Emily Williams

ft4 is kinda the middle ground that nobody talks about enough imo. faster than ft8 so you get slightly more actual throughput in a contest situation but its still weak signal capable. i ran a bunch of ft4 during one of the NA sprints and it worked really well once you get the timing down. the 7.5 second cycles throw you off at first if youre used to ft8s 15 seconds. js8call i tried once and couldnt really get my head around the relay/store forward stuff but i probably need to spend more time with it. seemed cool for emcomm type stuff where you might not have a direct path to where you need to talk to.

yeah comparing it to the 7300 is kind of a losing battle from the start, those are just different classes of radio. but the 857 can be nudged a bit. i did the ref osc mod a while back for better frequency stability which isnt receive sensitivity exactly but it does help when youre trying to zero in on a weak signal and youre chasing drift. small thing but combined with the optional filters it adds up. one thing i will say is make sure your coax and connectors are clean first because ive seen guys spend hours on internal mods when the actual culprit was a dodgy PL-259 or a connector that had been sitting in a wet bumper mount. not saying thats your situation just worth ruling out before you start pulling boards

yeah totally normal to be confused by this stuff, took me a while to get my head around it too. the short version is SFI gives you an idea of how ionized the F layer is, higher numbers mean the F layer can support higher frequencies and longer skip distances. so when it drops from 145 to 120 you might lose some of the higher bands or find that the MUF drops earlier in the evening. not a huge swing but noticeable especially on 17m which can be a bit finicky anyway. the K index is a different animal, that one is about geomagnetic activity. even if SFI is great, if K is up at 4 or 5 you can get absorption on the higher latitude paths and polar routes get hammered. europe from north america goes over or near the pole depending on your location so a high K can really mess with that even when solar conditions look good on paper. i usually dont bother chasing EU on 20 if K is above 3, its just frustrating. there are a few good sites for tracking this in real time, dxmaps and the NOAA space weather site both show current conditions and some have propagation forecasts. once you start watching it daily it starts to click pretty quickly

im kind of in the same boat as you, been lurking on this topic for a while. one thing i did find helpful was the WSJT-X documentation actually has a pretty good section on EME basics and how to set up for weak signal work. also theres a spreadsheet floating around where you can punch in your antenna gain and power and it'll give you a rough estimate of whether a contact is even feasible with a given station on the other end. cant remember where i found it exactly, maybe on the moonbouncers group or somewhere like that the coordination thing is real though, people do schedule contacts in advance especially for marginal stations, nobody is just casually bouncing signals off the moon and hoping someone random hears them, well okay sometimes but thats mostly the big gun stations with massive arrays

ok so ive been licensed for about 3 months now (general) and i keep hearing people talk about checking into nets but i honestly have no idea what the protocol is. like do i just key up and say my callsign? do i wait for the net control to ask? i tried last tuesday on the local 2m repeater net and just kind of froze up and didnt say anything because i wasnt sure when to jump in. also i saw something about a special event station on the ARRL site for some anniversary thing next weekend and i want to try working them but again im not sure if there's a specific way you're supposed to call them vs just a regular QSO. any help appreciated, this stuff isnt really covered in the technician material i studied

so ive been running FT8 for about a year now and yeah its great for contacts and watching the propagation but honestly it feels like a glorified beacon sometimes. you log the contact and thats basically it. someone at my club mentioned JS8Call and i set it up last weekend and its a completely different vibe — like you can actually type back and forth with someone over a weak signal path which is what i thought digital modes were supposed to be about in the first place my question is whether people actually use it regularly or is it kind of a ghost town on most bands. i found some activity on 40m around 14.078 i think but wasnt sure if i was even tuned to the right spot. also curious how it compares to PSK31 for actual ragchewing because i used to run PSK31 years ago on 20m and there was always someone to talk to on weekends not trying to start a modes war just genuinely curious what people are using when they actually want to have a qso and not just exchange grid squares

Are you using the optional ORB Control Device? I found that PTT delays were much worse when relying on software VOX. Hardware PTT through the ORB unit cut my transmit switching time in half.

