Jessica Williams53

had something similar on my 7300 maybe a year ago. turned out to be a cold solder joint on one of the driver board connectors, not the finals themselves. the symptom that matched for me was that it was totally fine on rx and would come back after a rest period. i actually found it by very gently flexing the chassis while it was in TX and i could make it drop on command which at least confirmed it was mechanical/thermal expansion related rather than a component failure. icom's service manual for the 7300 is floating around online and the board layout is actually pretty approachable if you're comfortable with a soldering iron. id check the connectors between the RF unit and the main board first before assuming its a component. could also be worth checking ALC voltage with a scope if you have one, sometimes a drifting ALC circuit can cause exactly this behavior and its not always obvious from the front panel.

built a tape measure yagi a few years back for 2m and it works great but honestly for dual band portable i just gave up trying to make one antenna do both. what i do now is bring a slim jim rolled up in my pack for 2m when i want omnidirectional and then a little 3 element 70cm yagi i made from some aluminum arrow shafts — total weight is nothing and setup takes maybe 2 minutes. two antennas sounds like more hassle but in practice its way easier than fighting with a compromised dual band design. if you really want one antenna though the Ed Fong dual band jpole that everyone talks about is actually pretty decent for portable, not a yagi obviously but its lightweight and the pattern is fine for most hilltop operating where you're not trying to nail a specific direction anyway. the gain isnt going to wow you but its way better than a rubber duck

yeah im kind of in the same boat as you, little further along maybe, sitting around 14wpm now. one thing that helped me a lot was switching to copying actual words and callsigns instead of random letters. random character groups are brutal because your brain gets no context clues at all. real words you start to anticipate and that helps a ton. there are some good head copy exercises on youtube too if you havent tried those, just search for morse code head copy drills and a few good channels come up.

yeah im going, drove out last year and picked up a barely used 706 for way under market price so its always worth it imo. the swap meet tables are the best part honestly, show up early like 6am early or all the good stuff is gone. our club usually grabs a table too if you want to swing by and say hi

So ive been using N1MM pretty much since i got my license, mainly because thats what the guys at my club use and it made sense to just go along with it for contest weekends. but im starting to do more day to day HF stuff outside of contests and N1MM feels like overkill honestly, the interface is kind of a mess when youre just casually working DX and dont need all the contest functions running. Someone at the last club meeting mentioned Log4OM and i downloaded it but havent really dug in yet. looks a lot cleaner for general use. my main concern is how it plays with WSJT-X because i do a fair amount of FT8 these days and my current setup has N1MM and WSJT-X talking over UDP which works fine, occasionally drops a log entry but mostly solid. does Log4OM handle that integration pretty well or is it finicky? also wondering if people actually use Log4OM for contests or if you basically have to fire up N1MM anyway when a contest weekend rolls around. Not trying to maintain two completely separate logs if i can avoid it, that sounds like a nightmare for tracking confirmations and DXCC progress.

I've been doing WWFF activations for about three years now and honestly it's one of my favorite things in the hobby. The community around it is really friendly and the hunters are super patient compared to some other pile ups ive been in lol. The nature reference system is cool too once you start looking into it — national parks, state forests, wildlife refuges, botanical gardens, all kinds of places count depending on your country's program. For the US its KFF references. Sounds like you're already hooked, welcome to it

yeah what he said. also worth knowing that the ARRL has a pretty readable breakdown of part 97 if the actual FCC document is making your eyes glaze over, which it did for me when i first looked at it. the enforcement thing is real though my old elmor told me a story about a guy in his club who kept operating phone on a portion of 40m that was only supposed to be CW for his ticket and eventually got a notice of violation after someone reported him. wasnt a huge fine i think but it was enough to scare him straight lol. just stay in your lane and you'll be fine

