Carlos Mendez

The new rules don't change existing RF exposure limits but require stations in all services to be evaluated against existing limits unless exempted, with existing stations having until May 3, 2023 to complete evaluation. For your 100W HF setup with a dipole 30 feet away, you'll likely find you're well within compliance limits using the tables in OET-65 Supplement B.

I'm upgrading to Extra in a couple months and wondering about call sign strategy. You can request a new sequential call sign at no cost during license upgrade or renewal. But I'm tempted by some of the shorter vanity calls available to Extras. For those who've gone both routes - when is the $35 vanity fee worth it versus just taking whatever sequential call gets assigned? I operate mostly CW and some contesting, if that matters. What factors should I consider beyond just "it looks cool"?

the doppler on SO-50 isnt as brutal as on a linear transponder bird so you're actually in decent shape there. for an FM sat like that most people just set a few pre-programmed channels offset from center and manually switch between them as the pass progresses. some guys do three channels, one for AOS, one for mid-pass, one near LOS. its not perfect but honestly for a 5-10 minute pass you dont need it to be. 5 watts with an arrow should definitely be enough to get in, i've worked it with a rubber duck on a good high pass so your setup is fine. the thing that gets most newcomers is timing - the sat is FM so it captures on the strongest signal and if two people are transmitting at once you just get noise. try calling right after you hear a contact complete, theres usually a brief gap. also make sure your tone is right, SO-50 needs the 67hz ctcss on uplink or it wont even open the repeater.

the coax length thing is real but its probably not your main issue here. what youre describing with the tuner jumping around sounds more like a common mode current problem to me — did you put a balun or choke at the feedpoint? without one the coax shield becomes part of your radiating system and it can make the whole thing act unpredictably, especially when you move to bands the dipole wasnt cut for. even a simple ugly balun, just coil up like 8-10 turns of the feedline in a coil about 6 inches across right at the feedpoint, can make a noticeable difference. i did basically the same build last summer and had the exact same tuner weirdness until i added a W2DU style bead choke. after that 20m settled right down. the 1.4 on 40m is fine honestly, youre probably a bit long which would put resonance below 7.150 but thats workable. id trim maybe half an inch off each leg at a time if you want to dial it in tighter but its not worth obsessing over.

had something similar on a friends 7300 a while back, turned out to be a cold solder joint on the TCXO board. the heat cycles can really do a number on those. if your TX is checking out fine on frequency that actually does point away from the reference osc being way off, but a marginal solder joint could still cause weird receive behavior without wrecking TX enough for people to notice on the air. before you send it to icom id pull the top cover and just have a look around that area with a loupe, maybe reflow anything that looks dull or cracked. icom's turnaround has been kinda slow lately anyway and it'll cost you minimum $150 just for them to look at it. if you're not comfortable with the iron i get it but honestly the 7300 isnt that scary to work on once you're inside.

For RX, set audio device levels to 100%, disable AGC, and adjust RF gain. For TX, enable "Remember power settings" and adjust power output to avoid ALC engagement. The key is avoiding any ALC indication whatsoever.

i did almost exactly this a couple years ago with a uno and a bmp280 for pressure and temp. ended up going the pi zero route sooner than i thought because formatting the APRS-style string got annoying on the arduino side without proper string handling. the zero with python just made that part way easier and then i just had it talk to a small arduino nano over serial to handle the actual keying since i didnt want to deal with the pi gpio timing being messed up by the OS scheduler. works pretty reliably now, beacons every 10 minutes on 30m. the iambic stuff — honestly dont bother unless you really need it for a beacon, straight key timing is way simpler to code and nobody cares if a beacon isnt using iambic

Finally passed my General exam yesterday and my new privileges should show up in the ULS soon! Looking for advice on which HF band to try first for my inaugural General contact. I've been a Tech for 3 years, mostly 2m/70cm repeaters and some 10m SSB. I keep hearing that 20 meters is the best for working DX and worldwide contacts, especially during favorable propagation. But I'm also interested in digital modes like FT8 which has become really popular on HF. My current setup is an IC-7300 with a G5RV in the attic (HOA restrictions). What bands would give me the best chance of success for that first General QSO? Any specific frequencies or times of day to focus on?

so im just sitting here with the radio on, nothing special going on, just kind of scanning around 40 meters and its actually pretty lively tonight for a wednesday. caught a couple guys ragchewing out of ohio and just listened for like 20 minutes. didnt even key up, just lurked. sometimes thats all i want to do honestly. anybody else do that or is that weird lol

ive been meaning to join ARES for like two years now and just keep putting it off. this kind of post makes me want to actually do it. quick question - do you need any special equipment to participate or is your personal radio setup usually enough to get started? i have a basic HF rig and a 2m/70cm handheld, not sure if thats sufficient or if theres a minimum kit people expect you to have

