Christine Lee

yeah same here, been noticing it too. i think a big chunk of guys just migrated to FT8 and never came back to ssb. which i get, the digital modes are impressive for weak signal but man i miss just turning on the radio and hearing people actually talking. my buddy down the road says he's heard more activity later at night like 10pm or so but i cant stay up that late on work nights lol

the HF nets are where it gets really fun imo. 40m and 75m especially have tons of traffic nets running all hours of the day. i stumbled onto the Waterway Radio and Cruising Club net on 7.268 a couple years ago just scanning around and got totally hooked even though im not a boater at all, just something about the format of it. also second what was said about special events — the ARRL page is the go-to but i also follow a couple of ham radio Facebook groups that post about upcoming ones. W1AW operations during field day week are worth catching too if you havent done that yet, they run a whole schedule of modes and bands.

so i've been on the waitlist for the Icom IC-7760 since basically forever and my local dealer called yesterday saying they finally have one coming in next week. pretty excited but also kinda nervous spending that kind of money on something i havent actually put my hands on yet. ive watched every youtube video there is at this point and read the manual PDF three times which is maybe a little obsessive but whatever. also side note — 10 meters has been absolutely bonkers this week, worked 14 countries yesterday afternoon just running 100 watts into a wire dipole. the cycle 25 peak might actually be living up to the hype for once. if youre not getting on 10 and 12 right now you are really missing out, at least here in the midwest the band opens almost every day around 1400 local. anyway back to the 7760 — the separate receiver/controller design is what really got me interested, i like the idea of keeping the RF away from the desk. has anyone actually gotten their hands on one yet or am i going to be the guinea pig here

N1MM is kind of the standard for a reason but i'll say the learning curve isnt as bad as it looks. just dont try to customize everything at once, get the basic config right for the contest you're entering and leave everything else default. the built in contest modules handle the multiplier stuff automatically so you dont have to think about it mid-run which is the whole point really

Rate isn't everything man. I've seen guys with fancy SO2R setups get beat by simple SO1R stations because they spent too much time fiddling with the switching instead of just making contacts. That said, are you using the band map effectively? Most of my rate comes from working the pile that builds up on radio 2 while I'm CQing on radio 1. Also check your interlock settings - if there's any delay when you switch radios it kills the flow completely.

summit to summit contacts are honestly the best part of the whole thing. i stayed up way too late one night just chasing S2S from my backyard because i could hear a pile up on a summit out west and couldnt stop. never actually activated yet but im planning my first one for this spring, been studying the SOTA rules so i dont mess it up

this is actually a pretty common gotcha with Xastir. check your SSID situation — APRS messaging is tied to specific SSIDs and if the destination station's SSID doesn't exactly match what you're addressing, the message just disappears into the void. like if the guy is on W1XYZ-9 and you're sending to W1XYZ without the -9, it technically goes out but nobody's home to ACK it. also worth checking whether your TNC-Pi is actually in KISS mode properly. sometimes it looks like it's working for beacons because those are one-way but the two-way handshake for messaging exposes weird timing issues. I went through something similar last year, ended up being that my serial port settings were slightly off and Xastir was dropping the incoming ACK frames before they could register. try bumping up the logging verbosity in Xastir and watch what's actually coming back when you send a message.

dude Georgia from Ohio on 5 watts is solid, dont sell yourself short on that. i remember my first QRP contact was like 200 miles and i thought i'd done something miraculous lol. the satisfaction thing you mentioned is real — something about knowing you're barely whispering and someone across the country hears you. i dunno it just hits different than cranking the amp. i built a little MTR3B kit a while back and it's become my go-to for hiking stuff, much lighter than my KX2 buddy's setup but way fewer bands obviously. if you ever want to go down the rabbit hole of building your own QRP gear that kit is a good starting point, not super beginner level but doable on a weekend if you're patient with a soldering iron.

so ive been a tech for about 8 months now and mostly just been doing 2m/70cm stuff, some local repeaters, helped out with a couple ARES nets. but ive been reading more about HF and honestly it sounds way more interesting than i thought when i first got licensed. my elmer keeps telling me to just go ahead and take the general exam already but im not sure im ready i went through the question pool once on hamstudyorg and got kind of overwhelmed. theres a lot of stuff about propagation and electrical theory that i dont really understand, like i can memorize the answers but i dont actually know why some of the stuff is right. is that how most people do it or should i try to actually learn the material before taking it also once i pass, what does that actually open up for me practically speaking. like which bands am i actually going to want to use first if i just have a basic HF rig. i dont have anything set up for HF yet so this is all kind of hypothetical still

Thanks for asking this! I was wondering the same thing as a new Tech. The bandwidth rules apply to specific band segments - not all amateur frequencies have the same restrictions.