so ive been running a 40m dipole at about 25 feet for the past year and a half and its been okay, worked a decent amount of DX with it but nothing spectacular. a buddy of mine keeps telling me to just put up a vertical and be done with it, says the low angle radiation will blow my dipole out of the water for DX. but then i read all this stuff about verticals needing a good radial system or they're basically just a dummy load, and i really dont have the yard space to lay out 32 radials or whatever the magic number is supposed to be. my lot is pretty small, maybe 60x90 feet, and most of it is taken up by the house and a couple trees. i was thinking maybe 4 or 6 elevated radials on a vertical might work as a compromise? or am i better off just trying to get the dipole up higher, like maybe 40-45 feet if i can manage it. the trees are there and i could probably run a line up into one of them. the feedpoint would still be low tho. not really sure what the right move is here. anyone dealt with a similar situation

ok so i just upgraded from tech to general last month and im trying to figure out the 40 meter band. i know generals have more privileges than techs but i keep reading different things online about where i can actually transmit. like some sites say 7.175 to 7.300 for phone and others mention something about a voluntary band plan that's different from the actual FCC allocation and i dont really understand the difference between those two things. also someone at my club told me to stay away from the band edges but didnt really explain why. is it just a courtesy thing or is there an actual rule about it? i dont want to accidentally transmit somewhere im not supposed to and get in trouble. running a 100w icom into a dipole if that matters

yeah the K index and SFI are kind of measuring different things, SFI is basically telling you how much juice the sun is pumping out which affects the ionosphere's ability to support propagation, higher is generally better for the higher HF bands. K index is more about geomagnetic disturbance, so if that spikes up it can actually kill a good opening even when the flux is high. you want low K, ideally 0-2, combined with a solid flux number. for 10m specifically the band can be weirdly unpredictable even in good solar conditions. what ive found is it tends to open mid morning your local time, sometimes peaks around noon or early afternoon depending on the path. the south america openings you caught are pretty typical, that path is often one of the first to show up. there are some good propagation sites out there, dxmaps and pskreporter can show you in near realtime whats actually being decoded so you can jump on when somethings happening instead of just hoping.

yeah the two program thing is annoying but honestly thats just kind of how most serious contesters end up. N1MM is really purpose built for contesting and trying to make Log4OM do what N1MM does natively is just fighting the software the whole time. the dupe checking alone in N1MM during a run is night and day compared to anything else ive tried that said if youre only doing 3-4 contests a year it might not be worth the learning curve, N1MM has a lot of config and the first time you set up a new contest template it can be confusing. the Cabrillo export from N1MM is rock solid though, never had an issue with it. Log4OM's cabrillo output has always felt a little sketchy to me, i remember someone on the Log4OM groups.io thread mentioning there were some header field issues a while back, might be fixed now but id double check against the contest sponsor requirements before submitting anything for the WSJT-X dropout thing, check which program has the UDP port bound, sometimes they fight over it especially if you launched them in a weird order

honestly i memorized probably 70% of it and actually understood the rest. theres no shame in that, the pool is finite and the question and answer choices are right there to study. that said some of the theory stuff like the oscillator questions and the filter roll-off stuff actually started making sense to me after i went through it enough times, kind of clicked eventually even though i started just trying to memorize it. as for whether its worth it day to day... depends. the extra segments on 20 and 40 are genuinely less crowded during contests which is nice if you ever get into that. and on CW the extra portion at the bottom of the bands can be a little quieter. but the biggest thing for me was just having it done, i dont have to think about it anymore. also some people wont talk to you as an elmer if you dont have it, which is dumb but its real.

so ive been running FT8 for about a year now and yeah its great for working new countries and all that but it kind of feels like logging entries rather than actually talking to anyone. saw some posts about JS8Call and downloaded it last week and honestly its kind of blowing my mind that i didnt find this earlier the thing is though im having trouble wrapping my head around when to use what. like for pure DX chasing and contesting FT8 and FT4 make total sense to me now, 15 second sequences, boom done. but JS8Call feels like it wants to be something in between CW ragchewing and digital efficiency and i cant quite figure out where it fits into my operating habits also been messing with PSK31 on 20m late nights and theres still people on there which surprised me. thought it was basically dead. RTTY i havent touched yet but i keep seeing it come up for contesting specifically anyone run all of these regularly? how do you decide which one to fire up depending on conditions or what youre trying to do. im on a G90 with a random wire up about 35 feet if that matters, pretty typical noise floor here in a suburban area

