Sarah Anderson50

so our ARES group finally did a full scale exercise last saturday, simulated a major flooding event cutting off three counties from normal comms infrastructure. we had about 14 operators spread across different served agencies and honestly i went in thinking it would go pretty smoothly because we do tabletops all the time. nope. first thing that fell apart was check-in procedures. net control was getting slammed with traffic from multiple stations at once because nobody had really internalized the proper order of operations when multiple priority messages come in simultaneously. it got chaotic fast and we basically had to pause and regroup after maybe 20 minutes. second thing - and this is the one that really humbled me - two of our newer operators froze up when asked to handle formal traffic. they know winlink fine, they know how to operate their radios, but when a served agency rep handed them an actual message form and said get this out, there was just this deer in headlights moment. we dont practice that part enough, the handoff from agency to operator, thats where things got wobbly. the stuff that went well was actually the simplex fallback plan. when we pretended the main repeater was down, guys shifted to simplex without much fuss which was great to see. anyway curious if anyone else has run exercises like this and what your biggest lessons were, especially around training newer ops before the real thing

I went through almost the exact same thing last year. What helped me more than anything was just shortening my practice sessions -- like 10 minutes, take a break, come back. Your hand literally learns better that way apparently, something about muscle memory consolidation. Also I switched to a single lever for a while because I was confusing myself with iambic mode on the dual lever. Might not be for everyone but it simplified things for me while I was getting the basics down.

yeah 10m has been treating me really well too, worked into europe a couple times this week which honestly surprised me because my antenna situation isnt great right now, just a dipole up about 25 feet. Solar flux has been staying up there and the K index cooperated for once. Makes me want to actually get my yagi sorted out before the cycle really peaks. On the Icom thing -- i think youre probably talking about some FCC filing or a trade show leak, they do that sometimes where stuff shows up on the website before theres any official announcement. Wouldnt get too excited until theres actual specs posted somewhere reliable. That said i am genuinely curious what they come up with. The 7300 is hard to beat at its price point and it feels like theyve been sitting on updating it for a while now.

the ALC thing is your main issue probably. on the 7300 you actually want the ALC moving a bit more than just barely — like you want it nudging into the first third of the bar during normal speech peaks. if its barely moving your mic gain is too low and the radio is basically transmitting at low power with no punch. what happens is guys on the other end are hearing you but you sound thin and they're cranking their RF gain to hear you which adds noise. on the TX EQ — dont leave it flat, that's leaving performance on the table. the stock hand mic that comes with icom gear has kind of a mediocre frequency response honestly. a lot of guys boost a little around 2-3kHz which is where speech intelligibility lives and cut below 200Hz to kill the boominess. you dont need to go crazy just a gentle curve. and yes holding the mic about an inch or two from your mouth matters, talking straight into the capsule versus at an angle makes an audible difference, not huge but its real.

so i've been wanting to get into ham radio for a while now and finally decided to just go for it and take the technician exam. i downloaded the question pool pdf from the arrl website but honestly its like 400 pages and i dont even know what im looking at half the time. like some of the electrical theory questions are fine but then theres stuff about propagation and band plans and i have no idea how any of that connects to actually using a radio my cousin told me to just memorize the answers without really understanding them and i could probably pass that way but that feels kinda wrong? like i want to actually know what im doing when i get on the air. does anyone have a method that actually worked for them or a study guide thats not just a wall of text. ive been looking at ham study dot org and it seems okay but not sure if thats enough on its own

the math on this really depends on your duty cycle more than anything. if youre doing heavy digital like JS8Call or Winlink relay you can burn through that 100ah faster than you think, especially if you're running anywhere near full power. my 7300 at 100w pulls something like 20 amps on transmit and maybe 2.5 at receive, so do the duty cycle math for however much you actually expect to be keying up. personally for an 8 hour event id just bring a second battery and forget the generator. two 100ah lifepo4s is still way lighter than that honda plus a gas can and you dont have to deal with the noise or the fumes or making sure someone remembers to check the oil. we did a 12 hour comms exercise last spring with two of those batteries and an FT-991A and came home with 40% left. granted we werent hammering it constantly but still. the truck alternator thing is fine in a pinch but yeah idling for hours is not great. if you go that route at least get a decent dc-dc charger like a Victron Orion so you're not just float charging through the aux port.

the filtering is non-negotiable if your antennas are anywhere near each other. i ran without proper bandpass filters once and it was exactly what you described, just garbage. the 4O3A filters are the gold standard but the Dunestar 600 series works fine if you're on a budget, ive had mine for probably 8 years. you really want the two radio paths to be as isolated as possible at the antenna level too — separate feedlines, separate antenna systems if you can manage it, not just filters inline. as for the mental side of it, it honestly just takes reps. the first few contests youre going to fumble the timing constantly, miss exchanges because your ear is half on the wrong radio, all of that. what helped me was starting SO2R only during slow rate periods, like when running on 20 dries up at 0200 local, thats when you go hunting on 40 with radio 2 while radio 1 just holds the frequency. you're not trying to do both at full speed at first. build up from there. took me maybe 3 serious contest weekends before the rhythm started feeling natural.

