John Johnson16

so ive been on FT8 for about a year now and yeah its great for working dx and racking up contacts but it kind of feels like youre just exchanging signal reports with robots. someone at my club mentioned JS8Call as a way to actually talk to people using weak signal stuff and i set it up last weekend but honestly im not sure im doing it right or if theres just nobody on. i was running about 25 watts into a dipole on 40m around 7.078 and i could see a few signals on the waterfall but nobody was responding to my CQ and i couldnt tell if i was just too weak or if the timing was off or what. with FT8 at least WSJT-X tells you if youre decoded. JS8Call feels a lot more freeform which i guess is the point but also makes it harder to figure out whats going wrong. also is PSK31 basically dead now or do people still use it? i remember reading about it years ago before i got licensed and it seemed cool for actual keyboard to keyboard stuff. just wondering if theres any mode where you can like, have a real qso with someone who isnt just firing off a macro

yeah what he said about the filters. i tried a ghetto SO2R setup with two cheap SDRs feeding into separate audio channels and even with the transmitters on different bands the intermod was bad enough to make it pointless. ended up just going back to one radio and honestly my rate went up because i wasnt distracted trying to manage two screens and two PTT circuits that werent properly interlocked anyway. you really dont want to accidentally key both at the same time, ask me how i know

so i finally got off my backside and did my first WWFF activation last weekend at a local nature reserve about 20 minutes from my house. KFF reference, logged the required contacts and got it submitted through the wwff logger thing. honestly wasnt as complicated as i thought but i have a few questions now that im on the other side of it. first off - is there any etiquette around how long you stay on a frequency before moving? i was running 40m SSB and got a decent pileup going for maybe 20 minutes then it totally dried up. i ended up moving to 20m and got a handful more. total was around 35 QSOs which i think is fine for a valid activation but im not sure if i should have worked harder to get more before moving bands. also the nature reference thing - do you have to physically stay within the boundary of the reference the whole time? there was a spot near the parking lot that had way better cell signal for uploading spots to POTA/WWFF and i wandered over there for a bit but i think it was still within the park boundary. just wasnt totally sure on the rules there. anyway it was a great time, really relaxing way to operate and i already want to go back and activate a different reference nearby

i drilled my roof for a NMO on my last truck and honestly it was fine, used a good rubber grommet and sealant, never had a leak in 4 years. but i get the hesitation. on my current car i went with a trunk lip just because i lease it and yeah that pattern compromise is real but like the other guy said for repeater stuff its pretty much irrelevant. 70cm especially you have enough signal margin most of the time that a slightly lopsided pattern doesnt matter unless youre at the edge of range

ok so i just passed my technician exam last week (finally) and now im trying to figure out what handheld to actually buy. ive been reading threads on here for like two hours and now im more confused than when i started lol everyone seems to have a strong opinion and they all contradict each other. some people say just get the cheap baofeng and learn on that, others say baofengs are garbage and ill regret it, then someone else says get a yaesu ft-65 and someone else says no get the ft-60 which is older but bombproof... i dont even know what half these features mean yet honestly main things i want to do starting out are just talk on local repeaters, maybe some simplex with my brother who lives about 8 miles away, and eventually APRS stuff would be cool but thats not urgent. budget is probably $100-150 give or take, could stretch a little if something is really worth it do i really need dual band right away or is 2m only fine to start? and does the chirp software work with most of these or is that another whole headache to figure out

I've noticed QRZ DXWatch can be a bit flaky sometimes too. Try refreshing the page or clearing your browser cache, that usually fixes it for me. For other spotting sources I really like DX Summit and also the DX Heat app on my phone works pretty well. The POTA spots website is great too if you're into parks on the air stuff

pretty common question honestly. general rule most people follow is you say it normally first and if theres any doubt or the band is rough you go phonetic. but on a busy contest or a pileup a lot of guys will phonetic right from the start just to cut through. no hard rule written anywhere, its more situational the 'sugar' thing is just old timers using pre-NATO phonetics, there were a few different systems floating around before NATO standardized everything in the 50s. you still hear roger, able, baker from guys who been doing this since forever. doesnt really cause problems as long as context is clear but yeah it can throw you off when youre not expecting it

i just did mine like two months ago so i was in the exact same spot not that long ago. i used hamstudy and also watched some youtube videos from a guy called HamRadioCrashCourse, that helped a lot for me because i learn better watching someone explain it than just reading. the test itself was way less scary than i expected, the testing session i went to the VEs were all super friendly and it was pretty low key. i passed technician and then actually stuck around and took the general the same day which you can do if you want to try, worst that happens is you dont pass. i did not pass lol but im studying for it now

i was in the same spot not long ago lol. the part 97 document is honestly kind of dense to just read straight through. what helped me was the ARRL handbook has a section that kinda summarizes what each license class gets in plain language. also there's a privilege chart floating around online somewhere that someone made that shows it all visually, way easier than reading the actual regulatory text. the 15 meter thing your club friend mentioned sounds right to me but yeah you'd want to confirm that before relying on it

so i spent most of saturday getting the FTM-500DR installed in my truck and overall i'm pretty happy with how it came out. ran the power leads directly to the battery like you're supposed to, used 10 gauge wire with an inline fuse close to the battery, and the radio itself is sitting in a RAM mount on the dash. antenna is a Diamond NR770H on a mag mount on the roof for now until i figure out where i want to drill. the problem is when i key up i get this buzzing noise through the audio. it's kind of hard to describe but it almost sounds like it pulses with engine RPM? it doesn't do it when the truck is off, only when running. already tried moving the coax away from the power leads but that didn't really help. signal reports from the local repeater guys have been decent so it seems like it's only affecting what i'm hearing on my end, not what i'm putting out, but it's still annoying as heck. anyone dealt with this before? i'm wondering if it's an alternator thing or maybe a grounding issue. i'm not super experienced with mobile installs so i might have done something dumb without realizing it.