also worth knowing that 40m is kind of a wild west band especially at night when the dx starts coming in and everybody wants the same chunk of spectrum. dont be surprised if you pick what seems like a clear frequency and someone tells you its "in use" even if you heard nothing — skip zones and all that, someone on the other side of the country might be hearing a station you cant. just do a quick qrl? before you start calling and youll be fine for the most part

so ive been using a cheap RTL-SDR v3 dongle for about a year now mostly for aircraft stuff and some HF with the direct sampling mode and honestly it works way better than i expected for the price. but ive been eyeing the SDRplay RSP1A and wondering if the jump is actually worth it for someone who's not doing anything super serious like the main thing i notice with the RTL is the noise floor on HF is pretty rough and the direct sampling hack feels like exactly that, a hack. i was receiving some 40m SSB last night and it was just marginal, kept losing signals that i know were there because i could see them on the waterfall but couldnt pull them out of the noise does the RSP1A actually fix that or is it just marginally better and i should save up for something like an Airspy HF+ Discovery instead. i run SDR# mostly but i've been messing with SDRuno a little too. anyway just curious what people think who've used both

so i finally did my first parks on the air activation yesterday at K-4562, a state forest about 45 minutes from my house. been meaning to do this for months and kept putting it off because i wasnt sure i had the right setup or whatever. ended up just throwing the gear in the car and going for it. brought my ft-891 and a random wire i made from some instructions i found online, fed it with a 9:1 unun and just kinda draped it over some branches maybe 15 feet up. SWR was a little ugly on 40m but the tuner handled it. i was honestly not expecting much but i ended up getting 12 contacts in maybe an hour and a half, which i know isnt a lot but the minimum is 10 so it counts as an activated park right? the weird part was i had no idea how busy the POTA frequencies actually are. i spotted myself on the POTA website using my phone and almost immediately had people calling me which was kind of overwhelming at first. i fumbled through a few exchanges and probably sounded like an idiot but everyone was super patient. one guy even slowed way down when i was obviously struggling with logging on paper. anyway just wanted to share because ive been lurking here forever and this community kinda pushed me to finally go do it. already looking at parks near me for next weekend.

so ive had the IC-7300 for about three years now and honestly its been a great radio, no complaints really. but lately ive been doing more contest work and some DX chasing and i keep running into situations where i feel like 100w just isnt cutting it, especially on 40m when the band is crowded and everyone else seems to be running amps anyway. ive been looking at either adding a linear amp to the 7300 setup or just jumping ship to something like the IC-7610 or maybe the TS-890S. the 7610 appeals to me because of the dual watch and the second receiver for SO2R type stuff even though im not really doing full SO2R yet. the 890 i keep hearing good things about the roofing filters and the receive performance but i havent heard one in person. the other option is just stick with the 7300 and grab an amp, been looking at the Ameritron AL-811H or maybe stretch to the AL-80B if i can find one used. probably more practical honestly but then i dont get the receiver upgrade which is what im actually more interested in when i think about it. anyone made a similar jump or have opinions on the 7610 vs 890 specifically? or am i just experiencing grass is greener syndrome with my current setup

so ive been messing around with APRS for a few months now and got my TNC-Pi talking to direwolf on a raspberry pi and everything seems to be working, im seeing packets come in on aprs.fi and i can track my car when im driving around which is cool. but now im reading about igates vs digipeaters and im starting to confuse myself. from what i understand the igate just pushes packets to the internet (APRS-IS) and the digipeater actually retransmits RF packets so other stations can reach further. i've been running mine as RX-only igate mostly because i didnt want to cause interference or mess anything up while i was still learning. but my coverage area is kinda rural and theres a gap between two digipeaters that my path sometimes falls into and i lose tracking for like 20 minutes on a drive. would it make sense to enable digipeating on my setup or is that something that needs more thought about paths and stuff? i dont really wanna cause QRM or be the guy who breaks everyones packets. also does anyone run a combined setup without issues or is it usually better to keep them separate

im in almost the exact same boat, got my general last year and just started getting into hf properly. i use the clublog livemap sometimes too which is kinda fun to just watch spots pop up around the world even if im not actively hunting anything. and yeah the dxsummit app is basically just the website in an app shell lol but it works ok for a quick check when im not at the radio.

