Emily Williams

honestly i tried Log4OM a while back and went back to just using N1MM for everything including regular logging because i couldnt be bothered to maintain two databases. the general logging stuff in N1MM isnt pretty but it works and the LoTW integration is solid. might be a me problem but every time i try to run multiple logging apps i end up with a dupe in somebodys log and it bugs me the WSJT-X port thing is a real headache tho, especially if you're on a single machine. some guys run WSJT-X on a seperate laptop just to avoid all that

so ive been trying to figure out the best spot to mount an antenna on my F-150 for my new TM-V71A and honestly im going in circles on this. i did a lip mount on the trunk of my old car which worked fine but the truck is a different animal. been reading about NMO mounts through the roof which sounds like the ideal option for pattern and everything but im really hesitant to drill a hole in a truck i still owe payments on lol. a buddy suggested the cab corner on the bed but ive heard mixed things about grounding when youre that far back on the body. someone else said just do a mag mount for now which yeah i know its not permanent but id rather do it right the first time if im going to bother at all. running a Diamond NR770HB which is a decent sized antenna so whatever i do needs to handle that without flopping around on the highway. whats everyone doing for truck installs these days? curious what actually works in the real world vs what sounds good on paper

jump in absolutely, dont let the modest station stop you. honestly some of my best DX contacts came during CQ WW running similar power to what you have. the big stations are calling CQ constantly so you dont even have to fight for a frequency, just tune to one of them and throw your call in. youll get through more often than you think especially if you pick your timing, like right after a pile dies down a little. for logging definitely get N1MM+ before the contest, its free and once you get it configured it makes everything so much easier. paper logging during CQ WW would drive me insane personally, keeping track of the zones alone is a headache. give yourself an evening to play with N1MM before the contest weekend and youll be fine. and yeah the Field Day debate is a whole thing, technically ARRL calls it an operating event not a contest but it kind of... is one? the scoring and competition aspect is there, just the purpose is supposed to be about emergency preparedness and getting people on the air. i just call it a contest and move on honestly

so the Tri-County hamfest is coming up again in March and im trying to figure out if its worth the drive this year. Last time I went I picked up a decent MFJ tuner for like 20 bucks so I cant complain but the drive is about 2.5 hours each way and my wife is already giving me the look about it lol. Anybody been to this one recently, is it still pretty well attended or has it shrunk down like a lot of the other ones have been doing. Also wondering if the swap meet part is still in the same parking lot or if they moved it indoors.

yeah i went through this same thing last year, ended up just waiting until i got my general before applying for a vanity. felt like it opened up a lot more calls to choose from and the one i really wanted was a 1x3 that would've been group C anyway so it worked out. the 18 day thing is accurate btw, i watched my application sit there for what felt like forever lol. just keep checking the ULS, when it shows up as granted you're good.

yeah the cluster totally changed how i operate, im still pretty new too so its nice to know other people took a while to find this stuff. one thing that tripped me up at first was all the busted spots — like someone posts a callsign wrong and you go tune there and nothings happening or its a completely different station. so i learned to kinda cross check if something looks weird before i get too excited about it. pskreporter is another one worth knowing about, its more for digi modes but you can see whos hearing you and whos being heard which is kind of wild when you zoom out and see the map.

I've actually been having decent luck on 40 but I usually get on around 0200 local when the long path stuff opens up. Might be worth trying later if you haven't. Also side note your dipole might be worth checking the feedline just to rule it out, mine had a corroded PL-259 that was killing my signal for months before I figured it out.

so ive been putting this off for like a year because i kept reading conflicting stuff online about whether it was worth doing and whether it would mess with anything else. finally just did it last weekend. for anyone who hasnt done it, its literally just opening the radio, locating the right connector inside, and either removing a jumper or bridging two points depending on your firmware version — takes maybe 20 minutes if you go slow. the main reason i wanted it was to get TX outside the ham bands for some MARS work and also just to have the flexibility when im experimenting. the mod itself went fine, no issues there. but here's the thing nobody really talks about — after you do it, the ALC behavior feels slightly different to me on the edges of the extended range. might be totally psychosomatic honestly, i dunno. the SWR is fine, everything reads normal, but something just feels off about the way the power ramp up at 29.7 MHz. could just be my antenna being less happy up there. anyway if anyone else has done this on the newer firmware versions (mine was on 1.40 before i updated) id be curious if you noticed anything weird or if im just imagining things.

