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

ran into basically this exact same thing last year. ended up putting up a vertical with about 24 radials, maybe 15-20 feet each, not perfect but decent. compared it back to back with my old dipole (roughly similar height to yours) and on 40m the vertical was noticeably better for anything over like 2000 miles but the dipole actually won on closer in contacts weirdly enough. so now i run both and just pick depending on where im trying to work, which probably isnt helpful if you're trying to simplify things but thats the honest answer from my experience.

so ive been running FT8 for about a year now and yeah its great for working new entities and the log fills up fast but honestly it feels more like a video game than ham radio sometimes. like you're just clicking buttons and watching callsigns appear. anyway a buddy from my club mentioned JS8Call and i set it up last weekend and it seems way more interesting but my question is — is anyone actually using it regularly? i fired it up on 40m saturday afternoon and saw maybe a dozen stations in the activity window but most of them werent responding to anything, just beaconing. tried calling CQ for like 45 minutes and got one reply from a guy in ohio who then disappeared after one exchange. i get that its weaker signal capability than FT8 because of the longer tone spacing or whatever but the tradeoff of being able to actually type a message seems worth it to me. does it have like designated calling frequencies the way FT8 does? im on 7.078 which i think is right but maybe thats the problem. also does anyone run PSK31 still? i used to love that mode back in 2009 or so and it felt more like actually talking to someone than anything ive tried since

okay so I just passed my technician exam last week and I'm still waiting on my callsign to show up in ULS. my VE team said it usually takes a few days but I've been obsessively refreshing the FCC site like every hour lol. anyway while I was down that rabbit hole I started reading about vanity callsigns and now I'm more confused than before I started. so from what I can tell, when you first get licensed you just get whatever sequential callsign the FCC assigns you based on your district and license class, right? like I dont get to pick anything at that stage. but then after that I can apply for a vanity call? is there a waiting period or can I do it right away once my initial call shows up? and does it cost anything now — I thought the FCC started charging a fee a while back but I've seen conflicting info online. also kind of a separate thing but my uncle who got licensed in the 80s has a really short 1x2 call and he said I could potentially get something like that eventually if I upgrade to general or extra. is that accurate or was he just messing with me

okay so i finally worked up the nerve to check into our local 2m net last night and i think i did everything wrong lol. i keyed up at the wrong time, said my callsign at the end instead of the beginning i think, and when the net control asked for traffic i just kind of... froze and said nothing for like 3 seconds before saying no traffic. the whole thing was maybe 45 seconds but i felt like an idiot afterward. so my questions are basically -- when do you actually say your callsign, is it before or after you say what you want? and what does it mean when net control says "QNI" versus just asking for check-ins normally? i hear different nets do it differently and i cant figure out the pattern. also is it rude to check into a net and then leave early if something comes up, or do you just key up and say youre leaving? i know this is all probably basic stuff but nobody really explained net procedure to me when i got my ticket and the club meetings are only once a month so i figured id ask here

so i just passed my technician exam last week and im trying to figure out what handheld to get. ive been doing a ton of reading and now i think i know less than when i started lol. everyone seems to have a strong opinion and they all contradict each other. like some people swear by the Baofeng UV-5R because its cheap and you can learn on it, other people act like youre practically a criminal for even considering it. then theres the Yaesu FT-60 which seems really popular with the older crowd, and the Kenwood TH-D74 which looks amazing but is like 500 bucks and i dont even know what APRS is yet. i mostly want to use it for local repeaters and maybe some simplex when im hiking. i dont need anything fancy i think. budget is maybe 60-80 bucks to start but i could stretch if theres a really good reason to. anyone have thoughts? what did you start with?

so ive been licensed for about 8 months now and i finally decided to stop using the whip on my HT and build something real. picked up some 14 gauge stranded wire from the hardware store and im putting together a simple half wave dipole for 40m. cut each leg to about 33.5 feet which is what the formula spat out, 468 divided by freq and then halved. my question is really about the feedpoint. i bought a SO-239 chassis connector and i was going to just solder the two wire ends directly to it, center pin on one leg and the shell on the other. is that all there is to it mechanically speaking? like do i need any kind of strain relief or is just soldering it solid enough? im hanging this between two trees in the backyard so theres gonna be some wind load and i dont want the solder joints pulling apart after a week. also not sure if i need a balun here or if i can just run coax directly to it. i read like three different things on three different sites and now im more confused than when i started.

yeah what he said but also dont stress about it too much, i was nervous my first few checkins and honestly nobody cares if you stumble a little. i remember forgetting my grid square on a VHF net and just said something dumb and laughed it off, net control was totally cool about it. the weekly 2m net through our local club was where i really got comfortable just talking on the air. also if you look up echolink theres tons of nets accessible even without a great antenna situation which might be handy while youre still getting your station dialed in

yeah that waiting around feeling is pretty much universal for first activations, dont let it throw you off. the honest truth is that real events are way more chaotic than any drill can really simulate, and even experienced operators spend a chunk of time just figuring out where they fit into the picture. the fact that you showed up and made yourself useful on HF is exactly what matters. best thing you can do between activations is just stay active on the training nets and maybe volunteer to be net control once in a while even if it feels nerve wracking. also ask your EC if you can shadow them during planning or setup next time, that helps a lot for understanding the bigger picture of whats actually happening operationally. some groups also do ICS training which honestly made a huge difference for me in terms of knowing the chain of command stuff.

SOTA is definitely its own rabbit hole haha. i got into it last spring and now i spend more time looking at summit databases and checking sota watch than actually operating which probably isnt ideal. but if you like hiking its really addictive. good luck this weekend though, i might pop on 40m and see whats happening but i'm not really a serious contest operator. i'll probably just chase a few multipliers and call it a night.

so ive been scratching my head on this one for about two weeks now. my 7300 is doing something weird where on 40m specifically the output power drops to maybe 20-25 watts at full drive, every other band is putting out close to 100w no problem. ALC looks normal, the display isnt showing any faults or PA temp warnings, and it doesnt seem to be heat related because it does it cold too right from startup. i already went through the obvious stuff, checked the antenna, tried a dummy load, reseated the connectors i could get to without fully disassembling it. swapped coax. still the same thing. its like the finals are just... unhappy on that specific band and i cant figure out why. has anyone seen this on a 7300 or had to dig into the PA board on one of these? im comfortable with SMD work but id rather not go poking around blind if someone has a schematic note or a known failure point on that board.