so i was out in the shack this morning just doing some casual monitoring and 10m was absolutely alive, i was hearing stations from Brazil and what sounded like eastern Europe just on a basic dipole, havent seen the band this active since... honestly maybe 2012 or so? solar cycle 25 is really delivering lately anyway while i was on there i kept hearing people mention some new Yaesu release, something about an updated version of the FT-710 or a new handheld, i honestly couldnt catch all of it and my internet out here is terrible so i havent been able to look it up properly. anyone know whats going on with that? also if you havent checked 10m recently seriously just turn the radio on and point an antenna at it, even a bad antenna, you might be surprised also our club is doing a special event station next weekend for the towns 150th anniversary if anyones in the central Ohio area, we could use a few more operators for the Saturday morning shift

An activator must achieve at least 4 two-way contacts to achieve a successful activation, using any amateur radio band or mode. Also try 70cm if you have it - many 2m ops can switch over for a second QSO. That's an easy way to build your count quickly.

So for 40m as a General you get 7.025 to 7.300 MHz for phone (SSB), and then CW you can go down to 7.025 as well. The portion from 7.000 to 7.025 is Extra class only for CW. So basically don't go below 7.025 and you're fine for voice. The band edge thing -- your rig's displayed frequency is usually the carrier or the suppressed carrier frequency, and with SSB the actual signal has bandwidth, so if you're on USB and you dial up to say 7.300.0 your signal is actually extending above that which is outside the allocation. Most people say stay at least 3 kHz inside the edge to be safe, so like 7.297 or so for the upper end. Some rigs will even warn you or limit you but not all of them do. The 891 should be fine just watch your dial.

ran a trapped vertical for years on 40 and 80 before i finally put up a proper inverted-v and the difference on receive was immediately obvious. not a little bit — a lot. verticals absolutely do pick up more noise in a suburban environment, the low angle stuff helps on dx paths but when you're working stateside you really want that higher angle radiation anyway and the dipole just delivers that naturally. the 60 foot lot thing isn't a dealbreaker for an inverted-v, mine has the apex at about 35 feet and the legs come down at around 45 degrees and it works great. you lose a tiny bit compared to a flat top but honestly in the real world i'd take a slightly compromised dipole over a vertical in a neighborhood any day. the noise floor difference alone is worth the install hassle.

I've been collecting the most essential ham radio abbreviations and wanted to share a reference guide. Here are the key ones every ham should know: 73 - Best regards, a greeting sent by radio amateurs over the air88 - Love and kisses, traditional sign-offs in ham radio communicationsCW - Carrier wave, often used to denote a Morse transmissionFB - Fine Business, meaning OK and widely used in Morse transmissionsTKS/TNX - Thanks, widely used in CW transmissionsThese originated from commercial landline telegraphy in the 1800s, adopted by amateur radio operators in the early 1900s.

so we ran a simulated disaster exercise with our county ARES group last saturday and honestly i wasnt prepared for how much i didnt know. the scenario was a major flooding event cutting off several towns from normal comms infrastructure and we had to establish a net, pass formal traffic, coordinate with the EOC and handle simulated resource requests all at the same time. what really got me was how fast things fell apart when two people tried to net control at the same time. we had one guy on a repeater and another trying to run simplex and nobody had agreed beforehand which took priority. just total confusion for like 20 minutes and in a real event that could matter a lot. also battery power was a bigger issue than expected — one of our newer guys had his HT die after about 3 hours because he forgot to charge it the night before. afterward we did a debrief and the lessons were pretty humbling. things that seem obvious on paper just dont hold up when people are stressed and tired. we're going to do another drill in about 6 weeks and im wondering if anyone has suggestions for scenarios that really stress-test the weak points in a group. what have you all found to be the most valuable exercises? especially curious if anyone has done multi-agency stuff with CERT or local fire department.

I went RSP1B about 8 months ago after being frustrated with the exact same direct sampling situation and yeah it's noticeably better. Like not a subtle improvement, HF actually sounds like HF now instead of a noisy mess. The 12-bit ADC vs the 8-bit in the RTL makes a real difference in dynamic range, you can have a strong broadcast station nearby and still pick out weaker signals without everything turning into mush. HDSDR also works with the SDRplay if you dont like SDRuno, and theres a plugin for it. I personally ended up sticking with SDRuno for HF stuff but use SDR# for VHF because im used to the interface. You can run both fine, just swap the device between them.