so ive been going back and forth on this for like two months now and i figured id just post and see what people think. my situation is a fairly small suburban lot, maybe 60x90 feet, two story house, a couple trees in the back that are decent height maybe 35-40 feet. i currently have a crappy end fed random wire that i threw up last year just to get on the air and it works but the noise floor on 40 is killing me, SWR is a mess above 7.1 and i have to fiddle with the tuner constantly. ive been looking at putting up something more permanent and the two options im seriously considering are a standard half wave dipole center fed with some 450 ohm ladder line into a tuner, or one of those trap verticals, maybe a Hustler or similar, with a few radials. i have a spot in the yard where i could get a vertical up maybe 15 feet from the house which isnt ideal i know. the part that has me stuck is that most of what i read says dipoles at low heights are basically NVIS and good for regional stuff, and the vertical would theoretically give me better low angle radiation for DX. but then somebody else told me a vertical 15 feet from the house is gonna have all kinds of issues with the house affecting the pattern. dont know who to believe at this point. mostly want to work 40 and 80m with occasional 20m, not a serious DXer but id like to at least make contacts outside north america sometimes.

DHS now requires all volunteers including amateur radio operators to complete IS-100, IS-200, IS-700 and IS-800. Don't worry - these are available as free online independent-study courses. Once you're certified, it's currently lifetime certification. The training really does help you understand how emergency management works!

okay so i've been a ham for about 8 months now and ive been checking into the local 2m net pretty regularly, which has been great. but i'm still kind of fuzzy on the unwritten rules. like the net control will sometimes ask for any stations with traffic or emergency traffic first, then priority, then general check-ins. i get that part. but what about when the net is winding down and it feels like things are getting casual and people are just chatting? is it rude to just key up and join the conversation or do you still wait for net control to acknowledge you? also had a moment last week where i heard a station calling and i wasnt sure if they were calling me specifically or just calling in general. i keyed up and apparently someone else had already been acknowledged and i walked all over them. felt awful about it. net control was nice about it but i still felt like a dork. just trying to figure out the etiquette here so i dont keep making the same mistakes

congrats on the first one, 35 QSOs is solid especially if conditions werent great. the band hopping thing is totally fine, theres no rule about staying on one band a certain amount of time. most activators i know will work a band until the rate drops to almost nothing then move. some will announce on the first freq that theyre going to another band so chasers can follow, which is a nice touch. on the boundary question - yeah you do need to stay within the reference boundary the whole operating time. the rules are a bit loose in practice i think but technically speaking if you wander outside the park youre not really activating that reference anymore. that said the parking lot situation sounds like it was still within the park so you're probably fine. WWFF doesnt have rangers checking on you, its mostly an honor system but worth keeping in mind for future ones, especially if you ever do a tricky boundary situation. i'd also suggest getting on the WWFF logger early and updating your spot if conditions shift bands, the chasers really appreciate knowing where you went. some of them are actively hunting references for awards and will follow you across three or four bands if you let them know.

The 10-minute rule means you must identify at least every 10 minutes during communication to clearly make the source of transmissions known to receivers. So if you start talking at 2:00 PM, you must ID by 2:10 PM, then again by 2:20 PM, etc., regardless of conversation breaks.

yeah what he said about the shielding, i had almost the exact same thing happen with a 20m DC receiver i built last year. what finally helped me was running the oscillator off its own small regulated supply separate from the rest of the board, the LO was coupling out through the power rail which i didnt even think about at first. once i added a simple RC filter on the VCC line to the oscillator section the leakage dropped noticeably even before i touched the shielding

so the band plan vs the license thing is actually a pretty common point of confusion. the FCC allocations are the law, full stop, if you operate outside those you can actually get in trouble. the band plan is more like a gentlemens agreement the amateur community came up with so everyone isnt stepping on each other, its not enforceable but ignoring it will definitely get you some choice words on the air from the old timers. the band edge thing is about your signal not just your carrier. if youre on 7.300 and youre running SSB your upper sideband is going to splash above 7.300 which is outside the allocation. so the rule of thumb a lot of people use is stay 3 or 4 khz inside the edge to be safe, especially on ssb. some people say more some say less depends who you ask. on the lower end same idea, generals on 40m phone start at 7.175 so dont just plunk yourself right on 7.175 either give yourself a little room. its not that complicated once you think about it in terms of the whole signal rather than just the dial frequency

honestly the General pool isnt that bad once you sit down with it. i used HamStudy and just drilled questions every day for maybe 3 weeks, probably 20-30 minutes a night, and passed with a comfortable margin. the theory stuff like reactance and all that — you dont need to deeply understand it, a lot of people just learn to recognize the right answer from seeing it enough times. not saying thats the best way to learn the hobby but for passing the exam it works fine the HF thing without a big setup is totally doable by the way. i started on 40m with a random wire thrown over a tree and a used Yaesu FT-891 i found on QRZ classifieds. made my first SSB contact into Europe about two weeks after upgrading. the bands do a lot of the work for you if you catch conditions right. 40 at night especially is pretty forgiving for modest antennas

i had the exact same problem when i first got my uv-5r, turns out i had the tone set on the wrong memory channel because i thought i had it right but chirp had written it to a different row. worth double checking you saved it to the right one. also some repeaters have a timeout timer so if you key up and just say your callsign and nothing else and let go, sometimes it takes a second before you hear anything back — thats normal, the repeater is just doing its thing before it drops.