Michael Moore99

Just starting with FT8 - this explains why some of my contacts weren't completing! I had my Yaesu's audio drive cranked up thinking "digital needs more audio." Will back it down and watch the ALC. Thanks for the education.

had something similar on mine last year, turned out to be a switching power supply in a USB hub literally two feet from the radio. even with everything else off that hub was still powered because it was on a different circuit. just mentioning it because you said computer off but didnt say everything on that desk. those cheap USB hubs are brutal on 40m.

so ive been going back and forth on this for probably two months now and i need someone to just tell me what to do honestly. i have a decent sized backyard, maybe 80 feet usable in one direction but not much else, trees on two sides. right now im running a trapped vertical that came with the house basically, previous owner left it bolted to the fence post and it gets out ok but the noise floor on receive is absolutely terrible. like S5-6 on 40 at night. a buddy of mine keeps telling me to just put up a dipole, says the low angle radiation on the vertical is worth it for dx but i mean im not really chasing dx that hard, mostly ragchew and some local nets. he also said something about the vertical needing a better radial system which i never really got around to doing properly, theres maybe 4 radials under it right now. anyway the question is basically — is the noise difference between a dipole and a vertical actually that noticeable or is he just a dipole guy and kinda biased toward them. and if i do the dipole, inverted V probably given the space, does 80 feet of backyard give me enough for 40m half wave

ive got both sitting on my desk right now actually, use the rtl-sdr for dedicated adsb since i dont want to tie up the sdrplay for that. on HF the difference is pretty obvious to me, the sdrplay just has way less of that overload problem when theres a strong shortwave broadcast station nearby. the 12-bit ADC vs 8-bit makes a real difference in how it handles crowded bands. one thing nobody mentions enough is that the sdrplay has better software support in terms of being actually maintained. the drivers and sdruno keep getting updated. rtl stuff works but its kind of frozen in time developement wise. if youre into trying new dsp stuff or playing with sdrpp that works great with both anyway so maybe less of an issue. i wouldnt say the rtl is bad, its incredible for the price, but yeah once youve used something with real dynamic range its hard to go back to HF on the dongle

yeah i had the same problem when i was new, spent forever looking for nets that had changed freq or disbanded. theres actually a pretty good website called radio-electronics.com that has updated net schedules but honestly the best way is just asking on local repeaters. someone always knows whats going on

Generally try to use the lower portion of the transponder for CW and the upper portion for SSB. Keep QSOs brief during high activity periods - maybe 2-3 minutes max. Lower power will also work well, so don't always run maximum power.

hamstudy is honestly fine for passing the test, i used it almost exclusively and passed with a 32 out of 35 on my first try. but i'll say this — if you actually want to understand what youre doing on the air afterward, at least skim through the ARRL Technician manual or Gordon West's book because otherwise some of the band plan stuff and operating procedures will feel like nonsense when you actually sit down at a radio for the first time. the question pool rotates every few years and the current one is valid through mid 2026 i think, so anything you study now should be current. the regulations questions arent as bad as they look, most of them are just common sense once you read through Part 97 a little bit. give yourself like 2-3 weeks of maybe 30 minutes a day on hamstudy and you'll probably be ready, especially if you already have some electronics background.

i tried js8call for a few weeks and kept coming back to ft8 just because theres way more activity. js8 feels a bit like showing up to a party and theres like 4 people there. when someone IS on it can be a really good qso though, had a 20 minute back and forth with a guy in finland once that was actually pretty cool, talked about his antenna setup and everything. but those contacts are rare in my experience. psk31 on 20m might actually scratch that itch better if you want real conversations and there are still people running it, not tons but more than js8 in my area at least. just something to consider before you go down the rabbit hole of setting up another software package

i had almost the exact same thing in my jeep with a different radio. turned out to be the mag mount coax running too close to the cigarette lighter wiring under the dash. moved the coax over about 6 inches and it dropped way down. probably not your only issue but might be worth looking at where the coax is routed before you go buying stuff

so ive been building this 40m DC receiver for the past couple months, basically a pretty standard NE602 front end into an LM386 audio amp, nothing fancy. been using ugly construction on a piece of copper clad which honestly i think looks great compared to my earlier stuff. the problem is im getting this really strange artifact, hard to describe but its like a low frequency warbling underneath everything, maybe 3-4 hz, and it gets worse when i touch the coil form. at first i thought it was LO leakage or maybe microphonics in the coil but ive tried rewinding it twice and it didnt really change much. the warbling is there even when theres no antenna connected which is the part thats really got me scratching my head. the NE602 is running off a 78L08 regulator so its not raw battery voltage, and i've got 100uf and 0.1uf bypassing pretty close to the pin 8 supply. ground plane seems solid. i dont know, maybe the LM386 is oscillating somehow and im hearing it get mixed back into the audio path? or could it be RF getting into the power supply somehow. any ideas appreciated because im kind of stuck

