Frank Williams

yeah done almost exactly this with a nano and an IC-7300 a couple years back. the band data stuff works great once you get the baud rate sorted, i think mine was 9600 but double check that in the radio menu. for the relays just grab one of those 8-channel relay boards off amazon, they run like $8 and they already have the optocouplers and transistors built in so you dont have to worry about frying anything. they take a logic low to trigger which threw me off at first but once i figured that out it was smooth sailing. i used a SainSmart board but honestly any of them should work the same. the flyback diode thing is real important if youre doing discrete relays, i learned that the hard way with a dead nano before i switched to the prebuilt board

yeah the Extra theory is a step up for sure, dont let anyone tell you otherwise. i spent probably 6 weeks going through the question pool before i felt comfortable and even then there were some questions about transmission line theory and Class A vs Class C amplifier operation where i was basically just hoping i remembered the right answer. but honestly the studying was worth it because i actually do understand my radio better now, like when somethings off with my SWR i have a better feel for whats happening instead of just poking around blind. the band privileges are real too, especially on 40 and 80 meters the Extra portion at the bottom is way less crowded and you find some solid DX down there that generals just cant touch. so yeah id say go for it, just dont expect it to be a cakewalk

so ive been chasing this for a few weeks now and i can hear the downlink fine on my FT-817 with a handheld yagi but i cannot for the life of me get my uplink to actually hit the bird. im using AO-7 in mode B mostly because the pass times work out better for me and ive got it set up in SO-239 split mode or whatever its called. the thing thats killing me is the doppler. i know i need to apply doppler correction on both uplink and downlink but every time i try to do it manually i feel like im chasing my own tail — i tune the downlink, then my uplink drifts, then i cant find my own signal anymore. ive been using Gpredict for tracking and it seems accurate enough, at least the pass predictions match what im actually hearing. someone told me i should just let the downlink sit and only correct the uplink but that doesnt feel right either? also not sure if my uplink power is even making it through, like how do you actually know if youre hitting the transponder or just shouting into the void. running maybe 3-4 watts out of the 817 to a 3el yagi on 70cm, downlink on a 5el on 2m. any thoughts appreciated, been lurking here for a while and finally just had to ask

yeah the LM386 is kind of notorious for that hiss, its a cheap part and it shows. the cap trick helps a bit but youre not going to get a quiet audio stage out of it no matter what you do. a lot of people swap it out for an LM380 or just build a simple discrete class A preamp stage — makes a noticeable difference. also check your bypass caps on the supply, even small amounts of ripple on the rail gets amplified right along with everything else and sounds like hiss. as for the image rejection, for a first build id honestly just live with it and learn the radio as-is. once you understand what youre hearing you can add a bandpass filter later and youll actually appreciate what it does. putting too many fixes in at once makes it hard to know what actually changed anything.

so ive been noticing 10 and 12 meters doing some interesting things the past few weeks and i wasnt sure if it was just local stuff or if the solar flux has actually been climbing. checked pskreporter this morning and there were spots from europe coming into my area around 1400 UTC which honestly i havent seen in a while. ran a few FT8 contacts with a station in Italy and one in Spain before it faded out. solar flux index was sitting around 180 something yesterday which i guess is pretty solid for this part of the cycle? im not super experienced reading the solar data stuff, ive kind of just been using dxmaps and watching the cluster but i feel like i should understand whats actually driving this better. does a higher SFI always mean better HF conditions or is it more complicated than that. also noticed 15 meters was open basically all afternoon which was a nice surprise, worked a couple JA stations which was cool for me since im still building up my DXCC totals. anyway curious if others are seeing the same thing or if i just got lucky with timing

so ive been a general for about three years now and i keep putting off the extra exam because honestly the math scared me off. i do okay with the practical stuff, been doing HF for a while, work some dx, nothing crazy. but every time i crack open the question pool i hit those filter design questions or the network analysis stuff and my eyes kind of glaze over. my study buddy keeps telling me just memorize the answers and move on but that feels wrong somehow, like i actually want to understand why a pi network does what it does you know. is it worth digging into the theory or should i just grind the pool and get it done. also does having extra actually change anything day to day on the air or is it mostly just the lower band segments that matter

so i've been pretty frustrated with HF the last couple months, mostly just hearing noise on 20 and 40, occasionally getting some contacts but nothing spectacular. yesterday i just happened to spin over to 10 meters around 2pm local time and it was absolutely alive, i mean signals from south america were coming in like they were next door. worked a few stations in Brazil and Argentina and then it just kind of faded out again after maybe 45 minutes. i checked the solar flux index after and it was sitting up around 160-something which i guess is pretty decent? im still trying to wrap my head around how all this actually works. like is there a threshold where 10m starts to reliably open up or is it always kind of random like that. also wondering if we're still climbing toward the solar cycle peak or if we're past it already because ive been seeing a lot of conflicting stuff online

so ive been trying to learn CW for about 3 months now and i finally got myself a decent set of paddles, nothing fancy just a cheap Bencher clone i found on ebay but it seems well built enough. the problem im running into is my characters come out kind of mushy, like the dits and dahs run together or i get extra dits where i dont want them. im using a Winkeyer USB for the keyer and i honestly dont even know if ive got the settings dialed in right. i watched some youtube videos on squeeze keying vs single lever but i think maybe i just dont have the muscle memory yet. is there a good way to practice getting cleaner timing? i try to just send random words but maybe im doing it wrong. also wondering if the paddle tension matters a lot because mine feels pretty light, like the contacts close really easily. been copying at about 12 wpm and sending is probably worse than my receive at this point which i guess is normal.

