James Wilson46

im kind of in the same boat actually, just passed tech in august and been looking at the general pool. some of it is genuinely confusing to me, the stuff about operating modes and the band plan questions are fine but the circuit stuff trips me up sometimes. i just keep hammering hamstudy until i get consistent scores above 80% and then ill go find a test session. havent done it yet but planning to before the year is out

welcome to the hobby, im only about 8 months in myself so still pretty new too. one thing i wish someone told me earlier is to just listen a lot before jumping in, you pick up so much just from hearing how other people handle things on the air. also if you can swing it even a cheap mag mount antenna for the car makes the baofeng way more useful than just the rubber duck

14 contacts is a solid first activation, dont let anybody tell you otherwise. the pileup thing is just something you figure out the more you do it, there's really no shortcut. i remember my first time i was so flustered i accidentally logged the same station twice and didnt even notice until i went to upload to the POTA website one thing that helped me a lot was posting a spot for myself on the POTA app before i even started calling CQ, that way you get a trickle of hunters coming to you instead of waiting for someone to spot you. also if the pileup gets overwhelming its totally fine to just say QRZ and wait a second before you come back, the hunters understand. most of them have been doing this long enough that they know activators are often running low power from a field and dealing with wind noise and everything else. youll get to 20 easy on your next one

so this has been bugging me for a couple weeks now. my 7300 is only putting out maybe 30 watts on a good day when it should be doing 100, and its not a wattmeter issue because ive checked it on two different meters and both agree. the ALC looks totally normal on the scope display which is what's really throwing me off, you'd expect to see that pegged if something was clipping it back but it's just sitting there looking fine. i already swapped the coax, different antenna, checked the power supply voltage which is rock solid at 13.8 under load. no fan errors, no error codes, runs cool. TX on all bands is affected, not just one, which kind of rules out a bandpass filter issue i think. audio sounds clean on the modulation monitor, just... low power. starting to wonder if its a finals issue but i dont really want to crack it open until i have a better idea of what im looking for. anyone dealt with this specific symptom on the 7300 or similar Icom stuff?

im pretty new to ARES, just joined a few months ago, and reading this is kind of reassuring honestly because I felt so lost at our last exercise. didnt want to say anything because everyone else seemed to know what they were doing but I definitely had no idea what to do when the net control asked me to relay a traffic message. just kind of fumbled through it. is there like a good resource for practicing the message stuff on your own before an exercise? or does your group do any kind of mentoring pairing where a newer person works alongside someone more experienced during the drill?

yeah the TX audio thing is real, i went through probably four different mic configurations before i landed on something people stopped complaining about. ended up pulling the bass up a bit and rolling off some of the higher treble in the equalizer settings, made a big difference. what mic are you running with it? the waterfall honestly changed how i operate, i used to just spin the VFO and hope, now i can actually see activity clusters and jump to them. took some getting used to reading it fast but now i feel blind without it on other rigs

so ive been a tech for about two years now mostly just doing 2m and some 70cm stuff with my HT and a slim jim antenna in the attic. i got into ham radio originally because of a local ARES group and honestly i really enjoy it but ive been hearing more and more people talk about HF and it sounds really cool especially the idea of just being able to talk to people across the country or even other continents without any repeater infrastructure needed. anyway i downloaded the question pool for General and started going through it and some of it is fine but then there's sections on like propagation and the electrical stuff like calculating impedance and resonant frequency and honestly it kind of feels like a lot. im not an engineer or anything, i work in landscaping so none of this is stuff i use in my day job. did anyone else feel overwhelmed going from tech to general or does it eventually click? and is there any particular study resource that helped, i know everyone says ham study or the ARRL book but just wondering what people actually used also semi related but once i do get my General what HF bands am i actually going to have access to right away because i remember reading something about tech already having some HF priveleges but i never really looked into it

11 hours on your first activation wow. ours around here are usually pretty short unless its a major event so i havent had that experience yet. im still fairly new to ARES and havent been activated at all, just doing the weekly nets and waiting. reading stuff like this is helpful though, makes me think i should actually put together a real go bag instead of just assuming i can grab stuff from around the house last minute

There's no hard rule that says you have to use phonetics every single time, at least not in the US on most bands. The idea behind them is just that certain letters sound almost identical over a noisy signal — B and D and E and V all kind of smear together when there's QRM or weak signal, so saying Bravo Delta Echo Victor makes it unambiguous. On a local repeater with good audio and people who already know your call, honestly you could just say your call normally and it's fine. Where it really matters is HF, especially DX contacts, or any kind of formal net where you want zero chance of confusion. Emergency comms guys tend to be pretty strict about it too because in a real situation you really don't want someone writing down the wrong callsign or name or whatever. So basically just use your judgment — if conditions are rough or you're working someone who doesn't know your call, phonetics are your friend.

