Ashley Johnson24

honestly i was in the same boat as you when i upgraded. mostly a casual operator, not a big builder or anything. i studied for maybe 6 weeks using hamstudy and HamRadioPrep, and yeah some of the propagation and antenna theory stuff went over my head the first pass but it kind of clicks after a while. the thing i didnt expect was that even if you dont use the math day to day, having that background actually helps you understand WHY your antenna isnt working or why a certain frequency is behaving weird. like i cant derive the impedance matching equations off the top of my head but i understand what an antenna tuner is actually doing now instead of just turning knobs and hoping. the extra HF segments are genuinely useful on 75m and 20m where General traffic can get pretty dense. not a massive difference but noticeable during contests or when things are busy. the exam itself wasnt as brutal as i thought. the question pool is big but a lot of it is pattern recognition once youve gone through it enough times.

so ive been on SSB for about a year now, mostly on 40m and 20m, and i keep getting reports that my audio is kind of harsh or "processed sounding" which bugs me because i spent a fair amount on the radio (IC-7300 for what its worth). I'm running the stock mic, the HM-219 or whatever it ships with, and i havent really touched any of the TX audio settings in the menus other than bumping the mic gain up a little because someone told me to. a guy last week on a ragchew said my lows were missing and my highs were peaking — he literally said i sounded like i was on a CB radio which, ouch. so i guess my question is what settings are people actually running on the 7300 for decent SSB audio, and is the stock mic just not cutting it or is this a settings thing. im not trying to sound like a broadcast station just want to be intelligible and not annoy people

oh man i went through the exact same thing with my first baofeng, those menus are a nightmare. i accidentally had tone squelch set on receive and couldnt figure out why i could hear the repeater fine on a scanner but nothing came through on the radio. took me like two weeks to find it buried in the menu somewhere. also one thing nobody told me early on — some repeaters are linked to other repeaters or to an Echolink or AllStar node and if theres a lot of traffic going on across the link sometimes there's a delay before the courtesy tone. so dont jump in too fast or youll end up talking over someone whos actually three states away lol. found that out the embarrassing way

nice work on the first one. i did my first POTA a few weeks ago, different vibe than SOTA since you dont have to hike anywhere but still pretty fun. set up in a state park parking lot which felt a little weird but whatever, got like 40 contacts in an hour on 20m which was way more than i thought id get. might try combining a POTA and SOTA activation sometime if i can find a summit thats also in a park boundary

Finished my DC40-based receiver last week and getting some strange results. Running QRP Labs VFO at 7.050 MHz but hearing strong audio breakthrough from about 7.080-7.090 range when tuned to CW portion. Diode ring mixer appears wired correctly - used 1N4148s with matched forward voltage drops within 5mV. Audio output shows clean signal on 'scope but breakthrough is definitely there. Anyone experienced similar with direct conversion designs? Wondering if I need better band-pass filtering ahead of mixer or if this is oscillator isolation problem. Using Manhattan construction on double-sided PCB material, copper pads every 0.1 inches. Supply is clean 12V with proper decoupling throughout.

congrats man, that first QSO feeling is something else. i remember mine i was shaking a little which is ridiculous because its just talking on a radio but somehow it felt like a big deal. the baofeng is fine for getting started dont let anyone give you grief about it, most of us started with something janky

I've run both Diamond X-500 and homebrew designs. The commercial antennas excel in bandwidth and consistent gain across the entire band, while homebrew often peaks at one frequency. For contest work where you need reliable performance across 2m and 70cm simultaneously, commercial wins every time.

honestly the Baofeng will work fine for hitting repeaters and local stuff, dont let anyone make you feel bad about it. ive got an old UV-5R that i still throw in my bag when i dont want to risk my nicer radio. the build quality isnt amazing and the programming software (CHIRP is what you want, not the Baofeng native software) can be a bit fiddly but its totally learnable. that said if you think youre going to get seriously into this hobby, and a lot of people do once they get on air, it might be worth stretching to something like the Yaesu FT-65 or even a used FT-60. the FT-60 is practically indestructible and holds its value forever. i bought mine used like 10 years ago and its still my go-to HT for anything that matters. the menu system on Yaesu takes some getting used to but the audio is noticeably better than the Baofengs ive used and the receiver is way less prone to getting stomped by strong nearby signals. for 8 miles simplex it really depends on terrain more than the radio honestly. what part of the country are you in, flat or hilly?

