James Wilson94

just chiming in cause im in almost the exact same spot, like 13wpm on a good day and it feels like running through mud. one thing that helped me a little bit was the LCWO website, you can set the character speed high like 20wpm but slow down the word spacing so you have time to think. its not the same as real QSO speed but it kind of bridges the gap i think. anyway still working on it myself so take that for what its worth lol

im in kind of the same boat as you actually, been at it for maybe 6 weeks. the app i've been using is called Morse Mania and its pretty decent for drilling individual characters but yeah once real code starts going it sounds like a blur to me too. someone on another thread here mentioned just listening to CW on the bands even when you cant copy it, just to get used to how it sounds in a real environment rather than a clean app. havent tried that yet but it makes sense i think

so ive had my 857 for about 3 years now and never bothered with the mars/cap mod or the extended receive thing but lately ive been thinking about it. mainly because i want to listen down into the lower HF stuff without swapping radios. i know you pull D42 and theres a few other jumpers or resistors depending on the version of the board you have, some of the older ones are different than the later production runs which is annoying. anyway has anyone actually done this and noticed any real world difference in sensitivity below the ham bands or is it kind of meh. i know the front end isnt really optimized for that range so maybe its not even worth the hassle of cracking the case open. also while im in there i was thinking about the mic gain mod too, mine always felt like i had to crank the internal mic gain way up to get decent audio reports. is that a separate thing or do some people just do it all at once. not worried about the warranty obviously its like a decade old radio at this point just want to know if its actually worth doing or if im going to get mediocre performance anyway

I did the same thing you're describing, just memorized the pool and passed. Felt a little weird not knowing what I was actually answering sometimes but it got me the license and then I learned the real stuff by actually operating. The exam is kind of its own thing separate from actually knowing how radio works if that makes sense. One thing though — if you dont have an HF rig yet, maybe look into what antenna situation you have before worrying too much about bands. I spent way too long researching radios before realizing my apartment was going to be the actual limiting factor. ended up starting with a random wire out a window which was a whole other adventure.

congrats on passing the exam. so the Baofeng hate you're seeing is a mix of legitimate stuff and just old-timers being snobby honestly. the UV-5R is fine for hitting local repeaters and learning the ropes, it's just not the most reliable long term and the receive audio isnt great. but plenty of people have used them for years without issue. if you can stretch to around the 100 dollar range the Yaesu FT-65 is a noticeable step up in build quality and the audio is cleaner. it's pretty straightforward to program too without needing the cable right away. dual band is genuinely useful even starting out because a lot of areas have both 2m and 70cm repeaters, and you might be suprised how much 70cm activity there is locally once you start looking. the extended battery thing is mostly just people wanting longer operating time between charges, the stock batteries are usually fine for casual use but if you're ever doing a long event or emcomm exercise it matters more. my honest take: skip the UV-5R, get the FT-65 or maybe look at the Radioddity GD-77 if you want something with a little more to grow into. whatever you get, grab the programming cable and load CHIRP on your computer, it'll save you a ton of headache with the menu diving.

yeah what he said about the band edges is spot on. i actully made this mistake early on, had my dial sitting right on the upper edge and got a pretty stern comment from someone during a net check in. embarrassing but you learn fast lol one thing i'd add is that the ARRL band plan and the actual FCC part 97 allocations arent always the same thing. the FCC rules are what you legally have to follow, the ARRL band plan is more like a suggested way to organize things so everyone isnt stepping on each other. so like technically you could do SSB in your general phone segment anywhere in that range but in practice certain sub-bands are kind of understood to be for digital modes or weak signal work and people get grumpy if you just plant an SSB contact in the middle of the FT8 watering hole

welcome to the addiction haha. so to answer your first question - WAS and DXCC are completely separate award programs and the contacts dont really overlap in terms of credit. working all 50 states gets you WAS, working 100 confirmed entities gets you DXCC, and WAZ is the 40 zone thing. you can work a station that counts for all three at the same time but theyre tracked independently. so like if you work a station in Wyoming that might be a new state for WAS, its almost certainly in the US entity for DXCC which you already have, and its in CQ zone 3 or 4 depending on where in Wyoming they are. make sense? on your WAZ question yeah you are reading it right, some countries or entities do span more than one zone. Canada is a big example - a station in Ontario is zone 4 but someone up in the Yukon or Northwest Territories is zone 1. so you gotta pay attention to where exactly the station is operating from, not just what their callsign prefix is. most dx stations will announce their zone in their QRZ listing or on their spots. for logging i use DXKeeper which is part of the DXLab suite and it tracks all of this really well, shows you your DXCC totals by band and mode, WAZ status, all of it. theres a learning curve but once you get it set up its pretty great. Log4OM is also supposed to handle this but ive never used it myself

so i finally decided to stop making excuses and actually learn morse code. ive been licensed for about 4 years now and always told myself id get around to it. started doing the lcwo.net lessons a few weeks ago and im up to about 12 wpm copying but my sending is another story i borrowed an old straight key from a club member to start but he also threw in a cheap paddle and a basic keyer and honestly im not sure im using it right. when i squeeze both paddles at the same time it does the dah-dit-dah thing (iambic i guess?) but half the time it sends stuff i didnt intend. like i squeeze for a dah and it also grabs an extra dit on the end. is that normal or am i holding it wrong or is the keyer set up wrong also whats a reasonable speed to start actually getting on the air and making contacts, like is 10 wpm enough that someone will actually respond or will they just come back at 25 and leave me in the dust