oh man i went through this exact same confusion last year. the mode thing tripped me up too. what helped me was just thinking of mixed as its own separate counter that gets fed by everything, and then phone/CW/digital are their own separate counters fed only by their respective modes. so yeah one SSB qso bumps both mixed and phone at the same time. 87 entities already without really trying is actually a pretty solid start, youll hit 100 for the basic certificate faster than you think once you get deliberate about it. the last 20 or so before 100 might take a little patience depending on what youre missing but nothing crazy. its when you get to like 280+ that things slow way down haha

yeah the band edge thing trips up a lot of newly upgraded generals. so the deal is your carrier frequency needs to stay within your allocation but your signal itself takes up bandwidth. if youre doing SSB on 7.300 your voice peaks can splash outside the amateur allocation which is a no-no and the FCC does not care that you were "close enough". most people just stay at least 3 khz inside the edge so like 7.297 at the highest for USB on 40 phone. some guys are more conservative than that. for digital, the ARRL band plan puts a lot of that down around 7.080-7.125 area but thats not legally mandated, its just where people agreed to hang out. FT8 in particular has pretty much settled around 7.074 which is where everyone just kind of ended up. the actual FCC allocation for generals on 40 phone starts at 7.175 so everything below that on phone youre not supposed to be doing as a general. the extra class guys have the whole band down to 7.000.

so ive been chasing FT5/W for what feels like forever and last week the Crozet expedition was on and i decided to really pay attention to what was working vs what wasnt instead of just throwing my call in randomly like i usually do first thing i noticed is i kept calling right on the DX station's frequency even though they said they were listening up — i know i knew this but muscle memory just takes over and you end up doing it anyway. once i actually spread up 2-3 kHz and listened to where they were actually coming back to, not where everyone else was piling, things started clicking the other thing that helped was timing. i stopped calling during the DX station's transmission and waited for the very tail end of whoever they were working to finish, then keyed up. seems obvious but honestly i dont think most people in a pileup are doing this. they're just mashing the key constantly also cut my exchange down to just my call, nothing else. no signal report, no name, just the call, twice if i had to, and then shut up. i think a lot of guys are sending way too much and it just muddies things up for the dx op who's trying to pull calls out of noise anyway got the Q after maybe 20 minutes which for Crozet on 17m with my modest setup (tribander at 40 feet, no amp) felt pretty good. curious what techniques other people actually use that work, not the textbook stuff, the real stuff

congrats on the japan contact, that's always a good feeling the first time you pull in a real DX station. to answer your question, yeah they're all separate awards and you dont have to do all of them, most people just chase whatever grabs their interest. that said DXCC and WAS kind of complement each other nicely because you end up working a lot of states while you're hunting DX anyway. the zones for WAZ can be a bit tricky depending on your location and propagation since some zones are just harder to reach than others, zone 26 gave me fits for a long time. as for cost, DXCC through the ARRL does have an application fee and you need to get your QSLs checked, either at a hamfest with an accredited checker or by mailing them in. WAS also has a fee but its pretty reasonable. honestly for a new person id say just start logging everything carefully in your software and let LoTW do the heavy lifting for confirmations, then see what credits you've already racked up without even trying. you might surprise yourself.

Check your connections - loose Anderson Powerpoles can cause voltage drops that make the radio shut down even when the battery has juice left. Also carry a multitool for antenna adjustments and connection checks in the field.

yeah the band edge thing tripped me up too when i first got my general. what helped me was thinking of it like your voice is wider than just the frequency you tuned to, so if youre on 7.300 your usb signal is basically spilling over the top and thats the problem. same deal on the low end of whatever segment you have access to. also worth knowing that 40m is kind of a wild west band especially at night when the DX comes in, you'll hear stuff all over the place and sometimes people are operating where they maybe shouldnt be so dont assume everyone you hear is doing it right lol

the math on the lithium isnt as scary as it seems once you actually sit down with it. a 7300 on SSB is pulling maybe 2-3 amps on receive, spikes to maybe 20-22A on transmit at full power but you wont be keying down constantly. if your typical duty cycle is like 20-25% transmit you're probably averaging somewhere around 5-7A depending on how you run it. 100ah lithium at that rate, you're looking at somewhere in the 12-15 hour range comfortably, and lithiums hold voltage way better than AGM so the radio wont start acting weird as the battery drains down. i'd honestly lean battery for an 8-10 hour exercise, especially if noise is a concern. a 2200i is great but even those "quiet" generators are noticeable in a parking lot and if the served agency is already making noise about it, thats a headache you dont need during an eval. bring a small solar panel if you want a backup top-up option. the generator is my fallback for multi-day activations, not single day stuff. the EFHW on a jackite is a solid plan, just watch your feedline routing if you're operating from a vehicle nearby, i got some nasty RF in the shack once running that configuration until i figured out my counterpoise situation.

