Sarah Johnson

honestly the thing that helped me was just listening more before transmitting. spent a few weeks just monitoring 40m before i ever keyed up and you pretty quickly get a feel for when people use full phonetics vs just saying the call normally. contest operating is a whole other thing too, in a contest nobody has time for full phonetics, they abbreviate everything and go as fast as possible. but for a normal SSB contact when conditions are mediocre, yeah phonetics just make the whole thing smoother. your point about letters that sound similar is real -- B and D and E are a nightmare on a noisy band

ok so ive been licensed for about 3 months now and i mostly do 2m fm through the local repeater and occasionally some HF when i can get my dad off the couch and onto the radio with me lol. my question is about the phonetic alphabet thing. like i know what NATO phonetics are, alpha bravo charlie etc, but i dont really know when youre supposed to use them vs just saying stuff normally. like do i have to say my callsign in phonetics every single time? sometimes i hear people just say their call straight without spelling it out and other times people go through the whole alpha november seven whatever routine. is there a rule about this or is it just kind of a feel thing depending on conditions or what

the crowded room thing is pretty accurate honestly. AO-73 gets hammered on good passes especially anything over like 30-40 degrees max elevation. the AGC on that transponder will pull everyone down if a few lids are running full power so yeah keeping your uplink conservative is the right call, but what that actually means in practice kind of depends on your antenna gain and feedline losses. the inverting transponder thing trips everyone up at first, dont feel bad. once you get the doppler sorted and tuned correctly you should hear yourself in the downlink which is really the sanity check — if you cant hear your own signal you either arent in the passband or youre way too low power for that point in the pass. i usually aim to just barely audible on the downlink rather than trying to boom in. also worth trying some of the passes at lower elevations, counterintuitively you sometimes get fewer lids on the marginal passes because casual ops skip them.

so our ARES group is doing a simulated emergency exercise next month and im trying to figure out the best way to power everything for what could be an 8-10 hour deployment. we're running an IC-7300 as the main HF station, a VX-6R on the side for local coordination, and probably a laptop for logging and maybe some winlink traffic. my current thinking is a honda eu2200i paired with a 100ah lithium battery as a buffer — basically run the genny for a few hours in the morning to top everything off, then run quiet on battery for the afternoon when we're closer to the residential area. noise-wise the honda is pretty tame but still, you know how it goes at these things, someone always complains. antenna side im probably going to throw up a linked dipole on a 31ft jackite pole, got it tuned pretty well for 40 and 20. might try to get a 15m link in there too if I have time before the exercise. the challenge is the site has some decent trees but ground is really soft from all the rain we got this spring so guying anything vertical is going to be a pain. anyone done something similar for a full day ARES or RACES deployment where you needed to stay quiet but still have enough juice? curious if the battery buffer approach actually works in practice or if im overcomplicating it.

made that exact switch about 18 months ago and yeah the difference on HF is pretty noticeable, not like night and day dramatic but the noise floor is definitely cleaner and you stop getting the intermod garbage you get on the RTL when theres a strong broadcast station nearby. the 10 MHz coverage at once thing is nice too if you do any spectrum monitoring. SDR++ works fine with it, you just install the SDRplay API separately and then it shows up in the source dropdown. took me maybe 10 minutes total including driver install on windows. the SDRplay SDRuno software is okay but honestly SDR++ is just better for general use so i dont even bother with it anymore. only time i use SDRuno is when i want to use the IF bandwidth settings that SDR++ doesnt expose. if you're doing a lot of HF the upgrade is worth it imo. if you're mostly VHF/UHF you might not notice as much since the RTL is actually pretty decent up there.

so ive been chasing for about 3 months now and finally decided to just do it and activate a local summit this weekend. its only a 2 pointer but whatever gotta start somewhere right. my question is kind of dumb but i want to make sure i get credit — do i need to register the summit reference on the SOTA database before i go up or just log it after? i looked at the sotawatch site and it was a little confusing to me about the self spot thing vs having someone else spot you. also im bringing my ft-818 and a linked dipole i made from a kit, planning to work 40 and 20 meters. the activation zone is pretty clear from what i can tell on the topo map but im a little unsure if im reading the elevation correctly. the summit is W4T/SU-064 if anyone knows it. any advice appreciated, first time jitters and all that

