Sarah Moore28

not a dumb question at all, everyone goes through this. the Q codes go back to telegraph days, they were shortcuts so operators could send common phrases quickly in morse without typing out a whole sentence. QTH is your location, QSL means confirmed or acknowledged, QRZ is basically who's calling me, QRM is interference from other stations, QSB is when your signal is fading in and out. those are probably the ones youll hear the most on voice. 73 is best wishes or regards, its just traditional. 88 means love and kisses, you'll hear older guys send that to their wives on the air sometimes. OM means old man which is just how hams refer to other male operators, not rude at all its just the lingo. YL is young lady which they use for any female operator regardless of age, and XYL is ex-young-lady meaning wife. yeah i know how that sounds but its been around forever and most people just roll with it. honestly the best thing is just spend time listening and itll click pretty fast. you dont need to memorize all 50 Q codes, maybe a dozen of the common ones and you're good for most conversations.

yeah what he said about the preamp, i cannot stress that enough. i made the mistake of running like 6 feet of coax before my preamp when i first set things up and it was night and day when i moved it up to the boom. completely different station basically. also dont underestimate the pointing accuracy thing if you go with a bigger array. i had a cheap rotor setup that was maybe plus or minus 5 degrees and that was enough to cost me signal on some of the weaker paths. not a dealbreaker starting out but something to keep in mind as you scale up. the moon moves faster than you think and the beamwidth on a big antenna gets narrow enough that it actually matters

check if theres a digi anywhere near you that's actually up. aprs.fi not showing you doesnt necessarily mean you arent transmitting, it means your packets arent making it to an igate. if the local digi is down or your signal isnt hitting one, youre just shouting into the void and nobody hears it. you can look up your area on aprs.fi map and see if there are active digis nearby, and also check when they last heard something — if a digi hasnt gated anything in hours its probably offline. the other thing i'd do is just grab a sdr dongle and use it on a second device to actually listen to your own transmission. tune to 144.390 and when you key up you should see a big spike and hear the packet burst. at least then you know the radio is actually putting RF out with data on it.

3m dish on 2m is a solid start, you're looking at maybe 26-27 dBd depending on surface accuracy and feed efficiency so that's workable. the NF thing is real though, like not optional real. at 144 MHz the difference between a 0.4 dB and a 1.2 dB preamp is actually audible on moon noise and it directly affects whether you're copying the other stations period. most serious stations are running cavity preamps or the Kuhne stuff, MKU LNA series. the 0.3-0.4 dB NF targets are achievable without going crazy, Kuhne MKU 144 B is popular and reasonably priced relative to building something from scratch. the sequencer is absolutely not optional in my opinion. software sequencer through the radio is too slow and too dependent on your computer not hiccuping at the wrong moment. a proper hardware sequencer like the ones from W6PQL or similar, it just removes the variable from the equation. i ran without one for about three weeks when i started and killed a preamp on day two. never again. the IC-9700 actually has decent integration for this stuff but i still use a standalone sequencer and let the radio key the amp through it. JT65 is forgiving enough that you dont need to be at the absolute noise floor limit to make contacts, plenty of initial contacts happen with setups that are slightly compromised. get the preamp right first, everything else is iterative.

so ive been using N1MM pretty much exclusively for the last few years and it does what i need for contests, no complaints there. but outside of contest season im finding it a little clunky for everyday logging and keeping track of QSOs, especially now that im doing more digital stuff with WSJT-X. the integration isnt terrible but it feels like N1MM is kind of fighting me when im just casually working FT8 on a random tuesday night and not actually in a contest. a buddy of mine at the club keeps pushing Log4OM at me and i finally installed it last week just to poke around. honestly the interface is a lot nicer for day to day stuff, the awards tracking is way better, and the WSJT-X integration just worked right away which was a nice change. but i dont know if i want to give up N1MM for contest season because i really dont want to be fiddling with something unfamiliar when im trying to run a pile or stay competitive in a sprint. is anyone else running both depending on what theyre doing, like Log4OM for regular rag chew and digital and then switching to N1MM when a contest comes up? does the ADIF import export between them cause any headaches, dupes showing up weird or anything like that? or am i overcomplicating this and should just stick with one and learn it better

so this has been driving me crazy for about two weeks now. picked up a used 7300 from a guy at the club, worked fine for the first few days then just started outputting low power across the board. doesnt matter what band, 40m 20m 10m all the same, just sits around 20w when the dial is set to 100w. i already went into the menus and looked at the ALC settings, didnt seem obviously wrong. RF gain is all the way up. tried a different antenna and dummy load just to rule out the obvious stuff. the radio doesnt throw any error codes and the display looks totally normal. SWR reads fine into the dummy load. its just... weak. my first thought was the PA transistors but i wanted to see if anyone had run into this specific thing before i start poking around inside with a meter. the previous owner said he never had issues but you know how that goes. anyone seen this on a 7300 specifically?

