fired up on that band in a while its worth checking out, even with modest antennas youre gonna hear stuff. my vertical has been doing work it has no business doing right now.

had the same problem with house wire on my 80m dipole. switched to some flexweave antenna wire from DX engineering and havent had a failure since. the stranded house wire just wasnt designed for the constant flexing in the wind. also make sure your insulators arent too small - you want the wire to have some room to move without binding up on the edges

worth it just for the piece of mind of having the top ticket honestly. the exam isnt that bad, the smith chart stuff looks scary but the actual questions about it are pretty limited and pattern-recognizable. i think there were like 2 or 3 on my actual test and one of them I'd seen almost word for word in practice. the 60 meter channels are also fully available to extras now i believe, and if you ever do want to try any digital weak signal stuff the extra segments on some bands open up some options. but really if your goal is just ragchewing on 75 go get it, worst case you learn a little RF theory along the way which never hurts when you're trying to figure out why your antenna is being weird

so i was just sitting at the desk doing some logging cleanup and figured id throw the radio on 10m just to check and holy cow it was absolutely alive, i was working stations in south america and then a few europeans started coming through around mid afternoon, havent seen it like that in maybe two years at least around here. ran barefoot with the G5RV and was still pulling in 59s from Brazil which i wasnt expecting at all. anyway while i was on i heard a couple guys talking about the new Yaesu FT-710 AESS or however you say it, apparently theres been some updated firmware that fixes the weird audio issues some people were complaining about on the earlier units. i havent tried the new firmware myself yet but figured id mention it in case anyone here has one and hasnt heard. supposed to be on the Yaesu site now if you go looking. also heard through the club email list that our regional hamfest got moved to the second weekend in October instead of September, something about a venue conflict. if youre in the northeast and were planning on going just double check the dates before you book anything.

so i finally did my first activation last weekend, took the KX2 and a random wire up to a local summit (W4T/SU-001 if anyone knows it) and honestly it went way smoother than i thought it would. got my 4 contacts within maybe 20 minutes which surprised me because i was half expecting nobody to be listening. spotted myself on SOTAwatch before heading up which i think made a big difference. anyway a couple things im still fuzzy on. first, does the summit reference on the activation log have to exactly match the official SOTA database spelling or does it auto-correct when you submit? i typed mine in manually and wasnt 100% sure i had the full reference right. second thing is i had a chaser come back to me who gave me a signal report but then just disappeared before i could get their callsign fully, just got the suffix. do i just leave that one out of the log or is there a way to note it? also the hike in was only about 45 minutes which felt almost too easy, i know some people do these brutal 4-5 hour climbs and im slightly embarrassed my first one was so chill but whatever, a summit is a summit right

I had the same thing! Spent three weeks listening before I finally keyed up. What helped me was practicing - I'd rehearse what I was going to say out loud before pressing PTT. The local hams are super friendly once you get started.

Impressive setup! For multi-band, consider using multiple RTL-SDR dongles rather than trying to span wider bandwidth - the v4 performs much better in narrow windows. What's your antenna setup feeding the RTL-SDR?

honestly it depends on conditions and who your talking to. if its a clear local repeater contact i usually just give my call normally, but if theres any static or the other guy seems to be having trouble copying then i'll phonetic it out. on hf though especially with dx contacts i use phonetics almost always since accents and qrm can make regular letters really hard to copy

Start asymmetric and keep it simple. Configure the IC-7610 as your dedicated run radio with all the good antennas, and let the IC-7300 handle S&P duties. The 7300 receiver is perfectly adequate for answering stations even with the vertical.

Welcome to the hobby and congratulations on your Extra! Don't worry - we all started somewhere. Just give your call sign once clearly when NCS calls for check-ins, then listen for acknowledgment. If they don't copy you the first time, wait a moment and try again with phonetics.

honestly the theory on the extra isnt as bad as people make it out to be once you just sit with it for a bit. the math that shows up is mostly stuff like calculating resonant frequency or impedance and theres really only a handful of formulas that actually appear on the test. i spent maybe 6 weeks going through the ARRL extra class book and doing practice exams on hamstudy and by the end it was clicking pretty well the transmission line stuff and the filter theory took me the longest to get comfortable with but even that wasnt calculus or anything crazy. what i found is that if you actually understand WHY the answers are what they are instead of just memorizing them you retain it a lot better and honestly start applying it when you're troubleshooting stuff on your own station which is kind of the whole point right as for day to day operating yeah the extra segments do matter more than i expected. during a pile up or a contest being able to drop down a few kc makes a real difference. the call sign thing is whatever to me personally but some guys care about it a lot

