Daniel Smith

the wind thing is real, i use a painters pole now instead of a tripod and just guy it out with some paracord. way more stable and doesnt weigh much. also keep a spare piece of wire in the bag always, ive bailed myself out of the counterpoise situation before too so you're definatley not alone there

so the short version is the FCC allocation is the actual law, the band plan is just a voluntary gentlemens agreement that most people follow to keep things organized. you HAVE to stay within the FCC limits or you're technically in violation, but the band plan stuff within those limits is more about courtesy and avoiding interference with other modes. the band edge thing is a real concern though and your elmer should've explained it better. the issue is your signal has sidebands and if you're running SSB and you set your dial to exactly 7.000 your actual transmitted signal is going to extend below that depending on which sideband and how wide your audio is. so you can end up with part of your transmission outside the allocation without even realizing it. most people say stay at least 3 khz inside the edge to be safe, some say more. its not always that you'll get caught but you could cause interference to other services and that's a real problem. for 40m as a general you've got phone privileges from 7.175 up to 7.300 if i remember right, double check that against part 97 though.

the ALC thing is real, totally agree with that. also worth checking if you have any RF getting back into the shack because that can cause all kinds of weird audio issues that look like a mic or settings problem but arent. i spent like three weeks tweaking my audio before i figured out i had RF on the feedline shield coming back into the rig through the USB connection. ferrite on the cable fixed it immediately and suddenly everything sounded way cleaner. anyway condenser vs dynamic for SSB — dynamic is generally preferred, condensers tend to pick up too much room noise and HVAC and whatever else is around you which doesnt help on a noisy band. the SM-50 or an Heil PR-40 if you want to spend more are popular for a reason but honestly theres cheaper options that work fine. just something with a cardioid pattern and decent midrange response, SSB doesnt need a flat studio response, you actually want something that emphasizes the 2-3kHz range a bit where speech intelligibility lives.

Had the same issue with my UV-5R! Make sure you're setting T-CTC (transmit tone) to 123.0, not R-CTC. The menu system is confusing at first. Refer to your radio's user manual for instructions on how to do this. Once you get it right, you'll hear the courtesy beep when you unkey.

I'm also pretty new to this (only done 2 activations so far) and the spotting thing is huge like the previous reply said. I was shocked how fast chasers responded once I got spotted. also just make sure your KX2 battery is fully charged lol, I made the mistake of assuming mine was fine and it was at like 40% when I got to the top. still worked out but stressed me out more than it needed to

im pretty new to all this, just got my tech last fall and im studying for general now, but i keep hearing people talk about 10m like its this magical thing when conditions are good. is it really that different from like 40 or 20 meters for working dx? i have a little vertical in my backyard that supposedly covers up to 10m but ive never actually heard much on there so i kind of gave up on it. maybe i need to check during the day more.

It's easier to cut wire off than add it back, so always start long. Your PVC center insulator is probably not the issue. I'd check your coax connections first and make sure you're measuring SWR at the antenna feedpoint, not just at the radio.

your math is basically right and for repeater work you're genuinely not going to notice the difference. half a db either way on 2m FM into a repeater that's probably 20 over s9 anyway is just not a real world problem. the guy at the club probably just has an opinion and ran with it. now if you were doing EME or weak signal meteor scatter yeah every tenth of a db starts mattering and you'd want the best feedline you could get. but for what you're describing i wouldnt touch it. save the LMR-400 money for a better antenna down the road if you want to actually improve the station, the X50A is decent but there are better collinears out there if you ever want to stretch a little further on simplex.

yeah the rx sensitivity falloff is real but honestly for anything stronger than like a marginal signal you wont notice. i checked mine with a signal generator after doing the mod and you lose maybe 15-20dB on the far edges of the extended range compared to in-band, which sounds bad but most things youre going to want to listen to outside the ham bands arent exactly weak. airband comms, weather, shortwave broadcasts, all fine. one thing i'll add that nobody ever mentions is make sure you take photos before you move anything because putting it back stock if you ever sell it is a pain if you cant remember exactly which pads had diodes and which didnt. ask me how i know lol

so i was sitting out in the garage last night with the ft-891 just spinning the dial on 40m and honestly it was just nice. no contest, no dx chasing, no specific reason. just listening to a couple of guys on a ragchew net somewhere in the midwest talking about their gardens and old trucks. i dont even know why but that kind of stuff hits different after a long week of work. like theres something grounding about it. anyway just curious if anyone else goes through phases like that where youre not really trying to accomplish anything hamwise and its still somehow the best session youve had in a while

Try using FT8 and FT4 digital modes for weak-signal DX, especially on 10m and 12m. I've been having success with 20m through 15m during daylight, then switching to 80m and 40m at night for strong regional contacts. The geomagnetic disturbances definitely impact the higher bands more than the lower ones.

congrats on the first activation, 47 contacts is a solid first outing. the reference error in the logbook uploader is usually because the KFF prefix needs to be entered a specific way depending on which country log you're submitting to — if you're in the US you want to make sure you're submitting through the WWFF USA affiliate (wwff.us i think) rather than the global one, or at least thats been my experience. they have slightly different upload portals and it confused me for a while too. for spotting, parksnpeaks works fine and a lot of WWFF operators use it. there's also the WWFF online logger that has a spot function built in. honestly just pick one and stick with it, hunters will find you either way as long as you're on a common watering hole frequency like 14.244 or 7.244. some people post to the facebook groups too which i know isnt everyones thing but it does pull in extra hunters.

ok so i passed my general a few months ago and ive been mostly just listening on 40m trying to figure out where to jump in. i keep seeing people talking about band edges and not operating too close to them but i dont really understand what that means practically. like is it about the carrier frequency or the actual signal bandwidth or what and also the ARRL band plan vs the actual FCC allocations seem different sometimes? or am i reading it wrong. someone at my local club said something about how generals cant go below 7.175 on phone but then i heard guys calling cq way down around 7.150 and they sounded american to me. just trying to figure out where i can actually key up without stepping on someone or going out of my priv

yeah the listening thing is huge and most people completely ignore it. i operated on a small DXpedition to a caribbean island a few years back, nothing super rare but still a solid pileup for a couple days, and from the DX end you really can tell who has any clue and who doesnt. the guys who just blast their full callsign over and over are basically invisible, you can never pull them out cleanly. what actually gets through is someone sending cleanly, once, and then just shutting up. the RIT trick you mentioned on SSB is real. a lot of operators running split arent necessarily listening exactly where theyre saying to call, theyre drifting around a bit looking for clear signals. so if you park yourself exactly on the announced split frequency youre competing with 400 other guys who read the same cluster spot. i used to tune around maybe 500 hz either side and often found a much cleaner window. also timing matters a lot, try to call right at the end of the DX stations transmission before the pileup really kicks back in.