Just worked my first EME contact last month with 75W and a single long-boom 18-element. Many successful QSOs happen between a modest station on one end and a high-power setup on the other. The digital modes like Q65 have really opened up moonbounce to smaller stations. Don't forget accurate time sync - that's critical for the WSJT modes!

so ive been a ham for about three years now and always ran 100w from the shack, figured more power was always better and never really thought about it. but my buddy kept bugging me to try a QRP setup for a hike we did last weekend and i finally caved and threw together a kit with my little ubitx and a random wire up in a tree. honestly i was not expecting much. i mean 5 watts into a compromised antenna in the middle of nowhere seemed like a recipe for frustration. but i worked 11 stations on 40m over about two hours including a guy in georgia (im in ohio) which felt pretty decent for the effort. the whole kit including the rig, battery, key, and antenna stuff fit in a small dry bag. anyway the question i have is about efficiency — i notice the ubitx runs pretty warm even at 5w and i'm wondering if thats normal or if there's something i should be looking at. also curious whether people bother with a tuner when doing portable or just cut the wire for the band you want and call it a day. feels like a tuner adds weight and complexity but maybe its worth it for flexibilty across bands. what do you guys do

so i finally did my first activation last weekend, been chasing for about 6 months and figured it was time to actually get up on a summit myself. picked W6/CT-096 because it looked pretty approachable on the map and the trail report said it was in decent shape brought the KX2 with a linked dipole i built from the instructions on the sotabeams site, threw it up between two trekking poles which honestly worked way better than i expected. spotted myself on sotawatch before leaving the trailhead and had a small pileup waiting when i got up there which was pretty cool the part that didnt go great — i only made 3 QSOs on 40m before the band just kind of died on me, tried 20m and got a few more but i was really fighting the noise. made the 4 contacts to qualify which is all that matters i guess but felt like i was leaving points on the table. also forgot to log the time on two of the contacts so im going to have to estimate when i submit to the database, hope thats okay overall though it was just really fun to be up there running portable. already looking at the map for my next one. anyone have tips for the spotting and alerting side of things, like how far in advance do people usually post alerts

welcome to the hobby. i had a baofeng for about six months before i upgraded, it gets the job done for local stuff. if the repeater has echolink linked to it you can actually work people pretty far out even on that little radio which is kind of fun while youre waiting to get a better HF rig sorted out

so ive been licensed for about 4 months now and i notice on the air some people go full NATO every single time they give their callsign like whiskey-four-tango-romeo-alpha or whatever and some people just say their call normally like they'd say a word. im not sure when youre supposed to do one vs the other. my elmer told me to always use phonetics but then i listened to a net last week and half the people just rattled off their calls without spelling anything out phonetically. also is it bad if i mix them up, like i know most of the NATO ones but sometimes i blank on a letter and i end up saying something random that isnt the official word. does that matter or do people not really care as long as its clear

so i finally did my first activation last weekend at a state park about 45 minutes from my house. been putting it off forever because i kept telling myself i needed better gear or more practice or whatever excuse i came up with. finally just threw the KX2 and a random wire in my bag and drove out there. set up near a picnic table, got the antenna up in a tree using a throw line (took me like 20 minutes and three attempts lol) and just started calling. honestly expected it to be a slow painful slog but i had 12 contacts in about 25 minutes and then it kind of dried up. ended up with 19 total over maybe an hour and a half which i think counts as a valid activation? the 10 contact minimum thing is what i remember reading. anyway my questions - is there a good way to spot yourself if you dont have cell service? i was lucky and had one bar of LTE but it was barely working. also noticed a few times someone would call me and id only catch part of their callsign, is it normal to just ask for a repeat or do most people move on if they have to say it twice? and one more thing - whats the deal with P2P contacts, i saw that mentioned somewhere but couldnt find a clear explanation of what makes them special beyond just both operators being in a park at the same time.

