Amanda Anderson50

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

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.

so i finally got my technician license back in march and ive been mostly just listening around on 2m but my elmer mentioned i should try checking into a local net to get some practice talking. found one on a tuesday night that meets on the local repeater and i sat and listened for like three weeks before working up the nerve lol. anyway i actually checked in last tuesday and it went fine but honestly i had no idea what to say beyond my callsign and i kind of froze when the net control asked if i had any traffic. do you just say no traffic or is there some specific phrase im supposed to use? also are there nets specifically for new hams where people are more patient? i feel like i slowed everything down a bit.

the generator noise thing is a real concern but honestly manageable if you pick the right one and run it with a little distance between it and the radio. i've used a Honda EU2200i at field day and a couple ARES deployments and with maybe 20-30 feet of cord and the exhaust pointed away you usually cant hear it in the receiver at all. the inverter generators are way cleaner than the old conventional ones — the EU2200i in particular puts out pretty solid sine wave and i've never had RFI issues with it. that said it is another piece of gear to lug around and fuel to manage.
honestly for your scenario i'd probably just do the second battery plus the solar panel and skip the genny. if you're running the 7300 at moderate power — say 50-75w — and only keying up for check-ins rather than continuous operation, two 100ah lithium packs should be more than enough headroom for 8 hours even without any solar contribution. the solar is just insurance and peace of mind. run them in parallel through a decent fused bus bar and you're basically set. keep the genny as a club resource you can call in if something goes sideways.

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 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

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

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.

yeah i did exactly this a few years back, had a vertical yagi pointed at a repeater about 35 miles out on a ridge. the gain difference is real but the pattern issue you mentioned is the actual tradeoff — i missed a bunch of nets because guys were coming in from directions i wasnt expecting and they were like 20 over on the collinear but barely readable through the yagi. ended up putting both up on the same mast about 3 feet apart and switching between them depending on what im doing. coax relay from an old rotor controller box, works fine. if you mostly just want that one repeater the yagi is genuinely better but if youre doing any kind of ragchew where mobile stations are coming from all over its a pain.
the vertical orientation on a horizontal boom is not a big deal btw, just mount the boom horizontally and the elements are vertical, people overthink that part. the feedpoint is the feedpoint regardless of boom orientation.

Don't neglect T4 (Amateur Practices) - it's only one question on the exam but covers important operating etiquette. The exam selects one question from each subelement, and you need 26 correct out of 35 to pass, so every point counts!

that first contact feeling is something you never really forget, congrats. the repeater guys are usually pretty welcoming especially to new hams, you picked a good way to start. dont be shy about keying up more, the more you do it the more natural it gets. and if that elmer offered his time take him up on it, those guys know stuff you wont find in any book