After 20+ years of QSLing via bureau, here are some hard-learned lessons: Always include your callsign on BOTH sides of the card - speeds up sortingWrite dates in full format (12 October 2024, not 12/10/24) to avoid confusionInclude county/grid square/IOTA references - many want your card for awardsYou can write "Wait 10" on your incoming bureau envelope to save money - your manager will wait until it's full before mailing. Cards are distributed every 3-4 months, so expect 12-16 weeks turnaround in some areas.

so ive been trying to get Winlink going for probably two weeks now and im getting close but not quite there. running Winlink Express on a windows 10 machine, got a Signalink USB hooked up to my IC-7300 and im trying to hit a local RMS gateway on 2m packet first before i mess with HF pactor or vara. the software sees my audio device fine and i can get the TNC configured in the vara FM setup but when i actually try to initiate a session to the gateway it just sits there saying connecting and then eventually times out. i checked the gateway list and there are two within reasonable range, one about 18 miles out and another maybe 35. tried both frequencies. i can hear packet traffic on the frequency sometimes so i know the radio is receiving. my RF gain is good, ptt is triggering (i can see the ALC moving), but nothing comes back. im wondering if its a timing issue with the TNC settings or maybe my audio levels are totally off. anybody gone through this with vara FM specifically, the documentation is not exactly hand-holdy also totally open to just doing it over HF if thats easier to get started, i have a decent signal on 40m usually. just figured local VHF packet would be simpler to debug

so ive been messing around with an arduino mega for the past few weeks trying to get it to handle my antenna switching automatically based on band changes from my IC-7300. the radio puts out band data on the ACC port and i figured i could decode that with the arduino and drive a set of relays to switch between my verticals and the yagi up top. got most of it working but im running into a weird issue where the relay for 40m keeps triggering a split second before the band data is fully settled — like there's some bounce or timing thing happening on the input lines. ive got 10k pulldowns on all the band data lines already so its not a floating input problem, just seems like the arduino is reading partway through a transition or something. debounce in software maybe? or is there a better way to handle this with the hardware side also kind of wondering if i should just scrap the mega and move this over to a raspberry pi zero, since i could log everything and build a little web interface to see what antenna is active. but that feels like overkill for what is basically a relay driver. curious what other people have done

so i finally did my first ever SOTA activation last weekend, been wanting to do it for about a year now and kept putting it off. picked W4T/SU-001 because its relatively close to me and the hike isnt too bad, about 2 miles each way with maybe 800 feet of elevation gain. anyway i brought my FT-818 and a homebrew end fed wire that i've been using at home, figured it would work fine. got to the summit, wind was absolutely brutal up there, way worse than i expected, had a really hard time getting my antenna up with just a 20 foot fiberglass pole. eventually got it sort of working but it was leaning at like a 45 degree angle the whole time. managed to get 4 contacts on 20m SSB which i think is the minimum for a valid activation right? but it took me almost an hour to do it because i wasnt self-spotting properly and i think my signal was pretty weak with the antenna all bent over like that. one guy gave me a 55 and that was the best report i got. for the people who do this regularly — whats your go to method for antenna support in wind? and do most activators use SOTA Goat or SOTLAS to spot themselves or is there something better now. also curious if anyone activates with just QRP or if most people bring like 50 watts portable.

the honda eu2200i is genuinely worth the money if youre doing emcomm seriously. ive run mine through three field day events and one actual deployment after a hurricane and it just doesnt complain. the inverter output is clean enough that ive plugged the 7300 directly into it with no issues, no interference that i could hear. the weight thing is real though, its not light, but theres a companion port on the 2200i and you can parallel two of them if you ever need more capacity which is nice to have as an option even if you never use it. on the cheap gens - a guy in our club brought a champion to field day one year and it ran fine honestly but it was noticeably noisier RF-wise. wasnt totally unusable but we had to be more careful about where we parked it relative to the antenna. probably fine for digital modes or if you have a good line filter but for ssb phone ops it was annoying enough that he ended up just not using it after a while. for the battery side, i'd honestly do both. run the battery as your primary and let the generator top it off when needed rather than running the radio directly off the gen. cleaner that way and you get the best of both

yeah i struggled with this same thing when i upgraded. what helped me was just saving the arrl band plan image on my phone so i could look at it quick. honestly for 40 the biggest thing is just dont go below 7.175 on phone and youre fine for the legal part. the band edge thing is mostly about ssb taking up more bandwidth than you might think, like your voice is spreading out a few khz around wherever your vfo says you are so if you set it right at the edge youre already out of bounds kind of

so i've been meaning to do this for literally two years and last weekend i finally sat down and just did it. got everything into a pelican 1510 case, which is maybe overkill but i had it laying around from an old job. threw in my FT-817ND, a few different antennas, coax, a little 20ah LiFePO4 battery, charging stuff, log sheets, pens, a copy of my license, all that. also grabbed one of those cheap little handheld weather radios because honestly i forgot i even owned it. the thing that surprised me is how fast it all adds up in terms of weight. like i thought i was being smart by using the 817 since its so small but by the time you add the battery and the coax and everything else im hauling around maybe 18 pounds? which is fine but more than i expected. my question is for you guys who actually deploy with served agencies or ARES stuff -- what do you wish you'd included that you didn't think of until you were actually in the field? i feel like im probably forgetting something obvious. also is there a standard checklist anywhere that people actually use or does everyone just wing it?

