Sarah Thomas43

so im finally making the trip out to dayton this year after talking about it for like 4 years, my buddy keeps telling me to just go already and i guess i finally listened. mostly want to hit the flea market tables early saturday morning before all the good stuff gets picked through. last time i went to our regional hamfest the good rigs were gone by like 8:15 and i got there at 8. anyway if anyone has tips for navigating the swap area or knows which entrance is closest to the outdoor tables id appreciate it, ive never been to xenia before either so kind of winging the whole trip

honestly just do it. i put it off for like three years telling myself the same thing and then i sat down with the ARRL Extra Class manual for a couple months and just... did it. the exam itself is not as scary as the question pool makes it look because a lot of the really deep theory questions have answers that you can kind of logic your way through once you understand the basics even a little bit. the transmission line stuff tripped me up too at first but once you get the mental picture of standing wave ratios and why they matter it starts to make more sense. i wont pretend i fully understand every single topic on there but you dont need to be an engineer to pass. hamstudy plus a decent textbook and you should be fine in a few weeks of regular study. the extra band segments are nice too, 40m especially feels less crowded down there.

so anyway i finally got one about three weeks ago after debating it forever and honestly i dont know why i waited this long. been running an old TS-570 for probably eight years and while that radio never let me down i knew i was missing out on stuff. the 7300 is just a completely different experience, the waterfall alone changed how i operate, i actually catch stuff now that id have totally missed before just scrolling past on the panadapter. one thing i wasn't expecting was how different the audio sounds on receive, way more presence somehow, i dunno how to describe it exactly. had to mess with the filters and the twin passband tuning for a bit before i found settings i liked but once i did it was hard to go back to how i had the 570 set up. also the built in ATU handles my off-center fed dipole pretty good, not perfect but good enough that im not running out to the shack every 20 minutes. only gripe i have so far is the knob feel is kinda plasticky compared to the 570, small thing but you notice it when youre spinning the VFO for a while. anyone else made this kind of jump from an older Kenwood or Yaesu to the 7300 and had the same adjustment period or am i just overthinking it

i was in the same boat last year, knew nothing going in. i used the Ham Radio Prep app on my phone and just did it while watching tv at night for like 3 weeks and passed first try. the math freaked me out too but its really not bad at all, maybe 4 or 5 questions on the whole test that involve any actual numbers. just dont overthink it. the test is 35 questions and you need 26 right to pass so you have a little room for error too which helps with nerves.

the ALC thing is actually the key piece you're missing i think. on the 7300 specifically you want to see the ALC just barely touching the top of the scale on voice peaks, not sitting there pinned the whole time you're talking. if its pegged solid that usually means your mic gain is cranked too high and you're probably generating a lot of splatter which is why people say you sound rough. for a starting point i'd back the mic gain down until ALC is just kissing the limit on peaks then add compression slowly. the built in comp on the 7300 is actually pretty decent, i run mine around 5-6 and it helps punch through on marginal conditions without completely wrecking the audio. the TX bandwidth you set sounds reasonable, some guys go a little wider like up to 2800 on the high end but 2700 is fine for most contacts. the stock mic on that radio is honestly not bad once you get the levels right, its not a heil but its usable. just make sure you're holding it correctly too, those electret mics are really sensitive to how far away you are from the element

yeah the backup personnel thing is probably the most common gap in almost every ARES group i've been involved with, and ive been doing this since the late 90s. everyone practices their own assigned role and then one person doesn't show and the whole thing gets shaky. what i've pushed for in our group is that at least two or three people can credibly run net control, not just one designated person. we do a thing where we rotate who runs the weekly nets specifically so people get reps in a low stakes environment before it matters. the ICS paperwork thing is real too. theres a reason served agencies drill on that stuff constantly and we sometimes treat it like a checkbox. if you havent done it under any kind of simulated pressure the forms feel way more complicated than they are. the good news is it does get smoother. first time i handled a ICS-213 traffic message in a real activation i definitely had to look at my cheat sheet twice. sounds like a solid first drill though, the fact that you noticed those gaps means youre paying attention to the right stuff.

congrats on the activation, 47 contacts for a first time out is honestly solid especially if you werent pre-announcing. to answer your log question, yeah you upload the ADIF directly on the wwff.cc site, there should be a log submission link once you're logged into your account. if you're activating a KFF reference you'd go through the WWFF North America page i believe, or it might redirect you correctly from the main site. it took me a couple tries to figure out the flow the first time. for announcing, most people use the WWFF Facebook groups and also the activator mailing list if your national group has one. there's also a spots page on the wwff.cc portal. honestly though a lot of activators just self-spot through whatever smartphone app they have handy, some use Ham Alert to trigger alerts for chasers who have set up filters for WWFF references. the pileup thing mostly comes down to how many dedicated chasers have you on their alert list, once you do a few activations and people recognize your callsign it tends to pick up. WWFF and POTA share some chasers but they really are separate programs with separate logs so yeah you want to make sure you're getting credit in both places if the reference qualifies for both, which some do.