yeah i blanked on letters constantly when i first started lol. what helped me was just listening to a lot of QSOs before i actually transmitted much, you start to absorb them without even trying. also there are apps that quiz you on phonetics if youre into that kind of thing honestly on a good signal on a local repeater or something nobody really cares but on HF with any kind of noise it genuinely does make a difference, ive had exchanges where i couldnt copy a single letter of someones call until they switched to phonetics and then it was totally clear

yeah i did my first EME contact about two years ago with a single 9el yagi on 2m and an old FT-847, maybe 80 watts out. worked one station in Japan running a big array. took like 45 minutes and a bunch of retries but it happened. honestly one of the best moments ive had in this hobby and the setup was pretty modest by EME standards the JT65 thing really did change everything from what the old timers tell me, back in CW-only days you needed a lot more antenna to hear yourself in the noise. now even marginal setups can squeak through. that said if you already have two yagis stacked you're ahead of where i was so i'd say just go for it, worst case you hear the big stations and nobody hears you back at first

i learned last year using just the morse code ninja videos on youtube, guy has a whole playlist that goes through the alphabet then starts doing random letter groups and words. I did it mostly during lunch at work with headphones, took me probably 5 months before i felt comfortable enough to actually call CQ on 40m which was terrifying but worked out fine lol. the hardest part for me wasnt learning the characters it was actually sending, i borrowed a straight key from someone at the club to start but honestly a paddle and a keyer felt easier once i tried it. anyway yeah skip the chart, just listen to the sounds from day one

i dont know, seems like having backup power is pretty important for emergency comms. what happens if your batteries die and its cloudy for the solar panels? at least with a generator you know youve got power as long as you have gas maybe compromise and get like a honda 2200 or something quiet? still plenty of power for 100w rigs but way less noise than those big construction generators

ok so i just got my technician license like three weeks ago and ive been trying to get on the local 2m repeater. i can hear everyone just fine but when i key up nobody seems to hear me or they dont respond. looked up the repeater on repeaterbook and it says theres a 100.0 hz tone required. i programmed that into my baofeng (yeah yeah i know) but still nothing. my buddy who got his ticket a few years back said maybe im transmitting simplex on the output frequency instead of setting up the offset correctly? i honestly dont fully understand what that means. the repeater is listed as 146.940 with a minus offset. does that mean im supposed to be transmitting on 146.340? i feel like i have one of these things wrong and its driving me crazy because i just want to say hi and get some practice in also quick side question — is there like a standard thing you say when you first get on a repeater? i dont wanna just start talking and be that guy who does it totally wrong

so i was just sitting down with coffee yesterday morning and figured id do a quick scan on 10 meters before work and holy cow there was actual propagation happening, i worked like 6 stations in South America inside of 20 minutes which almost never happens from my QTH in the midwest. havent seen 10m that alive since maybe 2022? felt like the cycle 25 predictions are finally starting to pan out for real this time. anyway that got me excited enough to start poking around online and i saw Icom apparently teased some kind of new handheld or maybe a mobile rig, the post i saw was a little vague but it looked like it might be a dual band with some updated DSP features. anybody else see that or have more details? the rumors have been floating around for a few months now and im curious if this is actually real or just the usual forum speculation stuff. feels like its been a while since they released anything that wasnt just a firmware tweak on an existing radio. also completely unrelated but the ARRL phone sweepstakes is coming up and i cant decide if i want to seriously try to compete or just hand out some points. last year i did like 4 hours and burned out pretty quick, might just be more relaxed about it this year.

oh man i remember that feeling, dont sweat it too much. most nets have an open comment period exactly for stuff like that and your question was actually a pretty good one. net control probably just paused because it was a bit of a longer topic to get into mid-net, not because you did anything wrong. the answer to your question by the way is that if someone breaks with emergency traffic you yield the frequency immediately, net control handles it from there. honestly the fact that you checked in at all and participated is more than a lot of new hams do. some people get their ticket and never key up for months. keep showing up, youll get a feel for the rhythm pretty quick. every net runs a little different too so after a few check-ins youll know what that particular group expects. the net manager email thing is good advice for longer questions but what you asked was totally reasonable in the moment.

the testing thing is huge and honestly most people don't do it enough including me sometimes. what helped me was treating my go-kit like a deployed station once a month, just set the whole thing up in the backyard or driveway from scratch like you actually got called out, time yourself, see what you forgot or what doesnt work. found out my PL-259 on the coax had a cold solder joint that way, would have been embarrassing in the field. for the antenna question, I keep a Wolf River Coils silver bullet in mine because it's compact and covers 40 through 10 reasonably well with just a whip, but I also have a linked dipole cut for 40 and 20 folded up in a freezer bag. the EFHW transformers are popular in go-kits too, just need a long wire and a support. depends on what your ARES group actually needs you to do, if youre mostly doing local stuff on VHF maybe the HF antenna is secondary but if youre backup comms for EOC then you want something reliable on 40. your list honestly sounds pretty solid, only thing I'd maybe add is a small notepad and some kind of laminated quick-reference card with your net frequencies, CTCSS tones for local repeaters, and your tactical call if your group uses those. sounds dumb but under stress you forget stuff you know cold.

Built a Class E stage for my 40m rig last year. The efficiency is amazing when tuned right, but the component tolerances are critical. One bad inductor and you're back to 60% efficiency. For QRP work, I'd stick with proven Class C designs unless you enjoy lots of tweaking.