John Mitchell

so ive been interested in ham radio for a while now, my neighbor has a big antenna setup and we got to talking and he said i should just get my license. i looked it up and theres like three levels? technician, general, extra i think. anyway i dont really know where to start studying or what the test is actually like. is it hard? i took a practice test online and got like 60% which i think means i failed lol. also do you have to memorize a bunch of math because im not great at that. any advice would be helpful, been going back and forth on this for a few months now and i think i finally want to just do it

yeah the part 97 tables are rough the first time you look at them, no question. so for tech privileges on HF — you get phone on 10 meters (28.300 to 28.500 MHz) and thats basically it for voice on HF. the 15 meter thing your buddy mentioned, i think hes maybe thinking of CW? techs do have some CW privileges on a few HF bands but its pretty limited, like a small slice at the bottom of 15 and a couple others. worth looking at the ARRL band plan because they lay it out way cleaner than the actual part 97 text. on the control operator question — this is the one people get mixed up on all the time. the control operator's license determines what the station can do, not necessarily who's physically at the mic. so if a general is the control operator and hands you the mic, technically the station can operate on general privileges. but here's the thing, the control operator has to actually be in control, meaning present and supervising. its not like he can just walk away and leave you running. theres been some debate in club settings about exactly how this works in practice but that's the general idea from 97.105 if i remember right.

im kind of in the same boat as you, been licensed about a year and a half and just got my WAS confirmed on LoTW like two months ago which felt really good. honestly just start logging everything and dont overthink it — a lot of the credits just accumulate without you really trying once you get into a rhythm of getting on the air regularly. the zones thing for WAZ did confuse me too for a while. basically the world is divided into 40 CQ zones and you need a confirmed contact from each one. some zones are tiny and rare so that award takes a while. DXCC is the one most people seem to chase hardest though, theres something addictive about watching that entity count go up

i passed mine like 4 months ago, used hamstudy pretty much exclusively and passed first try. honestly the hardest part for me was the electrical stuff like ohms law and some of the antenna questions but if you just keep doing practice tests it starts to click. dont overthink it

jump in, seriously, you'll regret it if you dont. CQ WW SSB is a great starting point especially for someone newer to contesting. the exchange is super simple — you just send your signal report and your CQ zone, thats literally it. zone 4 or 5 for most of the southeast if I remember right, double check that before you start. pile ups look scarier than they are once you realize you can just search and pounce for your first time instead of calling CQ yourself. just tune around, find a station calling, wait for a gap and throw your call in. you dont have to run a frequency at all if you dont want to. your setup sounds totally workable by the way. ive worked DXCC on an endfed and a 100w radio, its more about conditions and persistence than having a kilowatt and a yagi. go have fun with it, worst case you make 50 contacts and learn a ton.

i ran a 6BTV for a couple years before i put up a 2 element yagi and honestly the vertical does work for dx if you feed it right. my radial field was pretty janky at first, like 8 radials that were all different lengths, and it still made contacts into europe on 40 and 20. wasnt stellar but it worked. the main thing that drove me nuts with it was the noise floor, verticals just pick up more local QRN in my neighborhood and that got old during the solar minimum when signals were already weak. the dipole my friend runs at similar height is actually quieter on receive even though his transmitted signal is about the same on their end according to signal reports. so maybe factor in your local noise situation too. if you live near a lot of switching power supplies and LED dimmers and all that junk, vertical might frustrate you more than you expect

for what its worth i ran a mag mount on my silverado for almost two years and never had it slide at highway speed, but i think a lot of that depends on how clean and flat your roof surface is. that said, for a real install i ended up doing a hood hinge mount and honestly its one of the better decisions ive made. no drilling into the cab, the ground plane on a steel hood is solid, and it doesnt mess with the tonneau at all. antenna sits right up front and ive had zero issues with it coming loose even on rough roads. if youre really opposed to any drilling at all, the Comet RS-790 rail mount or something similar on the bed rail can work but youll want to run a ground strap to the truck body because the bed rails on a lot of newer fords arent great for RF ground. just something to keep in mind. NMO through the roof really is the cleanest looking install though, if you ever get over the fear of drilling. most body shops will tell you a properly sealed hole is basically zero risk of rust if you use the right grommet and sealant.

two 7300s and a dstar node plus packet is a pretty serious draw. have you actually load tested that 100ah pack to see what your real runtime looks like? on paper it sounds fine but if the 7300s are both hitting even 50 watts intermittently and the node is doing its thing you might be surprised how fast you're pulling it down, especially if the battery isnt at 100% when you start. id run a bench test at home before the exercise just to sanity check the numbers. also depending on what dipole feedpoint hardware your using that coax weight hanging off a jackite can be gnarly in wind. ive had the pole actually bow pretty significantly with RG-8X running down from the top. something to think about with the guying setup, angle your guys out far enough that it actually provides support and not just catches a fall after its already leaning.