G4FON Koch Method Trainer and Just Learn Morse Code provide excellent resources for methodical, step-by-step learning. LCWO and Morse Code Ninja offer customizable lessons and flexible practice options. For mobile, Ham Morse is solid. All the major free options (LCWO, MorseCode.World) are excellent - paid apps mainly add convenience features.

yeah the ARRL frequency allocation chart is probably what youre looking for, they publish an updated version and its way easier to read than the actual part 97 text. techs do get a slice of 10m for SSB voice, its 28.300 to 28.500 MHz, but power limited to 200 watts PEP. most new techs dont even know about it which is kind of a shame because 10m can be a lot of fun when the band is open. the FCC part 97 document itself is at ecfr.gov and it does get updated occasionally so yeah always worth checking the primary source rather than some random blog. section 97.301 has the frequency allocations and 97.313 covers power limits. its dense but once you read it a few times you start to get the structure of how its laid out.

the guy who said something to you was probably just being a little territorial honestly, 7.125 is fine. that said the lower edge of the general SSB allocation on 40 is 7.175 in some band plans i think? or maybe its 7.200, i always have to look it up. anyway the point is there are segments on 40 that are extra class only and if you wander into those you could technically be operating outside your privileges which is an actual problem not just a gentlemens agreement thing. i'd just download the ARRL band plan PDF and keep it nearby for a while til it becomes second nature

im kind of in the same boat actually, sitting around 13wpm right now and its frustrating. one thing i started doing that seems to help a bit is using the Just Learn Morse Code software with the Farnsworth method where the characters themselves are sent at like 20wpm but with longer gaps between them — the idea being your ears learn to hear fast characters even if you still have time to write. been doing that for about 6 weeks and i feel like its slowly working but i cant say for sure yet. 20 minutes a day sounds about right to me, i read somewhere that shorter focused sessions beat marathon cramming for this kind of thing.

congrats on the ticket. ok so the baofeng thing -- look, they work. i have one sitting in my go bag and it does what i need it to do. but the programming software is kind of a nightmare and the receive on them can be a bit broad which means you pick up all kinds of garbage on busy RF environments. for a first radio it's not the worst thing in the world but i personally think spending a little more is worth it. the yaesu FT-65 is a solid choice in your price range, pretty rugged, straightforward to use. i also really like the Kenwood TH-D74 but thats way over your budget so ignore that. if you want APRS built in without a lot of fuss, look at the Yaesu FT3DR -- its a bit pricier but it does dual band, has a decent APRS implementation, and the build quality is noticeably better than the cheap stuff. might be worth stretching the budget for something youll actually want to use for years instead of replacing in six months. whatever you get, grab CHIRP for programming. makes life so much easier once you figure it out.

okay so i just got my technician license about three weeks ago and ive been trying to get on the local 2m repeater but nobody ever seems to hear me. i programmed the frequency in and set the offset but i keep hearing other people talking and when i try to key up nobody responds, not even a courtesy beep or anything from the repeater itself. i looked up the repeater on repeaterbook and it says it requires a 100.0 Hz tone but im not totally sure where to set that in my radio. im using a baofeng uv-5r which i know everyone has opinions about but its what i have right now. i went into the menu and i think i set the T-CTCS to 100.0 but honestly the menu system on this thing is kind of a nightmare and i might have done it wrong. also a related question — when someone finishes talking and leaves a gap, is there like a rule about when you jump in? i dont want to be rude or step on anyone but i also dont know how long to wait. i heard something about waiting for the courtesy tone but i wasnt sure if thats a hard rule or just something people do around here.

haha yeah CQ WW is a whole different animal compared to Field Day, fair warning. but dont let that scare you off because running barefoot with a dipole is totally fine, especially if your dipole is up reasonably well and you have decent band conditions. the 30 foot height isnt ideal for DX but honestly ive heard guys with similar setups work 80-90 countries in a weekend so its absolutely doable. the zone thing clicks once you just pull up a zone map and stare at it for like ten minutes. CQ zones, not ITU, people mix those up all the time. north america is mostly zones 3 4 and 5, europe is 14 through 18 roughly, you get the idea. every unique zone you work is a multiplier per band so thats why people get excited about working something weird like zone 23 or whatever. N1MM is solid but yeah save your log constantly and maybe do a test run before the contest weekend, make sure your callsign and exchange are set up right in the config or youll lose points for dumb reasons

so ive been trying to check into the tuesday night 40m net for like 3 weeks now and either i cant hear the net control or nobody else is checking in. last week i heard maybe 2 other stations and that was it. used to be a pretty active net with 15-20 regular checkins. is it just band conditions or did something change with the schedule? i know the net control guy moved to florida a few months back but thought someone else took over

