Amanda Anderson50

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

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

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

ok so i've been interested in ham radio for like a year now but every time i try to figure out how to actually get licensed i just end up down a rabbit hole and close the tab lol. there's technician, general, extra... do i need to do them in order? and where do people actually study for this stuff, i found some website called hamstudy or something but i dont know if thats legit or what the actual test is like. my buddy at work has his ticket and he said it wasnt that hard but he also passed like 15 years ago and i dunno if anything changed. any advice appreciated, im just kind of lost on the whole process

honestly i still mess up and say the wrong phonetic sometimes under pressure, like my brain just blanks and i say random words that start with the right letter lol. but yeah what the previous guy said is pretty much it. conditions dictate it more than anything. i will say though one thing that helped me was just drilling the NATO ones until they were automatic, because when youre in the middle of a QSO and someones asking you to repeat your call for the third time the last thing you want is to be thinking about what N stands for

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?

i just passed mine like three weeks ago so this is fresh lol. i literally only used hamstudy.org and did maybe an hour a day for two weeks. the site tracks which questions you keep getting wrong and drills you on those more which is really helpful. didnt read any book at all. i do feel like i dont totally understand the electrical theory stuff but for actually getting on the air and using a radio it hasnt really mattered yet

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 ive been a tech for about a year and a half now and honestly i've been mostly doing 2m and some 70cm stuff with my HT and a slim jim in the attic. its been fun but i keep hearing people talk about HF and working dx and all that and i think i want to try it. my buddy W4something told me to just go for the general upgrade but im not sure how hard the exam is compared to the tech one. the tech exam honestly wasnt that bad once i went through the question pool a few times on hamStudy but i heard the general has a lot more about like propagation and operating procedures and some electrical stuff that goes over my head. also the regulations part seems way more complicated. is there stuff on there about like phone privileges and which bands you can operate on vs extra class? i dont really understand where the band splits are for general vs extra on like 40m or 20m. anyway just wondering if anyone has taken it recently and how they felt about it, and also what resources they used. im not in a huge rush but maybe want to take it in a few months

dont forget a way to actually charge that battery if you end up somewhere for more than a day or two. small solar panel is worth having even if its just a 50 watter, or at least know what your options are ahead of time. also spare microphone if you have one kicking around, those connectors on the 857 are not exactly bulletproof in my experience

im going through basically the same thing with my install right now so following this thread. I ran mine through the door jamb too and now im second guessing it lol. For the noise have you tried a noise filter on the power line? i picked up one of those Icom mobile filters cheap on ebay and it helped with my old radio. not sure if it matters what brand the filter is really

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

Definitely stick with the current 2022-2026 pool for your spring exam! New pools are typically released 6 months before becoming effective to allow time for study materials to be updated. The current pool has plenty of life left in it.

honestly sounds like GAS to me but i get it. i went from a 590 to a 7300 about two years ago and day to day on 40m ragchewing and some dx chasing its great, the waterfall alone is worth a lot just for situational awareness. but i did notice in the SS last november that things got a little rough when 20m was packed, the 590 handled that better in my experience. if your contesting is light though probably wont matter much. the cable cleanup alone might be worth it if that stuff bothers you, my shack looks way better now and thats not nothing when you spend a lot of time in there

yeah what he said about hamstudy. thats basically all i used. the ARRL book is good if you actually want to understand the why behind everything but for just passing the test its kind of overkill. one thing i'll add is dont freak out about the math questions, theres really only a handful and the formulas are simple once you do them a few times. V=IR and the decibel stuff mostly. just make sure you know your band privleges for technicians because that trips a lot of people up, like knowing you get phone on 10m but only a small portion of it, stuff like that.