Factor in your learning goals too. I've "wasted" money on component-level repairs that could have been done cheaper elsewhere, but gained valuable troubleshooting experience. If it's your only rig and you need it back quickly, go professional.

so i heard through the club that theres a swap meet being organized out near the fairgrounds sometime in late spring, think its the same guys who did the one last fall. last year i picked up a pretty decent HF rig for almost nothing so im definitely trying to make it out again. anyone else planning on going or know more details about it? i cant find anything on the club website but maybe its not posted yet

so i finally did my first activation last weekend, took a hike up W4T/SU-017 with my KX2 and a end fed half wave thrown up in a tree. got 5 contacts which i know is the minimum but man it was harder than i thought to get people to respond. i was calling CQ SOTA on 40m for like 20 minutes before anyone came back to me and honestly i was starting to think i had something wrong with the setup. a few things im confused about still. the summit reference, do i need to post my activation on sotawatch before i go or can i just log it after the fact? i spotted myself once using my phone but the signal up there was pretty sketchy. also does the contact have to be two way voice or can i work someone who is doing CW if im on SSB, like does that count for both of us? also one of the guys who came back to me said he was a chaser and gave me his callsign and a signal report really fast and then just disappeared, is that normal? felt a little abrupt but i guess thats just how it works. anyway i want to do another one soon, thinking about trying 20m next time since 40m seemed pretty dead that morning. any tips appreciated

the rx/tx antenna switching on the 857 goes through a set of diodes and a relay, if that relay isnt fully switching over on receive youll get exactly what you describe. tx still works because the tx path is different. check Q1017 area on the RF unit schematic if you can get hold of one, i think the Yaesu service manual is floating around on mods.dk or radiomanual.info. measure the voltage on the relay coil during RX and see if its actually being driven.

yeah that's basically the workflow, you're not doing anything wrong. most of us have QRZ or clublog open on the side just to sanity check a callsign or see if it's a new one for the log. the timing thing on DXwatch is kind of a known annoyance — spots can be aggregated from multiple cluster nodes and some of those nodes are slower to propagate than others so by the time it hits the web interface the pileup might already be dying down. what i'd suggest is looking at whether you can connect directly to a telnet cluster node instead of relying on the web interface. something like dxc.k0xm.net or one of the other public nodes. you can do it through fldigi or even just a raw telnet session if you want to feel old school about it. the spots come in much faster that way and you can set filters for bands and regions so you're not drowning in spots for stuff you cant even hear from your location. once you get your grid sorted in that app the beam headings become really useful especially if you're on a beam antenna.

so ive been chasing this fault on my 7300 for about three weeks now and im starting to lose my mind a little. the radio transmits fine most of the time, power output looks normal on the meter, but every so often — maybe once every 20-30 minutes of operating — it just drops to near zero output mid-transmission for like half a second then comes back. no warnings on screen, ALC looks normal before and after, SWR on the antenna side isnt doing anything weird. at first i thought it was the PA running hot but the heatsink barely gets warm. tried a dummy load instead of the antenna, same behavior. swapped the mic, same thing. its not happening on any particular band either, ive seen it on 40 and 20 mostly but thats just where i spend most of my time so hard to say. im pretty comfortable with a scope and DMM and ive poked around a bit but i dont really want to go too deep into the finals area without a clearer idea of what im looking for. anybody seen anything like this on the 7300 or similar SDR-based rigs? wondering if it could be something goofy in the RF sense chain or maybe a firmware thing but i doubt firmware causes something this consistent.

so the Tri-County fest is coming up on the 14th and im trying to figure out if its worth the drive this year. last year i picked up a pretty decent HF rig for like $80 which was nuts but the year before that i walked around for two hours and found nothing worth buying. totally hit or miss with these things. anyone else planning to go or know if the swap meet part is gonna be bigger this time around? i heard the club got a new venue which might mean more tables

so i finally did my first SOTA activation last weekend, W4V/SH-001 if anyone knows the area. took me forever to get up there with the pack and i was already kind of tired before i even set up. brought my KX2 and a random wire thrown up in a tree, ran like 5 watts on 40m and 20m. made 10 contacts which i know isnt a ton but for my first time i was pretty happy. the hardest part was honestly just finding a decent tree to throw the wire over, everything was either too short or too branchy. also my phone was dying so i was scrambling to log on paper which i havent done in years lol anyone else do activations in the shenandoah area? wondering if theres better spots where the trees cooperate more