so ive been messing with RemoteHams for about three months now and overall its been pretty solid but i keep running into this annoying audio desync issue when im connected over my home broadband from work. the setup is a IC-7300 at the home QTH with a raspberry pi handling the server side and everything looks fine on the waterfall but the audio just drifts after like 20-30 minutes and i have to reconnect to get it back in sync. latency is showing around 80-90ms which shouldnt be that bad i think the other thing im wondering about is whether anyone has actually used the SDR remote features alongside something like EchoLink or AllStar for internet linking because i had this half-baked idea of tying them together so club members could use the linked repeater system remotely through the SDR interface but i honestly dont know if that even makes sense architecturally or if theres a cleaner way to do it. im not a network engineer just a guy who likes tinkering anyone run into the audio drift thing specifically with the 7300? or is this more of a generic RTP buffer problem because i see references to that in the RemoteHams docs but the explanation is pretty thin

so ive been using N1MM pretty much exclusively for the last few years mostly because thats what everyone in my club uses and it made sense to just go with what people around me knew. works great for contests obviously but outside of contest season i find myself just kind of forcing it to do stuff it wasnt really designed for, like tracking LoTW confirmations and doing general day to day logging without everything feeling like im in the middle of a pileup someone at the last club meeting mentioned Log4OM and i downloaded it and poked around for maybe 20 minutes but honestly couldnt figure out where anything was. the interface felt really different. does it actually integrate with WSJT-X decently? that's probably my biggest thing right now since i've been doing a lot of FT8 and the logging flow between WSJT-X and N1MM has always felt a little clunky to me even with UDP set up correctly not really looking to switch completely just curious if anyone runs both or switched from one to the other and what the actual day to day difference felt like

In a satellite that uses an inverting linear transponder, an incoming signal is passed through a mixer, and the satellite transmits the difference rather than the sum. Inverting linear transponders reverse the signal position in the band and transform upper signals on the uplink to lower sideband signals on the downlink and vice versa. The key benefit is Doppler reduction since the shifts work in opposite directions.

yeah bring the generator as backup, you'll thank yourself. i've been burned twice thinking batteries would last and then something comes up — extra operators, someone decides to run a second radio, whatever. the eu2200i is pretty quiet as generators go and if you site it downwind and run a proper exhaust extension it's manageable. the CO thing is real though, get a detector if you haven't already, we keep one in the go kit now. the linked dipole vs EFHW debate is kind of a religious war lol. i use an EFHW with a decent tuner and it works fine across 40/20/15/10 but i've seen setups where the tuner just fights you all day. depends a lot on your counterpoise situation in the field. one thing i'll say is the EFHW is way faster when you're doing rapid setup drills and every minute counts in an actual activation.

QRA64 is 1-3 dB more sensitive than JT65, which is important for EME but much less so at HF. JT65 was designed for EME on VHF and higher bands, while Q65 is particularly effective for fast-fading signals including EME. Has anyone done side-by-side comparisons of these modes on 2m EME? Looking at real-world performance differences beyond the theoretical sensitivity improvements. QSOs are possible at signal levels 10 to 15 dB below those required for CWJT65 allows detection at around -28dB below the 2.5kHz noise level

had almost the exact same symptom on a friends 897D a while back, which shares a lot of the same guts. turned out to be a cracked solder joint on one of the band switching relays on the RF board. the relays on these radios are notorious for this, especially if the rig has been dropped or bounced around in a mobile install for years. worth pulling the covers and giving the RF unit a good look under magnification before you go chasing anything else. reflow those relay legs and see if anything changes. took me maybe 45 mins once i had it apart and it came back to life completely. also check the ATT and IPO settings, i know that sounds dumb but ive seen guys chase this for days and it was just the attenuator switched in. not saying thats your issue but worth confirming before going deep into it.

so this has been driving me crazy for about two weeks now. we had a pretty bad storm come through, nothing hit my antenna directly as far as i can tell but i had everything connected and yeah i know i know, lesson learned. anyway after the storm the 7300 receives just fine, waterfall looks normal, i can hear stations no problem. but when i key up there's literally nothing coming out. the ALC meter moves a tiny bit, like maybe one bar, but RF power meter doesn't budge. PA TEMP reads fine, no fault codes showing up. i pulled the top cover off and did a visual inspection and i cant see any obviously scorched components, no capacitors that look bad or anything. i did notice one of the small transistors near the PA section has what might be a hairline crack on the case but im not 100% sure if thats new or if it was always like that. i dont have a ton of surface mount rework experience but im comfortable with through-hole stuff and i have a decent DMM and an old analog scope. anyone dealt with this specific failure mode on the 7300 or similar Icom rigs? trying to figure out if this is worth attempting myself or if i just bite the bullet and send it to the Icom service center. repair estimate i got was "probably around $300-400" which honestly might be worth it but id rather learn something if possible.