so ive been noticing over the past few weeks that 17 and 20 meters have been doing some really interesting things in the evenings. last tuesday i worked a JA station on 17m around 0100z with just 100 watts and a dipole which honestly shocked me because that path has been pretty dead for me for like two years. and then the next night i couldnt even hear europe on 20m at all. its been all over the place. checked the solar flux index and its been hovering around 150-160 which i know is decent for this part of the cycle, but i dont really have a great feel for what numbers mean what in terms of actual band openings. like i know higher is better generally but is there some threshold where things really start to open up on the higher bands? been eyeing 10m and 12m but havent heard much up there yet. anyone been seeing good openings lately or know what to look for?

went two years ago and honestly wasnt that impressed but my buddy picked up an old Kenwood for like 80 bucks so maybe im just unlucky with timing. might go just to see whats around and catch the talk-in on the way there

so ive been a general class for about two years now and mostly just do SSB but ive always wanted to learn CW properly. got myself a cheap dual paddle from amazon (not great i know but its what i could afford for now) and hooked it up to the keyer built into my IC-7300. my problem is im not really sure what speed to practice at or how to set the keyer up right. the iambic mode A vs mode B thing is kind of going over my head and i dont know which one i should even be using. ive been trying to copy stuff on 40m in the evenings and i can get maybe half of it at like 10-12 wpm but then i fall behind and lose the whole exchange. also when i try to send it sounds really uneven, like my dits and dahs arent consistent. is that a paddle tension thing or am i just doing something wrong with my hand position? anyway any advice from people who actually know CW would be really appreciated, i feel like im close to getting it but just missing something

ok so I just upgraded to general last month and im trying to figure out where I can actually transmit on 40 meters. I know technicians are pretty limited but now that im a general I should have more privileges right? the problem is every chart I find online looks slightly different and im not sure which one is the actual official one vs just someones suggestion or whatever. like I was tuning around 7.250 the other night and heard some guys having a roundtable, joined in, and someone came on later and said something about being close to the phone edge. I thought 7.250 was fine for general? and then theres the whole thing about ssb vs am vs digital and I have no idea where digital is supposed to go. do I just pick a frequency that sounds clear or is there like actual rules about this

so we did a simulated hurricane comms exercise through our local ARES group this past saturday and honestly i went in thinking it'd be kind of boring but it really wasnt. we had to assume all repeaters were down and practice passing formal traffic using winlink and also some voice nets on simplex which sounds easy until you realize half the guys cant actually hear each other on HT's from across town. the big thing i took away from it was how bad our ICS documentation habits are. like we'd get a message passed correctly but nobody was writing down times or operator callsigns consistently, and the net control guy (who is excellent normally) was getting overwhelmed trying to track everything at once. it made me realize i should probably be way more familiar with ICS 213 forms than i am. curious if anyone else has done these kinds of exercises and what caught you off guard the most. especially interested if anyone's done a full multi-day deployment sim or worked alongside actual served agencies during a drill

yeah so the digital modes have genuinely changed things, im not gonna sugarcoat it and say your 4 element setup will be killing it but ive seen guys make EME contacts on 2m with a single long yagi and 400 watts. the key thing most people overlook is the preamp right at the feedpoint, like literally at the feedpoint not in the shack, every tenth of a dB of noise figure matters when youre talking about signals this weak. i run a 4x9el array with a DB6NT preamp and that thing is night and day compared to what i had before Q65 is probably your best bet to start, bit more forgiving than JT65 for EME work. get yourself on 144.174 or wherever your regional EME calling frequency is and just listen during moon windows, youll start to hear whats possible. honestly just lurk on the moon for a few sessions before you try to work anyone, youll get a feel for whats realistic with your setup

Nice catch on the Es. This time of year you can get some surprises, the solar flux has been running elevated and that tends to correlate at least loosely with more sporadic E activity even though the mechanism is still kind of debated. I've been logging the openings on DX Maps and there were a handful of good ones over the past two weeks across the midwest corridor. The 905 is genuinely interesting hardware if you're doing any kind of weak signal microwave work. The integrated transverter design is clever. That said I'd probably wait a revision or two before dropping that kind of money, first production runs always have something that gets sorted out in later batches. Just my habit after getting burned once or twice over the years.

i was in the same boat when i first got my ticket, part 97 reads like stereo instructions sometimes. one thing that helped me was just listening on those HF bands for a while before i ever transmitted, you start to get a feel for where the activity is and what modes people are using where. also just fyi the FCC doesnt really go after new hams for honest frequency mistakes but you definitely dont want to accidentally key up on a frequency you dont have privileges on, other operators will let you know pretty quick lol

hamstudy is honestly what most people use and it works fine for the tech exam. the question pool isnt as bad as it looks once you start going through it, a lot of the questions kind of repeat the same concepts just worded differently. i did maybe 45 minutes a day for like 3 weeks and passed with a decent score. the electrical stuff and ohms law questions tripped me up at first but if you just understand the basic formula you can work out most of them instead of memorizing the answers. the band plan stuff is mostly just pattern recognition after a while. i wouldnt stress too much, the tech exam isnt that hard if you actually put in some time with the question pool

