Linda Wilson

propagation has been weird this whole season tbh. i logged a few contacts into europe last tuesday around sunset which was great but then nothing for days after that. 40m can be like that i guess. also FT8 definitely took a lot of people off voice, thats just kind of the reality now

congrats on the first one, that nervousness before the first activation is totally real and then you do it and realize it wasnt that scary at all. pending status on the park reference is completely normal, it usually clears within a day or two once the logs get processed. as long as you used the right K- number from the website youre fine, dont stress about it. for logging i use HAMRS on my phone and it syncs up pretty well with the POTA upload format. some people swear by logging apps on a tablet but honestly even paper is fine if youre comfortable with it, the ADIF transfer is annoying but you only do it once per activation. theres also a guy in our local club who just uses a spreadsheet template he made, whatever works. on the band question — definitely worth trying 20m especially if youre activating on a weekend. 40 is great in the morning and evening but 20 can get you contacts from way further out and sometimes you get spotted and a small pile builds up faster. i usually start on 40 to get my 10 and then flip to 20 to see whats happening. some activators will work both simultaneously if they have the gear for it but thats a whole other thing.

A band plan is an operating guide, while FCC rules define the actual legal limits for US amateur operation. Good operating practice uses both: confirm that a segment is legal for your license and mode, then use the band plan to choose an appropriate place inside that legal window. For 10m as a Tech, you can legally operate 28.000-28.500, but check the ARRL band plan to see where phone, CW, and digital activity typically occurs.

yeah i had almost the same thing happen with my Kenwood mobile last year. drove me nuts for like a month. turned out to be one of those cheap PL-259 connectors that came with a coax kit, the center pin wasnt making solid contact. swapped it out and 70cm cleaned right up. the X50 is a solid antenna btw, probably not the antenna itself.

so i finally did my first SOTA activation last weekend, drove up to a summit in the whites and honestly the hike almost killed me lol. brought my kx2 and a random wire antenna and figured id be set. well the wind was absolutely insane up top and i couldnt get the antenna to stay up, ended up just draping it over some rocks in a weird L shape and calling it good. made like 6 contacts on 20m before my fingers were too cold to log anymore. i think 4 contacts is the minimum? i had 6 so im good. took forever to find a clear frequency too, kept getting stomped on. anyway it counts and im already planning the next one

For domestic contests, even modest stations can usually find a hot band and run successfully, but DX contests are more challenging. Start S&P and see if you're getting people on first call - that's your signal strength indicator for whether running will work.

so ive been going back and forth on this for like two months now and i cant make up my mind. currently running a G5RV which does okay but its kind of a compromise on 40 and i want something more dedicated. my lot is maybe 80 feet wide so a full size 40m dipole would just barely fit if i go at an angle, but then ive been reading about verticals and people seem to love them for low angle radiation which matters for DX right. the thing is i dont have a great ground plane situation. backyard is pretty rocky and putting in a proper radial field sounds like a weekend project i may never actually finish. a dipole at least would just work once its up. but then again 30 feet is about as high as i can realistically get it which isnt even a half wavelength on 40, so it would be more of a cloud warmer anyway. anyone gone through this same decision? i mostly want 40m for evening DX and some rag chewing, not really contesting. and yeah before anyone asks i know a beam would solve it but thats not happening in this neighborhood

Don't feel overwhelmed! I started with WAC and got it in my first month of operating. WAS, WAC, and WAZ are the most popular awards to begin with. The learning curve for each award builds on the previous one, so you're gaining valuable experience with each step.

Started with POTA myself and loved it! You can turn any day into a mini-fieldday at short notice. Get a lightweight rig like the FT-818 or IC-705 and you're set. Way less intimidating than hauling gear up a mountain!

