Michael Williams

Yeah that opening was real, i caught the tail end of it sunday morning. Worked a JA station which was unexpected, thought conditions had died off but apparently there was still some life in the band. Solar flux has been climbing lately which probably explains it, we're heading into a good part of the cycle so hopefully this becomes more regular. As for the FT-710, my buddy at the club has had one since late last year and seems pretty happy with it. He says the receiver is solid and the built in antenna tuner handles his end-fed without complaining. I dont think its a massive leap over older rigs in terms of raw performance but for a new radio at that price point its apparently competitive. Havent touched one myself though so take that for what its worth.

1.8:1 on an inverted V is actually pretty reasonable, especially at that apex height. the angle of the legs changes the feedpoint impedance from the theoretical 73 ohms of a flat dipole — depending on how steep your V is you can end up anywhere from 50 to maybe 65 ohms, which is why it's matching up better than you'd think. the 468 formula is a starting point too, real wire with real insulators in a real environment is gonna need some trimming. on the balun question — yes, you should put a 1:1 choke balun or at least a few turns of coax wound up at the feedpoint. what you're describing with the shield getting warm is common mode current running back down the outside of the coax and that's not just inefficiency, it can cause RF in the shack and mess with your SWR readings. i built a simple air-core choke for mine, just wound about 8 turns of the coax itself in a coil about 6 inches in diameter right at the feedpoint. worked a treat and the shield stopped getting warm almost entirely. dead simple and costs nothing if you have spare coax.

yeah i passed mine a few months ago using basically just hamstudy and the gordon west technician book, the book is kind of old school but it actually explains the why behind stuff which helped me retain it better than just drilling questions. the electrical math freaked me out too but theres really only like 3 or 4 formulas you need and they show up pretty predictably. one thing that helped me was just doing a full 35 question practice test every night in the last two weeks before my exam so i got used to the pacing. good luck, its really not as bad as it looks at first

yeah what he said about audio levels. also — and this is a dumb one but worth checking — make sure you dont have the wrong callsign or SSID set. ive seen people fat-finger an extra character and then wonder why nothing shows up. on aprs.fi you can search for a partial call too which helps. also the path thing, WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 is correct but some areas are real sparse for digis and you might just not have coverage. try looking at aprs.fi and zooming into your area to see where the nearest digi actually is, sometimes they're further than you think and your 5w signal just doesnt make it.

okay so ive been listening to a lot of HF lately and people are throwing around all these codes and short words and i cant figure out half of what theyre saying. like i hear QSL and QRN and QRM all the time and i kind of figured out QSL means like confirmed or something but the rest im lost on. also people say 73 at the end of conversations which i looked up and means best regards but why not just say that lol. and then theres stuff like OM and YL and XYL which i think are for men and women but im not totally sure. is there like a master list somewhere or do people just kind of pick these up over time? ive been licensed for about 3 months and mostly been on 2m/70cm but just got a used Icom and want to start doing actual HF stuff soon

so my buddy told me the Tri-County club is doing their annual hamfest this saturday out at the fairgrounds, i havent been in a few years and wondering if its still worth the drive. last time i went i picked up a pretty decent MFJ tuner for like 20 bucks so you never know what youll find at the swap tables. does anyone know if there's gonna be more vendors this year or is it the same 6 guys selling dusty boat anchors lol

yeah the sweep thing is real, a lot of DXpedition ops have a pretty predictable pattern if you listen long enough. ive found that some of them also tend to favor certain parts of the split range — like they'll work 5-10 up almost exclusively and rarely touch anything above that. so everyone piling into the middle of the split range is just wasting time. one thing that helped me a lot was actually working on my keying. i was sending my call way too fast and in a pileup where the op is copying partial calls out of noise, a clean slower send can literally stand out more than blasting at 28wpm. i dropped to like 18-20 and started getting picked out more often. feels weird to slow down when youre excited but it works. the other thing — and this is boring advice — is just band conditions. ive had runs where i could not crack a pileup for days and then one morning the band just opens up differently and i work them first call. sometimes its just propagation and there's nothing you can do tactically to overcome a bad path.

