Jessica Thomas

so i passed my technician exam on the 14th and just got my callsign showing up in the ULS a few days ago. been sitting on my baofeng for like two weeks just listening to the local repeater too scared to key up lol. finally yesterday i just did it, introduced myself during the morning net and this older guy came back to me and we actually talked for like 10 minutes about antennas and stuff. i was shaking the whole time which is embarrassing to admit but whatever. anyway just wanted to say hi to everyone here, been lurking this forum for months while i was studying. 73 de KD9whatever (still not used to saying my own call)

not a dumb question at all, everybody goes through this exact same thing. so dual band just means you can hit both 2m and 70cm repeaters which honestly matters more than you'd think once you start figuring out what's active in your area — some places have way more 70cm infrastructure than 2m and vice versa. the baofeng stuff works, i wont lie, but the receive quality is noticeably worse and they can spurious transmit in ways that make other hams grumpy at you. for $150 i'd seriously look at the yaesu ft-65 or maybe stretch a tiny bit for a wouxun kg-uv9d if you want more band coverage. the yaesu build quality is just in a completely different league and programming it doesnt require a 45 minute youtube tutorial. if APRS is on your radar eventually look at the yaesu ft3dr or the kenwood th-d74, but those are way above your budget so maybe that's a later upgrade path

yeah what he said about mic gain but also check your speech processor settings if you have it turned on. i had similar issues with mine until i realized the compressor was cranked way up from the factory. also the stock hm-219 mic that comes with the 7300 isnt great for voice characteristics, might want to consider upgrading to something like a heil hc-4 or sm-10 down the road. makes a huge difference in how you sound on the air

so i finally got my first scratch built QRP rig on the air last weekend, its a simple 40m CW transceiver based on the Pixie kit design but i wound my own toroids and substituted a few components i had in the junk box. got about 500mw out of it which i know is low even for QRP but im pretty happy with how it came together on the bench. managed a contact about 200 miles away which felt amazing honestly, the other op was running like 100w so i know thats not exactly a fair fight but still. my question is about efficiency, im running off a 9v supply and the PA stage gets pretty warm after a few minutes of key down. is that normal for a class C amplifier at these power levels or should i be looking at my biasing? i dont really have a proper dummy load either, just a bunch of resistors i cobbled together, wondering if thats throwing off my measurements. also if anyone has suggestions for a next build that steps up a little, maybe to 5w on a couple bands, id love to hear what kits or designs people have had good experiences with. im not opposed to building from a schematic either if the documentation is decent.

went through this same exact confusion a few months ago lol. the ae7q site the other person mentioned is seriously invaluable, you can search available calls and see if the one you want is open or in a waiting period because someone just let their license lapse. there is a 30 day window after a call becomes available before the FCC will reassign it through vanity, so if you find something you like you kinda have to time the application right or just hope nobody else grabs it at the same time as you. also worth knowing — if multiple people apply for the same call in that open window it goes to whoever has been licensed the longest i think, or maybe its just random within the window, i honestly cant remember the exact tiebreaker rule so dont quote me on that part.

so ive been going back and forth on this for probably two months now and i cant decide. im putting together a 40m setup at my new QTH, decent lot but the backyard is kinda narrow so a full halfwave dipole would have to go at a weird angle or i'd have to bend the ends. not ideal. the other option i keep coming back to is a vertical, maybe a trap vertical or just a resonant quarterwave with a ground radial system. the lot is also pretty flat which i guess helps for verticals but i dont really know how critical the radials actually are in practice vs theory. the thing is i hear so many people say verticals are noise magnets and then i hear other people say they work great for DX. im mostly interested in general HF operating, some DX occasionally but not like hardcore contesting. would the inverted-V version of the dipole be a reasonable middle ground if i cant do a flat-top? feels like i keep reading conflicting stuff everywhere.

My trusty TS-440S has been rock-solid for 15 years, but last week during a 20M POTA activation, it suddenly lost all RF output. Power transistors or ICs, but other components may be affected as well (electrolytic capacitors - rare but it happens, diodes, zeners, etc.) SWR meter shows 1:1 on dummy load, but zero watts output across all bands and power levels. Supply voltage is steady 13.8V, fuses are good. Before I tear into the PA section, what's the systematic approach here? Unless the failure can be positively attributed to counterfeit transistors (which will fail at much lower power levels than the genuine device), try to determine exactly what went wrong before re-commissioning the amplifier. Check speaker leads, supply voltages and speaker impedance Should I start with bias measurements on the final transistors or check the driver stage first?

marathons are great for first activations honestly because the pace is pretty manageable and its not like a hurricane where everything is chaos. your main job at a water station is probably gonna be reporting runner numbers if someone goes down or needs medical, so just know how to give a clear position report and you'll be fine. one thing i'd say is dont key up unless you have something to say, new folks sometimes feel like they need to check in constantly to prove theyre there. net control will poll the positions periodically, just answer when they call your station and stay off the air otherwise unless theres something to report. you got this.

