David Johnson

I used hamstudy exclusively and passed on my first try last spring so yeah its definitely enough. just make sure youre consistently getting like 85% or higher on the practice exams before you go, dont go in cold after only doing it a couple times. the electrical theory stuff tripped me up too but theres a trick someone told me for ohms law where you cover up the variable you want with your thumb and whatever is left shows you the formula. sounds dumb but it works lol. good luck at the club session

yeah done something pretty similar for my HF station about two years ago. ended up going the pi zero W route for exactly the reason you said — wifi just makes it so much easier, especially since you can throw a simple flask web server on it and control everything from a browser. took me maybe an afternoon to get something basic running once i had the GPIO wiring sorted. the relay boards with built-in optocouplers are definitely the move, saves you from worrying about the inductive kick from the relay coils frying your GPIO pins. most of those cheap chinese boards work fine, just double check the trigger logic — some are active low which trips people up at first. one thing i'd add is put a small cap across each relay coil anyway even with the opto, i had one board where the protection was kind of marginal and i was getting weird resets under RF. might have been a grounding thing too honestly, hard to say. for the control side i just wrote a tiny python script and served it with flask, nothing fancy. you can also look into node-red if you want something more visual without writing as much code, works well on the pi zero.

that's awesome, 559 on 500mw is no joke. im pretty new too and just got into qrp recently, been using a youkits hb1b which i didnt build myself but man its tiny and runs on a little lipo pack. took it camping and made a few contacts on 20m. my antenna situation is still kind of a mess though so i cant really give advice there haha

so ive been doing these hilltop portable activations for a while now, mostly 2m and 70cm, and i keep going back and forth on whether to bother lugging a yagi up or just stick with the collinear i already have. the collinear is a diamond x50 on a painters pole, works fine for local stuff but i feel like im leaving signal on the table when conditions get interesting. last weekend there was a pretty decent tropo duct going and i was hearing guys 200+ miles out but couldnt work most of them, which was frustrating. a buddy of mine swears by his 5 element yagi for this kind of thing but honestly ive never actually done a proper comparison side by side. anyone done that? like actually swapped antennas during the same opening and noted the difference? also wondering about the mechanical side of things — whats a reasonable portable mast setup that doesnt take 20 minutes to set up and isnt going to fall over if theres any wind. i've seen people use push up poles, tripods, all kinds of stuff. my painters pole setup works but its a bit janky if im honest

The HackRF was really designed as a learning platform and TX/RX development tool, not necessarily for optimal receive performance. The RTL-SDR V3 has excellent filtering and a lower noise figure for RX-only applications. For VHF/UHF scanning, stick with your RTL-SDR.

oh man i remember being confused about basically all of this same stuff on my first one lol. i actually uploaded my log wrong twice before i figured out the ADIF fields thing. one tip — if you use HAMRS or Fast Log Entry in the field they both have WWFF/POTA modes built in and it saves you the headache of fixing the log later. i do paper backup too but having the fields right from the start is way easier.

so ive been going back and forth on getting a dedicated QRP rig for portable work for probably two years now and i finally just bought a KX2 a few weeks ago. been running it in the backyard mostly but took it out to a state park last weekend with a random wire antenna and a small lithium pack. honestly surprised how well it does with just 10 watts. i worked a guy in germany on 20m SSB which i did not expect at all, took a few tries but it happened. the built in ATU is a lifesaver for field work, i was using a pretty janky end fed situation and it just... tuned it up no problem. my only gripe is the knobs feel a little small and fiddly when youre cold, like i was out there in october and my fingers were not cooperating with the filter bandwidth knob. minor thing but worth mentioning if youre someone who does a lot of cold weather ops. anyway if anyone is on the fence about getting into QRP portable stuff i dont regret it. curious if anyone else here is running a KX2 or KX3 and what antennas they use for parks on the air type stuff

hamstudy.org is honestly all you really need for most people, especially if you already have some electronics background. the site pulls from the actual question pool and it tracks which ones you're getting wrong so you can focus on those. the way the test works is they pull 35 questions from that pool and you need 26 right to pass, so once you're consistently scoring in the 80s or 90s on practice tests you're probably ready. the ARRL book is fine if you want to actually understand the why behind things, like if you want to understand what's actually happening with like ohms law or propagation rather than just memorizing answers. but plenty of people pass with just the flash card approach and thats totally valid for the tech exam. the regulations section trips up a lot of people at first but honestly once you do enough practice questions the wording starts to click. give yourself like 2-3 weeks of casual studying and you should be in good shape.

yeah so techs do get some HF privileges, its not a ton but its there. on 10m you can do phone between 28.300 and 28.500 MHz which is actually pretty useful when the band is open. for 40m and 80m and 15m you can do CW only in small segments, i think 40m its around 7.025-7.125 but dont quote me on that exactly, look it up in the actual part 97.301 table because i always mix up the exact edges. the thing people forget is you still need to ID properly every 10 minutes and at the end of a contact, that trips up a lot of new folks. honestly just study the general exam pool even if youre not ready to test, it explains a lot of this stuff in plain english and youll understand your current privileges better too

so ive been putting off the extended TX mod on my FT-857D for like two years now because honestly the whole diode removal thing seemed scarier than it actually ended up being. finally sat down last weekend with a decent soldering iron and some magnification and just did it. took maybe 45 minutes including the time i spent second-guessing myself and re-reading the procedure three times. the actual mod is pretty straightforward once you get the bottom cover off and locate D3007, just remove it and youre transmitting on the extended ranges. but here's the thing nobody really mentions — my power output on 60m dropped noticeably compared to what i was seeing on 40 and 17, and im not sure if thats expected behavior for this radio or if i maybe disturbed something nearby while poking around in there. anybody else notice that? also the fan seems to kick on a bit earlier than before but that might just be me being paranoid about it now that ive had the thing open. either way im glad i finally did it. been wanting to work some of the oddball frequencies for MARS and just general experimentation. if anyone's been thinking about doing this mod and has a steady hand its really not that bad, the service manual is pretty clear once you track down the right version of it.