Angela Washington

Perfect timing on this question! I had the same confusion when I upgraded. Understanding and adhering to band plans is essential for maintaining order and preventing interference on the airwaves. Print out an ARRL band plan chart and tape it near your radio - saved me from several potential violations.

honestly the question pool method works fine for most people, the technician exam isnt super deep technically so if you use something like HamStudy.org and just do practice exams until you're consistently hitting like 85% or better you'll be fine on test day. the actual pool only has 35 questions pulled from it so you dont need to memorize every single one perfectly. that said if you actually want to understand what youre doing on the air once you pass, the ARRL Tech study guide is pretty decent, its like 20 bucks and explains the why behind stuff which helps it stick. i studied maybe 2 weeks casually before my exam and passed easy, your mileage may vary depending on how much electronics background you have coming in

yeah im kind of in the same boat, been at it for about two months now. what helped me a lot was just listening to stuff even when im not actively trying to copy it, like having a CW practice file playing while im doing dishes or whatever. not sure if thats actually a real technique or i just made it up but my brain seems to recognize letters faster now the app i ended up sticking with is Morse Mania, its not fancy but it works. the one thing nobody told me is that its really easy to burn out if you try to do too much at once so i keep my sessions short

yeah this trips up a lot of new generals, dont feel bad. so the short version is the FCC allocation is the law, thats the hard limit you cannot cross. the band plan is basically a gentlemens agreement that the amateur community uses to keep things organized within those legal limits. you wont get fined for ignoring the band plan but youll probably get an earful on the air. for 40m as a general your phone priveliges start at 7.175 MHz and go up to 7.300. below that down to 7.025 is where the extras hang out for phone. the digital and cw stuff is down in the lower part. now the band edge thing is real important — your signal has sidebands, so if youre doing USB and you set your dial to 7.300 your actual signal is going above that into frequencies you arent allowed to use. most people stay a few kHz inside the edge just to be safe. the rule of thumb ive always used is stay at least 3 kHz inside the upper edge when running SSB.

yeah dont try to run them both pointing at the same WSJT-X instance, thats gonna be a mess. what i do for the state QSO parties is just run N1MM as the primary and set WSJT-X to send UDP to N1MM's port directly. Log4OM gets completely shut down on contest days. then after the contest i just import the ADIF from N1MM into Log4OM for the permanent log. little bit of cleanup sometimes on the fields but nothing terrible. its not the most elegant solution but it works and i stopped fighting with port conflicts two years ago when i did basically the same thing you described and lost like 40 contacts to a logging split-brain situation that was not fun to sort out

yeah its mostly situational honestly. on a clear local repeater where everyone knows each other people dont bother spelling out phonetics every single time, you just say your call and move on. but on HF especially when the band is noisy or youre working someone far away, phonetics become really important because letters like B and D or M and N can sound identical through static and QSB. the NATO phonetics exist specifically so that every letter has a totally distinct sound that wont get confused even on a terrible signal. there isnt a hard rule in part 97 that says you MUST use phonetics, its more of a best practice thing. the FCC just says you have to identify with your callsign, how you do it is kind of up to you and the situation. that said during contests or when working DX you really want to use them because the other op might be copying hundreds of calls and needs to get yours right the first time. and in emcomm situations its basically considered mandatory because accuracy matters. so just read the situation, if the band is clean and local, probably fine either way, if its noisy or long distance, use the phonetics.

dont underestimate how much junk 40m sucks up at night, even with a perfect frontend you're gonna hear broadcast intermod sometimes especially if you're anywhere near the eastern seaboard. that said if its happening constantly and not just at night then yeah something is off with the filter. the 2N3904 preamp idea is fine but 15dB is a lot before a mixer with that kind of IP3, id try 6 or 8dB at most if you want any preamp at all.

i went from a 7300 to the TS-890 last year and the receiver really is noticeably better on crowded band conditions, like during a contest weekend when 40m is a wall of signals the 890 just picks things apart cleaner. but im a pretty active contester so that matters to me. for what you're saying your use is, probably hard to justify unless you just want new gear, which is a valid reason too honestly, no shame in it

yeah theres no hard rule that says you MUST use phonetics every single time, its more just best practice especially when theres any chance of confusion. on a clear local repeater with a strong signal you can usually get away with just saying the letters and people will copy you fine. but on HF or when the band is noisy or youre working someone who doesnt know your call, phonetics really help cut down on the back and forth. the sugar/king stuff is just old timers using what they learned before NATO standardized everything. used to be a lot of regional and military variations floating around. the NATO alphabet became the standard for good reason — if youre ever doing anything cross-border or with emergency comms groups its the one everyone agrees on. i still hear "Adam" for Alpha from guys who came up through old ARRL materials. doesnt really matter on a local repeater but if youre doing ARES or anything like that just stick to the NATO ones, avoids any confusion.