that relay experience is honestly some of the most underrated work in emcomm. everyone wants to be net control or at the command post but a solid relay op in bad terrain is what actually makes or breaks the whole operation. sounds like you handled it well. the hurry up and wait thing never really goes away either, you just get used to packing snacks and a good book haha. welcome to the club

so ive been going back and forth on this for probably two months now and im just gonna ask. i have a pretty typical suburban lot, maybe 60 feet usable in the backyard before i hit the fence. the house is on one side, neighbors garage on the other. right now i have a temporary end fed wire just draped over a tree branch and its honestly been working better than i expected but i want to put something real up. the plan was a 40m dipole in an inverted V off a 30ft mast in the middle of the yard, feed it with coax and call it a day. but then i started reading about verticals and now im second guessing everything. the lot isnt big enough for good radials on a vertical anyway i dont think, and i cant get a dipole at a real half wave height obviously, so im not sure which compromise is better. mostly interested in domestic ssb, maybe some casual DX if conditions let me. anyone been in a similar situation and figured out which way to go

yeah this is basically the eternal question for guys who do a mix of operating. what i ended up doing — and its not perfect — is using Log4OM as my main shack log for everything casual, DXpeditions, random SSB ragchews whatever. WSJT-X you can point it to log via UDP to Log4OM directly, theres a setting in WSJT-X under reporting where you put in the UDP port and Log4OM listens on the same port. once you get that set up it actually works pretty reliably, contacts just pop into the log automatically while youre calling CQ on FT8 for contests i still fire up N1MM because honestly nothing else comes close for contest operation, the bandmap, the dupe checking speed, the way it handles multipliers — Log4OM just isnt built for that kind of rapid fire logging. after the contest i export an ADIF from N1MM and import it into Log4OM. yeah you gotta watch for dupes on import but Log4OM has a duplicate check on import that catches most of it. its a bit clunky but ive been doing it this way for about two years and it works well enough that i stopped stressing about it

foxtrot yes lol dont worry about blanking, happens to everyone at first. honestly there's no hard rule that says you MUST use phonetics every single time, but on HF especially when conditions are rough or you're working someone far away it makes a huge difference. on a local 2m repeater with strong signals and everyone knows each other, a lot of people just say the letters and its fine. where it really matters is like if youre trying to give your call to someone who can barely hear you, or during a contest when things are moving fast and you need to be understood the first time. the NATO alphabet is the standard and thats what most people expect to hear, so sticking with it is the smart move. i knew a guy who used his own made up phonetics for years and it drove everyone nuts because nobody could tell if he was saying november or november-something-else

i'm kind of in the same boat so not sure i can help much but one thing that actually made a difference for me was doing the Koch method with LCWO dot com instead of just trying to ragchew before i was ready. also someone on here mentioned recording yourself and comparing to a really clean sender, i started listening to W1AW practice transmissions and just trying to match that rhythm and it helped my ear more than anything

i was in basically the same spot about a year ago and ended up with the Yaesu FT-4XR which was right around $60 at the time and its been solid for me. not as many bells and whistles as some others but it just works and the battery lasts forever compared to my friends baofeng. i did eventually get a used kenwood TH-D74 for APRS stuff but thats a whole different rabbit hole lol, definitely dont start there.

went through this exact thing about 6 months ago. one thing nobody told me that tripped me up — the call you want has to actually be available, meaning the previous holder has been expired long enough. i think its like 2 years after expiration before it goes back into the pool but dont quote me on that. i ended up not getting my first choice because someone else applied the same window but i got my second pick which im pretty happy with. the AE7Q website is super useful for checking availability and looking up call history, saved me a lot of time

so i just passed my technician exam last week and im looking at getting my first handheld radio. i've been doing a ton of reading and honestly its making my head spin a little. like there's the baofeng route which everyone seems to have an opinion about, and then theres yaesu and kenwood and icom and they're all like 3-4x the price for what looks like similar specs on paper. my main use case is probably just local repeaters, maybe some simplex with a buddy who also just got licensed, and id love to eventually do some APRS stuff if thats possible from a handheld. i dont really have a home station set up yet so the HT would be my only radio for a while. budget is flexible but i dont want to spend money on features i wont use for years. someone at the club mentioned the Yaesu FT-60R and another guy said look at the VX-6R because its submersible. do i really need waterproofing for casual use? also does the dual band vs tri-band thing matter much starting out? sorry for all the questions just trying to not make a dumb first purchase