yeah the Q codes go way back to telegraph days, way before ham radio was even a thing. they were made so operators could communicate across language barriers quickly since you dont need to know how to say something in french or german if you can just send QTH and the other guy knows you mean location. most of the common ones you'll pick up pretty fast just from being on the air. QRM is interference from other stations, QRN is natural static and noise, QSB is when your signal is fading in and out which you hear a lot on HF, QTH is your location, QTR is the time, and yeah QRZ means whos calling me. people do sometimes misuse it a bit, like youll hear someone end a CQ with QRZ which technically isnt right but everyone knows what they mean so nobody really cares that much. as for 73 thats just an old telegraph code meaning best regards, goes back to the 1800s honestly. 88 means love and kisses and is usually sent to women operators though some people have opinions about that one. there used to be a whole list of these numeric codes called the phillips code or something like that but most of them are totally forgotten now and only 73 and 88 really survived into modern ham radio use.

yeah the honda should be fine, a buddy runs his ts-590 straight off one with just a basic filter and its quiet enough. that said i'd still use the battery as a buffer like the other guy said, just makes sense. one thing people dont think about on longer exercises is the fuel situation — eu2200i at partial load is pretty sip on gas but 18 hours is still like 2-3 gallons depending on how hard youre running it. bring more than you think you need because nothing kills an exercise faster than running out of fuel at hour 11 and having to beg someone for a gas can.

yeah the simplex fallback thing is real. we had almost the exact same issue in our section drill last spring. everyone is so used to hitting the repeater that when you take it away people kind of freeze up for a second. what we ended up doing after that was building a simplex net into our regular monthly training so operators actually get reps on it, not just as a backup plan on paper. the NCS handoff problem is something i've seen at every level honestly. the fix that worked for us was having the backup NCS shadow the primary for like the first 20-30 minutes of any activation and actively log traffic, not just listen passively. that way when the handoff happens they already have situational awareness and its not a cold start. sounds obvious but we werent doing it before. the out of date programming thing though... man that one stings because its so preventable. we actually made it a rule that anyone showing up to an activation has to check in with their call and confirm their radio config during the weekly net the sunday before any scheduled drill. if you cant do that you get a reminder call. not foolproof but it cut down on the frequency mismatch stuff a lot.

yeah the frequency selection in a pileup is kind of an art. what i usually do is listen for maybe 5-10 minutes before even keying up. you can actually hear the DX op's rhythm — some guys work up the pile systematically and you can anticipate roughly where they'll listen next. others are more random but even then you can usually tell if theyre favoring one end of the spread. the other thing that helped me a lot was shortening my call. like in a pileup you really only want to send your call once, maybe twice if conditions are rough, and then listen. a lot of guys send their call 4 or 5 times and all that does is make it harder for the DX to pull anything out. the stations that break pileups fast are usually sending one crisp call and shutting up. also if the DX op asks for a region or a number dont call if it isnt you, sounds obvious but you wouldnt believe how many people just pile in anyway and make it worse for everyone. congrats on the ZL7 tho, thats a decent one.

Whatever you do, don't use the cigarette lighter for power! Run proper power cables directly to the battery with inline fuses. I learned that lesson the hard way when my old setup started causing voltage drops and audio issues.

so i moved to a new place couple months ago and put up my trusty 80m dipole that worked great at the old house. same wire, same balun, but now the swr is all over the place and it just sounds dead on 80. at the old place it was about 30 feet up between two trees, here ive got it at about 25 feet but the trees are closer together maybe 100 feet span instead of 120. ground here is a lot more clay too if that matters. anyone else run into this kind of thing after moving? starting to wonder if i need to retune the whole thing or if its just the different environment

so i finally did my first SOTA activation last weekend up on a summit here in the white mountains and man i was not prepared for how much the wind affects everything. got my end-fed halfwave strung up between two trees and the whole thing was just flapping around like crazy, kept moving my SWR all over the place. made like 4 contacts before i just gave up and called it. still counts i guess since you only need 4 but i felt kind of defeated honestly. i think i need a better way to tension the wire or maybe a different antenna setup for exposed summits. anyone else dealt with this kind of thing

not dumb questions at all, this stuff is genuinely confusing when you're starting out. ok so the short version: LoTW is run by the ARRL and is the most widely accepted for award credit, especially DXCC. eQSL is a totally separate service, older crowd is kind of mixed on it but plenty of people use it. neither one replaces the other, they just dont talk to each other. for uploading from Log4OM you just export an ADIF file and then use the TQSL software to sign and upload it to LoTW — theres a pretty good walkthrough on the ARRL site. once you get the workflow down it takes maybe two minutes after a session. paper cards through the bureau — you send your outgoing cards to the incoming bureau for whatever country youre sending to, not directly to ARRL. theres a whole list on the ARRL site. honestly for most stateside contacts people have mostly moved to digital confirmation but for DX the paper card still means something to a lot of operators, especially the older ones. i still send them for any new entity or any contact that felt special.