so ive been licensed for about 8 months now and a buddy at the club keeps telling me i need to try CQ WW this october. i finally got my HF privileges sorted out (general class) and ive been making some random contacts here and there on 40m and 20m but nothing serious. i dont really know what to expect from a contest that big. like is it complete chaos on the bands or is it actually manageable if youre just doing it casually for fun and not seriously trying to win anything also ive been reading a bit about SOTA and wondering if thats something totally separate or if people sometimes do SOTA activations during contest weekends. probably a dumb question but i genuinely dont know how all these different events interact with each other. any advice from people who have actually done CQ WW would be really appreciated, especially if you remember what it was like your first time jumping in

I passed mine last spring and honestly just did hamstudy for like 3 weeks. I was getting above 85% consistently on the practice tests so I just went and took it. I did not read any book at all lol. I mean I probably should learn more of the theory eventually but for just getting the ticket it worked fine for me. the hardest part for me was the antenna and propagation questions because i had zero background in any of that stuff. but you see the same questions enough times that you kinda figure out the patterns

12 contacts on your first one is pretty solid honestly, some people struggle to get the 4 minimum especially if they dont get a spot out. i had a disaster on my second activation where my feedline connector just came apart in the cold and i spent like 20 minutes fixing it with numb fingers so you're already ahead of where i was

General is definitely harder than tech but not like impossibly so. the electrical theory gets a bit deeper and theres more band plan stuff to memorize but if you study the question pool for a few weeks you should be fine. i used hamstudy.org and just drilled questions every day for maybe 3 weeks and passed with room to spare. as for whether to get the license first or the radio first, personally id say get the license. no point dropping money on an HF rig before you even know what privileges youre going to have, and honestly studying for General will teach you a lot about HF operating that helps you make a better decision about what radio to buy anyway. you'll start understanding why people argue about different rigs and modes and all that. and yeah techs do have some HF privileges, mostly 10 meters with phone and some CW segments on lower bands i think, but its pretty limited. General opens up a huge chunk of 40, 15, 10 and partial 20 meters which is where most of the action is

so anyway i've been a ham for about two years now and i kept hearing people mention dxwatch and the dx cluster and i just kind of nodded along pretending i knew what they were talking about lol. finally sat down last weekend and actually figured it out and man i wish someone had just explained it to me earlier. basically for anyone else who was as confused as me — dxwatch pulls spots from a bunch of cluster nodes all over the world and you can filter by band, mode, continent, whatever. so if youre chasing dx you can just watch the screen and see when something interesting pops up instead of just spinning the dial hoping. i had it open on my laptop next to my radio and worked a few stations i never would have found on my own. also been messing around with the QRZ logbook which is pretty decent for keeping track of things, and there's that little dx alert thing where it tells you if a callsign you look up is a new entity for you. didnt realize it did that until recently. are there other tools people are using that i should know about? feels like i've been operating half blind for two years.

honestly the theory isnt as brutal as it looks at first glance. i remember staring at those impedance matching questions and thinking there was no way i was gonna pass but if you spend a couple weeks with the ARRL extra class manual or even just hamstudy.org and grind the question pool it starts to click. the thing is you dont have to actually deeply understand all the math behind every question, some of it you can reason through once you see the pattern in how theyre asking it. the filter and transmission line stuff is probably the part most people get tripped up on but even that, if you watch a few youtube videos on the basics of reactance it helps a lot. took me maybe 6 weeks of studying on and off and i passed with room to spare. the privileges on 80 and 40 are nice, that little extra slice of phone actually comes in handy more than i expected for finding a clear frequency during busy weekends.

good timing on joining ARES, they'll teach you a lot. okay so the way i think about go-kits is you build around your mission first, not around gear. for ARES EOC support you probably dont need a full portable antenna setup if there's already infrastructure there, so that changes things a lot compared to someone doing field comms from scratch. for power the bioenno stuff is solid, i've been running a 30ah lifepo4 for a couple years now and it handles a full 12 hour shift on the 991 without breaking a sweat as long as im not running high power the whole time. jackery works too but the lifepo4 chemistry handles being discharged and recharged more regularly without degrading as fast. get a small PWM or MPPT solar panel too so you can top it off if the deployment goes long. for cables i just started using those velcro cable ties and labeling everything with a label maker. sounds boring but pulling out a labeled bag that says "SO239 to BNC adapters" is a lifesaver at 2am during an activation. also keep a laminated sheet in the kit with your frequencies, PL tones, and the contact list for your net. you'd be surprised how much your brain goes blank when stuff is actually going down.

