Michael O'Connor

im kind of in the same boat as you actually, been at it for like 3 weeks using the LCWO website which is free and browser based. its based on Koch and you can set your own speed targets. i started at 15wpm character speed with Farnsworth spacing and its been rough but i can do the first like 9 characters pretty reliably now one thing i read was that trying to do more than 20-30 min a day doesnt really help, something about how your brain needs to consolidate the sounds overnight. dont know if thats true but i figured id mention it. also morse code ninja on youtube has a ton of practice files at different speeds which i use when im bored in the car, just listening not copying, and that seems to help too

yeah what he said, AE7Q is the site you want. i went through this whole process about a year ago and spent way too long just browsing available calls on there. one thing i'll add -- think carefully about what you actually want before you apply because changing your callsign again later means going through the whole process again and waiting another 30 days. i picked mine kind of on a whim and its fine but in retrospect i wouldve thought harder about phonetics and how it sounds on the air, especially for HF where youre saying your call a lot. anyway good luck with it, its kind of a fun rabbit hole to go down

ok so ive been listening to a lot of HF lately and people keep saying stuff like QSL and QRZ and QTH and honestly i have no idea what any of it means. i know theres like a whole list of Q codes somewhere but when i look it up i get like 50 of them and i dont know which ones actually get used vs which ones are just historical or whatever also people say things like 73 and 88 and i figured out 73 means best regards kind of but what does 88 mean and why do people use numbers instead of just saying the words. and sometimes i hear people say things like OM or YL or XYL and i dont know if those are callsigns or what. im a new tech who just got my license last month so sorry if this is a dumb question

so ive been working on getting my CW speed up over the past few months and im stuck around 18-20 wpm. the problem isnt really copying, its my sending that falls apart. i use an old Bencher BY-1 paddle into a Winkeyer USB and at slower speeds everything sounds clean but once i push past like 22 wpm the dits start running together or i get extra dahs i didnt intend. ive messed with the weight setting in the Winkeyer software a bit but honestly i dont fully understand what im tweaking. im wondering if its a paddle tension issue or if its just my technique needs work. the gap between the two paddles feels about right to me but i honestly dont have anything to compare it to. been doing CW for about a year and a half, passed my general last spring. any advice from people who have been through this would be really appreciated, feeling a little stuck

yeah i ran that exact combo for about two years, N1MM for contests and Log4OM as my main shack log. the import/export isnt too bad honestly — Log4OM will take an ADIF just fine and N1MM exports to ADIF so you can pull your contest results in after the fact without too much headache. i set up a folder that WSJT-X writes its log to and then just do a periodic import into Log4OM so at least everything ends up in one place eventually the LoTW thing though, yeah thats where it got messy for me. WSJT-X has its own LoTW upload settings and if you dont have that sorted out youll have dupes or missing QSOs. i ended up just disabling auto-upload in WSJT-X and doing everything through Log4OM manually. more steps but at least i know whats actually been submitted Log4OM's award tracking is genuinely good if you work DXCC or WAS, way better than trying to do it in N1MM which really isnt designed for that at all

So ive been running WSJT-X for FT8 for about a year now and just logging everything to the built-in ADIF file and manually importing to my shack log every few weeks which is obviously a terrible way to do things. finally decided to actually set up proper logging software that talks to WSJT-X in real time. the two i keep seeing recommended are N1MM Logger+ and Log4OM. from what i can tell N1MM is really geared toward contest ops and Log4OM is more of an everyday general logger but supposedly both can interface with WSJT-X over UDP. my question is which one actually works better in practice for someone who does a mix of things — some FT8, occasional SSB contests like sweepstakes and field day, and general rag chewing when the bands cooperate. i dont really need the full N1MM contest powerhouse stuff but i also dont want something that falls apart when i actually sit down for a contest. heard Log4OM can do contest logging but also heard its kind of an afterthought in that software. anyone actually use both and have an opinion that isnt just "well i use X so X is the best"