yeah what he said about hamstudy is right, that site is probably the single best free resource out there for this. but i'd also say dont sleep on the gordon west technician book if you want something more than just drilling questions. it actually explains the why behind a lot of the electrical stuff which helped me way more than just memorizing answers. the ohms law questions especially, once you just remember the little triangle trick it becomes automatic. the rules and regulations section is honestly the easiest part once you read through it a couple times because a lot of it is just common sense about not interfering with other stations and identifying yourself and stuff like that. you'll be fine, 58% on your very first cold practice test is actually not bad at all

so i just got my technician license a few weeks ago and ive been lurking on the local repeater mostly just listening. i notice some people spell out their callsign using like alpha bravo charlie etc and some people just say their callsign normally. is there a rule about when you have to use phonetics or is it just whenever you feel like it? i tried looking it up and i keep finding stuff about nato phonetics but it doesnt really explain when youre actually supposed to use them on a repeater vs just saying your call normally. also sometimes people seem to use different words that arent the standard ones, like i heard someone say "sugar" instead of sierra the other day which was confusing

I've got a similar setup in my leased Accord, been using a mag mount on the roof for almost a year now and honestly no complaints. I know people say mag mounts are temporary but if you get a good one with a quality cable and dont move it around it just kinda lives there. Mine's been through carwashes and everything. I did put a thin piece of rubber mat under it just in case. For 2m and 70cm hitting local stuff it works perfectly fine. The FT-7900 is a solid radio by the way, you'll enjoy it.

so I've been interested in ham radio for a while mostly because of emergency prep stuff and also just the idea of talking to people around the world seems pretty cool. my neighbor has been licensed for like 20 years and keeps telling me to just go do it but when I look stuff up online I get kind of overwhelmed with all the different license classes and study materials and I dont even really know what the difference is between technician and general and all that. I guess my main question is what is the best way to study for the technician test and how hard is it really? I'm not super technical, I took some basic electronics in high school but that was a long time ago. is there a specific book or website people actually use? I've seen hamstudy.org mentioned a few places. also how long did it take you guys to feel ready to actually take the test

yeah i was in the same boat when i first started checking into the wednesday morning net here. felt super awkward the first few times. what helped me was just listening for like a month before i ever tried to check in — by then i kind of had the rhythm memorized. now i barely think about it. one thing i'd add is if you're on a really busy net sometimes people will just say their suffix only during the check-in round to save time, like if my call ends in KT4 i might just say "KT4" and net control knows to write it down. not every net does this but worth listening for. your net control will usually tell you what format they want at the start of the net anyway if they're running it properly.

went last year and honestly it was smaller than i remembered but still found a decent HF mobile rig for way under what theyre going for online so i mean its worth showing up early. the club tables had some good stuff too, one of the elmers from the local club was selling off a bunch of old antenna parts basically for nothing. id say go but get there when the doors open not like an hour later when all the good stuff is already gone

so ive been licensed for about 8 months now (general class) and i keep hearing people talk about CQ WW and ARRL Field Day like theyre the biggest things in ham radio. i tried to get on during field day this past summer but honestly had no idea what was going on, the exchanges confused me and i wasnt sure if i was even doing it right. ended up just listening most of the time which felt like a waste. now CQ WW SSB is coming up and i want to actually participate this time, not just tune around and feel lost. i have an IC-7300 and a dipole up about 30 feet, nothing fancy. do i need to be part of a club to count or can i just operate from home and log contacts? and is there like a good resource for learning the exchange format before jumping in? i feel like everyone else already knows this stuff and i missed some orientation or something lol also someone mentioned SOTA to me at a club meeting and that sounds really cool too, different vibe than contesting i guess but still some kind of operating event? not totally sure how that fits in with the contest calendar

ok so i just passed my technician exam last week and im waiting on the FCC to process everything. my uncle who got his license back in the 80s keeps telling me i should just wait for whatever sequential callsign they assign me but my friend who got licensed last year applied for a vanity call right away and got a pretty cool one with his initials in it. im not really sure how the sequential process even works — like does the FCC just pick the next available callsign in my district and hand it out, or is there some kind of criteria? and then with the vanity system, i know you have to apply separately through the ULS but i dont fully understand the timing. can you apply for a vanity call before your sequential one even comes through, or do you have to wait until youre in the system first? also does it cost anything? i saw something about a fee but wasnt sure if that was for the license itself or the vanity application or both. just trying to figure out what makes more sense before i do anything.

yeah 40 has been kinda meh lately for me too. though i did catch a nice pile up on saturday around 7.250 or so, some dx station i couldnt quite make out the call. my noise floor has been terrible this week though so that doesnt help, neighbors got some new LED fixtures or something and they're absolutely killing me below 10mhz. your dipole at 30ft should be fine for regional stuff at least

oh man the deer thing is so real, i had a whole family of them basically walk through my operating position at a county park activation last fall. one of them sniffed my coax i think. totally worth the hobby just for moments like that haha i'm still pretty new to WWFF myself but from what ive gathered the community is really welcoming, way less pressure than some of the other portable operating programs. good luck getting back out there for those last 6 contacts