same thing happened to a buddy of mine with his 7300 couple years back, different cause but similar symptoms. his turned out to be a blown LP filter relay, of all things. rig was receiving fine, showed power on the meter briefly then dropped to nothing. relay contacts were partially fused i think. not saying thats your problem but worth keeping in mind its not always the obvious stuff. also -- and i know this probably isnt what you want to hear -- icom service manuals for current production stuff are pretty locked down but there are some good folks over on the 7300 groups.io list who have done deep dives on the hardware. might be worth poking around there before you commit to shipping it anywhere.

so ive been going to this one for like 4 years now and its honestly one of the better ones in the region, the flea market tables are always packed and last year i picked up a barely used 706 for way under market. just wondering if anyone else from around here is planning to show up. also i think the club is doing a fox hunt the day before but i havent seen anything confirmed on the website yet

so ive been licensed for about four months now (general class) and i keep hearing people talk about checking into nets but honestly i still feel a little lost about how the whole thing works. like i know the basic concept but finding an actual schedule that works for me has been harder than i expected. i work evenings so most of the local club nets happen when im at work and i miss them every time. i have a decent HF setup, ic-7300 into a g5rv, so i can get on most bands. was thinking maybe 40 meters since i hear its pretty active at night? or does anyone do 80 meters nets that are actually friendly to newer operators. i dont want to be the guy who steps on someone or messes up the exchange. is there like a standard way to check in or does every net do it different

yeah VNC is basically the lazy answer and it works but you're right that its heavy. what a lot of guys do is run OpenWebRX at the remote site instead — it serves the SDR data as a web stream so you just open a browser tab and youve got your waterfall without streaming a whole desktop. way less bandwidth than VNC and the panadapter lag is pretty acceptable. i run it on a pi4 alongside my main rig control and it doesnt really fight for bandwidth in any noticeable way, at least on a 10mb upstream connection. the EchoLink thing — yeah some people do run both but usually on separate machines or at least separate processes. mixing remote rig access with a linked node on the same box can get weird with audio routing, especially if you're using something like VAC or VB-Audio to pipe things around. not impossible but you kinda need to think through the audio graph before you start or you end up with feedback loops and a headache

so ive been licensed for about 8 months now and finally decided to take the plunge and learn morse code. not required anymore i know but something about it just appeals to me. anyway ive been using the LCWO website to learn the characters and im up to about 15 wpm copy on a good day which honestly suprised me, i thought it would take way longer. the problem is my sending is just awful. im using a cheap paddle i picked up off ebay, nothing fancy, and i have a keyer built into my radio (IC-7300). i can form the letters ok i think but when i actually get on the air and try to have a QSO everything falls apart. my spacing is wrong, i rush, and i think my dits are uneven. had one guy just send NIL after my callsign and i wanted to crawl under the desk lol. is this just practice practice practice or is there some specific thing i should be working on? also wondering if the cheap paddle is making it worse or if thats just an excuse im making for myself

congrats on the first one, that feeling when the pileup starts and youre out in the middle of nowhere with a wire in a tree is pretty hard to beat. dont sweat the logging stuff, everyone fumbles that early on. i used HAMRS for my first dozen or so activations and kept making little mistakes, now i use the POTA app directly and it uploads basically automatically which helps a lot. 40m at midday can be hit or miss depending on conditions but sounds like you picked a decent time. if you go back to the same park try getting there earlier and maybe throw a line over a higher branch, even getting your apex up to 30 feet makes a noticeable difference. and yeah the hunters community is genuinely one of the nicer corners of ham radio, people are pretty forgiving especially when they can tell youre new to it.

I run N1MM exclusively during contests and dont even open Log4OM that weekend, then do the ADIF merge Monday morning. honestly after the first couple times you do it its not a big deal. the duplicate check in Log4OM on import is good enough for me. the WSJT-X UDP thing though, i had that exact same problem and it turned out to be Log4OM going into some kind of idle state and not listening anymore. there might be a keepalive setting or something, i honestly just restart Log4OM if it goes quiet for more than like 20 minutes during an FT8 session. not elegant but it works

yeah the self spotting thing was a game changer for me too when i first started. i was so suprised how fast people come calling once youre on the list. one tip if you havent already, get the SOTA goat app or just watch the reflector the night before because sometimes chasers will actually schedule skeds with you which makes hitting 4 way easier especially if conditions are garbage. also 20m was treating me real well lately too, tried 40 last week and it was a mess of noise

so ive been trying to figure out if its worth the drive this year, last time i went was maybe 3 years ago and i scored a pretty decent HF rig for way under market price but also spent like 4 hours walking around in the sun and came home with a sunburn and a bag full of random coax connectors i probably didnt need. my buddy KC8 something is going but he lives closer so its easier for him. anyone else planning on making the trip? also does the club still do that breakfast thing saturday morning before the gates open