Amanda Anderson50

so ive been working on this direct conversion receiver for 40m for like the past two months on and off, based loosely on the NorCal 40A design but with a few mods i found in an old QST. got it mostly working last weekend and i can actually hear stations which honestly surprised me after all the grief i had with the LO section. the problem is the audio is just... rough. lots of hum and what sounds like hash, especially when i touch the cabinet or move the coax around. im using a TL072 for the audio amp stage and i wonder if thats the weak point. also my ground plane situation is kind of a mess on the ugly construction board, lots of little islands that probably arent connected as well as they should be. anyone else fought this kind of thing on a scratch built DC rx? not sure if im chasing a grounding issue or if the audio chip is just picking up everything because the gain is so high at that stage. the LO is a colpitts oscillator running around 7 MHz and i havent shielded it at all yet which might be part of it

on my SUV i just drilled a hole through the roof and called it a day, no more mag mount debates lol. but seriously if youre noticing a difference its probably real, our brains are pretty good at picking up on consistent signal quality changes even if we cant always quantify it. the NR770 is a decent antenna tho so im guessing the variation is subtle either way

so ive been going down a rabbit hole lately trying to get my SSB audio sounding better and honestly the amount of conflicting advice out there is kind of overwhelming. been licensed about 4 years, running an IC-7300 with the stock mic right now, and people keep telling me different things about processing levels, mic gain, compression, all that stuff. did a lot of A/B listening on my own signal using a second receiver and i gotta say the difference between settings is way more noticeable than i expected. had my mic gain cranked too high for probably the first couple years and had no idea. someone finally told me my audio sounded 'thick' on 40m and i went and checked and sure enough ALC was pinned basically the whole time i was talking. so i guess my question is what do you guys actually find makes the biggest real-world difference for intelligibility on SSB, not just for rag chewing but also for when band conditions get rough. is the built in compression on the 7300 actually useful or is it just adding distortion? and does mic choice really matter that much or is it more about the settings?

yeah the ignition noise thing gets everyone at least once, I think its basically a rite of passage at this point. I had the same issue with my ID-5100 and it drove me nuts for weeks before someone at the club told me about the ferrite trick. Also worth checking your antenna feedline if the noise changes pitch with rpm rather than just being a constant hiss — that was a separate ground loop issue I had that turned out to be the antenna mount on my hatch not making good metal-to-metal contact. Once I scraped down to bare metal under the mount it cleared right up. RAM mounts are the way to go for the head unit, mine has survived two years of rough dirt roads without budging. The adhesive ones make me nervous though so I always try to find a screw mount option if possible.

there's no actual FCC rule that says you have to use phonetics, it's just good practice when there's any chance your call could be misheard. on a clear local repeater with people who already know you, most guys just say their call straight and thats fine. where it really matters is HF when the band is noisy or during contests or nets where the control op might be logging dozens of stations and needs to get your call right the first time the guy who asked you to repeat phonetically probably just didn't catch it clearly the first time, that's not a critique of you. honestly the more you operate the more it becomes second nature to just throw in phonetics whenever conditions seem even a little sketchy. after a while you dont really think about it

no worries at all, this confuses pretty much everyone at first. so the short version is LoTW is the one that actually counts for DXCC and a lot of the big ARRL awards, its digitally signed so they know the contact is legit. eQSL is separate, some awards accept it but not DXCC. a lot of people upload to both just to cover their bases and honestly once you set up the automatic uploads from your logging software its not really any extra work for paper cards through the bureau — yeah thats through ARRL if youre a member. you basically send a batch of outgoing cards to them and they route them through the international bureau system. incoming cards accumulate and you request them periodically. its slow, like sometimes months slow, but thats kind of part of the charm. that German card you got was probably from someone who sent it ages ago haha. for DX contacts a lot of people also just use direct mail with a self addressed envelope and a couple green stamps (thats dollar bills, sort of an old tradition for covering return postage). anyway definitely get yourself uploaded to LoTW at minimum, the certificate process is a little annoying but you only do it once

nice one for getting out there though, even a partial activation is way more fun than sitting in the shack if you ask me. i had a similar thing happen at a state forest reference a few months back, except my antenna fell down halfway through and i spent 20 minutes retying knots in the dark like an idiot. still made 50 contacts somehow. the WWFF community is pretty welcoming from what ive seen, worth posting about it in the WWFF-net group too if you havent already, people there are super helpful and sometimes they can even tell you about specific references that tend to have better shelter or cell coverage for spotting yourself.

so ive been running ft8 for about a year now and i enjoy the contacts but honestly it feels a bit like watching a slot machine, you spin it and either get a qso or you dont, theres not really any... conversation happening. heard about js8call from a guy at my club who uses it for emcomm stuff and apparently you can send longer messages back and forth, almost like a slow text message over hf. my question is whether its actually worth setting up alongside wsjt-x or if the bands are just too dead on js8 frequencies to make it practical. im on 20m most evenings and occasionally 40m when 20 goes long. i've got a pretty basic setup, ft-891 into a trapped vertical, nothing fancy, maybe 100w out. i can decode ft8 signals way down in the noise which is great but im wondering if js8 needs more oomph or if its similar sensitivity-wise. also is there any reason not to just leave both running at the same time on different vfos or does that cause issues with the audio interface? i only have one signalink usb so im guessing that might complicate things

so been trying to work Chatham Island for a few weeks now whenever the band opens and last night i finally got through on 17m. took way longer than it should have but i think i finally figured out what i was doing wrong the whole time. for the longest time i was just calling on top of everyone else right after the DX station finished, which is what i always assumed you were supposed to do. but i started watching more carefully and realized the DX op was listening way up — like 8 to 10 up — and i was just blasting away on his tx frequency like an idiot. once i found where he was actually pulling calls from everything changed pretty quick. also started using split more aggresively, like actually parking my tx freq a little off where the big guns seem to be clustering because thats where it gets so dense nobody gets through. moved up maybe 3 or 4 khz from where most people were transmitting and got picked up on my third call after that. running about 500w into a hex beam at 35 feet so not a super station by any means. anyway curious if others have tips for this kind of thing, specifically like how do you decide WHERE to put your tx freq in a split situation. is there some kind of strategy beyond just guessing or listening to where the DX is working people?

yeah the paperwork side always surprises people. i did a tabletop exercise with our RACES group a while back and half the room hadnt touched an ICS 213 since their ARRL emcomm course like two years prior. we ended up spending more time sorting out the forms than actually doing radio stuff which was kind of embarrassing but also genuinely useful to know about before a real event. one thing our EC started doing is running a short 20 minute drill every few months thats specifically just message handling practice, nothing else. no net control drama, no scenario, just here's a form, send it, receive one, log it. boring but it works. might be worth suggesting to your group if they dont already do something like that

Excellent work on the ACC connector approach. I did similar on my 751A but used the 24-pin connector for both audio paths. I've managed to work all of the states and more than 200 countries using the digital modes with my old IC-751A in the last couple of years. These old ICOMs still have plenty of life left in them!