Honestly for just hitting local repeaters and getting started, the UV-5R is fine. I know people love to dunk on them and yeah, some units do have spurs and the TX can be a little wide but for a new tech just getting on 2m FM it's not gonna cause any real problems. I started on one back in 2019 and it worked totally fine for two years before I upgraded to a Yaesu FT-65. The programming is a bit of a pain without Chirp but once you get that sorted its straightforward. That said if you can stretch even a little, the Yaesu FT-4XR goes for around $50-60 sometimes on sale and its a noticeably better radio — tighter TX, better audio, and the menu system is way less confusing. Kenwood TH-D74 is amazing but thats overkill and way over your budget right now lol. Just get on the air, thats the main thing. You can always upgrade later once you know what features you actually want.

so ive been chasing VP6R for a few days now and finally got them in the log last night on 17m SSB. wanted to share what ended up working because honestly i tried a bunch of stuff before something clicked. first couple days i was just calling with everyone else, timing it pretty much the same as the herd, and getting nowhere. the DX station was working split, listening up 5 to 10, and i kept landing in the same spot as like 50 other stations. classic mistake i guess. what finally worked — i started really listening to where the op was actually pulling calls from. not just the frequency they said, but watching the pattern. he kept drifting to the upper end of his listening range and most people were still piled up at the low end. so i moved up to like +9 and suddenly he was coming back to stations near me. took maybe 4 or 5 tries and he got me. also i noticed he had a pattern in how long he listened before moving on. once you figure out when he's about to move to a new call you can time your TX to land right at the start of his listening window. not sure if thats a thing people talk about but it seemed to help. running 500w into a 4el yagi at 45ft, nothing exotic, mid-tier setup i guess. just patience and actually listening before transmitting.

so ive been messing around with this idea for a while now and finally started putting something together. basically i want the pi zero to handle antenna switching based on what band i select on the radio, reading the band data output from my ic-7300 via the acc port. the idea is that it talks to a relay board over gpio and just... switches the antenna automatically without me having to reach over and flip anything manually. ive got the ci-v stuff mostly figured out, im using a little python script to poll the rig and parse the band data, that part actually works pretty well. the problem is the relay board im using has some weird timing issues where it'll sometimes latch in a bad state if the script crashes or reboots unexpectedly. trying to figure out if i should be using a watchdog timer or if there's a smarter way to handle the fail-safe situation. ideally i want the default state to go back to my dipole if anything goes sideways. anyone done anything like this? even just partial setups would be helpful. im running raspbian lite, nothing fancy, and using a sainsmart 8 channel relay board that i had laying around from a different project.

so ive been a tech for about two years now and i finally decided to just go for the general upgrade. been doing the hamstudy thing and the gordon west book and honestly most of it is fine but some of the electrical stuff is killing me. like i understand ohms law no problem but when they get into the reactance and impedance questions i just kind of stare at the screen for a while and hope i absorb something by osmosis or whatever. my question i guess is do you actually need to understand all the math behind this stuff or is it more just memorize the formulas and recognize which one they're asking about. because right now im trying to do both and i feel like im confusing myself more than anything. also the band plan stuff is pretty straightforward right, that part seems manageable at least. been wanting to get on 40m and 17m for a while now so im motivated to get this done. just wondering how other people approached the exam prep, any sections that tripped you up or any advice on what to actually focus on vs what you can kind of skim.