so ive been running SO2R for about three contest seasons now and im still not sure im doing it right. last weekend during the state QSO party i had my second radio parked on 15m while i was running on 40 and honestly i think it cost me more time than it saved because i kept losing my run frequency when i'd go answer something on the second radio and come back to find someone parked on my spot. my setup is nothing fancy, two K3s with a bandpass filter setup between them, dipoles at different heights so the isolation is decent enough that i can usually transmit on both without too much bleed. but the operating strategy side of it is where i feel like im still fumbling. like when do you actually commit to a second radio CQ vs just doing S&P on it when you hear something good. i've read the k1ar stuff and the n5kf writeups but some of it feels like advice for guys running at 200/hr rates which i am definitely not doing. anyone who's actually ground through this and figured out when SO2R starts paying dividends would be great to hear from. im averaging maybe 80-90/hr on a good run, is that even fast enough for SO2R to matter or am i just adding complexity for no reason

yeah what he said about the license class is the big thing. i made the same mistake when i first looked into vanity calls, had my eye on this nice short callsign and then found out i needed Extra for it. ended up just going ahead and studying for Extra which was worth it anyway. the AE7Q site is your best friend for this stuff, bookmark it now. you can set up alerts i think for when specific calls become available which is handy if theres one youre really after.

ok so I just upgraded to general a few weeks ago and im still trying to figure out the frequency thing. like I know generals have more privileges than tech but the band plan stuff is really confusing me. on 40 meters specifically, I keep seeing people say stuff like 'dont operate too close to the band edge' but I dont really understand what that means practically. like if the allocation goes down to 7.125 for phone can I just tune to 7.126 and go or is there some rule about your signal needing to fit within the band or something. also someone at my club mentioned something about the ARRL band plan vs the actual FCC allocation and now im even more confused because those are apparently two different things? sorry if this is a dumb question im just trying to not accidentally do something wrong

food and water lol. not even kidding, when i did my first actual activation i was so focused on the radio stuff that i didnt eat anything until like 7pm and i was completely useless by then. your brain does not work right when you're hungry and running on adrenaline. just throw some granola bars and a water bottle in there, future you will be grateful. also headlamp with fresh batteries. separate from whatever batteries you have for the radio gear. i kno it seems obvious but its the kind of thing that lives in a drawer and has dead batteries half the time.

yeah the timing thing is huge and most people never figure it out. ive watched guys transmit their full call three times back to back when the DX is clearly already in a QSO and its just... why. youre not helping yourself. one thing i'd add for SSB specifically is audio. if your signal sounds like garbage in a pileup you are invisible. ran an experiment a while back where i borrowed a friend's station that had a really well processed mic setup, same antenna roughly same power, and the difference in how fast i got through was pretty dramatic. not saying go crazy with processing but some gentle compression and making sure your levels are clean goes a long way when the op is hearing 50 guys at once and trying to pick out something intelligible. also the listening-before-transmitting thing you mentioned, i call it doing homework and i'd say most casual ops skip it entirely. 15 minutes of just watching the operation before you ever key up will save you hours of frustration. you learn the op's rhythm, whether he's doing a full callsign exchange or just signal reports, whether he's working geographic regions, all of it. that stuff matters a lot more than raw power in my experience.

yeah 10m has been genuinely unreal, I worked a station in South Africa on a dipole in my attic last Tuesday. Like a random Tuesday afternoon. I had to double check the callsign because I couldnt believe it. If you haven't tried FT8 on 10 lately you're missing out, the band is open way more than you'd think even when you don't hear much voice activity. As for Icom, I think you're thinking of the IC-905 stuff but that's been out for a bit now, mostly microwave/VHF stuff which isn't for everyone. There was also some chatter about a possible successor to the 7300 line but nothing official that I've seen, could easily be rumor mill stuff. Those Facebook groups can be... creative with their sourcing sometimes lol. Your 7300 is honestly still one of the best bang for buck rigs out there, I wouldn't stress too much about upgrading unless something really compelling shows up. The contest is probably CQ WW, that's the big one in the fall that everyone talks about. Runs the last full weekend of October for phone and then SSB, then CW in November. If you've never operated it even casually just turning the dial around on a Saturday is kind of fun to see how many prefixes you can pick up without really trying.

the RSP1A is genuinely better than the RTL for HF, not even close really. the dynamic range difference is real and you'll notice it immediately if you're in a RF-dense environment. the 12-bit ADC vs 8-bit on the RTL makes a meaningful difference when strong signals are around. that AM broadcast problem you're describing is pretty classic RTL behavior and the RSP handles it a lot better with the built-in preselection filters. that said if your main goal is just better HF receive i'd also look at whether you have a decent antenna first. the RSP1A wont fix a bad antenna situation and ive seen people upgrade the radio and still be disappointed because they're still on a random wire thrown out a window. for what it costs though, around $100 US, the RSP1A is a solid jump up from the RTL. the SDRuno software that comes with it is actually pretty capable once you get used to the interface, though i know some guys run it with SDR# or HDSDR just fine too. skip the HackRF for pure receive use. it's a transmit-capable device and the receive performance is actually not that impressive, HackRF receive is worse than a decent RTL in some respects because of the architecture. it's meant to be a flexible dev platform not a high performance receiver.

so ive been monitoring 10m pretty regularly for the past few weeks and something feels off. some days it opens up like crazy, had a contact with a station in japan last tuesday which honestly shocked me, and then the next two days it was completely dead. like nothing. checked the solar flux index and it was hovering around 140-150 which shouldnt be that bad but the band just wasnt cooperating at all. been using pskreporter to get a sense of whats happening and the spots are all over the place. one morning ill see europe lighting up, next morning nothing past maybe 500 miles. is this just normal cycle 25 behavior or am i missing something about how to read conditions better? i know the k-index matters too but im not sure how to weigh all these different numbers against each other. any of the more experienced folks here have a good way of making sense of it all?