Michael O'Connor

so i've been interested in ham radio for a while now, my neighbor has a big antenna setup and it always looked cool to me. i finally decided i want to actually get licensed but i have no idea where to begin. i looked up the FCC stuff and there's like technician, general, extra?? do i have to take them all or can i just go straight to technician and be done with it for now also i found this site called hamstudy.org but i dont know if thats what people actually use or if there are better options. i have maybe 2-3 weeks before theres a test session near me and im wondering if thats enough time. the practice tests seem pretty doable but some of the electrical theory questions are going over my head a little any advice from people who already went through this would be really appreciated, i dont really know anyone else doing this hobby

did the rx mod on mine ages ago mostly for airband. works fine for that. never bothered with anything else on it tbh the radio does what i need out of the box for hf work and thats really all i care about. might look into the fan thing though because mine does get annoyingly loud when i'm running any kind of digital modes for extended periods

so ive been interested in ham radio for a while now mostly because of the whole emergency preparedness angle but also just think its cool, my neighbor has like 3 antennas on his roof and hes always doing stuff on his radio. anyway I went to look up how to get licensed and theres like a million different websites and apps and study guides and I genuinely dont know whats worth using vs whats a waste of time. do I just memorize the question pool or is there actually stuff I need to understand? also how hard is the actual test, im not great at electronics stuff but im not totally clueless either. any advice appreciated, sorry if this is a dumb question

one thing i didnt think about until our county did a drill — power for everything else, not just the radio. like my laptop for logging and winlink, my phone, maybe a small fan if you're in a hot EOC for 8 hours. a small inverter and a usb hub with a good power brick made a huge difference. also bring food lol. sounds dumb but i showed up to a 6 hour activation once with nothing and was completely useless by hour four.

i upgraded like 8 months ago and was in the exact same spot you're describing. the exam itself felt easier than i expected after all the anxiety of studying. just keep doing practice exams on HamStudy until you're consistently hitting 80% or better and you'll pass. the real learning honestly happens after, when you actually get on HF and start figuring out what the bands are doing and why your signal is going one place and not another. no amount of studying really prepares you for that part, you just have to get on the air

200Ah of LiFePO4 at 50W out should be more than enough for 6 hours, assuming your radio is pulling somewhere around 10-12A receive and maybe 18-20A transmit at that power level. on a net you're transmitting maybe 30-40% of the time if that, so your average draw is probably 13-15A. rough math puts you around 80-90Ah used which leaves you a comfortable margin. i'd say run on batteries and skip the generator headache, nothing worse than trying to run a net over a cheap genset that's putting noise on everything. for the antenna situation — if trees are sparse look at a vertical. a homebrew quarter wave for 40m with a few radials on the ground works well and you just need the one mast. i use a 23 foot jackite pole for mine and the whole thing breaks down to nothing. the EFHW is great but you really do need that height to make it perform and if you're fighting for attachment points it can get frustrating fast.

okay so i just got my general about two months ago and ive been making contacts pretty regularly, mostly on 40m SSB and a little HF digital. someone in my club mentioned i should be uploading to LoTW and i went and created an account but honestly the whole TQSL certificate thing had me spinning for like an hour before i gave up. then someone else said eQSL is easier and i should do that instead. and then another guy said paper cards are still the way to go if you want the real confirmations for awards. im just trying to figure out what most people actually do and whether i really need to be doing all of them. like does a LoTW confirmation count the same as a paper card for DXCC or whatever? and is eQSL basically useless for the serious stuff? i dont want to spend a ton of time on this if half of it doesnt matter but i also dont want to miss confirmations from people i worked months ago. any help appreciated, been lurking here a while and everyone seems pretty knowledgeable

this is really encouraging to read, ive been putting off joining my local ARES group because i wasnt sure if my license class would hold me back (im a tech) but it sounds like they found useful stuff for you to do even early on. did they give you much guidance on what radio to bring or were you expected to just figure it out yourself going in? asking because i have no idea what the expectation is for gear at activations

honestly the extra sub-bands are more useful than you'd think once you start chasing DX seriously. during a pileup those extra 25kHz on 20m can be the difference between finding a clear frequency and just giving up. that said if you're mostly on VHF/UHF right now yeah it wont change your day to day at all. for studying i used hamstudy.org and just drilled questions every night for maybe 6 weeks. the theory stuff you dont necessarily need to fully understand to pass, some of it you just kinda learn by pattern recognition if im being honest. but the antenna and propagation theory is actually really interesting once you get into it and ive found it genuinely useful for understanding why some setups work and others dont. id say go for it, the question pool isnt as scary as it looks once you actually sit with it for a while.