ok so ive been licensed for about three months now (general class) and i finally worked up the nerve to check into a local 2m net last tuesday. went fine i think but im still not totally sure i did it right. like when the net control came around i just said my callsign and gave my name and said i had no traffic. is that the right way? nobody corrected me or anything but i felt like maybe i was too short with it. also theres this one guy on the net who always gives like this really long check-in with his location and equipment and signal report request and it goes on for a while. is that normal or is he just kind of doing his own thing. i didnt want to ask on air because i didnt want to embarrass anybody. basically just trying to figure out what the unwritten rules are. the handbook covers some of it but real life feels different than reading about it

yeah the ICS stuff gets everybody the first time, dont feel bad. i've been doing emcomm for about twelve years now and i still see experienced operators freeze up when the net control asks for a formal resource check. the thing is the online courses teach you the theory but they cant really simulate the cognitive load of actually handling radio traffic at the same time you're trying to remember what your ICS-214 is supposed to look like the mic gain thing is actually a really common failure mode and it's kind of a perfect lesson honestly. one of the things we started doing in our group after a similar situation is a quick radio check protocol at the start of every activation where everybody confirms audio levels before anything else happens. takes maybe five minutes but it's saved us from a lot of confusion. the other thing we do now is always have a designated backup net control on a different radio in case the primary goes down or has issues, even if that person is just sitting there doing nothing for the whole exercise keep going to those drills, the discomfort is literally the whole point of doing them before a real event

ham study dot com is honestly where most people start now, its free and it has the actual question pool with explanations. the thing people dont realize is the test is multiple choice and the questions are all drawn from a published pool, so theres no surprises. some people just drill questions for a week or two and pass fine. the technician pool isnt that bad, theres some electrical theory and stuff about operating practices and regulations but nothing crazy. HamStudy lets you track which ones you keep getting wrong and focus on those. id give yourself maybe 2-3 weeks if youre studying a little each day, less if you go hard at it. look up the ARRL website to find a testing session near you, most are held by local clubs and the fee is usually like 15 bucks or so

honestly the technician test isnt bad at all if you put in a couple weeks of practice. the question pool is public, thats the big thing people dont realize — every single question that could show up on the exam is available ahead of time so theres no surprises. i used hamstudy.org almost exclusively and just did practice tests every night for maybe two weeks and passed with room to spare. the app is called Ham Study too and its basically the same thing on your phone. some people swear by the ARRL technician manual but i found it a bit dry personally, i learned more just by drilling the practice questions and looking up anything i didnt understand. the RF safety and electrical stuff tripped me up a little at first but if you understand the why behind it it sticks better than just memorizing. good luck, its way less scary than it sounds

the 40m phone situation for general is actually not too bad once you see it laid out. you get 7.175 to 7.300 MHz for phone, extras get a bit more on the lower end starting at 7.125. so as long as you're operating above 7.175 you're fine for SSB. the ARRL band plan graphic is decent but honestly the actual part 97 appendix is clearer once you just sit down with it. as for stuff that trips people up -- the ID rules are probably the most common. you gotta ID at the end of every contact and every 10 minutes during a contact, and it has to be in english even if you're working a foreign station (or CW obviously). a lot of new generals also don't realize that running too close to the edge of their privileges can still get you in trouble even if you think you're in bounds, because if your signal is wide enough it might splatter into a portion you don't have phone privileges on. not saying you're doing that just worth knowing.

honestly for 40m ragchewing at that height the inverted V is probably fine. yeah 25 feet is low but inverted V's actually have a higher angle of radiation which works pretty well for regional contacts, 200-800 miles or so. i ran one at about 28 feet for two years before i moved and worked all 48 states without much trouble. the feedpoint impedance is a little lower than a flat dipole but nothing a 1:1 balun cant deal with. the vertical with radials is more work and if your ground is average you need a lot of radials to really get performance out of it. some people lay down like 16-32 and call it done but buried radials in a suburban lot are kind of a pain. i wouldnt bother unless you're really after dx.

yeah the band plan thing trips up a lot of new generals, dont worry. so basically there are two separate things going on. what the FCC says is the actual legal allocation -- for general class on 40 meters that's 7.175 to 7.300 MHz for phone (SSB). that's the hard limit, go outside that and you're actually violating your license conditions. the band plan on top of that is more like a gentlemens agreement between operators about where certain modes and activities tend to hang out, like DX windows and digital stuff and whatnot. nobody's gonna arrest you for ignoring the band plan but you'll annoy people. the band edge thing your club guy mentioned is real -- if your signal is sloppy or your rig's filter isn't great, sidebands can bleed outside the allocation even if your carrier frequency is technically legal. a lot of people just stay a few kHz inside the edge to give themselves some margin. 7.178 or so is a pretty safe starting point if you just want to ragchew and not worry about it.