Power is the thing people underestimate. You can figure out antennas on the fly and you can borrow cables, but if your battery dies two hours into a deployment you're just standing there looking useless. I'd put honestly half your budget into a decent LiFePO4 pack and a way to charge it, whether thats solar or a small generator hookup or both. Also — and I say this as someone who showed up to an actual activation without it — a laminated copy of your frequencies, your served agency contact info, and your ICS forms. Sounds dumb but when everything is chaotic you do not want to be digging through your phone trying to find the repeater input. Print it out, laminate it, zip tie it inside the lid of your kit. Took me one embarrassing afternoon to learn that one.

same boat as you were like 6 months ago haha. what finally clicked for me was realizing LoTW just does the counting for you once your logs are uploaded, so i'd start there before worrying about paper cards. i was surprised how many entities i already had confirmed just sitting in my log that i hadnt paid attention to. ended up being like 87 toward DXCC which i had no idea about. WAZ took me way longer than WAS btw, some of those zones are really hard to get on certain bands. Zone 26 and some of the pacific zones were a pain. just something to be aware of if you go down that rabbit hole, its a fun one though

I'm a General class operator ready to take the plunge for my Extra. The question pool looks massive compared to General - over 700 questions! What's the most efficient way to approach this beast? Should I focus on memorizing answers or try to understand the theory first? Looking for proven strategies from recent upgrades. I've heard mixed advice about just drilling question pools vs. reading the ARRL Extra manual cover to cover. Any recommendations on study apps or methods that actually work?

Household members can be evaluated using occupational limits, while others use general population limits. Keep your calculations on file - the FCC doesn't require submission but you need them for potential inspections.

i had almost the exact same situation last year, was pulling my hair out over the audio delay. ended up switching from the default UDP mode to the lower latency option in RCForb and it helped a bit but honestly the biggest thing was just moving my remote machine to a wired connection instead of wifi. obvious in hindsight but wifi was adding like 80ms of jitter on its own and i hadnt even thought about it. cant really help with the wires-x linking stuff, never messed with that system. echolink i know a little but not enough to say anything useful about bridging it with a remote session setup like yours.

so ive been running a center fed dipole for 40m for about two years now, got it up about 35 feet in an inverted V configuration and honestly its been fine for domestic stuff but i keep reading that verticals with a good radial field will beat a low dipole for dx every time because of the lower takeoff angle. my property isnt huge so getting it much higher isnt really an option unless i put up a tall mast which is a whole other project i dont want to start right now. been thinking about pulling down the dipole and throwing up a vertical instead, probably one of those trap verticals or maybe just a quarter wave with a bunch of radials on the ground. question is whether thats actually going to make a noticeable difference on 40 for working europe and japan from the midwest, or if im just going to end up with a noisier antenna that picks up every power line in the neighborhood and still doesnt do what i want. anyone actually done this comparison with real results, not just theory

Honestly you're doing exactly the right thing by listening first. Most experienced guys will tell you that's how they learned too. On a directed net, net control is basically running the show and you wait to be recognized before transmitting — that's the whole point of a directed net versus just a round table. When net control asks for check-ins, that's your window. You just give your callsign, and if you have traffic or announcements you'd say so then. If you dont have anything specific just say your call and "no traffic" or "listening" and that's totally fine, you're still part of the net. As for keying up at the wrong time, it happens to everyone. I've done it plenty of times over the years and nobody's gonna give you a hard time, especially as a new ham. Net control will just work around it. Just don't make a habit of it and you'll be fine.

so ive been thinking about learning CW for a while now but every time i look into it i get overwhelmed by all the different methods and opinions and honestly i dont even know what the right approach is. some people say learn with a straight key first, others say dont bother and just use a paddle from the start, some say use an app, some say apps are bad and you should only listen to actual QSOs. i took the technician exam last year and just upgraded to general a few months ago so i dont need code for the license anymore obviously but i just feel like im missing something by not knowing it. is there like a sensible starting point for someone who literally has never done any of this? i tried one of those online things a while back and could never get past like 4 or 5 letters before i gave up. not sure if i was doing it wrong or just not practicing enough or what

so ive been licensed for about 8 months now and i mostly do HF on 40m and sometimes 20m and i keep hearing people use all kinds of different phonetics. like some guys say the standard NATO ones, Alpha Bravo Charlie etc, but then i hear other people saying things like America Boston Chicago or whatever they feel like. my elmer told me the NATO ones are technically the standard but i wasn't sure if there was actually a rule about it or if it's just kind of a gentleman's agreement type thing. also when do you even need to use them, like is every transmission supposed to have phonetics for your callsign or just when conditions are bad. i feel like i'm probably overthinking this but i don't want to sound like an idiot on the air

