Daniel Smith

so ive been licensed for about 4 months now and i keep seeing people throw around stuff like QSL, QRM, QTH and honestly theres like a hundred of them and i dont know where to start. i know QSL means like confirming a contact or something and QTH is your location but beyond that im totally lost. like what does QSB mean and why do people say 73 at the end of everything, is that a Q code too or something different. also sometimes i see people write things like OM or YL and i dont think those are Q codes but idk. basically just trying to get a handle on the shorthand because it feels like everyone else just knows this stuff and i missed the memo

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.

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

I'm considering adding an external linear amplifier to my IC-7300 setup but I keep reading about power overshoot problems. Most Icom's have a tx power overshoot problem when feeding an amplifier. Its rarely a problem but its there. Can anyone explain exactly what this means and if there are any practical workarounds? I run 100W on 20M and 40M mostly SSB with occasional FT8.
The amp I'm looking at is the AL-811H. Should I be concerned about this overshoot affecting the amp or is it something I can just ignore?

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.

so ive been going back and forth on this for like two months now and i think im just going to ask and stop second guessing myself. my lot is roughly 60 feet wide and maybe 120 deep, suburban neighborhood, HOA isnt terrible but i do need to be somewhat low profile. right now i have nothing on 40m and thats the band i most want to work in the evenings.
the obvious answer everyone gives is a dipole but the problem is i dont really have a clean east-west or north-south run of 66 feet without either crossing the driveway or ending up 8 feet off the ground on one end which i know is going to kill the pattern. i was thinking about an inverted V off a 30 foot mast in the backyard, apex at maybe 28 feet and the legs going down at like 45 degrees. other option is a vertical, maybe a trap vertical or homebrew quarterwave with some radials thrown in the grass.
i know the inverted V is going to radiate higher angle stuff which is fine for regional contacts and honestly thats mostly what i do, but im also not opposed to building a proper vertical if the radial situation is manageable. the ground here is pretty decent, not rocky, decent moisture. anyway what would you guys actually do with this lot, not theoretically, like if this was your yard

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.