yeah what he said about the bureau timing is right, i think my record wait was like 14 months for a card from somewhere in eastern europe lol. some people skip the bureau entirely and just go direct but you gotta include a green stamp or an IRC for return postage which gets annoying. i use all three honestly — LoTW for the awards stuff, eQSL because some guys i work regularly only use that one, and paper cards because i just like them. some of the cards you get back are really cool looking, especially from dx stations. its kind of a nice physical reminder of the contact in a way thats hard to explain to non hams

yeah what he said. i remember my first one and i was way too geared up for it lol. brought like half my shack in a bag. ended up just monitoring a repeater for six hours and eating vending machine coffee. not glamorous but that's kind of the point right, you're there so someone can say the comms capability is staffed. one thing i'd add — introduce yourself to the served agency folks when you get there if you get a chance. the emergency managers sometimes dont really know who the ham people are or what we do and it helps to just be a normal friendly person rather than the mysterious radio guy in the corner. goes a long way for the relationship between ARES and the EOC long term.

ok so i got my tech license about 3 months ago and ive been mostly just listening on my local 2m repeater. there's a net that runs every tuesday night and i really want to check in but honestly i have no idea what im supposed to say or when to say it. like i know you wait for the net control to ask for check-ins but then what? do i just say my callsign? do i say my name? my location? i dont want to step on anyone or say the wrong thing and make a fool of myself on the air. also one thing i noticed is sometimes people come back with like signal reports or ask if you have traffic, what does traffic even mean in this context? i thought that was just for like emergency nets or something. anyway if anyone can walk me through what a typical local 2m net check-in actually sounds like in practice that would be really helpful. i've tried googling it but everything i find is either super formal ARRL stuff or about HF nets which seems different

I'm having trouble getting reliable CAT control working on my IC-9700 when operating through linear transponders like AO-73. The Doppler correction seems to work fine on FM birds, but when I engage tracking on the linear sats, the frequency drift is noticeable and QSOs tend to drift across the transponder passband. I'm using Ham Radio Deluxe with the linear transponder tracking option enabled. Has anyone else experienced similar issues with the 9700's satellite mode? My current setup is running HRD 6.8 with LSB on uplink and USB on downlink as recommended for inverting transponders, but the tracking just doesn't seem as precise as it should be. Any suggestions for improving the CAT control accuracy?

that sidetone pitch shift on longer dashes is almost certainly a power supply sag issue — your battery voltage is probably drooping slightly under the TX load and since the sidetone oscillator is probably sharing that rail it follows the voltage down. easy fix is either a small cap across the supply at the board or a separate regulated rail for the audio section if you have room. either way nothing to worry about operationally, it's not affecting your RF output. 11 contacts in 90 minutes with a homebrew rig at 5 watts is a solid afternoon. colorado and ontario on 40m in the afternoon is decent propagation work too, not a gimme. once you get that spurious sorted out you'll be in good shape. have you thought about adding a low pass filter if you dont already have one? even a simple 5 element chebyshev will clean things up considerably and takes maybe 30 minutes to wind.

so i've been hearing some buzz about the Tri-County hamfest coming up in like 3 weeks and wondering if anyone from this group is planning to go. Last year i picked up a decent MFJ tuner for like 20 bucks and a bunch of coax connectors so im definitely going back. also heard they might have a bigger tailgate section this time around which would be great cause that's honestly the best part anyway if anyone wants to carpool from the north side of town let me know, i usually get there pretty early to beat the crowds before all the good stuff gets picked up

so i finally got to participate in an actual ARES activation last weekend, not just a drill. there was a pretty bad storm system that came through our county and the county EOC requested we staff some positions for about 18 hours while some cell infrastructure was down in the southern part of the county. ive been in ARES for about a year now but all ive done is the monthly nets and one SET exercise so this was kind of a big deal for me personally. overall it went really well i think. i was assigned to a shelter site with another ham i hadnt worked with before and we handled message traffic back to the EOC for most of the night. nothing super complicated but there were moments where i had to use ICS forms for real and not just in a classroom setting and that was actually kind of eye opening. the training does prepare you but theres something different about doing it when it actually matters. anyway my questions are kind of scattered. first, how do you all handle logging during an activation when things get busy? i felt like i was dropping the ball keeping up with both the radio and the written log at the same time. second, does your group do any kind of after action review? ours did a brief one the next day but i feel like we could have gone deeper. and honestly im just curious how other groups run their activations vs what we did, feels like there's a lot of variation out there

