Michael Barnes

ha i do this all the time. sometimes i just leave the rig on scan and half listen while im doing stuff around the shop. 40m at night can be real hit or miss depending on where we are in the solar cycle and right now its just kind of blah most evenings. try dropping down to 7.200 or so sometimes theres more activity down there, or if youre feeling adventurous 17m can be surprisingly good late at night when 40 is dead.

i went lip mount on my jeep about a year ago just because i couldnt bring myself to drill and honestly its been totally fine. antenna is a Tram 1185 dual band which is like a clone of the diamond 770 basically and it works great. only issue i had was the lip mount clamp scratched the paint a little where it clamps but thats minor. one thing nobody mentions — check how long the pigtail is on whatever lip mount you get before you buy it because some of them are really short and you end up fighting to get the coax routed nicely inside the door frame area. learned that the hard way.

totally understand the rabbit hole problem, been there myself when i was starting out. ok so honest opinion — the uv-5r criticism is not entirely wrong but its also a little overblown for what youre trying to do. hitting local repeaters and chatting with a buddy? it'll work fine. the audio thing is real but its usually worse on the receive end than transmit in my experience, and a lot of it depends on your specific unit and how you set the mic gain. that said if you can stretch to like $100 or so, a yaesu ft-65 or one of the wouxun kg-uv9d units are noticeably better quality and honestly not that much harder to program. the yaesu especially feels like a real radio in your hand if that makes sense. the menu system isnt as confusing as people make it out to be once you sit with the manual for an hour. i gave one to my nephew when he got his ticket and he figured it out in an afternoon whatever you get, download chirp before you do anything else and save yourself the front panel programming headache

ran basically this exact experiment a few years ago. had a 40m dipole at 35 feet and put up a DX Engineering radial plate with a hustler 4BTV after debating it forever. short answer is they both have their moments and its really angle of radiation that matters most. for closer stuff, 500-1500 miles, the dipole at that height was consistently better, higher angle radiation works in its favor there. but when i was trying to work JA or anything eu on 40 at night the vertical had a clear edge most of the time. not dramatic, maybe an S unit or so, but real. the catch is i had 32 radials down and spent a weekend doing it right. without a solid radial field the vertical was noticeably worse and i woulda stuck with the dipole. if youre only doing 16 radials id honestly add more before drawing conclusions. theres a reason everyone says radials radials radials, its not just people repeating stuff, it actually matters a lot for a ground mounted vertical.

Had this exact issue with my TNC-X last month. Verify your terminal program settings match the TNC - most use 9600 baud, no stop bit, 8 data bits, 1 parity. Also check UNPROTO setting should be APN382 for TNC-X units. My problem was incorrect SSID format in the path string.

so i finally did my first POTA activation yesterday at a state park about 45 min from my house. brought my ft-891 and a linked dipole i built a few months ago, figured id just throw it up in a tree and work some stations easy right. yeah no. spent like 40 minutes trying to get the rope over a decent branch and by the time i had the antenna up i was sweating through my shirt and my lunch was gone somehow. got on 40m and the band was just dead for a bit, started to panic a little honestly. finally moved to 20m and got my 10 contacts but it took almost 2 hours total. not complaining because i did activate it but man i thought itd be more relaxed than a contest. anyone else have a rough first one

honest answer is it depends a lot on the contest and your goals. for something like CQWW or SS where multipliers matter as much as QSO count, SO2R lets you keep running on your good frequency while hunting mults on the second radio without breaking your run rate. thats the real gain, not just raw QSOs per hour. if youre doing a pure rate contest the benefit is still there but maybe less dramatic the isolation thing is real though. you need either good bandpass filters like the 4O3A or ICE filters, or you need to be on bands that are far enough apart that your transmit on one doesnt blow the front end on the other. 20 and 40 is actually not the worst combo for that. the controller stuff is less intimidating than it sounds once you get into it, most guys use the microHAM stuff or a winkeyer setup and N1MM handles a lot of the sequencing automatically now but yeah if your fundamentals arent solid on single radio first, adding a second one just gives you twice as many ways to screw up. id say get your search and pounce timing really clean, learn to read band conditions on the fly, work on your exchange speed. SO2R amplifies good operating, it doesnt fix bad operating

honestly the hardest part is just keying up that first time, after that its totally fine. most nets just want your callsign phonetically and then just unkey and wait. some nets you also give your name and location but a lot of them the net control will ask for that after you check in. just listen to how other people are doing it for a few minutes before your turn and copy what they do, you'll get the hang of it really fast. net control folks are used to new people checking in, they wont care if you fumble it a little. the main thing is dont hold the key down too long when you give your call, just say it once clearly and let go. also if the net has a specific format sometimes theyll announce it at the top of the net, so pay attention to the preamble when it starts. some of the more formal traffic nets want things in a specific order but a casual 2m ragchew net is usually pretty relaxed about it.