been reading about moonbounce for months and think i'm ready to give it a shot but getting conflicting info on power levels. some people say 400w is bare minimum others claim theyve done it with 100w and big yagis. my current setup is ic7300 with 4x17el yagis on 2m, no amp yet. should i get the amp first or try as is? also not sure about the doppler correction thing, does everyone use map65 or are there other options that work better

the one that tripped me up for the longest time was QRP vs QRO. QRP means low power operation, like 5 watts or less, and QRO is running higher power. people say things like "im running QRP today" and i had no clue what they meant for weeks. also PSE means please and TU or tnx is thank you, you see those a lot on digital modes too. just keep a notepad near the radio and write down anything you dont recognize then look it up after, thats what i did

so i finally did my first activation last weekend, went up to a local summit that was only about a 2 mile hike, nothing crazy. brought my FT-818 and a homebrew EFHW i built a few weeks ago. the antenna took forever to get into the tree but once it was up i was getting out pretty well i think. ended up making 6 contacts on 40m and 3 on 20m so i qualified the summit which i was pretty stoked about. one of the chasers was in germany which kinda blew my mind considering i was running like 5 watts from a hillside in vermont. anyway a couple things i wanted to ask — first, when i log the activation on sotadata do i need to enter every QSO or just the ones that count toward the 4 minimum? and second, does it matter what mode i used, i was just doing SSB but i see people talking about CW and FT8 and i wasnt sure if there were bonus points or something for different modes. still pretty new to all this, got my general about 8 months ago.

yeah the ARRL has a frequency/privileges chart on their website that breaks it down way better than reading the actual part 97 text. just search for ARRL technician privileges and it should come up as a PDF or a table, way more readable. basically as a tech you have full privileges on 2m, 70cm, and the other VHF/UHF bands which is where most people start out anyway. on 10m HF you get CW on 28.000-28.300 and then phone/image on 28.300-28.500 only, so yeah there is a limited segment there. just stick to that and youll be fine. honestly for getting started on a local repeater none of that matters, you have full access to 2m so just go for it.

so i finally got my tech license a few months ago and ive been lurking on the local 2m repeater net pretty much every week just listening and getting a feel for how it works. last night i decided to check in for the first time and i think i maybe messed up but im not totally sure. when the net control called for check-ins i keyed up and just said my callsign and said i was listening, which seemed fine, but then later when someone was finishing up a comment i kind of jumped in a little too fast i think and maybe stepped on the tail end of their transmission? the net control didnt say anything but i noticed there was like a weird pause after and i felt bad about it. also i wasnt sure when it was appropriate to just make a comment versus waiting to be recognized by net control. is that something that varies by net or is there a general rule? i really dont want to be that guy who doesnt know what hes doing lol

the question pool is the same nationwide, ARRL and the other VECs all pull from the same pool so dont worry about that. it gets updated every 4 years i think, just make sure whatever resource you're using has the current one which right now runs through mid 2026 or somewhere around there. as for the memorize vs understand debate, honestly both camps have a point. for the tech exam specifically a lot of it you CAN just memorize and pass fine, some of the electrical theory stuff makes more sense if you actually get why the formula works but you dont need to be an engineer to pass. i used hamstudy.org when i was studying and it was really good because it shows you explanations for each answer and tracks which questions you keep getting wrong. ran through it maybe 20-30 minutes a day for like two weeks and passed no problem. the gordon west book is also popular if you prefer reading actual text over just drilling flashcards, some people really need that structure. the memorize-everything-first crowd isnt wrong either, once you start actually operating a lot of the theory clicks on its own. dont overthink it.