so ive been listening to the local 2m net for a few weeks and want to check in but im not really sure about the procedure. do i just wait for them to call for check-ins and then give my call? seems like some people give their name and location too but others dont. also what if i cant copy the net control station very well, is it ok to ask them to repeat something or does that mess up the whole net

so ive been chasing this one for a while now and its starting to drive me nuts. got my IC-7300 probably 4 years ago and it was flawless up until a couple months back. what it does is starts out fine, full 100w into my dummy load, but after maybe 5 or 10 minutes of operating it starts pulling back power on its own. doesnt throw any fault codes or anything, the ALC looks normal on the scope display, just... less power coming out. like it'll drop to 60-70w and just sit there. let it cool down for 20 minutes and it comes back to full power again. my first guess was the PA transistors running hot but i pulled the top cover and stuck a thermal probe around and nothing is getting crazy hot, the finals look fine. someone on another forum suggested maybe the LPF relays but i havent gotten that far yet. i did recap a kenwood once but the 7300 feels way more involved to get into. anyone dealt with this specifically on a 7300 or similar ICOM? wondering if this is a known thing before i start throwing parts at it.

the thing everyone will tell you and its true — do NOT learn the dits and dahs as written patterns. like dont memorize that K is dash dot dash as a visual thing. you want to hear K and just know it, the way you hear a word in english and dont spell it out in your head first. the Koch method is what most people end up recommending and theres a free program called LCWO dot net that does it online, you just work through letters two at a time starting with K and M i think. the whole idea is you learn each character at full speed from the beginning so your brain has to recognize the sound pattern, not count anything. honestly the biggest thing is just doing it every single day even if its ten minutes. i went months doing it inconsistently and made almost no progress, then started doing it every morning before coffee and it started clicking within a few weeks. lunch break would be perfect for you.

i had almost the exact same setup in my tacoma and the noise drove me nuts for weeks. what finally fixed mine was actually adding a small capacitor across the power terminals at the radio, someone on another forum suggested it and i was skeptical but it helped a lot. also make sure you're running a separate ground wire all the way back to the battery instead of grounding to the chassis near the radio, that made a difference for me too. as for the NMO mount, i was scared to drill too but it really wasnt that bad, just take your time and use a good step bit. the mag mount works okay but you lose a bit on performance and it can slide around on highway if you get a good gust.

just chiming in because im kind of in the same boat as you. been on FT8 a while, works great, but yeah its not really operating in the traditional sense. more like data collection lol. i havent tried JS8Call yet but this thread is making me want to. whats the typical frequency you were using on 40m, i dont want to just spin the dial looking for it

this is making me think i should actually show up to one of these. i keep meaning to get involved with our local ARES group but i always assume i dont know enough yet to be useful. reading stuff like this though it sounds like even experienced operators are still figuring things out so maybe thats a bad excuse on my part. quick question though — when you say you went simplex, were you using a designated simplex calling frequency or just whatever worked? i've seen different things in different references and i'm never sure what the actual practice is when the repeater isnt cutting it

i use the DXwatch app on my phone mostly just to see whats happening when im away from the shack, its not perfect but it does the job. one thing i noticed is the web version on a laptop is way easier to filter stuff. the phone apps feel a little clunky to me but maybe thats just me being old lol congrats on studying for general btw, 40 and 20 meters are gonna open up a whole different world for you

honestly its way more approachable than most people expect. the technician exam is 35 questions and you need to get 26 right, which sounds scary but the question pool is completely public so you basically study the exact questions that will be on the test. hamStudy.org is probably where id send anyone first, just make flashcards and keep grinding through them until you're consistently passing the practice tests. HamStudy also has an app if you want to study on your phone during breaks or whatever. as for cost, the exam fee is usually around 15 bucks give or take depending on the VE team running it, some clubs do it cheaper or even free occasionally. after you pass your info goes to the FCC and a callsign usually shows up in the ULS database within a few days, sometimes faster. technically you can transmit as soon as your license shows up there, you dont have to wait for a paper license in the mail or anything like that. your neighbor might actually be a ham himself, if so ask him, having someone local to help is honestly huge when youre starting out

The ITU phonetic alphabet is universally understood and developed specifically to be intelligible in harsh conditions. When I work DX, I stick to standard phonetics because that's what DX stations are listening for - it gives you every advantage possible.

honestly the biggest thing nobody talks about is room acoustics. i spent forever messing with radio settings and it wasnt until someone did a recording of me that i realized half my problem was room echo. i was in a hard-walled shack and it sounded like i was calling from a bathroom. threw up some moving blankets behind my desk and the difference was pretty dramatic, tightened up the audio a lot before it even hits the radio. mic technique matters too, like keeping consistent distance from the element. i know it sounds obvious but i used to drift around while talking and the level variations were making the ALC go nuts which creates its own kind of distortion. stay about 2-3 inches from the PR-40 and talk across it slightly rather than directly into it, reduces plosives.