the fan mod is honestly the best thing you can do for those radios if you run digital at all. i did something similar on my 897D except i used a PWM controller tied to a thermistor i stuck to the heatsink with some thermal epoxy. gives you a nice smooth ramp instead of just off/on. the stock fan on these yaesu rigs from that era is barely adequate even for SSB if you're doing any kind of contest operating, forget about sustained digital. on the recap question -- i wouldnt bother with the audio section unless youre actually hearing something wrong. those elna caps in there are generally fine. where recapping actually makes a difference on older 857s is the PA board if you've got one thats been sitting unused for years, some of those electrolytics get a bit leaky over time and you can see it in the power output starting to sag or get inconsistent. worth scoping the supply rails on the PA while you have it open if you havent already.

so ive been licensed for about 3 months now and i mostly just listen on HF since im still nervous about transmitting. but i keep hearing people say things like QSL and QRZ and QTH and honestly there are so many of them i cant keep track. i tried looking them up but i found like 50 different ones and now im even more confused about which ones people actually use vs which ones are just technically in the book but nobody says anymore. also is there a difference between how people use them in voice vs CW because i feel like on SSB people sometimes use them kind of loosely? like someone said QRM to me and i wasnt 100% sure if they meant actual interference or just that they couldnt hear me well. anyway just wondering if someone can break down the ones that actually come up day to day

so i finally did my first parks on the air activation last weekend at a state park about 45 minutes from my house, K-2830 if anyone knows it, and honestly it went way better than i thought it would. i was super nervous about the whole thing because ive been licensed for about 8 months and mostly just do local repeater stuff and the occasional HF contact from home. i brought my IC-705 and a wire antenna i threw together from some stuff i had laying around, just a basic end fed half wave thing i hung between two trees with a piece of paracord and a slingshot. got it up maybe 25 feet at the high end which i know isnt ideal but whatever. set up on 40m SSB because thats what most of the youtube videos i watched said to start with and within maybe 10 minutes i had my first pile up which was honestly kind of overwhelming? i didnt realize hunters would spot me that fast once i got on pskreporter and threw my callsign into the POTA website. ended up with 32 contacts in about an hour and a half which i think is decent for a first time. one thing i wasnt prepared for was people calling on top of each other, im used to pretty polite repeater QSOs so the whole pile up management thing was new. any tips for next time? also does anyone know if you have to stay within the actual park boundary the whole time or can you set up just outside the entrance

yeah i did basically the same fan swap on mine two years ago and it's been solid. also added a small heatsink to the PA transistors while i was in there, some guy on eham had a writeup on it. not sure it does that much but it made me feel better lol. one thing i'd suggest if you havent already — the audio mods. theres a pretty well documented mod to improve the rx audio filtering on the 857, involves swapping a couple caps in the audio chain. reception on weak SSB signals genuinely improved for me. not a huge deal if you're mostly doing digital but for voice it was noticeable enough that my wife who also has a ticket commented on it which i took as a good sign.

so ive been putting this off for like 6 months but i finally got the FT-857D mounted in my F-150 last weekend. runs on VHF and UHF just fine so far, been hitting the local 2m repeater with no problem. i ran the power leads directly to the battery with an inline fuse which i was told is the right way to do it. my main question is about the antenna. right now im using a mag mount i had sitting around, its a dual band whip and its just sitting on the roof. works okay but i get some noise when the engine is running, not terrible but noticeable. i was wondering if a proper NMO mount would make a difference or if its more likely something else causing the interference. also the mag mount keeps sliding a tiny bit when i make turns which is kind of annoying. second question is kind of dumb but how are you guys routing your coax inside the cab? i ran mine through the door jamb which seems fine but i feel like im pinching the coax a little. is that a real concern or am i overthinking it

calling CQ and checking into nets are really pretty different things yeah. when you call CQ you're basically just putting yourself out there and hoping someone wants to ragchew or do a contact, totally freestyle. a net is more structured — there's a net control station running it, people check in, sometimes there's traffic (like formal messages being passed), sometimes its just a social check-in deal. you dont have to do either one, plenty of people just listen for years honestly. for 40m in the evenings you're right that it gets crowded fast. what i usually do is spend a few minutes on a frequency listening to make sure its actually clear before i transmit anything. the old saying is listen listen listen before you transmit and its genuinely good advice not just something they tell newbies. if you hear nothing for like 2-3 minutes and its a reasonable spot away from known net frequencies then a quick "is this frequency in use" is totally fine and then go for it. dont stress too much about messing up, everyone was new once and most folks on HF are pretty patient as long as you're making an effort.

yeah what he said about ALC is spot on. i spent like three months wondering why my audio sounded terrible and it was literally just the gain set too high. also one thing i do now is record myself with audacity through the USB audio on the 7300 — you can actually hear what youre transmitting that way without needing a second radio and it was kind of a revelation honestly. sounded way worse than i thought it did in my head lol. once i could actually hear the problem it was a lot easier to fix

this is the kind of stuff i wish i'd read before my first exercise honestly. i showed up to one about six months after getting my ticket thinking i basically just needed to know how to key up and say my callsign and uh... it was a lot more than that. nobody told me what ICS was or why the net control kept asking for message numbers. felt pretty lost for the first hour. does your group do any kind of orientation for new people before throwing them into a full exercise? or is it more just learn by doing