i just got my technician last spring and been reading about qrp a lot, havent built anything yet but threads like this make me want to try. quick question though, when you say 9:1 unun with a random wire, how long was the wire roughly? i keep seeing different numbers and im not sure what actually works vs what people just happen to have in their backpack

congrats on your first activation, sounds like you pulled it off. yeah 4 QSOs is the minimum and it sounds like you hit it so you should be good. the S2S contact absolutely counts toward your 4, and on top of that both you and the other activator get bonus S2S points which is kind of a nice little extra. def worth noting those separately when you log because the database tracks them. the SOTA Spotter app is really for self-spotting while you're on the hill so chasers can find you in real time, you dont have to use it but your pile will be way smaller without it. some folks use SOTAwatch or just post to the reflector ahead of time to get an alert out. sounds like you did fine though, get the log submitted and watch those points roll in lol

nice work man, that germany contact on qrp is always a good feeling. i do a lot of pota too and honestly the wire antenna thing is so underrated, people show up with giant masts and all this stuff and im just like... a random wire in a tree does fine most days. what summit did you do if you dont mind me asking

yeah the TCXO on those is a genuine improvement, not placebo. i did mine probably 4 years ago and same experience. the stock oscillator on the 817 was never great and yaesu knew it which is why they sold the TCXO-9 as an option in the first place. as far as other mods, honestly the one thing i'd actually recommend is the internal battery pack upgrade if you're doing any portable work. not a performance thing but swapping to a higher capacity lithium pack makes a real difference in the field. some people do the PA mod you mentioned but from what i've read the gain is marginal like maybe half a watt on a good day and the risk of killing the finals on a radio that's getting harder to find parts for just doesnt seem worth it to me. the thermal management in that radio isnt great to begin with so adding more dissipation seems like asking for trouble eventually.

congrats on the first one, it absolutely gets easier. the first couple activations you're basically just trying to remember everything at the same time and it feels like a lot. after maybe 3 or 4 you'll have a system and it becomes second nature. the ranger thing happens a lot, honestly most of them are pretty positive about it once you explain. i usually bring a little printed card with a brief explanation of what amateur radio is and the WWFF program specifically, some rangers have never heard of it and think you're doing something weird with a radio. saved me a few awkward conversations. 61 contacts for a debut is solid by the way, a lot of first timers dont quite make the 44 threshold because they underestimate how long setup takes or pick a reference with terrible propagation conditions. sounds like you picked well.

honestly the extra exam got me nervous too but it wasnt as brutal as i expected. the filter stuff and the smith chart questions tripped me up at first but after going through the question pool a few times it starts clicking. i dont think i could derive any of that math from scratch but for the exam you really just need to recognize the patterns. the privileges i actually do use — i like operating near the bottom of 20m and that's extra only territory so for me it was worth it. just do the hamstudy thing every day for a month or so and you'll probably be fine

cut long, always cut long. seriously like add 6 inches per side minimum and then trim toward resonance with an analyzer or SWR meter. wire is cheap and cutting it back takes two minutes but you cant add length once its gone. stranded is fine at 40m, the skin effect stuff only really matters at VHF and above, dont overthink it. on the balun question — honestly for a basic backyard dipole you can get away without one but youll probably notice some RF on the coax shield and it can mess with the pattern a bit. i just wind a few turns of the coax into a choke coil near the feedpoint and call it a day, works well enough. but if you want to do it right a 1:1 current balun there is the proper move. for a first build though just get it in the air and see how it plays, you can always add stuff later.

yeah what he said about the sidebands is the thing people dont realize at first. i made that mistake early on, had my dial sitting right at the edge thinking i was legal and someone pointed out my upper sideband audio was spilling over. felt pretty dumb but hey thats how you learn also worth knowing that the band plan the arrl publishes is kind of a gentlemans agreement on top of the actual FCC allocations. like the digital segments and stuff are not law exactly, just what everyone agreed to do. the part about general vs extra privileges though, that IS the actual regulation so you gotta respect that one

yeah what he said. also id suggest getting to your station a bit early just so you can do a radio check with net control before things kick off. nothing worse than discovering your HT isnt hitting the repeater when the runners are already coming through. some of those marathon routes go through weird terrain and you might need to find a better spot to stand or think about whether a whip antenna upgrade would help. the phonetic alphabet thing -- dont stress it. if you blank on one just say the letter, people will understand you, especially in a friendly local event like this. the ICS stuff and proper procedures matter more in a real disaster activation but for a race support gig everyone is pretty relaxed about it.

I've found GQRX more stable for long-duration monitoring sessions, especially for weak signal EME work. The AGC behavior in SDR++ still needs work for moon bounce applications. Stick with GQRX for serious weak signal work until SDR++ matures more.

took me about 8 months total to feel solid at 20, but i wasnt super consistent with practice so probably couldve done it faster. one thing nobody told me early on -- sending matters as much as copying. i spent all my time on receive and my fist was terrible which actually made copying harder too somehow, like it all connects. get a straight key or a paddle and just send along with the trainer audio, it really does help