so i finally got activated for the first time last weekend, been a member of our local ARES group for about 8 months and mostly just done the monthly nets and one tabletop exercise back in the spring. but there was a pretty bad storm system that came through thursday night and our county emergency manager actually called us up friday morning to support the EOC. i ended up staffing a shelter for about 6 hours with another ham i'd never actually met in person before, just seen on the nets. we were doing welfare traffic and keeping a link back to the EOC on simplex while the repeater was acting flaky from a power issue. nothing super glamorous but it felt real, you know? like all the training stuff suddenly made sense. anyway i guess my question for people who've done this more than i have — how do you handle it when served agency staff dont really know what to do with you? the shelter coordinator was nice but kept asking me to help with things that weren't really radio related and i wasn't sure how far to step in or stay in my lane. didn't want to be useless but also didn't want to overstep

yeah the NATO ones are just what everyone's trained to recognize so they work better even when the other guy isnt a ham, like if you ever have to communicate with anyone in aviation or emergency services they'll know exactly what you mean. i used to mix in random words sometimes when i forgot and it just creates confusion honestly. now i just have the whole thing memorized and it comes out automatic. took maybe a week of just saying them to myself while driving before it clicked

yeah that's basically exactly what most activations are like, 95% boredom and 5% suddenly you really matter. the waiting is part of the job honestly. i've worked everything from marathons to county EOC activations during flooding and it's almost always hurry-up-and-wait until it isn't. the runner situation you described is a textbook reason why trained operators beat untrained volunteers every time — you kept your head and passed clean traffic under a little pressure, that's the whole point. for staying sharp i usually bring a small notebook and just log everything even when nothing is happening. timestamp every check-in, note the weather, note runner counts if they're being relayed, whatever. it keeps your brain in the radio mindset instead of drifting off. some guys bring a book but i find that makes me slower to respond when something does happen. your EC might also have tips specific to your group, worth asking after a debrief.

I went through the exact same thing last year and what finally clicked for me was just slowing way down and doing 20-30 minute sessions instead of grinding for an hour. the tension stuff is real, i didnt even notice how tense my whole arm was until my elbow started aching. also i moved my paddle closer to the edge of the desk so my wrist wasnt bent at a weird angle and that helped a ton. keep at it, it does get better

so i finally got my technician last month and ive been listening to the local 2m repeater net on tuesday nights for a few weeks now. last night i actually tried to check in and when the net control called for check-ins i keyed up and just... blanked. said my callsign wrong, stumbled over it, probably sounded like an idiot. net control was super nice about it but i still felt embarrassed. is there like a standard way you're supposed to check in? i noticed some people just say their callsign and others give their name and location too. and whats the deal with when you want to pass traffic vs just checking in to say youre there? i dont really understand the difference between a directed net and a casual ragchew net either. any help appreciated, been lurking here for a while and everyone seems really knowledgeable

so ive been running a Diamond X50A on my roof for about 2 years now and it does fine for hitting the local 2m and 70cm repeaters but theres one about 45 miles out that i can get into maybe 60% of the time and it drives me nuts because i know the path is mostly clear, theres just this ridge line to the southeast that i think is killing me. been thinking about putting up a small yagi pointed that direction, something like a 5 or 6 element on 2m, just fixed mounted since thats the only direction i care about. but then i lose the omni coverage which i use for local stuff. so now im wondering if i just get a better collinear, like step up to a Diamond X510 or maybe a Comet GP-9 and see if the extra gain helps clear the ridge, or if directional is just the only real answer here when terrain is involved. anybody been in a similar situation, like trying to work around a terrain obstacle on 2m? is there a point where stacking gain on a vertical is just not going to help and you really need a beam?

so i finally dragged myself up W4T/SU-001 last weekend with the KX2 and a linked dipole and honestly the whole thing was kind of a disaster but also kind of great at the same time. spent like 45 minutes trying to get the dipole up in the trees because i forgot my throw bag at home so i was just chucking a rock tied to some paracord which... yeah. eventually got it up about 20 feet which is not ideal but whatever. called CQ for maybe 10 minutes and then the pile started and i totally panicked and forgot how to log on paper like i just blanked on it. ended up getting 7 contacts which i think is enough to count? i read it was 4 minimum. anyway the hike down was brutal because my boots are garbage and it rained. would do it again probably.

