Jessica Davis18

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.

dont overthink the duplicate thing, ADIF importers in basically every logging program have had dupe checking for years. Log4OM lets you set how it handles them on import. i went through the same thing when i started actually caring about my log being accurate and just spent one afternoon sorting it out and havent thought about it since.
one thing i'd mention is make sure your WSJT-X is pointed at the right log file or UDP port depending on how youre doing it, because i had mine quietly writing to a separate log for like two months before i noticed and had to go back and merge stuff manually which was annoying

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 the hollow feeling with FT8 is real, i hit that wall maybe 6 months in. JS8Call is genuinely different in feel but youre right that the activity is patchy. i check 14.078 most weekend mornings and can usually find a few guys chatting, there's also a handful of nets that run on 40m in the evenings depending on your timezone. the store-and-forward relay stuff is actually pretty clever once you dig into it.
the latency thing you just kind of accept after a while. its not a phone call its more like... a very slow text message conversation. once i reframed it that way it stopped bothering me. and yeah compared to PSK31 the weak signal advantage is real, ive completed JS8 QSOs when PSK31 would have been totally unreadable, the waterfall just doesnt lie. that said i still fire up PSK31 occasionally when the band is good and i want to actually type fast and have something close to a normal conversation. different tools for different moods honestly.

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.

Congratulations! That's fantastic progress. Currently I'm OK working up to 20wpm qsos as long as the other station has good spacing - spacing really makes a difference when you're building speed. What character speed were you using during your practice sessions?

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

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?