Don't overlook the obvious - verify your dummy load and power meter are accurate across all bands. I've seen "defective" rigs that were just measurement errors. Also, thermal issues can cause band-specific power rollback if the PA temperature sensors are acting up.

the -18dB thing with FT8 still blows my mind every time, im running 10 watts to a compromised antenna in an apartment and working EU from the midwest on 20m on a mediocre day. that said i totally get what you mean about it feeling hollow after a while havent tried JS8Call yet but this thread is making me want to, is the setup much different from WSJT-X? im using a SignaLink and an older Kenwood so wondering if itll just work or if theres a whole new config nightmare waiting for me

QCX mini is a great first kit, glad it worked out. the QRP Labs stuff is pretty well documented and Hans does a good job with the design so most people get it going without too many headaches. your EFHW setup is about as good as it gets for portable honestly, that combination works really well on 40. i've been doing POTA almost exclusively QRP for about three years now, mostly with a KX2 which is a different animal price-wise but if you ever decide you want something with more band coverage it's worth saving up for. that said i know guys who activate every weekend with a QCX and a wire and log 10+ contacts no problem. the key is really just the antenna and picking a time when the band's doing something. early morning on 40 in summer you can work half the country at 5 watts without breaking a sweat. the efficiency thing is what gets me about QRP, you start actually paying attention to everything — feedline loss, antenna height, even which direction you're throwing the wire. it makes you a better operator i think.

so ive been trying to get my APRS setup working properly and im losing my mind a little. running a TM-D710G connected to a raspberry pi with direwolf, feeding into APRS-IS through an ethernet connection. the radio is beaconing fine, i can hear my own packets come back out of the speaker and direwolf is decoding them, but when i check aprs.fi i sometimes see my position and sometimes i dont. its totally random. sometimes it shows up within 30 seconds, sometimes not for like 10 minutes, sometimes not at all. i checked the path and im using WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 which should be getting picked up by the local digis. there are at least 3 digipeaters within range according to the map. RF environment seems decent, im running 50 watts into a vertical on the roof. the thing that really confuses me is that direwolf shows good decode quality on its own packets when it hears them come back, so the RF side seems okay. anyone dealt with this kind of intermittent thing before? starting to wonder if its a timing issue with my beacon interval or maybe the IGate closest to me is having issues. set to beacon every 2 minutes right now.

honestly the General exam isnt that much harder than Tech, just more of the same kind of stuff. i used HamStudy.org and just drilled questions every night for like two weeks while watching tv. the electrical theory sections look scarier than they are, most of the math questions you can just memorize the answers without really understanding the formula. the propagation stuff is actually pretty interesting once you get into it, you start to understand why 40m is great at night and 10m goes nuts during high solar flux and all that. just go through the question pool a couple times and youll be fine. the hardest part for me was the band plan stuff, keeping track of which frequencies you get as a General vs what you already had as a Tech.

yeah the glitchy switching sounds like a debounce thing for sure. what i did on a similar project was add a small delay after detecting the band change — like dont act on it until the voltage has been stable for maybe 50-100ms. just poll it in a loop and reset a counter every time it changes, only trigger the relay when the counter hits your threshold. cleaned up all the spurious switching on mine. also those cheap 8 channel relay boards are fine for the control side but if youre actually switching RF through them forget it, the contacts arent really rated for that and youll get all kinds of problems, insertion loss, arcing if youre running any power at all. you want proper coax relays for the RF path, denkovi or maybe look at what hy-gain sells. the arduino just fires the coil on those, keeps the RF completely separate. and honestly stick with the uno for this, a pi is massive overkill and it boots slow, you dont want your antenna switcher sitting there for 30 seconds while linux comes up every time you flip the radio on.

so ive been a general for about 3 years now and i keep going back and forth on whether to bother with the extra exam. like i mostly do HF, some 40m and 20m SSB, occasional digital stuff on PSK31 and lately a bit of FT8. the general privileges have been pretty much fine for everything ive wanted to do honestly. but lately ive been lurking on some of the extra portions of 80m and 40m and it does sound less crowded down there, especially during contests when the general segment is just absolute chaos. also someone at my club mentioned the theory questions on the extra exam are actually interesting, not just memorization, like the stuff on filter design and transmission line theory and whatever. is that true or is it still mostly just memorizing answers from the pool like the technician and general were i guess my main question is — for people who actually went through and got their extra, did you feel like you learned something useful or did you just grind the question pool and forget it all after the test. and how long did it realistically take to study, im not a super fast learner with the math stuff

yeah that tracks with my experience honestly. the vertical noise thing is real — they pick up local QRM like crazy unless you have a really clean RF environment. 30 feet isnt exactly ideal for a dipole either, thats only about a third of a wavelength up on 40, so your takeoff angle isnt as low as people imagine, but its still a decent antenna. the vertical should theoretically win on low angle stuff once you get past say 1500 miles but in practice the extra noise floor really hurts you. 16 radials is ok but if you could get to 30 or 32 you'd probably see it tighten up a bit on transmit at least. also trap verticals give up something to a monoband vertical — the traps have losses that add up. if you built a real quarterwave 40m vertical with 30+ radials you might change your tune. or you might not, depends on your local noise. i ran a comparison at my place for about 6 months, switchable from the shack, and the vertical only really won consistently on paths to JA and VK late at night. everything else the dipole was competitive or better.

