Jessica Miller89

yeah the pillow thing usually means either too much low frequency or the mic is too close to your face and youre getting proximity effect. i had the same problem and it turned out i was basically eating the mic. moved it back like 6 inches and it helped a lot. also had the TX bandwidth set to wide for no real reason, narrowing it up cleaned things up a lot on the recieving end apparently.

man i was in the exact same spot like 18 months ago. general for three years, thought i was fine. what finally pushed me was wanting to operate on 75m closer to 3.8 and some of the dx windows that are technically extra only. that and honestly the theory stuff just clicked for me once i got into it. the exam pool is bigger yeah and some of it is legitimately tricky — stuff about phase locked loops, smith charts, filter Q factor, antenna modeling concepts. its not just memorization in the same way but if you use something like hamstudyorg and actually try to understand why the answers are right instead of just flashing cards it goes a lot faster than you'd think. took me maybe six weeks of casual studying, maybe 30 minutes a night. the privileges are real. extra has sub-bands on 80, 40, 20, 15 that are actually noticeably less congested, especially on weekends during a contest when the general portion is just wall to wall signals. so yeah i think its worth it but i also just liked knowing the theory better. felt like i actually understood my radio instead of just using it

so ive been interested in ham radio for a while now, my neighbor has a big antenna setup in his backyard and it always looked cool to me. he mentioned i need a license to actually transmit and that theres a test involved but honestly i dont really know where to begin. like do i just show up somewhere and take a test or do i have to take a class first or what. and how hard is it really, im not super technical but im not an idiot either, i work in IT so i understand some basic electronics stuff. also is there more than one level of license, he mentioned something about technician and general but i wasnt really paying attention lol. any help appreciated, kind of overwhelmed just looking at the FCC website

I'm kind of in the same boat so following this thread. One thing that helped me a little was recording myself and playing it back — hearing your own sending is kind of painful at first but you immediately hear where your spacing is falling apart. I use just a free audio recorder on my phone patched into the sidetone output. Also someone on another forum mentioned that 20 minutes a day is actually fine but it needs to be focused practice not just randomly sending stuff. Like actually sending real words and QSO exchanges rather than just the alphabet over and over. Havent fully tried that yet but it makes sense to me.

yeah the balun thing is real, i skipped it on my first dipole too and then spent like two weeks wondering why my swr was bouncing around depending on where i put my hand near the feedline. turned out it was common mode the whole time. just wound some coax into a coil at the feedpoint like the other guy said and fixed it immediately, felt kind of dumb but whatever also double check your connections arent just twisted together, that'll oxidize over time especially outdoors and resistance starts creeping up. i solder mine now and then seal everything. the self amalgamating tape is fine but make sure moisture cant get in at the ends

so ive been messing with this for a few weeks now and im at the point where i can get the basic remote connection working but the audio path is driving me absolutely nuts. running a K3 at the remote site with a raspberry pi handling the RemoteHams RCForb server side, and on my end im using a windows 10 laptop with the client. connection comes up fine, i can key the rig, S-meter responds, all that stuff looks good. the problem is im also trying to feed an SDR into this whole thing — RTL-SDR dongle connected to a wideband port on the antenna switch at the remote site — and i want to somehow get that panadapter view accessible remotely too. ive been looking at SDR-Console with the network server mode and wondering if thats the right direction or if theres a smarter way to tie it all together. latency is around 90ms which should be fine for most things but when i try to actually decode anything the timing is just off enough to be annoying. also separately, and maybe this is a whole other thread, but im curious whether anyone has experimented with linking the remote setup into an Allstar node or something similar. my thinking is i could tie the audio into the local repeater network when im not actively using the transceiver for HF, basically let the remote site do double duty. probably a terrible idea but figured id ask

so ive been using WSJT-X for FT8 stuff for a while now and it logs to an ADIF file which i then import into Log4OM and that workflow has been mostly fine but now im getting more into contesting and everyone keeps saying N1MM is the way to go for that and i get it, N1MM is basically purpose built for contests my question is do people just keep both installed and use N1MM for contest weekends and Log4OM for regular everyday logging or is there a cleaner way to handle this without ending up with duplicate QSOs all over the place when you import contest logs back into your main log after the event also does WSJT-X play nice with N1MM when youre doing like a digital contest, i know theres some UDP integration stuff but ive never actually set it up and the documentation is kind of all over the place depending on which version youre reading

the ic-7300 is a solid rig for this by the way, good choice. one thing that helped me a ton when i started cluster chasing was just accepting that youre gonna miss a lot of spots, especially early on. thats just how it goes. the rare dx you really want will come around again usually. i use DX Sherlock on my phone sometimes when im not at the shack, it pulls cluster data and lets you set alerts for specific callsigns or entities which is pretty handy if youre hunting something specific. might be worth a look.