oh man this brought back memories, i went through the exact same thing last spring. sat there hitting refresh on ULS for two days straight. when my callsign finally popped up i just stared at it for a minute before it sank in. my first QSO was on a local 2m repeater and i was so nervous i forgot to give my callsign at the end like twice before someone gently reminded me haha. welcome to the hobby, its a rabbit hole for sure, six months in and ive already upgraded to General and im eyeing an HF rig which my wallet is not happy about

so ive been working on this for probably 3 months now, its a single band SSB exciter for 40m based loosely on the W7EL design but ive made some changes along the way mostly because i couldnt source the exact parts. built the balanced modulator first and got that working pretty well, carrier null is decent, maybe -45dB which im happy enough with for a first attempt. the problem im running into now is theres this kind of low frequency feedback squeal that kicks in whenever i talk into the mic. its not constant, like it only happens when theres audio present and it seems worse when im running higher mic gain. ive tried swapping the electret element and that didnt change anything so i dont think its the capsule. the feedback loop seems like its coming from somewhere in the audio chain before the balanced modulator but i cant pin it down. ground loops maybe? ive got the whole thing in a steel chassis but the grounding is a bit of a rats nest honestly. anyone dealt with this before on a homebrew SSB rig? running out of ideas here and i really want to get this thing on the air before winter

i was in the same boat like a year ago, the LoTW certificate thing is honestly the most confusing part and once its done you forget it ever happened. one thing i'll add — definitely get your QRZ logbook set up too even if its not the same as LoTW, a lot of people check there and it can auto-sync confirmations. and yeah send paper cards back when you get them, i got my first one from a JA station and it made my whole week honestly

congrats on passing, that first contact feeling is something you dont forget. i remember mine was on a 2m simplex frequency and i was so nervous i gave my callsign wrong twice. the guy on the other end just laughed and said welcome to ham radio. the baofeng will get you going just fine dont let anyone tell you otherwise. just make sure you program it properly before you key up on any repeaters, theres a program called chirp that makes it way easier than trying to do it through the keypad. and check the local repeater directory for your area, most clubs have a main one that gets a lot of traffic especially in the mornings with commuters.

check if you accidentally hit the attenuator or turned the preamp off, i know it sounds dumb but ive done it myself more than once and spent an embarassing amount of time troubleshooting before noticing the little ATT indicator sitting there on the display. the 7300 touch screen makes it pretty easy to fat-finger stuff.

yeah what he said about the preamp is huge, i was skeptical when i added an SSB Electronics preamp to my setup and it was honestly night and day for receive. cant stress that enough one thing nobody told me when i started is that Doppler shift is actually something you have to deal with on 2m EME, its not massive but your JT65 software needs to handle it or you'll wonder why you keep missing decodes. WSJT-X handles it automatically once you have your location set right so just double check that. also the moon has to be above like 10 degrees elevation minimum before the ground noise starts killing you, some guys say 5 degrees but i find 10 is more realistic at my QTH took me about 3 months from deciding to do EME to actually making my first contact and it was with a station in Japan which still kind of blows my mind

so this has been sitting on my bench for about three weeks now and im finally getting around to posting about it. we had a pretty bad storm come through in late september, nothing hit the tower directly as far as i can tell but something must have come in through the coax because my 7300 just... stopped receiving. transmit seems okay actually, i can key it up and the power output looks normal on the wattmeter, SWR reads fine too. but receive is just dead, like completely silent no matter what band or mode i try. not even static. ive already pulled the antenna connector off and tried a dummy load on the receive side just to rule out the obvious stuff. also checked that the preamp wasnt doing something weird, turned it off and on, changed settings back to factory, nothing. the RF gain is up, AF gain is up, its not muted. its genuinely just silent. my first instinct is the front end got cooked somewhere between the antenna connector and the first IF stage but i really dont know where to start probing on this thing. anybody had a similar experience with these or know which part of the signal chain typically takes the hit in a near-strike situation? i have a service manual but the block diagram is only kinda helpful without knowing what im actually looking for.