so ive been a general for about two years now and i keep going back and forth on whether to bother with the extra. like i mostly do HF on the usual general segments and honestly i rarely feel like i need more spectrum access. but then i hear people talking about the theory stuff on the extra exam and im genuinely curious about some of it — the filter design stuff, the impedance matching, all that. i guess my question is does learning that stuff actually make you a better operator or is it mostly just trivia you cram and forget. also what even changes once you have full privileges, like practically speaking day to day. i feel like i already have access to most of the good stuff as a general but maybe im wrong about that

Been running the MPAS Lite for two seasons now - the frequency agility is outstanding. Just tune the rig's internal ATU and you're golden across entire bands. However, efficiency takes a hit below 30m compared to resonant antennas. Setup is literally 90 seconds including counterpoise deployment.

yeah RF getting into the arduino is absolutely a real problem, been there. i built a similar rig for a remotely tuned loop and first time i keyed up on 40m the thing just reset constantly. what helped me most was ferrite cores on every wire going into the arduino, like every single one, and also keeping the sense lines as short as possible. i also put the whole arduino in a small metal enclosure and tied that to chassis ground, made a huge difference. the encoder idea for position feedback is solid. i used a cheap 600ppr optical encoder off ebay and it worked fine once i debounced it in software. one thing to watch though — if your stepper skips steps under load the encoder wont save you, youll lose sync. might be worth oversizing the motor a bit or at least testing it under the actual load the antenna mechanism puts on it before you commit to the design. also on the nano vs uno question, nano is fine, ive used both. just annoying sometimes that the nano clone boards need the old bootloader driver on windows but thats a one time thing.

so i finally did my first activation last weekend on W4T/SU-048 and honestly it was a mix of good and bad. i've been chasing summits for about 8 months now and kept telling myself i'd get out there and actually activate one, and my buddy finally dragged me up the trail saturday morning. we brought the KX2 and a random wire end-fed, maybe 40 feet of wire, and i had this whole plan to get on 20m and 40m, make my 4 contacts, and call it a victory. well the wire kept wanting to fall out of the tree i slung it over and the SWR was all over the place on 40 which is usually my bread and butter. ended up just camping on 20m for about 45 minutes and i did get 6 contacts including one guy in Germany which honestly made my whole day. didn't self-spot because i forgot to set up the SOTAwatch app before i left the parking lot and cell service at the summit was barely one bar. so i was basically calling CQ into the void hoping someone was tuning around. kinda surprised i got anyone at all. next time i'll actually prepare the night before like a normal person. anyway just wanted to share since this community got me into chasing in the first place. any tips for dealing with flaky antenna setups on summits? the ground was really rocky so i couldn't stake anything down well either.

I did my first one last spring and honestly just went to a state wildlife area and it worked out fine. Checked the reference beforehand on the website like the other guy said. The 44 contact thing felt like a lot to me when i started but on 40m during a weekend afternoon i hit it in like 45 minutes which surprised me. Biggest thing i learned was bring more coax than you think you need lol, i ended up throwing my dipole legs kind of crooked because i ran short and it still worked but you know.

RTTY contester here so take this with a grain of salt but i think people undersell how much FT8 hurt weak signal HF in general. like yeah the mode is incredible technically, -20 something dB SNR is nuts, but the 15 second sequencing and the contact format basically stripped out everything that made weak signal ops interesting to me JS8Call I keep meaning to try. does it handle the timing drift differently than FT8? i had a friend say somthing about it being more forgiving on that end but wasnt sure if that was accurate or just wishful thinking. also what software are you using on the logging side, i cant find a clean way to get JS8Call to talk to my logging software without a bunch of manual entry

i tried JS8Call for a bit but tbh my setup wasnt great at the time and i couldnt tell if the lack of responses was the mode or just my antenna situation. been meaning to revisit it. does it play nice with a modest station or do you really need solid signal levels to get anything going

so ive been a general for about two years now and i keep going back and forth on whether to bother with the extra. like i mostly do HF and some digital stuff, occasionally get on 40m SSB. the thing is i looked at some of the practice questions and honestly some of that theory is pretty intense. the stuff about impedance matching networks and filter design and all the operating privileges differences... im not sure how much of it i actually need to know vs just need to memorize to pass the test. does the extra actually open up a lot more spectrum or is it kind of marginal depending on what you do? i know about the CW sub-bands and the phone segments but in practice do you actually find yourself needing those extra slices of spectrum often? would appreciate hearing from people who actually went through it and whether they felt like it was worth the study time