Oh man I remember being exactly where you are. Honestly the Baofeng UV-5R debate is kind of a rite of passage in this hobby. Here's my take after going through a few radios myself — the Baofeng isn't bad for learning, it's just a bit of a pain to program without the software and cable, and the build quality is what you'd expect for $25. If your budget goes up to $150 I'd seriously look at the Yaesu FT-65 or maybe a used FT-60 if you can find one. The FT-60 is basically a tank and the receive is noticeably cleaner on the local repeaters compared to the cheaper stuff. For APRS down the road you'd eventually want something like the VX-8DR or look into a TinyTrak setup but that's a whole other rabbit hole, don't worry about that yet. Just get on the air first and figure out what you actually need as you go.

passed mine about 6 months ago, hamstudy was the main thing i used too. honestly i spent more time than i needed to because i was trying to actually understand everything instead of just learning the answers. both approaches work but if you just want to pass the test the fastest way is drilling the question pool. you can always learn the why later once you're on the air. one thing that tripped me up was the regulations section, like remembering which frequencies techs are allowed to operate on, the band privileges stuff. just made a little cheat sheet for myself and ran through it a few times. also the exam itself is only 35 questions and you need 26 right so theres more wiggle room than you'd think

ok so ive been interested in ham radio for a while now, like probably a year of just watching youtube videos and lurking on forums like this one, and i finally decided i actually want to go through with getting licensed. but honestly im kind of overwhelmed about where to start. theres the technician exam obviously but i dont even know what study materials are actually worth using vs just noise. someone at work mentioned the ARRL book but then someone else said just use hamstudy.org and dont bother with books at all. also how hard is the test really? i did fine in school but that was a long time ago and i havent really done anything with electronics or radio stuff in years. any advice would be appreciated, i just dont want to spend months studying for something i could have knocked out in a few weeks

lol same. i just got my tech a few months ago and half the time i just sit there not sure what to actually do. my elmer said just listen for a while but at some point i feel like im just procrastinating actually transmitting

went through the same confusion when i upgraded lol. one thing that helped me was just downloading the ARRL band plan chart and keeping it next to the radio for a while. also yeah the band edge thing burned me once, i was on 7.299 thinking i was fine and someone told me i was technically splattering outside the band. felt pretty dumb but live and learn i guess

nice, ive been wanting to try this for ages. did you self spot or did someone else spot you? thats the part im not sure about with my setup, i dont always have cell service on the summits near me and im not sure how the whole alerting thing works without data

the linked dipole on a spiderpole setup is pretty much what we use for every exercise and it works great, we've done it on 80/40/20 with a 40ft jackite and it holds up fine in moderate wind. 40 feet of LMR-400 is a little heavy but yeah you'll appreicate the low loss especially if you're running modest power. on the power question — i cant speak to the bioenno specifically but i will say dont underestimate how much the laptop draws if it's got a big screen or a dedicated GPU. some of those logging laptops people drag out are old chunky things that pull 40-50w by themselves. measure it with a watt meter before you commit to leaving the generator home, just tape the meter in line for a couple hours during a practice session and you'll know exactly what you're dealing with. kind of a pain but worth it to not get caught at hour five with dead batteries.

i had almost the exact same thing happen with my first 40m dc receiver a few years back. ended up being that i had the audio output wire running right next to the input coil and it was feeding back just enough to make a mess. moved the wiring around and half the birdies went away. ugly construction is great but sometimes you gotta be a little intentional about where stuff physically sits relative to each other. also dont underestimate the wall wart if thats what youre powering it from, switching supplies are awful for this kind of thing. i switched to a 7812 off a small transformer and it cleaned up a lot.

yeah i ran RemoteHams for about two years with an IC-7300 at a remote site about 45 miles from home. the audio path in the newer client versions is pretty much direct UDP between you and the host machine, theres a server in the middle for the initial handshake and session negotiation but the actual audio and CAT data goes peer to peer once the connection is established, at least thats how it worked when i last dug into it. so your latency is basically your internet path plus whatever the host machines processing overhead is. the SDR panoramic thing though, thats where it gets interesting. ive seen people feed an SDRplay into SDR-Console and then kind of run that alongside the RemoteHams session in a separate window so you get the waterfall from the SDR while the actual TX and RX audio goes through the rig. its a bit janky to set up honestly and you end up with two separate connections but it does work. the delay i had on CW was workable, maybe 150ms on a good day over my home cable connection, not great but i could still copy and send without completely losing my mind. 200ms plus though and it starts feeling really wrong.