so ive been licensed for about 3 months now and i get on the air occasionally but half the time people are throwing around stuff like QSL and QRM and QTH and i just nod along pretending i know what they mean. i looked some of them up but there are like hundreds of them and i dont know which ones actually get used vs which ones are just historical junk that nobody says anymore. also on top of that theres all the other abbreviations that arent Q codes, like people say 73 and 88 and ES and DE and i kind of picked up that 73 means goodbye or good luck or something but im not totally sure. is there like a short list of the ones that actually matter for everyday operating? i dont want to memorize 300 codes if only 20 of them come up regularly

Our club is gearing up for Field Day 2025 on June 28-29 with the 'Radio Connects' theme. This year showed growth with 4,369 entries and 31,785 participants, so we're expecting good activity. I'm tasked with organizing our Get On The Air (GOTA) station but I'm a bit confused about the logging requirements and power restrictions. It's part picnic, campout, practice for emergencies, informal contest, and most of all, fun - the most popular ham radio activity held annually in the US and Canada. Anyone have experience running a GOTA station?

the short answer is you dont have to use all three but a lot of people do because different awards and different operators prefer different methods. LoTW is definitely the most trusted one for things like DXCC confirmations, the TQSL software is a bit clunky but once you get it set up it kind of just runs in the background. if you got stuck on the certificate part just email the ARRL and they walk you through it, took me maybe 20 minutes once i actually did it eQSL is way easier to get started with and plenty of people use it, just know that not all eQSL cards count for ARRL awards unless theyre authenticated members. paper cards are honestly still fun and a lot of the older ops really appreciate getting a physical card in the mail, i still send them when someone specifically requests one or when its a memorable contact as for the etiquette thing — the old rule was always QSL 100% but realistically most people dont expect a paper reply unless you asked for one or they specifically sent you one with a note. uploading to LoTW is kind of the modern way of fulfilling that obligation in most peoples eyes

so the Tri-County thing is coming up again in March and im debating whether its worth the drive this year. last year the flea market tables were pretty picked over by the time i got there around 10am, mostly just old CB radios and busted power supplies nobody wants. but i did score a decent MFJ tuner for like 20 bucks so i cant complain too much anybody else planning on going? wondering if theres enough people interested to maybe do a club carpool or something since gas isnt exactly cheap right now

so ive had my IC-7300 for about three years now and honestly it's been a rock solid radio, no complaints really. but lately ive been eyeing the IC-7610 mostly because of the dual receiver setup and the idea of being able to work two bands simultaneously during contests. my shack is pretty basic right now — 7300 into a LDG tuner, into a fan dipole up about 35 feet, ground mounted vertical for 40/80. thing is im not sure if the jump is actually worth the money for how i operate. im not a serious contester, i do a handful of contests a year mostly for fun, work a lot of ragchews on 40m evenings, occasional DX when something interesting pops up on the cluster. so dual receive is kinda a luxury for me. but the 7610 second receiver thing is genuinely useful for SO2R even at a casual level right? or am i just convincing myself because i want a new radio has anyone made this upgrade specifically from the 7300? curious if the roofing filters made a noticeable difference on crowded band conditions, that's the other thing people always mention

yeah the contact list thing bites almost every group the first time they actually test it. we had the same issue a few years back during a windstorm exercise — our net control had a printed roster from eight months prior and three of those people had moved or upgraded their license and changed callsigns. not a huge deal in a drill but in a real event that kind of confusion adds up fast. what ended up helping us was assigning one person specifically to be the roster keeper and making it their job to send out a check-in email every 90 days asking everyone to confirm their info and primary frequency. sounds simple but somebody has to own it or it just doesnt happen. on the message traffic question — we use ICS-213 forms and have someone play the role of an EOC liaison feeding us realistic requests. stuff like 'we need a health and welfare check on this address' or 'the shelter at the high school needs to report their current capacity.' it keeps people focused and feels less like a classroom exercise. not perfect but way better than just making stuff up on the fly