so ive been going back and forth on this for like three weeks now and honestly i think im just spinning my wheels. i have a decent sized backyard, probably 80 feet usable end to end, and im trying to decide if i should just put up a simple 40m dipole or go with a vertical. currently running an IC-7300 into a tuner and whatever antenna i build will be my main HF antenna for a while. the thing is, my yard slopes down toward the back so the dipole would be kind of a sloper anyway, apex maybe at 30 feet if im lucky off a mast i already have. ive read conflicting stuff about whether a sloping dipole changes the radiation pattern much vs a flat one. some people say it works great, others act like anything less than horizontal is a compromise. meanwhile a vertical seems simpler to erect but then everyone talks about needing a good radial field and i dont have a lot of open space around where it would go. has anyone actually compared these two in a situation like mine and noticed a real difference on the air? not looking for theoretical answers, more like what actually worked for you

wish i could go but i got a club meeting that same morning which is kinda annoying. our net control has been pushing this emergency comm drill for weeks and we finally scheduled it so i cant bail. let me know if you see any cheap 2m mobile rigs though, been looking for a backup for the truck

dont quote me on this but i think the bed cover thing matters less than people say for UHF, like the signal just kind of goes where it goes. that said i have a mag mount too and yeah the sliding is real lol. my buddy who does a lot of mobile work drilled a hole and just did it, said he was nervous too but its really not that bad and a proper NMO mount with a good antenna just performs so much better. maybe worth having a conversation with your wife about the resale value of good communications equipment ha

ok so i just upgraded to general last month and im trying to figure out where i can actually transmit on 40 meters. i looked up the band plan but honestly its kind of confusing because there's the FCC allocations and then theres the ARRL band plan and they dont seem to be exactly the same thing? like one says i can go down to 7.025 but then i see people talking about staying away from the band edges and i dont really understand why that is also is the band edge thing a legal issue or just a courtesy thing? i dont want to accidentally operate outside my privileges but i also dont fully understand how close to 7.125 or whatever the edge is i can actually get. my rig shows the carrier frequency i think but someone told me i need to account for the sideband when im on SSB which i hadnt even thought about

Are you running the latest 3.14 API? CubicSDR version 0.2.8-test3 works with RTL-SDR v4 and SDRPlay RSP1B receiver if you have SDRPlay 3.14 API. The VHF artifacts might be driver related - worth checking SDR++ as an alternative to eliminate software issues.

yeah i caught about 45 minutes of that opening and it was something else, had europe coming in S9 on the vertical which almost never happens for me this time of year. worked a handful of italian stations and one guy in greece who had a massive signal. the solar flux has been creeping up lately so hopefully this becomes more regular as we head further into the cycle. dont give up on it, just keep the radio on in the background when you can and have the cluster alerts set up, thats the only way i ever catch these things during the week

dont have the X510 but ive had the GP-6 up for about a year and a half, no complaints so far. my mount is just a j-pipe off the eave not a chimney mount so cant speak to that specifically. the antenna itself feels well built, connectors are solid, no issues with the SO-239 at the base getting wet or anything like that. one thing nobody mentions is how annoying it is to get that thing in the attic or up a staircase when you first buy it, its just long and awkward lol. small thing but yeah.

so ive been using Log4OM for general logging for maybe two years now and i really like it for day to day stuff, the QSL management and the award tracking is great but every time a big contest rolls around i feel like im fighting the software a little bit. like during the ARRL DX last month i kept fumbling around trying to get the rate window visible and the bandmap wasnt behaving the way i expected a buddy of mine keeps telling me to just run N1MM for contests and keep Log4OM for everything else, export the ADIF after and import it. seems like extra steps but maybe thats just how people do it. also ive been running WSJT-X on the side for FT8 and right now Log4OM is handling the integration fine through UDP but i heard N1MM can also receive the WSJT-X spots somehow and i havent dug into that yet curious if anyone actually runs this kind of split setup or if you just picked one and stuck with it. im not a hardcore contester, maybe 4-5 contests a year, field day, the usual

so ive been on more of a listening kick lately than actually transmitting, just spinning around the dial on the ic-7300 and seeing whats out there. caught some interesting stuff on 40m last night around midnight, lots of DX coming through that i normally wouldnt hear during the day. also heard what sounded like a net i didnt recognize somewhere around 7.250 but i coulnt quite make out the callsigns. anyway just curious if anyone else goes through phases like this where you just kinda lurk and listen more than you talk