ok so ive been licensed about 8 months now and i keep seeing people talk about LoTW and eQSL and also trading actual paper QSL cards through the bureau and i honestly have no idea what the actual difference is or if i need to be doing all of them. like is one better than the other or do most people just pick one and stick with it? i set up a LoTW account a while back and i think i uploaded a couple logs but i dont really understand the whole TQSL certificate thing and whether my confirmations are actually going through. and i heard eQSL is kind of looked down on by some people but others seem to use it fine. and then theres the paper cards which look really cool honestly but seems like a lot of work and postage to send them internationally. just trying to figure out what the normal workflow is for most hams. do you guys do all three or just focus on one? and does it matter for any awards or anything

im kind of in the same boat as you actually, just got my general a few months ago and been trying to figure all this out. one thing that helped me was the pskreporter site which isnt exactly the same thing but you can see whos hearing who in realtime which is pretty cool for figuring out if a band is even open before you start hunting around. not sure if that helps with the lag problem but its another tool to have open i guess

honestly hamstudy by itself got me through it no problem, i just drilled the questions every day for like two weeks and passed with only missing two. that said the way i did it was i went through each subelement in order rather than just random mode, at least the first time through, so i had some sense of what topics were grouped together the math stuff like ohms law only shows up a handful of times and the formulas are always the same so once you do those questions a few times you kind of just remember the pattern. dont stress too much about really deeply understanding antenna theory for the tech exam, the questions they actually ask are pretty surface level as for the question pool i think the current one is good through mid 2026 or somewhere around there, you can check the ARRL or NCVEC site to confirm. you definitely have time if you just started

so ive been trying to get Winlink Express set up for a while now and i keep running into the same wall. i can see the local RMS gateway in the list, it shows up fine, frequency looks right, i set the dial freq in the software and everything but when i actually try to connect it just sits there and then times out. im using a KAM XL for the TNC and its been working fine for regular packet stuff so i dont think thats the issue my radio is a 706 mk2g and i have it set to 1200 baud, the gateway supposedly accepts 1200 too based on the winlink.org gateway listing. i ran the audio levels through the soundcard stuff in express and they look okay but honestly im not 100% sure what im looking at. the waterfall shows... something when i key up but i dunno if its actually a proper bell 202 tone pair or just noise has anyone been through this before. is there some obvious thing im missing with the RMS gateway setup or the way express talks to the TNC. feels like im close but just missing one thing

honest answer? about half of it you'll actually use and the other half is just hoops. but here's the thing, the hoops are worth jumping through because some of that theory does stick and you start understanding WHY your antenna is doing what its doing or why a certain filter configuration causes problems. i did mine over about 3 months of casual studying, maybe 45 minutes a night a few times a week. ham study dot com and just grinding practice exams until i was consistently hitting 85 percent or better. the actual exam felt easier than the practice ones somehow. the extra band privileges are real and you will notice it on 40m especially during a pileup. worth doing in my opinion, just dont stress about fully understanding every formula. get the concept down and the math will follow eventually or it wont and youll still pass.

had the exact same issue when i was getting started with this. for me the fix was actually adjusting the audio levels on the signalink, i had the drive way too high and it was causing vara to just fail the handshake entirely. there's a setup guide on the winlink.org site that has specific levels for the IC-7300 with signalink and once i matched those it got a lot more consistent. also try telnet mode just to verify your winlink account and messages are actually working before you troubleshoot the RF side. if everything works on telnet then you know the issue is the radio path not the software config.

ok so i just upgraded from tech to general last month and im trying to figure out the 40 meter band. i know theres a chart somewhere but every time i look at it i get more confused not less. like the arrl band plan shows different things than what i see people actually operating on and then theres the band edges thing which everyone says to stay away from but nobody really explains why or how close is too close. also somebody at my club told me that the lower part of 40m is only for CW but then i heard ssb down there too so now im not sure what to believe. is there like a simple breakdown of this or am i just overthinking it

As a Technician, you can only apply for Group C or D call signs - that's 1×3 or 2×3 format. Did you accidentally request any 1×2 or 2×1 calls? Those are reserved for Extra class only and will get your application dismissed immediately.

JS8Call is more sensitive to linearity than FT8/FT4 due to its extended message structure, while PSK31 demands high linearity for reliable decoding. If you plan to use multiple modes, invest in a quality interface from the start. The Digirig or MFJ-1204 are both solid choices.