James Davis67

yeah hamstudy.org is exactly what you want, thats the one pretty much everyone uses now. and yes you do have to go in order, Tech first then General then Extra, cant skip ahead. the Technician pool isnt too bad honestly, its 35 questions out of a pool of like 400 or so and you need 26 right to pass. most people spend a couple weeks just drilling questions on hamstudy and they're fine. the site will tell you when you're consistently scoring high enough, just keep at it until you're hitting like 85% or better and you'll probably be ok on test day.
for finding an actual exam session look up your zip on the ARRL website, they have a list of upcoming VE sessions. some clubs do them pretty regularly. also some places do online testing now through groups like ARRL VEC or Laurel VEC if thats easier for you. Laurel ones are free which is nice. good luck, its really not that scary once you just commit to taking the test

so ive been chasing ZL9 for like three weeks now and kept getting nowhere, just throwing my call into the void with everyone else and getting stepped on constantly. last night something finally clicked and i actually got through so i figured id write up what worked while its fresh.
the big thing was stopping trying to call on top of the pileup. sounds obvious but its hard to resist when you hear everyone else going. what i started doing was listening to where the DXpedition was actually coming back — they were working split and pulling out of a pretty narrow slice, maybe 2-3 kHz above their TX. once i mapped out roughly where they were digging i started placing my call about 500 Hz above where the last guy got picked up. not on top of him, just slightly off.
also tightened up my exchange, just my suffix at first, full call only when they came back partial. i think a lot of guys waste time sending their whole call over and over when the DX op already has half of it and just needs confirmation.
running about 400w into a 4-el yagi at 45ft and the band was 15m which was behaving reasonably. propagation into the south pacific was marginal for me in the midwest but not impossible. timing helped too — i waited until the pileup thinned a bit, like 20 minutes into a run when some guys had already worked them and dropped off.
anyway it finally went into the log after three weeks. curious what techniques others use because i know theres probably smarter ways to do this

so ive been licensed for about 8 months now (general class) and i keep hearing people talk about checking into nets but i honestly havent done it much. did one ARRL phone net a while back and kinda fumbled through it but the net control was really patient with me so that was nice.
anyway im looking to make it more of a regular thing. how do you guys find nets that are worth checking into? i know theres stuff on arrl.org but its a little overwhelming trying to sort through all of it. also do most local clubs run their own weekly nets? mine does a monday night 2m net on the local repeater but beyond that i feel like im missing a ton.
also kind of a dumb question but whats the deal with special event stations — like i hear people mention them but i never really know when theyre happening or how to find out ahead of time. are those separate from nets entirely or sometimes combined?

the doppler numbers you're seeing are totally normal, dont let that throw you off. at 435 MHz the total doppler swing on a low-inclination LEO pass can be around 10kHz yeah, more like 8-9kHz for a 400km orbit and it varies depending on the elevation angle of the pass. a high overhead pass actually has a faster rate of change near AOS and LOS. gpredict is probably doing it right if you've entered your QTH coordinates correctly and selected the right doppler correction mode for split operation.
on the inverting transponder thing — yeah it trips everyone up at first. the way i think about it is this: your uplink on 145 MHz and the downlink on 435 MHz are linked but inverted. so if you hear yourself drifting high on the downlink, you tune your uplink DOWN to compensate. it genuinely just takes a handful of passes before it clicks. what helped me was not trying to chase myself and instead just finding a clear spot, setting my uplink, and letting gpredict handle the gross doppler while i fine-tune manually. also make sure your split is set up right in gpredict, there's a tracking mode specifically for inverting transponders and if you have it set to the wrong one everything will fight you.

welcome to the hobby, first off. what you experienced with that guy transmitting over people is unfortunately pretty common on some repeaters and no, it's not correct procedure. could be a few things — his radio might have a timeout issue where he doesnt realize he's stepping on people, or sometimes folks just have bad habits they've picked up over years and nobody ever said anything. you weren't wrong to feel like something was off, because something was off.
as for the traffic question, yeah that tripped me up too when i was new. most casual nets you just say no traffic and move on. if the net has a formal structure sometimes you hear people say "no traffic, just a signal report" or something like that. the main thing is just listen for a few weeks on whatever net you join, you pick up the rhythm pretty fast. you did fine checking in, the fact that you waited and listened first puts you ahead of a lot of new hams who just jump right in.

the snowball effect you're describing is super normal and honestly the sign that you're right at the edge of your current ability which is actually where you want to be practicing. the trick that helped me more than anything else was learning to let go of missed characters instead of chasing them. just leave a blank and keep moving. your brain will eventually fill in more from context once you get faster and have more experience with common words and phrases.
Farnsworth is worth trying if you havent already - basically you hear the characters at your target speed or higher but there's extra space between them so you have time to process. the idea is your brain learns the sound of each character at speed so you're not counting dits and dahs anymore. i think i went from around 10 to 18wpm over about 8 months of pretty inconsistent practice so 4 months and already at 13 sounds like you're doing fine honestly. just dont rush it or it gets frustrating real fast

oh man i remember feeling exactly this way before my first check in. honestly just listen to what other people say when they check in and copy that. most casual 2m nets the format is just your callsign, first name, and maybe your city or signal report if they ask for it. net control will usually tell you what he needs. if you miss something he'll just ask. nobody's going to be annoyed, trust me most of us were right where you are not that long ago. the nets that are more formal like traffic nets or ARES stuff will usually have net control spell out exactly what format they want right at the opening, so youll know. just key up when he asks for check ins and give it a shot. worst case you fumble a word and laugh it off and nobody cares.