yeah the 7300 on 100w will chew through a 100ah battery quicker than people expect especially if duty cycle is high like on digital modes or just long overs on phone. rough rule of thumb i use is around 20-22A on transmit at 100w so if youre at say 30% duty cycle over an hour youre pulling maybe 6-7ah just on transmit plus baseline receive current. adds up. one thing nobody talks about enough in these setups is keeping the battery topped while youre running, not just starting full. a small 200-300w solar panel feeding a decent MPPT controller can keep pace with moderate operating even if it doesnt fully cover 100w transmit. something like a renogy 200w panel folds down okay for transport. that combo might actually be lighter and more flexible than hauling a generator unless you really need the sustained high power. i run an EFHW myself for portable, 49:1 wound on an FT240-43 core, works great from 40 through 10. does fine on 80 with a tuner but gets a bit lossy. the linked dipole is probably a bit better on 40 specifically but the EFHW is just so much faster to get up and honestly for emcomm speed of deployment matters more than squeezing out an extra db.

i had almost the exact same situation and went with an end-fed halfwave instead, runs along the fence line so its pretty stealthy and the neighbors havent said anything. just a thought if the dipole footprint is really the issue. the 9:1 unun and a short counterpoise and youre on most bands. not trying to derail your vertical vs dipole thing but sometimes there's a third option that solves the actual problem which is the neighbor not the antenna type

not a dumb question at all, everyone starts somewhere with this stuff. first thing i'd say is yes get on LoTW immediately if you're not already, a huge percentage of serious DX operators upload there and confirmed credits just accumulate in the background without you having to chase paper cards. you can still collect paper QSLs for the fun of it but for actually submitting toward DXCC credit LoTW is the way most people go these days. WAS and WAZ are completely separate awards run by different organizations actually — WAS is ARRL same as DXCC but WAZ is CQ magazine. the confirmations themselves dont overlap in terms of the applications but the actual contacts can count toward multiple awards, like if you work all 50 states those QSOs can go toward WAS and if those states happen to cover different zones those same contacts count toward WAZ progress too. you're not doing duplicate work. on the mixed vs mode question — yeah almost everyone goes for mixed first because it lets you use whatever mode gets you the contact. once you hit 100 on mixed a lot of people start a phone only or digital only run just because the challenge changes. i did mixed first then spent about two years filling in phone separately and honestly the second run was more fun because i already knew which entities were going to be the hard ones.

congrats man that's a great first build. the QCX+ is a solid kit, QRP Labs really does make it approachable. and yeah the toroids trip everybody up at least once, i rewound one of mine like three times before i was happy with it. if you havent already, look into getting a small antenna tuner to go with it for portable ops. i use just a little Z-match i built for maybe $15 in parts and it makes a big difference when you're out in a field with whatever wire you can hang. 3.5 watts can go a long way when conditions cooperate, ive worked europe from the midwest on 40 SSB at 5 watts back when the band was really moving. CW obviously even easier. have fun with it

oh man i hope they dont cancel it, that was gonna be my first hamfest. been collecting some stuff to sell and was really looking forward to checking out all the vintage gear everyone talks about

Oh man i went through exactly this about three years ago. The mushy feel is almost certainly your gap adjustment — those cheap paddles usually ship with way too much gap between the contact and the paddle arm. You want just barely a hairs width, like you should almost be able to see light through it but not quite. Tighten up the tension springs too, most people run them way too loose starting out. Also slow your keyer way down, i mean really slow, like 8 or 10 wpm even if you feel like youre already going slow. The runaway dits thing sounds like your iambic mode might be set to mode B and youre used to mode A or vice versa — worth checking in the menu. Once the mechanical stuff is dialed in it starts clicking and you kind of feel it more than hear it. Give it a few weeks before you give up on it.

im in basically the same boat as you so take this with a grain of salt but i started using the Just Learn Morse Code software on my laptop and its been pretty decent. also theres a youtube channel i found that plays characters at different speeds which helped me get used to hearing them. still cant copy much above maybe 5wpm but its only been like 6 weeks so. what radio do you have btw, im curious if youve tried listening to any actual CW on the bands yet because even just having it on in the background while youre doing other stuff supposedly helps