Jessica Davis21

honestly it took me like 8 months to feel solid at 20 but i wasn't that consistent about practicing so take that for what its worth lol. the farnsworth thing is real though, stick with it even when it feels impossible. your brain needs time to stop decoding and start recognizing. i kept a little notebook of words i always missed and drilled just those for a while which helped

This is really interesting to read about, I'm still pretty new and haven't been part of any ARES exercises yet but I've been wanting to get involved. The part about operators fumbling message passing is kind of reassuring honestly because I've been nervous about exactly that — like I've read the ARRL handbook sections on NTS format but reading about something and doing it while someone's waiting on you are very different things.
Is there a good way to practice before jumping into an actual drill? I dont want to be the person slowing things down when it counts.

yeah its pretty much a culture thing more than a hard rule, at least for routine contacts. on a clear FM repeater where everyone can hear you fine, spelling out Whiskey Kilo Four Foxtrot whatever every single time would get tedious real fast and people would probably find it a little odd honestly. but on HF especially when the band is noisy or youre working someone with a language barrier, phonetics are genuinely useful and expected. DX contacts especially -- if you dont use phonetics when youre calling a rare station in a pileup you might just never get picked up because they cant parse your call from all the noise. i think the general guidance is use phonetics when theres any chance of confusion, so weak signals, lots of QRM, working someone overseas, or just when youre giving your call and you want to make sure it lands clean. on a local 2m ragchew with a guy you talk to every week, probably skip it.

so i just passed my technician exam last week and im trying to figure out what handheld to get. ive been going down a rabbit hole reading reviews and watching youtube videos and now im more confused than when i started honestly. everyone seems to have a really strong opinion and half of them contradict each other
the baofeng UV-5R keeps coming up and its like $25 which is obviously appealing but then people say the build quality is bad or that its not type accepted or whatever that means. then theres the yaesu FT-65 and the kenwood TH-D74 but that one is like $500 so probably not where i want to start
i mostly want to hit a few local repeaters, maybe do some simplex with a friend who lives about 8 miles away, and eventually learn more about the hobby in general. not sure if i need dual band right away or if that even matters yet. any thoughts would be appreciated, im just trying to not make a dumb first purchase

Yeah the gateway map can be misleading because stations do show up even if they havent been heard from in a while. The GIS map on winlink.org updates but I've seen nodes sitting there that havent actually been active in weeks. First thing I'd do is check the last activity timestamp on the gateway — if it hasnt made a connection in the last day or two I'd skip it and try another one even if its further away. Also Vara HF needs to be calibrated properly for your soundcard, the drive level matters a lot more than people realize. What's your signal report looking like on your end, is Vara actually decoding anything back?

So ive been following the chatter on a few different forums and it sounds like Icom is getting ready to drop something new in the HF portable space, nothing confirmed obviously but the speculation is getting pretty intense over on some of the DX boards. Someone posted what looked like a leaked photo but who knows if thats real or just wishful thinking.
Also completely unrelated but 10 meters has been absolutely wild this past week, worked a bunch of South American stations last Thursday with like 50 watts and a dipole that honestly isnt even optimized for that band. The solar flux has been cooperating lately which is nice after that rough stretch we had in the fall.
Anyone else been paying attention to the Hamvention announcements? I know its still a ways out but they usually start dropping hints about whats going to be showcased and I feel like this year could be interesting. Last year felt a little slow on the new gear front but maybe thats just me.

yeah what he said. i'll just add that 40m can get pretty crowded especially in the evenings and the "unofficial" band plans kind of exist because otherwise it would just be chaos with CW and phone all mixed together. so even if you technically can operate phone at 7.150 as a general, you probably dont want to because you'll be right in the middle of a CW pileup and everyone will hate you lol.
the band edge thing burned me once when i was new, i was sitting on 7.298 thinking i was fine and someone pointed out my upper sideband audio was definitely poking past 7.300. just stay a few kHz inside and you wont have to think about it.

that intermittent behavior with the ALC looking normal right up to the cutout is interesting. had something similar on an older 7200 and it ended up being one of the driver transistors getting flaky when it warmed up — thermal issue basically. the PA finals were fine but one of the drivers would just stop cooperating once it got to a certain temperature. you could actually predict when it was going to happen after about 20-30 minutes of operation because the case would be warm by then.
worth checking if there's any correlation to heat on yours. let it sit powered on for a while with no TX, then start transmitting and see if the timing of the dropout matches up with thermal soak. if it cuts out faster on a warm day that's probably your answer. icom's service manual has the driver stage laid out pretty clearly and the transistors themselves arent expensive if you can solder SMD, which on a 7300 you need to be comfortable with anyway.
also check all the coax connectors inside the chassis. i know you swapped external stuff but the internal PL-259 to board connection on these can develop a hairline crack that only shows up under RF load. i've been burned by that before.

I had similar issues until I disabled the radio's internal satellite tracking and let the software handle everything. Don't use the satellite tracking built into your radio - let Ham Radio Deluxe do the work for you. The key is making sure HRD has exclusive control over both VFOs.

Oh man the number of times ive gotten to the summit and realized i forgot something basic... definitely bring more water than you think you need, and maybe throw a granola bar or something in the pack. Also dont forget to spot yourself on sotawatch once you get set up, makes a huge difference for getting contacts. You can pack up after 4 QSOs but honestly once you get going its usually pretty fun to work a few more if conditions are good

yeah what he said. i'll just add that 40m can get pretty crowded especially in the evenings and the "unofficial" band plans kind of exist because otherwise it would just be chaos with CW and phone all mixed together. so even if you technically can operate phone at 7.150 as a general, you probably dont want to because you'll be right in the middle of a CW pileup and everyone will hate you lol.
the band edge thing burned me once when i was new, i was sitting on 7.298 thinking i was fine and someone pointed out my upper sideband audio was definitely poking past 7.300. just stay a few kHz inside and you wont have to think about it.

I had similar issues until I disabled the radio's internal satellite tracking and let the software handle everything. Don't use the satellite tracking built into your radio - let Ham Radio Deluxe do the work for you. The key is making sure HRD has exclusive control over both VFOs.

So ive been messing with this install for about three weeks now and its mostly working but something is still off. Running a Yaesu FTM-400 in my F150 and the antenna is a Tram 1185 on a mag mount right now, center of the roof. SWR on 2m reads around 1.3-1.4 which i know isnt terrible but on 70cm it jumps up to almost 2.1 near the top of the band and i cant figure out why.
The coax run is about 12 feet of RG-58 going through the door jamb rubber seal, which i know isnt ideal but i dont want to drill. The radio itself is mounted under the dash on a RAM mount and everything looks clean to me. Power is going straight to the battery through an inline fuse.
I tried adjusting the antenna tip but it barely changed anything. Anyone dealt with this with that antenna specifically or with mag mounts in general? Part of me is wondering if its the coax routing through the door seal thats pinching something but i cant really see any damage. Really just want to get this dialed in before the club's simplex net on Saturday.