James Wilson94

yeah i did almost exactly this for my shack like two years ago, except i was using a TS-590 so kenwood CAT instead of CI-V, but same basic idea. the byte dropping thing is almost certainly a buffer overflow on the arduino's hardware serial - if youre using Software Serial for CI-V that thing is notoriously flaky especially if anything else in the loop is blocking. even a small delay() call in the wrong place will cause you to miss bytes. what i ended up doing was switching to one of the hardware serial ports on the mega (you have 4 on that board which is great) and then just making the main loop as non-blocking as possible. no delay() anywhere, just state machines and millis() for timing. its a bit more code to write but once you do it that way it just works. also double check your baud rate matches exactly what the 7300 is putting out, CI-V is usually 19200 but some people have theirs set different and its easy to miss. raspberry pi would work too and you'd have more headroom for sure but honestly the arduino is fine for this, you just gotta be careful about blocking code

so ive been getting reports for a while now that my audio on SSB sounds kind of muddy or muffled, one guy on 40m last week said it sounded like i was talking through a pillow. im running an IC-7300 with the stock mic and i havent really touched the audio settings much since i got it a couple years ago. i set up a frequency offset once and thats about it. i know the 7300 has a ton of EQ options in the menu but honestly i never dug into them because the manual is kind of overwhelming. i also read somewhere that SSB audio benefits from a bit of a mid-range boost and cutting some of the low end because the low frequencies just eat up power without actually helping intelligibility. not sure if thats true or just something someone made up on reddit. also my mic gain is probably set too high, ive been told that before. but i dont know what level to set it at without actually being able to hear myself. is there a way to monitor that on the radio itself or do i need a second receiver to check? genuinely unsure how people dial this stuff in without spending hours on the air annoying everyone while they tune their audio.

so i was just messing around on 10 meters yesterday afternoon, not really expecting much, and all of a sudden the band just exploded open. was working stations in south america like they were across town, S9 signals just pouring in. ran a bunch of contacts in about an hour and a half before it faded out. honestly forgot how good 10m can be when the solar cycle cooperates, we havent seen conditions like this consistently in a long time and its been a real treat lately. also wanted to bring up the new IC-7760 that Icom apparently announced — saw some chatter about it on a couple other forums and there's a video floating around showing the remote head setup. looks like they're really leaning into the remote operation angle which makes sense given how many people are dealing with HOA situations these days. i havent seen official US pricing yet but the Japanese market price someone converted was... not cheap. curious if anyone here has more info on it or has seen hands-on coverage from a hamfest or dealer demo. anyway just thought id share, felt like one of those days that reminds you why you got into this hobby in the first place.

yeah this trips up a lot of new folks and honestly even some people who've been licensed for years get it slightly wrong or just do what they were taught without looking it up. the actual FCC rule is that you have to identify at least once every 10 minutes during a communication and at the end of the communication. so on a short net check-in where you're on and off in under 10 minutes, you technically just need to ID once at the end of your transmission. giving your call at the start is good practice and courteous but its not strictly required by the rules for short exchanges. now giving BOTH calls — yours and the station you're working — thats actually not required in the US at all, thats more of an old habit carried over from HF or just tradition. some guys do it out of habit or because they like the formality and theres nothing wrong with it, but you dont have to. on a net specifically, the NCS usually has a rhythm going and if you listen to how the experienced checkins do it you'll pick up what that particular net prefers pretty quick. most nets i run with just want your call, your name, location, and whether you have traffic — clean and simple. dont stress too much, nobody's gonna yell at you for being a little extra courteous with your ID.

the ground plane argument against lip mounts is real but honestly for hitting repeaters 20-30 miles out it probably wont matter much. ive had a Larsen NMO-K lip mount on my Tacoma for maybe 3 years now and the only issue i had was one of the set screws backed out after a winter, retightened it and put some blue loctite on and havent touched it since. corrosion on mine has been minimal but i do spray it down with some dielectric grease every fall before the salt starts flying. the coax routing is the real headache with lip mounts compared to drilling. you still end up fishing it somewhere, just differently. if you go that route budget some time for the routing, it took me longer than i expected to get it looking clean going through the cab. as for the antenna choice, the G7 is a nice stick but i honestly couldnt tell a real world difference versus a decent 5/8 wave on a solid mount. the extra gain only matters if youre pointed the right direction anyway on mobile.

