Ashley Johnson24

good job committing to the drill, seriously. i put off doing a proper NMO mount for almost two years because i kept telling myself id do it right eventually and in the meantime ran a mag mount that slid around constantly. finally drilled the roof of my jeep and it was one of those things where you wonder why you waited so long. the signal difference was noticeable too, probably because the ground plane was actually making proper contact instead of relying on whatever the mag was grabbing onto. the FTM-300DR is a solid choice for mobile use, the display is easy to read at a glance which matters more than people think when youre actually driving. i had the older FTM-400 for years and eventually moved to the 500D mainly because i wanted more output on 70cm for hitting a distant repeater on my commute but honestly for most people 50 watts is plenty. sounds like you did the install the right way with the power cable routing too, a lot of folks underestimate how important it is to keep that run short and fused right at the source.

yeah the Q codes originally came from maritime and commercial telegraphy, way before ham radio even existed, so they were designed to work across language barriers which is why they're still useful on CW where you're just sending a few characters instead of spelling everything out. on phone (SSB etc) a lot of guys still use them out of habit more than necessity but you'll hear them constantly. the ones you'll run into most are QRM which is interference from other stations, QRN is natural static or noise, QSB is signal fading, QRT means shutting down or going off air, QRZ is asking who's calling, and QTH is location like you figured out. QSO just means a contact or conversation. QRO and QRP are high power and low power respectively, and QRP has kind of taken on a whole life of its own as a subculture of guys running really low wattage. the 73 and 88 thing is totally separate, those are from the old Phillips telegraphic code which is different from Q codes. 73 means best regards and 88 is love and kisses, 88 is usually just between people who know each other well. there's a whole bunch of other number codes too but most of them have fallen out of use, 73 is really the only one you hear constantly. honestly just spend some time with a Q code reference sheet and it'll click pretty fast, most of the common ones you'll memorize just from hearing them repeated.

oh man this is something i think about a lot. went through the same thing a couple years back after joining our county ARES group. what i ended up doing was building two kits actually — a small one that fits in a backpack with just my FT-817 (well FT-818 now), a small LiFePO4 battery, and a random wire antenna that i can toss in a tree. that one i can grab in 60 seconds and it covers HF plus 2m/70cm. then i have a bigger pelican case with more gear for if im going to be somewhere for more than a few hours, has a bigger power supply, spare cables, logging stuff, that kind of thing. the power thing is honestly where people get tripped up the most in my experience. you need way more capacity than you think you do, especially if youre running any kind of digital modes or leaving things on standby overnight. i run a 40ah battery now and even that gets a little nervous after a full day. also dont forget a way to recharge — i have a small solar panel and a charge controller in the big kit. my main regret is i spent too long trying to get everything perfect before i actually tested anything under realistic conditions. just throw it together and do a field day style exercise with it, youll figure out real fast what you actually need versus what you thought you needed

so i got my general ticket back in march and ive been just doing casual QSOs on 40m mostly, talking to people, getting my feet wet etc. someone at the club mentioned that fall is basically the big season for HF contests and i should try jumping in. i looked it up and now im kind of overwhelmed honestly. CQ WW is apparently huge, ARRL Sweepstakes is a thing, there's the state QSO parties... i dont even know where to start. my setup is pretty modest, running a Kenwood TS-590SG into a dipole up about 30 feet, nothing fancy. can someone with more experience kind of walk me through what's realistic for a first timer? like is CQ WW too much to start with or is it actually a good intro because there are SO many stations on the air? i've heard field day is usually recommended for beginners but that already passed. also seen people mention SOTA which seems completely different, more like hiking stuff? anyway any pointers would be great, im genuinely not sure where to begin.

yeah what he said, also dont stress too much about the exchange format beforehand, after like your third contact it just becomes muscle memory. i remember my first CQ WW i kept forgetting to send the zone and just fumbled through it, nobody cared, they just asked for a repeat and we moved on. SOTA is great prep for contesting actually because you get used to making quick contacts under a little bit of pressure. field day too, if you can find a club doing one next june definitely go, it clicks a lot of things into place about operating in a contest environment without it being as intense as CQ WW.

so ive been messing with APRS for about three weeks now and i cant figure out why my packets arent showing up on aprs.fi. the digipeater about 8 miles from me is clearly hearing me because i can see it in the raw packets when i pull up a nearby igate, but none of my position reports are actually making it onto the map. running a TM-D710G into Dire Wolf on a raspberry pi, path is set to WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 which i thought was pretty standard. beacon rate is every 2 minutes. the symbol is set correctly as far as i can tell, using the house symbol since im just doing home station stuff for now. RF seems fine, im hitting the digi no problem. my best guess is maybe the igate near me is RF-only and not actually connected to APRS-IS? or maybe theres a filter issue on the server side? i honestly dont know enough about how the igate to internet part works to debug this properly. anyone dealt with something like this

made basically that exact jump about two years ago, 706mkii to a 7300, and yeah the difference is real. the SDR panadapter alone changed how i operate, i actually find myself hunting around the band way more than i used to just because i can see whats there. the roofing filter situation on the 7300 is way better for crowded band conditions too, like during a contest weekend when everyones piled on you can actually pull signals out that wouldve just been mush before. the built in waterfall also means i got rid of an external SDR i was running alongside the 706 so thats one less box on the desk which my wife appreciated. digital modes are dead simple with the 7300, USB audio just works, no fussing around with interface boxes unless you want to get fancy. only thing id say is give yourself a few sessions to get used to the menu system, its not bad but its different, and some things are buried a couple levels deep. overall though yeah i dont regret it at all, felt like a meaningful upgrade not just a lateral move.