yeah what he said about monitoring your own output is good advice. but also — have you tried just manually keying a position beacon and then immediately going to aprs.fi to see if it shows up? sometimes the site caches weirdly or your browser is showing you old data. sounds dumb but ive been burned by that before, sat there convinced my setup was broken for an hour before i hit ctrl-f5. also worth checking if your local digi is actually running. some of those machines are volunteer-maintained and go down without notice. check if anyone else in your area is getting gated or if the digi itself is showing up on aprs.fi

honestly for casual FM repeater chat you can pretty much do whatever works, nobody is gonna call the FCC on you for saying the letter B instead of Bravo lol. the phonetics really matter when youre in a noisy situation or working a weak signal where one wrong letter could mess up a callsign or a piece of info. on HF especially when theres QRM or a station is barely above the noise floor thats when you really want to nail the NATO stuff because Bravo and Delta sound nothing alike even in static but B and D can both disappear into noise and become the same mush. i went through the whole thing when i was starting out, just keep using the real NATO ones and eventually they wire themselves into your brain. Sugar is not a thing by the way, thats the old phonetics from before the NATO standard got sorted out in the 50s. Sierra is correct and will always be correct

I've seen this exact issue! The problem is often that the TNC-X isn't properly entering KISS mode. Try sending "KISS ON" manually through the serial terminal before starting Direwolf. Also verify your audio levels - APRS has no error correction, so excessive packets or poor audio means lost packets forever.

i went through basically the exact same thing lol. what finally clicked for me was just sending random letters over and over instead of trying to do real words. like just dit-dah dit-dah for A until my hand stopped thinking about it. also i read somewhere that 15-18 wpm is actually easier to learn iambic at than super slow speeds because the timing is more forgiving with the squeeze, something about the element timing working in your favor. not sure if thats true for everyone but it worked for me weirdly enough

so ive been messing around with my audio chain for a while now trying to get a cleaner signal on 40m SSB and honestly its kind of overwhelming how many variables there are. mic gain, processor settings, EQ, the mic itself, ALC behavior... like where do you even start my current setup is an IC-7300 with the stock heil boom mic i got a few years back, running into the radio direct no external processing. guys on the air tell me i sound okay but ive heard recordings of myself and the low end is pretty muddy and i roll off too early on the highs. speech isnt super intelligible at the DX end from what i can tell ive read that cutting below 300hz and boosting a little around 2-3khz helps with intelligibility but i dont really know how to apply that with just the built in stuff on the 7300. does anyone actually use the parametric EQ in that radio and get good results or is it kind of a waste of time without an external processor. also whats the deal with ALC — i keep reading conflicting stuff about whether you want it barely moving or pinned or somewhere in between not trying to be an audiophile about it just want to be actually readable when conditions are rough

im working up to joining our local ARES group and this is actually really helpful to read. i keep putting it off because i feel like i dont know enough yet but maybe thats just an excuse. what HF or VHF gear do you typically run during something like that, just whatever portable stuff you bring or does the EOC have its own equipment?

so this has been bugging me for a couple weeks now. im running a TM-D710G in the truck with a GPS puck mounted on the dash, the GPS is locking fine (green light, good coordinates showing on the head unit) but when i look myself up on aprs.fi im showing up like 40 miles northeast of where i actually am. its not even close, its a completely different town. at first i thought it was the GPS being goofy but ive verified the coordinates on the radio display match where i actually am so the data going into the radio is correct. my path is set to WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 which should be fine for mobile. im wondering if theres some weird digipeater in the area that's mangling the position data or if maybe theres an old beacon that got cached somewhere with my callsign. i did have a different setup a few months ago when i was experimenting with an opentracker, could that be confusing the APRS-IS somehow? anybody run into something like this before? kinda frustrating when you're trying to use it for actual tracking during a net.

so I've been meaning to do this for like two years now and I finally just ordered a Pelican case and I'm going to stop procrastinating and actually build a proper go-kit. I'm a general class, been licensed about three years, mostly do HF from home but I'm also on the local ARES team and honestly every time we have a drill I'm showing up with like a bag of random stuff that barely works together and I feel like an idiot next to the guys who have these nice organized setups. right now I'm planning to put in my FT-891 for HF, a little 40ah LiFePO4 battery, a power pole distribution panel thingy, and my comet antenna and some coax. also throwing in a small notebook and pencil obviously. I feel like I'm forgetting something obvious though. like I know food and water is important but thats more the personal deployment bag. this is just the radio kit. anyone gone through this process and have stuff they wish they'd included from the start? or things they threw in that turned out to be useless dead weight?