ok so I passed my tech exam about two months ago and finally got a decent HT, a Baofeng UV-5R which I know everyone has opinions about but it was cheap and im still learning. anyway I can hear people talking on what I think is the local 2m repeater just fine, 146.940 with a 100hz PL tone according to the club website. but when I try to transmit nobody seems to hear me or respond. I thought maybe I had the CTCSS set wrong so I checked like four times and it looks right. the repeater does have a courtesy beep after people finish talking so I know its actually there and active. I tried timing my transmission right after the beep like ive seen mentioned online but still nothing. could it be my antenna or output power maybe? I'm set to high power which I think is 8 watts. live about 6 miles from where I think the repeater is located based on the club page. just feeling a bit lost and dont want to embarrass myself more than I already have lol

yeah the 2SC2290s are getting hard to find and when you do find them theyre sometimes questionable quality fakes. lot of people have had good luck with the MRF476 as a substitute, takes a little work to get the bias right but its doable. definitely check both transistors even if only one looks bad, they tend to go together or the surviving one has been running stressed and is on its way out anyway. one thing i'd do before assuming its the finals though — check the driver stage too. on mine the problem ended up being a bad solder joint on one of the driver board connectors which was starving the PA of drive. took me forever to find because everything looked fine visually until i started poking around with a scope. classic intermittent cold joint thing.

the old timestamp thing threw me off too when i started. sometimes a spot will get re-propagated through the network and show up again even if the original was from like 20 minutes ago. drove me crazy at first thinking i was missing openings constantly. you get used to checking the actual spot time vs when it appeared in your feed.

So ive been trying to get Winlink Express set up for a few weeks now and im just not getting it. I can see RMS gateways in the list, I pick the closest one which looks like its only about 40 miles away, set my frequency on the 7300, click connect and just... nothing. It tries for a minute and then times out. I'm running Vara HF and I went through the soundcard setup thing like three times. PTT is triggering, I can see the ALC moving on the radio, so the audio path seems fine. My question is basically — is there something about how RMS gateways work that I'm missing? Like are some of them just not staffed or active even if they show in the map? Also does the gateway operator have to be on the air at that exact moment or is it more like a server that just runs? I genuinely dont know if this is a propagation issue or a setup issue or what. Any help appreciated, been staring at this for too long.

Sounds like your battery wasn't fully charged to begin with, or it's getting old. My 30Ah LiFePO4 usually runs my rig for hours, and most hams report good performance with quality brands like Bioenno that output 13-13.5V in use. What brand battery are you using?

so i've been licensed for about three years now and finally got around to joining our county ARES group earlier this year. they do these quarterly simulated emergency tests and i figured hey, how hard can it be, i talk on the radio all the time right well. the drill was a simulated flooding scenario, EOC needed traffic relayed to a couple of shelter locations and we had maybe 6 operators spread out. the actual radio part was fine but what caught me completely off guard was how bad i was at the ICS paperwork side of things. like i knew ICS 100 from the online course but actually filling out an ICS 213 while also trying to copy traffic and not mess up the net was a whole different thing. i kept losing my place in the message and had to ask for fills twice which felt embarrassing even though everyone was super nice about it also nobody told me the repeater we were supposed to use had a 100hz tone on it and i sat there for like 5 minutes wondering why nobody could hear me. minor thing but in a real event that kind of delay matters anyway just wanted to share because i think a lot of people assume they're ready until they actually run a drill. anyone else have a story like this or tips for getting better at the message handling part specifically