ok so for DXCC you really do need LoTW or physical cards submitted to the ARRL, QRZ confirmations wont cut it unfortunately. the LoTW setup is a pain the first time but once you get through it its pretty much automatic after that. you apply for a certificate through the ARRL, they mail you a thing, you use TQSL to sign your logs and upload them. took me maybe an hour to figure out the first time but now it just runs in the background.
eQSL is kind of its own thing — some awards accept it, some dont, and honestly a lot of DX stations dont use it at all. i mostly use it because its free and some people only confirm there. but for serious award chasing LoTW is the one you want.
as for paper cards, yeah people still send them and some folks really love them. i send cards for anything rare or a new entity for me, or if someone sends me one first. otherwise i dont bother printing and mailing for every FT8 contact, thats just not practical at that volume

yeah the LPF relays on those are absolutely worth suspecting, ive seen that exact symptom on an 897 which is basically the same guts. the relay contacts can look fine but have high resistance that only shows up under RF load. what i did was unsolder each relay and measure contact resistance with a decent meter, anything over like half an ohm and youre probably in trouble. also worth cold spraying the relay bodies while keyed up and watching the power meter, sometimes thermal helps you nail down which one is the problem child.
the ALC thing you mentioned is interesting too though. if somethings pulling the ALC line down it can absolutely kill your output without any obvious cause. do you have a scope? poking around the ALC feedback loop while transmitting into a dummy load has saved me a lot of time on yaesu stuff.

congrats on passing the exam. ok so here's the honest truth about all this -- the UV-5R will absolutely get you on the repeaters and it works fine, the radio itself isnt bad for the price. the programming through the front panel is genuinely confusing though, its not just people complaining for no reason. the good news is CHIRP software is free and once you get it set up programming the thing takes like ten minutes. i used one for about a year before upgrading and have no real regrets about starting there.
that said if you can swing the FT-60r i do think its a nicer radio to actually use day to day, the menu system makes more sense and the audio is noticeably better. also tougher physically which matters if youre taking it hiking. either way you're gonna have fun, just get something and get on the air -- you can always upgrade later and the first radio never ends up being the last one anyway

yeah this trips up a lot of new generals, dont feel bad. so the short answer on the band edge thing - when your rig displays 7.298 on USB, the carrier is at 7.298 but your actual audio is going UP from there, so yeah your signal can easily extend to 7.300 or even past it depending on how much audio you're pushing and whether your processor is cranked. most people just stay at 7.295 or below to give themselves some breathing room. some rigs are worse than others about this too.
the 7.125 to 7.175 segment - generals can do CW there but not phone, that part is still restricted to phone starting at 7.175 for generals. at least thats how i understand the current allocation, you should double check the arrl band chart because i might be off by a few khz on the exact edge

So we're gearing up for field day again and same story every year - my friend keeps wanting to bring his massive 15kw generator that sounds like a freight train. Thing weighs like 300lbs and you need a trailer just to move it around. I keep trying to tell him we could do just fine with some smaller setups maybe some battery packs or those little 2kw inverter jobs but he says "you gotta have the power for the amps" and all that.
Thing is we ran class 2a last year with just 100w rigs and did pretty decent. Made like 800 contacts over the weekend. But every year its the same argument about needing the "big iron" even though half our operators are running QRP anyway. I mean i get it if youre doing a serious contest operation but field day is supposed to be about emergency preparedness right?
Anyone else deal with this kinda thing in their club? How do you convince the old timers that you dont need to haul a small power plant to every outdoor event?

JS8Call is its own standalone program, not a WSJT plugin or anything like that. but here's the thing — if your SignaLink is already dialed in for FT8 you basically just point JS8Call at the same audio devices and it works. the audio levels are similar enough that you probably wont need to touch the hardware at all. maybe tweak the TX level slightly but nothing dramatic.
activity is honestly pretty decent on 40m especially in the evenings, 20m during the day. its not wall-to-wall signals like FT8 gets during a contest weekend but theres usually enough to find someone to ragchew with. the heartbeat feature is kind of cool too — your station can auto-respond to certain queries even when youre not sitting at the keyboard. for actual back and forth conversation its way more satisfying than grinding out FT8 QSOs. i still run FT8 for DX but JS8 scratched that itch of wanting to actually communicate something.

what he said about the coax choke, i built like 4 dipoles before someone told me about that and it explained so much weirdness i was seeing. also 1.4 at 7.150 is honestly pretty good for a first build, i wouldnt stress it too much. mine came out way worse first try and i still made contacts on it.
one thing i do different now is i make a proper drip loop in the coax right below the feedpoint so any water running down the coax drips off before it gets to your connections. small thing but helps a lot.

yeah the timestamps will absolutely get you — spots can go stale in like 2-3 minutes on the higher bands especially when conditions are sketchy. what you're seeing is normal honestly. DXwatch, the QRZ spot tab, and most of the apps are all pulling from the same underlying cluster network (the DX Spider network basically) but there's propagation delay between nodes so sometimes you'll see a spot show up on one site 90 seconds before it appears on another. its annoying but thats just how the architecture works.
for real time stuff i actually prefer to just connect directly to a telnet cluster node in my logging software — i use N1MM and point it at a nearby node and the spots come in pretty fast. DXwatch is fine for browsing but if you're actually trying to work something fresh you really want that direct telnet connection so you're not waiting on a webpage to refresh. the QRZ tab is decent for casual browsing but i wouldnt rely on it if you're trying to be first in the pileup.
also on 17m specifically — if a spot is more than like 5 minutes old just forget it, the band can flip that fast. 40m spots tend to stay valid longer especially evenings.