Lisa Thompson

the TCXO question comes up a lot and honestly my take is it depends on what youre doing. for regular SSB and even FT8 the stock oscillator is fine, the software does enough correction that you wont notice. where it actually matters is stuff like weak signal VHF work or if you're doing any kind of coherent operations or WSPR where you want your frequency accuracy to be really tight over long periods. i did the upgrade on mine mostly because i had the rig open for something else and figured why not, but i wouldnt specifically open it up just for that unless you have a reason. the fan mod is the real quality of life improvement, totally agree. mine was making this faint whine on certain RPMs that drove me crazy during quiet CW sessions. noctua fixed all of that.

so ive been a general for about 3 years now and lately ive been going back and forth on whether to bother with the extra. like i use probably 90% of the bands i want to already and the segments that are extra-only arent ones i spend much time on anyway. but then i start reading about the exam and honestly the theory stuff looks pretty intimidating — the stuff about filter design and transmission line theory and all that. i did okay on my general but that felt manageable, this feels like a different level. i guess my real question is twofold — is the exam as hard as people say, and do you actually use any of that advanced theory in practice or is it just trivia you memorize and forget. i dont have an engineering background or anything, just a curious hobbyist who likes HF and occasionally does some digital modes. anyone been through it recently?

okay so i just got my technician license a couple months ago and ive been lurking on local repeaters mostly but ive started actually keying up a bit. one thing thats been confusing me is the phonetic alphabet stuff. like i know the NATO ones, alpha bravo charlie etc, but ive heard people on the air using completely different words sometimes? like i heard a guy say "Adam" instead of Alpha and "Boy" instead of Bravo and i wasnt sure if he was doing it wrong or if theres some other system im not aware of. is there a rule about which one you have to use or is it more of a just use whatever works thing. i dont want to sound like an idiot on the air but i also dont want to correct someone whos been doing this for 30 years lol

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yeah that gap between copying code in an app vs real signals is totally normal and honestly it trips up almost everyone. the app is clean, consistent speed, no QRM, no fading, and the letters just come one after another in a predictable way. on 40m you've got guys with slightly different timing, QSB, maybe some interference, and suddenly your brain just locks up. what helped me was finding the slow speed CW nets — there's a few that run around 5-10 wpm specifically for people learning and they're super patient. also SKCC has a lot of members who will slow right down for you if you just send QRS. on the sending side, the hesitant thing is almost certainly just tension. people death-grip the paddle when they're nervous and it shows. try to consciously relax your hand and let the keyer do the work. most decent keyers with iambic mode will sort the timing out if you just trust it. honestly the biggest thing is just making contacts even when you feel like you're not ready — you learn way faster in an actual QSO than any other way

yeah field day is its own weird thing honestly, its technically a contest but most clubs treat it more like a public event slash emergency preparedness exercise. you didnt miss the end of the world by missing it, there's always next june. and it's genuinely more fun when you go with a club anyway vs trying to do it solo in my opinion one thing nobody told me when i started contesting was to just pick one band and stay on it the whole contest your first time. dont try to chase multipliers on every band, just plant yourself somewhere on 20m and work whatever you can. makes the logging way less confusing when you're learning

dayton is absolutely worth it at least once, the flea market alone is nuts. i went in 2022 and ended up buying a old kenwood ts-520 for way less than i expected, had to haul it back to the car like three times across the parking lot though lol. get there early on friday if you can, the good stuff goes fast as for local swaps, check the arrl website for your section, they usually have a calendar that's more up to date than most club sites. also just emailing the club secretary directly usually works better than waiting for the website to update, those things never get maintained

yeah honestly if the exercise goes into evening you might want at least a small genny on standby even if you dont plan to use it for the radio. we had a similar thing last summer and around hour nine the laptop battery situation got sketchy and we ended up needing to charge two HTs plus keep the main rig going and it got real tight. a little Honda eu2200 running the chargers only while the radio stays on battery is a pretty clean solution, just keep them physically seperated. also if your doing winlink for any significant traffic load the laptop pulls more than people expect, especially if it's not a purpose-built low draw machine. worth metering it beforehand if you havent already.

yeah the Technician license is where basically everyone starts, it's the entry level one and gets you on VHF/UHF which is plenty to get going. for studying honestly the HamStudy.org website is what most people use these days, its free and it just drills you on the question pool which is the actual pool they pull the test questions from. there's also the ARRL Technician manual if you want something more in depth but a lot of people find the website enough. the test itself is 35 questions and you need a 74% to pass so like 26 right out of 35. its really not as hard as it sounds, most people who put in a couple weeks of study time pass on the first try. find a local club too, they usually do license exam sessions pretty regularly and sometimes even run free classes

So ive been licensed about 8 months now and honestly the whole QSL confirmation thing is kind of overwhelming. Like i understand the basic concept, you worked someone, you want proof of it, great. But then theres LoTW which the ARRL runs, and eQSL which is totally separate, and then actual physical cards in the mail, and some people seem really passionate about one over the other and i just dont know where to even start. Right now i have maybe 60 or 70 contacts logged in WSJT-X and i synced them to QRZ logbook but i havent done anything with LoTW yet because the whole TQSL certificate thing looked confusing and i kept putting it off. Someone at my local club mentioned eQSL is easier to set up but then someone else said the awards programs dont count eQSL confirmations so now im second guessing everything. Do most people just do all three? Is it worth printing actual paper cards? I kind of like the idea of getting physical cards in the mail but i also dont want to spend a ton on printing if nobody sends them back. Any advice from people who have been doing this a while would be really helpful.