Depends on your parks really. If you can drive to the site, the 891 is fantastic - that 100W really helps in contests when everyone's running power. But for hikes, the 705 wins hands down. Weight matters!

oh man i went through this exact same thing last year. what helped me was just sending actual words i cared about instead of random code groups. like i started sending callsigns of people i knew, names of towns, whatever. something about having meaning attached to it made my hand and brain sync up better. might sound dumb but it worked for me. also the tension thing — yeah tighter than you think is usually better, at least thats what i found

so i finally pulled the trigger on a Begali Simplex after months of borrowing a buddy's cheap paddle and i expected it to just feel... better? and it does in some ways but im having this weird issue where my dits are running together or i squeeze a character and it comes out totally wrong. like i'll go for a K and get something else entirely. been playing with the weight and ratio settings on my K3 keyer and i think i had the weight cranked up too high from when my friend set it up. brought it back toward center and it helped a little. i'm running about 18wpm right now which is where i feel comfortable copying but maybe thats part of the problem — not sure if i should slow down and relearn muscle memory with the new paddle or just push through. anyone else go through this adjustment period when switching paddles? feels like starting over almost. my spacing between characters is a mess too when i'm not concentrating.

yeah repeaterbook is def the move for finding tones, thats how i figured it out too when i was starting. one thing i'll add — some repeaters have no tone required at all, they're "carrier squelch" so if yours isnt listed with a tone you might be fine without one. but if it IS listed and you dont have it set, yeah youre basically invisible to the machine. the UV-5R menus are kind of a pain to navigate honestly but once you find the right menu item its pretty straightforward

yeah what the other guy said about not counting is huge, i made that mistake for like the first month and had to basically unlearn everything. also just throwing this out there but the app Morse Mania on the phone is pretty decent for squeezing in practice when youre waiting around somewhere, it wont replace actual sitting down practice but its something. one thing nobody told me was that copying by hand is really diffrent from just recognizing letters in your head, so even when you think you know a letter you might fumble when youre trying to write it at the same time. i had to slow way down when i added the pencil into it. anyway dont stress the WPM thing yet, just get the letters solid first

so ive been licensed for about 8 months now (general class) and i keep hearing people talk about CQ WW and ARRL sweepstakes and all these big contest weekends coming up and honestly it sounds like a blast but i have no idea where to begin. like do i need special software, a super antenna, do i even stand a chance with my IC-7300 and a wire dipole in the backyard? i tried hopping on 20m during a smaller contest a few weeks ago and the pileups were just chaos to me, couldnt really figure out the rhythm of it. someone said something about S&P vs running but i wasnt sure what they meant in practice. also heard Field Day was a good starting point but that already happened this year so i guess ill have to wait til next june for that one anyway if anyone has tips for a newer ham trying to get their feet wet in contesting id really appreciate it. is CQ WW this october a reasonable first try or is that too overwhelming to start with

Great point! WAZ is organized by geography rather than politics, with zones based on continents and propagation challenges. I found myself naturally working toward WAZ while DX-ing anyway. Now that LoTW supports CQ's WAZ program, it's much easier to track and apply for.

Just went through this myself last month! The certificate process takes about 2-3 weeks. While you're waiting, start getting your paper logbooks into software - that was the biggest time sink for me. Ham Radio Deluxe worked great for the LoTW integration once everything was set up.

okay so i just got my technician license about three weeks ago and ive been listening to the local 2m repeater a lot trying to get the hang of things before i actually key up. i noticed that sometimes there's like a short beep or tone before someone starts talking and i honestly dont know what that is. is that the repeater itself doing something or is that like a courtesy tone or what? also i programmed what i think is the right CTCSS tone into my baofeng (67.0 hz i think, i got it off the repeater directory) but when i transmit i dont hear myself come back through or anything. not sure if thats normal or if i messed up the offset or something. the repeater is listed as plus 600 khz offset. i feel like im missing something obvious here but i cant figure it out from the manual which is pretty terrible honestly. and one more thing — is there like an unwritten rule about how long you should wait after someone stops talking before you key up? i dont want to be that guy who steps on everyone

Watch your ALC meter during testing - keep it in the recommended range, not pegged at max. The 7300's processor is quite good when used conservatively. Minimal processor input with enough output drive for proper ALC indication works best for me.

had almost the exact same thing on my 746 pro years ago, different radio i know but similar architecture. turned out to be a cold solder joint on the driver stage for that particular band. wasnt visible without a magnifier and a good light. resoldering that area fixed it completely. not saying thats definitely your problem but worth looking at the board under magnification if you go in there anyway.