I went through this exact same thing last year. What really clicked for me was using the G4FON trainer software and setting it way higher than I could actually copy — like 20 wpm character speed with extra spacing between them. Called the Farnsworth method I think. Your brain learns the sound of the letters instead of counting dots and dashes and it makes a huge difference when you actually try to copy real QSOs. For sending I just kept at the straight key for a few months before moving to paddles. Paddles are way easier once you get there but I think the straight key did help me feel the rhythm better early on. Also don't be afraid to just get on 40m around the QRP calling frequencies and listen for a while before you ever transmit. You pick up a lot just hearing how different operators sound.

honestly hamstudy.org is what got me through it, i spent maybe two weeks just doing practice exams on there every evening and by the end i was consistently hitting 85-90% and felt pretty good going in. the site tracks which questions you keep getting wrong and kind of focuses on those which helped a lot. you dont have to read the whole question pool front to back, that would put anyone to sleep. some people swear by the gordon west study guide which breaks things down into plain language if you want actual explanations instead of just drilling answers. for the tech exam i think either approach works fine but yeah if you want to actually operate and understand whats going on later, picking up at least some of the concepts helps. the electricity and antenna sections clicked pretty quick for me once i just watched a couple youtube videos on basic ohms law stuff

sounds like either your antenna swr is off or you're hitting a congested digi. atlanta area can get pretty busy on aprs. try backing down to 1 watt first and see if that helps, sometimes less is more with packet. also check your beacon rate - if you're beaconing too often you might be getting ignored by the digis

honestly same boat as you when i started, took me a while to figure out that not every spot is accurate. sometimes people mislog the frequency by like 3-4 khz and you're sitting there wondering why you cant hear anything. i just kind of developed a habit of checking a spot and if i dont hear something within a minute or so of tuning around a bit i move on. the 7300 is a great radio for this by the way, the bandscope helps a lot when youre hunting around a cluster spot that might be slightly off.

so ive been interested in ham radio for a while now, mostly because my neighbor does it and it seems really cool. i looked up what you have to do to get licensed and honestly i got kind of overwhelmed. theres the technician, general, extra... i dont even know if i need all of them or just the first one to get started. someone at work told me you have to know morse code but i heard that was changed? anyway i just want to know what the actual process is and how hard the test really is. i'm not great at memorizing stuff and some of the sample questions i saw looked pretty technical. is there like a good way to study for this without buying a whole bunch of books

yeah this is basically the eternal question and honestly the answer is kind of annoying — use N1MM for contests, use something else for everything else. i know that sounds like more work but N1MM during a contest is just in a different league for things like super check partial, the rate meter, the way it handles dupe checking across bands. Log4OM is genuinely nicer to live with day to day and the WSJT-X integration works well, ive had it running here for about a year and no real complaints for regular logging the thing is after a contest you just export the cabrillo from N1MM and then import the adif into Log4OM and youre done, your main log stays clean. little bit of overhead but you get used to it. N1MM's interface really does look ancient but after one or two contests you stop noticing because everything is where you expect it to be

yeah what he said about just listening first, that saved me so much awkwardness when i was new. also some nets have a specific format they announce at the top, like the net control will say "check-ins please give your callsign name and location" so just pay attention to that part at the start. i missed it my first few times because i was so nervous about keying up that i wasnt actually listening lol

yeah the first one is always the most intimidating and then you get up there and realize its actually pretty chill. i remember standing on my first summit thinking i was gonna forget how to work the radio lol. 40m is great for that, you get a lot of chasers just sitting on the freq waiting. what kind of linked dipole setup were you using, did you build it yourself or buy one of those pre made ones?

i went through this like 8 months ago so hopefully its still the same. ae7q dot com is your best friend honestly, it shows you when callsigns are going to become available and all that. i did mine directly on the FCC site and it wasnt too bad, took maybe 20 minutes to figure out the first time. got my vanity confirmed in a few days i think. def dont pay those services lol

omg i was doing the exact same thing a few months ago, so many tabs. what finally clicked for me was just picking one spot source and sticking with it for a while until i understood how it worked. i use DX Summit now mostly, you can filter by band and mode right on the page which helps a lot. QRZ is more for looking someone up after the fact imo, like checking their bio or confirming the entity. for actual chasing in the moment i dont really use it for spots anymore