yeah i did the same mod on mine about six months ago, same reason honestly, the summer drift was getting annoying on JS8Call. totally agree on the ribbon cable, that thing made me sweat a little. the phase noise thing i cant really confirm either way, i dont have anything sensitive enough to really measure it properly but i feel like band noise on 40 late at night seems a bit cleaner? could be placebo, who knows. the CI-V expansion stuff, are you talking about the thing where you can get the transceiver to report band data to an external amp controller? because i did mess around with that and it works fine through the standard CI-V port with the right baud rate settings, i dont think you actually need any hardware mod for that part. what exactly are you trying to do with it, might be able to point you in the right direction depending on what youre trying to connect.

i went from a 7300 to an 891 actually, not because the 7300 was bad but i needed something i could take in the car. missed the waterfall almost immediately if im honest. for what your doing the 7300 is completely fine, dont let the forum rabbit holes get to you, ive lost weeks to that stuff

congrats on the ticket and the first QSO, that first contact is always a bit nerve wracking no matter how much you prepare. dont worry too much about the baofeng stuff, yeah they have their issues but plenty of people started on one and it does what you need for 2m FM. once you get comfortable on the repeater you might want to look at getting on HF, thats where things really open up. your tech license gets you some HF privileges on 10m and a few other bands so theres no reason to wait on upgrading if you want to explore more. welcome to the hobby

the Koch method is honestly the way to go and i wish someone had told me that when i started instead of wasting months on character charts. basically the idea is you learn at full speed from day one, like 20 wpm or whatever your target is, but you only work on two characters at a time until you can copy them reliably, then you add a third and so on. the whole point is your brain learns to recognize the sound as a whole instead of counting dits and dahs which will absolutely wreck you later when speeds go up. LCWO.net is free and does exactly this, its a website not an app and i found it way better than anything on my phone. give it like 15 minutes a day consistently, that seems to work better than hour long sessions once a week. took me maybe 3 or 4 months before i could pull calls out of a pileup, but i was doing it every single day. the first time something just pops out of the noise and you actually got it, that feeling makes the whole thing worth it

im in almost the exact same boat as you, just got my general like 8 months ago and started logging everything to LoTW right away. one thing that helped me was downloading the ARRL DXCC entity list and just going through it in my logging software to see what ive already worked vs confirmed. it was kind of eye opening how many i had worked but not gotten a confirmation back yet. the bureau cards thing is its own whole rabbit hole honestly. i set up an outgoing bureau account through my section and it takes foreverrr to get stuff back but its way cheaper than going direct for every card. for the rare stuff though i just bite the bullet and go direct with a green stamp or two and hope for the best

That's normal behavior for the 7300's compression algorithm. When processing is engaged, power output increases with more consistent 75W average and 100W peaks. The ALC swings are the compressor doing its job - compressing dynamic range causes more erratic meter movement.

oh man yeah that 13wpm plateau is so real, i think almost everyone hits it somewhere between 10 and 15. what worked for me was forcing myself to practice at speeds i absolutely could NOT copy cleanly. like set LCWO to 18 or even 20wpm and just let it wash over you even if you only catch a letter here and there. feels awful and discouraging at first but your brain starts to adjust to hearing the characters as whole sounds instead of counting dots and dashes. give it a few weeks of that and then drop back to 15 and see how it feels. also the head copying thing -- that just takes time honestly. common words help a lot, like start recognizing CQ and 73 and the and that as single units. some people swear by listening to actual QSOs on the air instead of random letter groups, real words give your brain patterns to grab onto.

Not only is an equivalent Lithium Iron Phosphate battery cheaper than a lead acid battery now, but it's also 3 to 5 times lighter. For your first activation, a 6Ah LiFePO4 will be perfect - I regularly get 6-8 hours of QRP operation from mine. Just make sure to get one with Anderson Powerpoles!

so i picked up a used Bencher BY-1 paddle last month and ive been practicing with it every evening but my character spacing is just terrible. like the letters themselves are coming out okay i think but the spaces between words and letters are just a mess. i slow it down on my keyer (running an old MFJ-464 i borrowed from a club member) and it helps a bit but as soon as i try to speed up even slightly everything falls apart. i spent probably 20 years doing phone and just decided to finally learn CW at 62 years old so maybe im just expecting too much too fast. been using the G4FON trainer software on the computer to practice receiving and thats actually going pretty well, im up to about 12 wpm copy on that. but sending is just humbling me. anyone else go through this? does the spacing thing just click at some point or is there something specific i should be working on

ok so i passed my technician exam about 3 weeks ago and finally got a baofeng set up and i found a local repeater on repeaterbook. i can hear people talking on it just fine but whenever i try to key up and say my callsign nobody responds, sometimes it doesnt even sound like the repeater picked me up at all. im not sure if im doing something wrong or if people are just ignoring me lol. the repeater is listed as 146.940 with a -600 offset which i think i have right. is there a tone i need to set or something? i feel like im missing something obvious