so i passed my general last year and have been working on morse pretty much since then. started with just5 wpm copying random characters and slowly worked up to where i am now which is somewhere around 12-13 wpm on a good day. the problem is i feel like i just hit a wall and cant seem to push past it no matter what i do. ive been using the LCWO website mostly, doing the Koch method, and i can copy most of the characters fine at this speed but when i try to bump it up even a little bit everything kind of falls apart and i start getting behind and then i panic and miss whole words trying to catch up. not sure if its a technique problem or if im just not practicing enough or what. does anyone have advice for going from this intermediate stage up to like 20wpm eventually? feels like the jump from 5 to 13 was way easier than this is turning out to be

yeah same thing happened to me when i first started lol, was convinced my radio was broken for like two days. turned out my offset was wrong. the repeater was hearing me but i wasnt getting the output because i was listening on the wrong frequency basically. rookie mistake but easy to do with the baofeng menus being what they are. the etiquette stuff is pretty relaxed on most local repeaters from what ive seen, just dont kerchunk it over and over and dont talk over someone elses conversation and youre probably fine. most hams are pretty welcoming to new people honestly

so ive been a tech for about 8 months and i keep reading that learning CW is worth it but every time i look into it i just get confused about where to start. theres like the Koch method and Farnsworth and LCWO and some app called Morse Toad and honestly i dont even know what half those things mean yet. is there a "right" way to learn or does it just depend on the person i guess my main question is how long did it actually take you to get to a point where you could actually have a QSO. not like perfectly, just like... functional. i keep seeing people say 3 months which seems fast but maybe im wrong. also does it matter if you learn to copy by ear vs writing it down vs just reading it in your head, someone told me not to write it down but i dont know why

so ive been doing contests semi-seriously for a few years now, mostly phone but been getting more into CW lately, and every time i read the writeups from the top scorers they're always talking about SO2R and how critical it is for rate. i get the concept — run on one radio while you're searching and pouncing on the second one, or use the second radio to find a mult while you're holding a frequency on the first. makes total sense in theory. but honestly my station is nowhere near ready for that. im running an IC-7300 into a tribander at about 45 feet and i dont really have a second antenna that could work simultaneously without blowing up the front end on radio 2. i've read about band pass filters and all that but the cost adds up fast. the question is whether the rate improvement is actually noticeable for someone doing like 500-800 QSOs in a typical CQWW weekend or if SO2R only really matters when you're pushing 2000+. also curious if there's a middle ground — like using a second radio just for monitoring without actually transmitting on it. does that even help enough to bother with the setup hassle

yeah the hum thing with the 386 is pretty classic, ive fought that battle more than once. usually for me its been the power supply — even if you think youve got clean DC feeding it, sometimes a little ferrite bead right at the Vcc pin on the chip makes a suprising difference. also check that your bypass cap on pin 7 is actually a good low ESR cap and not some ancient electrolytic that's mostly dead inside the layout thing on ugly construction can bite you with the 386 specifically because any stray coupling from the RF side into the audio stage just gets amplified like crazy. i'd try keeping the audio board as physically far from the NE602 as you can get away with and see if it helps before swapping chips. the TDA2822 is fine but the 386 should work if the layout is clean enough

so ive been trying to learn CW for about 3 months now and i finally broke down and bought a decent set of paddles (Bencher BY-1) to go with my little Begali clone keyer i picked up used. the problem im running into is my dits and dahs are coming out kind of mushy? like not crisp at all. i've been playing with the speed and weight settings on the keyer but nothing feels quite right. im currently practicing around 12-13 wpm using just code groups and some LCWO sessions but when i actually sit down and try to send anything real it all falls apart. like my brain knows what letter i want but my hand just isnt keeping up. does this get better or am i doing something fundamentally wrong with my technique? also not sure if my paddle tension is too loose, it feels pretty light right now. any advice appreciated, been at this a while and starting to wonder if i should just go back to a straight key for a bit

so i finally finished my first QRP rig, been putting it off for about two years honestly. went with the Michigan Mighty Mite as a starter since everyone said it was hard to mess up. got it oscillating on 40m and made my first CW contact with it last weekend running somewhere around 500mw i think, maybe less. the other station was only about 200 miles away but still, it was MY radio that i built with my hands and that felt incredible. anyway i have a few things im trying to figure out now. first, the output is drifting quite a bit when it first fires up, like maybe 500hz or so over the first 10-15 minutes before it settles down. is that just the crystal warming up or should i be looking at something else. second question is about antennas — right now im just throwing a wire up in the trees and feeding it with some coax and a tuner, but i keep reading that for QRP you really want a better antenna situation than you can get away with at higher power. is that actually true or is it overstated. been thinking about building an end fed half wave but not sure where to start with the matchbox. thanks for any input

same situation as you were a while back lol. i finally just sat down one afternoon and did the LoTW setup following a youtube video step by step and it wasnt as bad as i thought, took maybe an hour including waiting for the email confirmation from ARRL. once its done its done. eQSL took like 10 minutes so i did that too just because why not. havent sent any paper cards yet but ive recieved a few from people i worked during a contest and they are pretty cool to have on the desk ngl

which jumper location did you use exactly, J4011 or the one closer to the mic connector? i tried this on mine about a year ago and i swear i used the right one but i still had issues on 60m specifically. everything else opened up fine but 60m tx was flaky. ended up just leaving it and havent gone back in since but your post is making me want to try again

cardboard chassis lol i built a 20m regen in a cracker box once, worked great until humidity got to it. anyway for the leakage i always just wrap the detector section in copper tape and make sure the ground connections are solid, made a noticeable difference on mine. not a perfect fix but cheap and easy to try before you commit to a real enclosure