so i heard the Tri-County hamfest is back this year after they skipped it in 23 i think. been a while since ive been to one and i kinda miss just walking the tables and finding weird old gear for cheap. last time i picked up a barely used MFJ tuner for like 12 bucks which was pretty great. anyway just wondering if anyone from around here is planning to go and if the swap meet part is still in the morning or if they moved it around

yeah i was the same way when i first got my ticket, spent like two months just listening before i ever keyed up. late check-ins are fine, ive checked into nets like 20 minutes late before and net control just adds you to the list no big deal. the etiquette thing that tripped me up early on was waiting for a full second or so after the squelch breaks before i started talking because i kept getting cut off on the repeater. took me a while to figure out what i was doing wrong

so ive been at this for about three weekends now and i finally got audio out of my little direct conversion rx build. its based loosely on the NE602 mixer design that gets passed around everywhere, with a simple audio stage after it using an LM386. nothing fancy at all. the thing actually works which honestly surprised me a little. i can hear SSB stations on 40m when i tune around, but the audio is pretty rough and theres this low frequency hum that i cant seem to shake. ive tried bypassing the power supply pins on both chips with 0.1uf caps and it helped a little but not much. running it off a 9v battery doesnt change the hum so im pretty sure its not coming from my bench supply. also the opposite sideband rejection is basically nonexistent which i know is a known thing with direct conversion but i was hoping it wouldnt be quite this bad. you can hear both sidebands at the same time and it gets pretty muddy on a busy band. is there anything practical i can do about that without going full phasing network, that seems like a whole other project in itself. anyway just looking for thoughts from people whove gone down this road before. got a schematic i can post if that helps.

Congrats on the activation, 44 in a day on 25 watts is solid especially if conditions weren't great. For the logging side of things, WWFF uses its own database at wwff.co and you'd want to upload there separately from POTA. They accept ADIF but you need to register and submit through the WWFF logger or just the upload page on the site. The two programs are kind of parallel and don't automatically talk to each other even if the park has both a KFF and a WWFF reference, which a lot of state forests do. The grid square thing is just hunters being hunters, some people collect grids for various awards and they ask everyone regardless of what program you're activating under. You dont have to provide it but if you have it handy its a nice bonus for folks. Sounds like a great first outing though, the wildlife sightings are half the fun honestly.

honestly i spent way too long second guessing this exact same thing when i started. what helped me was just remembering the phonetics exist because letters sound similar -- B and D and E and G and P and T and V can all blur together especially with any static. so if you're just chatting on a quiet local repeater and saying your call normally works fine then go for it. but the second you think someone might not have caught a letter, phonetics. i mess up sometimes and say things like "november november... wait no, that's two N's" lol but whatever, you get the hang of it

so ive been using WSJT-X with its built in logging for the past year or so and it's fine for FT8 but i've been getting more into SSB contesting and the WSJT-X log is just not cutting it anymore, especially when i want to submit to LOTW and also track my dxcc progress at the same time without manually importing stuff every five minutes someone at the club mentioned N1MM Logger+ and said it's basically the gold standard for contesting which i get, i looked at it and yeah the contest support is insane, basically every contest you'd ever want to do is in there. but the interface looks like it was designed in 2003 and i honestly have no idea where to start with it then i found Log4OM which looks way more polished and apparently handles the everyday QSO logging really well, has good LOTW integration, cloud backup etc. but i'm not sure how serious the contest side of it is compared to N1MM i guess my question is — is anyone running both? like N1MM for actual contests and Log4OM for day to day, and having them talk to each other somehow? or is that just asking for a headache with duplicate logs and conflicting data. or should i just commit to one and deal with the tradeoffs also does N1MM even integrate cleanly with WSJT-X because i know some people run them together but ive heard it can be finicky depending on your setup

so i've had my general for about 4 years now and i keep telling myself i'm going to get serious about DXCC and i just... never do. finally sat down last week and actually logged into LoTW for the first time in like 8 months and apparently i already have 67 confirmed entities just from casual operating. which honestly surprised me more than it probably should have. anyway i'm trying to figure out how this all works in terms of actually submitting for the award. do i need to wait until i hit 100 confirmed on LoTW or can i mix LoTW confirmations with paper QSL cards? i have a shoebox full of cards from the last few years that i never really organized and i'm wondering if those still count toward the initial 100. also is WAS worth chasing at the same time or is that just going to split my attention too much. i've heard some guys say do one thing at a time and others say just work everything and sort it out later. sorry if this is a dumb question, i'm sure this gets asked a lot

honestly the General exam is not that bad if youve already got your Tech. a lot of the concepts overlap and the question pool isnt as scary as it looks once you start grinding through it. i used HamStudy exclusively, didnt even open a book, and passed with like a 90 something. just do the practice exams over and over until youre consistently hitting 85% or better and youll be fine on test day the electrical theory stuff like calculating impedance or reactance, yeah thats the part that makes people nervous but you really dont need to deeply understand all of it for the exam. some of it you can kind of pattern match once youve seen the questions enough times. that sounds lazy but it works. the propagation and band plan questions are actually pretty interesting once you get into HF operating and youll be glad you know that stuff later and no it doesnt matter that you dont have a radio yet, the exam doesnt care about any of that. good luck, it took me like 3 weeks of casual studying to feel ready