suffix only on CW is definitely a thing, worked for me on a few tough ones. some ops dont like it but honestly in a massive pileup nobody cares about your full callsign until they actually copy you anyway so it makes sense. just be ready to send the full call immediately when they come back with a partial. one thing i havent seen mentioned much is antenna polarization — on 15 and 10m especially, trying a different antenna or rotating your beam slightly off peak sometimes actually helps because your signal arrives differently and might stand out a little more in the pileup. probably placebo half the time but ive convinced myself it works lol

so ive been a general for about three years now and i keep telling myself ill study for the extra but never actually do it. anyway i finally bought the ARRL extra class manual last month and started going through it and honestly some of this stuff is way over my head. like i get the basic operating stuff and the band privileges make sense, but when it gets into the math for like filter design and the transmission line theory and all the impedance matching stuff... i dunno. i passed the general without really understanding half of it and now im wondering if i need to actually understand all this or if i can just memorize the question pool again. also is the extra exam actually worth it just for the privileges or is there more to it than that. i mostly do HF SSB and a little bit of digital, not really into contesting or anything super technical. just feels weird to have the highest license and not really know what im doing i guess

so ive been a technician for about 8 months now and honestly the HF thing is really starting to pull at me. i can hear guys on 40m with my little HT when im near my buddy's antenna setup and it just sounds like so much more going on down there compared to the repeater stuff im used to. anyway im thinking about going for the general ticket but i honestly dont know where to start. i used the hamstudy.org thing for my tech exam and it worked pretty well but the general pool seems way bigger and theres stuff in there about like propagation and operating procedures that i feel like i dont really understand, im just memorizing answers which feels wrong. is that how most people do it or should i actually try to learn the theory first before drilling questions also what HF privileges does general actually get you because i looked at the chart and its kind of confusing with all the different segments. do you basically get access to everything or is there still a lot locked behind extra class

colpitts all the way for 40m in my experience. the hartley can work fine but youre adding an inductor tap and that just means one more thing to wind and get wrong. with a colpitts you can tune the ratio of the capacitive divider to control the feedback and it tends to be more predictable thermally if you use decent NP0 caps in the tank. i built three or four of these over the years and the ones that drifted were always the ones where i got cheap on the capacitors. for the audio gain thing, yeah two stages can definitely oscillate if you're not careful about decoupling. put a good RC filter between the supply rails for each stage and keep the high gain stage physically away from anything thats picking up RF. even a couple inches on a piece of ugly construction can make a huge difference. the LM386 is notorious for doing weird things when the supply isnt clean. the NE602 choice is fine for a first build, just watch the input impedance. a lot of people forget to match their antenna to the front end properly and then wonder why the thing is deaf. little LC filter at the input does wonders.

yeah the audio thing is probably in your head honestly, the mod doesnt touch anything in the audio chain, its just freeing up the TX range limiter that icom puts in at the firmware/hardware level. that said the 7300 EQ is actually pretty capable if you dig into the ACC settings and mess with the bass/treble rolloff. i spent a good afternoon getting mine dialed with a similar mic setup, ended up cutting some of the low mids around 300hz because it was getting muddy on SSB. worth running it by a buddy on the air and having them give you honest feedback rather than trusting the monitor. the heat thing is real btw if youre pushing duty cycle on digital modes at extended freqs, just keep an eye on it. on SSB voice youre probably fine.

yeah i had almost the exact same setup dilemma last year. ended up stacking two jpoles about 5 feet apart which was kind of a weird experiment but it actually helped a bit on the low angles. probably not worth the effort compared to just buying a better antenna though lol. the rotator thing sounds fun until you actually have to deal with it in the middle of winter

the thing that got me on my first deployment was lighting. i had everything radio-wise dialed in but it was dark in the EOC and i couldnt see my logging sheets properly. now i keep a small LED headlamp AND a little desk lamp in the kit. sounds obvious in hindsight. for organization i switched to a pelican case for the radio gear and then a separate soft bag for the personal stuff. keeps it clean and the pelican stacks nicely if youre loading into a vehicle. i also laminated my freq list because paper gets wrecked fast when its humid or raining, learned that the hard way at a flood response a few years back. honestly the comfort stuff matters more than people think. after hour 8 of sitting at a table your back is done. i throw a small seat cushion in now, sounds ridiculous but i dont regret it. also snacks that dont make a mess, granola bars not chips. and a portable battery bank for your phone separate from the radio power system — you dont want to be draining your main battery because your personal phone is dying.