dude same, I worked like 40 countries on 10m last weekend and I was not expecting that at all. my setup is pretty modest too so its not like im running a kilowatt into a yagi or anything. just goes to show when the band is open it really doesnt matter that much. one thing i noticed is that the openings seem to come in waves, like theres a really good window in the morning my time for Europe and then it kind of drops and then sometimes opens again toward afternoon for the Pacific. not totally consistent but thats been the rough pattern. somebody in our club mentioned something about greyline propagation playing into it too but i havent dug into that yet

congrats on your first one, the 44 QSO requirement trips everybody up at first but it sounds like you nailed it. on the logging question - you dont need the reference on every individual QSO line, it gets attached to the whole log when you upload to the WWFF logbook. just make sure your header info has the right KFF or whatever your national prefix is reference number and youre good. self-spotting is huge, youre right about that. i usually spot myself as soon as im set up and getting signal reports, even before i really start running. the WWFF Spotter page and also just the regular POTA spotting network both work, a lot of hunters watch both. put the reference number in the comment field for sure, something like "KFF-1234 WWFF" is plenty and people will find you. some of the more active hunters have alerts set up so they get notified when a new reference goes active. once you get into a rhythm with the spotting it becomes second nature. the log itself sounds fine, have fun with the next one.

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.

had almost the exact same problem last year. turned out my GPS wasn't actually locked and the radio was sending out a null position or something like 0,0 coordinates which aprs.fi just drops. check that the GPS icon on the D710 is solid and not blinking — blinking usually means it hasnt got a fix yet. if youre in the shack the GPS reception through the roof might be marginal depending on your antenna setup for it.

dont worry about freezing up, everyone does that the first time. nets really arent complicated once you do it once or twice. basically the net control station will open the net and then ask for check-ins, thats when you just say your callsign phonetically — so like Whiskey One Alpha Bravo or whatever yours is. some nets want your name and location too so just listen to what others are doing before you jump in and copy that format. the tricky part is timing — you want to wait for a natural pause after net control asks for check-ins, then just key up and give your call. if two people do it at the same time net control will usually ask for the station with a certain letter or something. just try it, worst case you step on somebody a little and net control sorts it out, nobody's gonna get mad at a new ham for trying. for the special event station yeah its basically just a normal contact, call them like you would anyone else, maybe a little pileup depending on how popular the event is but nothing crazy like a DX pedition usually. they'll often have a QSL card or certificate you can get which is kinda fun for a new ham to add to the collection

The FT-991A is a great option to build a shack around - that's exactly what I did as a new General. Having VHF/UHF means you can work local repeaters and still have HF for DX. It provides versatility of things you can do, even with just a Technician license before you upgraded. The waterfall display is nice too, though smaller than the 7300's.

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.

So ive been licensed about eight months now and i finally started tuning into our local 2m net on tuesday nights. Really enjoying it, the net control seems like a good guy and everyone sounds pretty relaxed. But i honestly dont fully understand when its appropriate to just check in and say hi versus when you should only listen. Like last week someone checked in and said they had traffic and then net control handled that whole thing separately, and i wasnt sure if i was supposed to just stay quiet until called or if i could have checked in at the same time. I ended up just listening the whole time because i didnt want to step on anyone or do something dumb. Is that the right call as a newer guy or am i being too cautious? Also how bad is it really if you accidentally key up at the wrong time? Feels like the stakes are high but maybe im overthinking it.

yeah the takeoff angle thing is real and it bites people more than they expect. a high gain collinear is compressing that radiation pattern down toward the horizon which sounds great until the path has any terrain in the way and suddenly youre shooting under or over the thing depending on your elevation relative to the repeater. for flat terrain 45 miles out a gp-9 type antenna would probably help you some, but hilly is a different story. honestly for that one specific machine a small yagi fixed-pointed at it isnt the worst idea even without a rotator. if the repeaters you use day to day are in different directions then yeah it gets complicated, but if that 45 mile one is more or less the same bearing as a couple others you could probably get away with a fixed mount slightly off true and cover a wider slice than people think. a 5 element yagi has like a 30-40 degree beamwidth at 3db down, its not a flashlight beam. something to consider before you start running rotator cable through the attic anyway

yeah what he said. also one thing that tripped me up early on was people making up their own phonetics instead of using NATO ones. like saying Nebraska instead of November or something. drives me crazy honestly because the whole point is that everyone knows the same words. i was on a net once where this one op kept using random words and the net control had to ask him to repeat twice. just use the standard ones and youre fine