so ive been on SSB for about a year now mostly on 40m and 20m and people keep telling me my audio sounds 'thin' or 'tinny' and i cant figure out what the deal is. im running an IC-7300 which i know is a pretty decent rig so i dont think its the radio itself. using a Heil PR-40 mic which everyone says is great but honestly i wonder if im just not setting it up right. the mic gain is sitting around 50% and i have the compression on but only like 2-3 bars showing on the ALC. someone on the air told me to turn the TX bandwidth up but i messed with that and it didnt seem to help much or maybe i was doing it wrong. i also noticed the high frequency stuff in my voice just doesnt come through and i sound almost like im on a telephone from 1985 according to one guy lol. is there some baseline setup people use for SSB voice that i should know about? i feel like theres a combination of settings that work together and i just havent stumbled on the right combination yet. any help appreciated, been bugging me for a while now

so ive been wanting to get into ham radio for a while now and finally decided to just go for the tech license. problem is i dont really know where to start with studying. a friend mentioned the ARRL handbook but that seems like way overkill for just the tech exam? also saw some stuff about hamstudy.org online but idk if thats enough on its own or if i should get an actual book too also kind of confused about the question pool thing, like is the actual test pulled directly from those questions or is it similar questions or what. im a pretty fast learner but i have zero background in electronics so some of the math stuff is going to be rough probably any advice appreciated, trying to take the exam in like 3-4 weeks

so ive been a Tech for about 8 months now and honestly been mostly just doing 2m/70cm stuff with my HT and a little bit of packet radio stuff on the side. but lately ive been really wanting to get on HF, i tried listening on 40m with just a wire antenna i threw up and man theres just so much going on down there, i want to actually transmit not just listen anyway my question is how hard is the General exam compared to Tech. i remember the Tech test wasnt too bad, i used the HamStudy website and just drilled questions for like 3 weeks. is it the same kind of deal for General or is there like actual math i need to know. someone at my club mentioned something about the electrical principles section being tricky and now im a little worried. also wondering if its worth going straight for Extra but that seems like a big jump any advice appreciated, trying to figure out how much time i need to set aside for this

yeah same boat as you last year, passed it and the Extra at the same session actually which maybe wasnt the smartest idea lol but it worked out. for the electrical theory stuff i just watched some YouTube videos, there's a few guys who specifically go through the General pool and explain the why behind the questions instead of just making you memorize. that helped me way more than just flashcards for the formula stuff. dont stress too much about impedance matching and all that, you'll run into it again when you actually start messing with antennas anyway and it clicks better with hands-on stuff

congrats on the first build, MTR-3B is a great kit to start with. Steve Weber designs are really solid and well documented so if something seems off theres usually a good explanation in the build notes or the yahoo group archives (or whatever replaced those). on the sidetone thing — theres a trim pot inside for adjusting that, pretty sure its labeled on the board. just a small screwdriver and you can dial it up to whatever feels comfortable. i like mine a little lower actually so i dont fatigue on long sessions but thats personal preference. for portable antennas the EFHW is genuinely hard to beat for simplicity, especially if you wind your own 49:1 unun. you can get the whole thing including wire under 200 grams easy and it'll load up on multiple bands. i use a 40m EFHW for most of my SOTA stuff and it just works. dont overthink the antenna, get out and operate is my advice.

yeah 35 lbs sounds like where everyone starts lol. did you self spot on SOTAwatch before you went up or just wing it? i always forget to post an alert ahead of time and then wonder why the chasers arent there when i start calling. also whats the trail like on that one, ive had it on my list for a while

Yeah both stations definitely have to upload to LoTW for a confirmation to show up — that's the part that trips a lot of new folks up. You could have a perfect log entry but if the other guy never uploads his side you'll just sit there waiting forever. Some operators upload every week, some do it once a year, some never bother at all. Just kind of how it is. Physical cards are still very much a thing, especially in the DX world. A lot of DXers still prefer paper cards for certain awards or just because they like having something tangible. I've got a whole wall of cards going back to the 80s and I'd never give that up. But for DXCC specifically, LoTW is honestly the way to go now — the ARRL accepts LoTW confirmations and it saves you a ton of hassle versus mailing cards back and forth through QSL bureaus which can take like a year or more sometimes. eQSL is kind of its own separate thing — it's faster and free and a lot of casual operators use it, but it's not accepted for DXCC credit the same way LoTW is. Some awards programs do accept it though. I'd set up all three honestly, takes like an afternoon and then you're covered no matter what the other person prefers.

oh man i remember my first contest, i had no clue what was happening for the first like two hours lol. one thing nobody told me — write down the exchange format before you start so you're not fumbling during a QSO. for CQ WW it's signal report and CQ zone, which sounds simple but when you're nervous and the other guy is going a mile a minute it helps to have it written on a sticky note or something. also look up SOTA if you ever want something more chill than a full contest. it's not really a contest but there's awards and points and you go activate summits, really fun way to get portable operating experience. totally different vibe but scratches a similar itch if contests feel too intense at first.

yeah dont overthink it, i studied for my tech off and on for maybe 3 weeks using just the free question pool on the ARRL site and passed no problem. the real test only pulls 35 questions from that pool so you just need 26 right to pass, which isnt that hard once you've gone through the material a few times. some of the questions about operating procedures and band priveleges you kind of just learn naturally once you start listening on the air anyway

oh man i remember my first solo activation, i over-thought literally everything. the exchange stuff confused me too for a while. i think of it more like a friendly contact than a contest so people kind of do whatever feels natural to them. one thing that helped me a ton for spotting was just texting a friend before i left and asking them to spot me once i said i was on frequency, i'd send a quick text if i had even one bar and they'd take care of the rest. not always possible but it works when it does. also the parksnpeaks app has a spot function that sometimes works on really minimal data connections if the pota website is being slow.