What freq you trying and which RMS? Some of the gateways have been flaky lately, especially the HF ones during the day when propagation is weird. Try switching to a different gateway or maybe try VHF packet if you have a TNC. Also check your audio levels - if theyre too hot it can cause connect issues even though it sounds fine to you.

Had the exact same problem with my FT-2980R setup last month. Solution was dropping the radio's mic gain to about 30% and setting VARA FM TX level to around 40%. Common troubleshooting shows overdriven audio requires lowering TX/RX audio levels. Test with a local user before going live.

yeah the two-tab thing is honestly how a lot of people start out and theres nothing wrong with it. once you get a feel for what youre actually looking for it starts making more sense to pull it into your logging software. i use Log4OM which is free and it has a built in cluster window that connects to a telnet node directly so spots just roll in and you can click one and it tunes your radio if you have CAT set up. that part alone changed everything for me, no more hunting around trying to find the frequency manually for the app thing, the delay issue you mentioned is pretty common with apps that are just scraping the web interface instead of connecting to a real telnet cluster. if you want something more real-time on your phone i'd look at something that lets you set up a direct telnet connection to a cluster node. DXscape and a couple others do this. you can also filter by band and mode which helps a lot so you're not getting slammed with FT8 spots when youre trying to work SSB or whatever the QRZ logbook is fine for casual use but if youre serious about DX chasing youll probably want something with DXCC tracking built in eventually. just my two cents after going through the same learning curve a few years back

so i finally passed my technician exam last tuesday after studying for about three weeks and i was pretty nervous about actually getting on the air for the first time. i bought a baofeng uv-5r just to start out and programmed it with chirp to hit the local repeater which is like 8 miles from my house. anyway yesterday i just kind of worked up the nerve and keyed up during the morning net and the net control actually came back to me and we had a solid 5-10 minute QSO about how i got into the hobby and stuff. it felt way more exciting than i expected honestly, like i knew it was just two guys talking on radios but there was something cool about it. the guy told me to look into getting my general class next which i probably will. just wanted to share because i dont really have anyone in my life who gets why this is cool

Finally got around to doing the MARS mod on my IC-705 this weekend. Followed the standard procedure of removing the diode in the lower left corner and everything seems to work fine on non-ham frequencies. Question: Has anyone noticed any odd behavior after the mod? I'm getting intermittent display artifacts on startup - nothing major, but curious if this is normal post-surgery. Also, there's conflicting info about whether the second diode (D1302) needs removal for full 60m capability - thoughts?

Been using RCForb for 3 years now. No additional hardware is required which kept my costs down. The integrated DX cluster is handy, and the optional ORB Control Device lets you attach PTT microphone and CW paddle if you want that tactile feel.

honestly the theory stuff is more learnable than it looks. i was in the same boat, general for like three years and kept putting it off. what finally got me was just working through the hamstudy site every day for maybe 20 minutes. the oscillator and filter questions start making sense once you see them enough times, and some of it you genuinely start to understand rather than just memorize, especially the impedance matching stuff which actually clicked for me when i started thinking about why my antenna tuner was doing what it was doing. as for whether it changes how you operate, kind of yeah. i dont think i suddenly became a better operator but i started paying more attention to what was actually happening rf-wise, like why certain times of day certain bands open up the way they do, the propagation theory in the pool helped with that. the extra band segments are nice but youre right that theyre not always packed. the cw end of 20 is usually where the dx is though if you ever get into that.

the intermod point you made is something i had to learn the hard way too. was running a kilowatt into a tribander and kept wondering why i wasnt getting through when stations with similar setups were. had a friend listen to a recording of my signal and it was splattered all over the place. turned out my amp needed retuning and i was running it way outside its linear range. cleaned that up and things got noticeably better. honestly though for rare DX i think antenna is still king over power. neighbor of mine has a 6el on a 70ft tower and he breaks pileups with 100w that i cant get through with 500. kinda depressing but also motivating i guess.

i went two years ago i think? it was fine, wasnt as big as i expected but met a few guys from my local club there which was cool. think the date is on the ARRL event finder if you wanna double check