Thomas Anderson

Great question! QTH stands for "My location is _____," and when followed by a question mark, the Q-signal turns into a question. So technically "QTH Springfield" is correct, not "QTH IS Springfield." That said, everyone understands what you mean. I lean toward proper usage in formal nets but don't stress it in casual QSOs.

I'm comparing different study resources for my Tech exam. HamStudy.org offers free flashcards and practice tests for the 2022-2026 Technician pool, while ARRL has their official study guide and exam review software. For those who've used both, which approach helped you retain the material better? I learn best with a mix of reading and practice questions. Budget is a consideration - free vs paid optionsTime constraint - need to test in 4 weeks

yeah the touchscreen thing caught me too when i first got mine, i think ive got like two years on it now. you kind of learn to hover rather than rest but it does get annoying during a contest when youre moving fast. someone on here mentioned you can lock certain parts of the screen but i never bothered to dig into that. the waterfall point is real though. i came from a much older rig with no spectrum display at all and it felt like going from a paper map to GPS honestly. 17m openings especially, that band is so variable and the visual really helps you see whats happening in realtime rather than guessing. what antenna are you running for 160? im curious what grumpy looks like, mine tunes up ok but i suspect im just not getting out as well as i should be on that band.

went to that one last year i think. parking was kind of a mess but inside was pretty good, lotsa tables. bought a MFJ tuner for cheap that works fine. bring cash

not a dumb question at all, everyone goes through this when they upgrade. so for 40m as a general you get phone privileges starting at 7.175 MHz up to 7.300 MHz. below that down to 7.025 is CW only for technicians and generals, and extra class has a bit more room on the lower end for phone too i think down to 7.150 but dont quote me on that exactly. the band edge thing is a real practical concern not just superstition. your transmitted signal has sidebands and if youre running SSB right at 7.300 for example your actual signal can spill outside the allocation pretty easily depending on your rig and how its set up. the FCC doesnt care that your dial said 7.300, they care where your signal actually is. so most people stay a few kHz inside just to be safe, like dont park yourself on 7.298 calling CQ with a wide audio setup. the gentlemens agreement stuff is more about things like 7.200 being kind of informally used for certain nets or 7.290 being a calling frequency in some regions. not legally binding just courtesy stuff you pick up over time

so ive been licensed for about 8 months now (general class) and everyone keeps telling me i should try a contest but honestly the whole thing feels a little overwhelming. like i get the basic idea, you make as many contacts as possible in a set amount of time, but theres so much else going on that i dont fully understand. exchange formats, multipliers, log checking... its a lot. i did listen to CQ WW last october just to see what it sounded like and the bands were absolutely insane, signals wall to wall and everyone calling so fast. i couldnt even figure out how to break in. field day is coming up and my local club is doing a group setup which seems like a more chill way to get started. is that a reasonable first step or should i just try jumping into something solo first? also curious if anyone here does SOTA activations because that seems kind of contest-ish but more relaxed? i dunno, just trying to figure out where to jump in.

Your rate plateau might be technique, not equipment. High powered and rare stations get significant advantage by "running" - calling CQ and working stations one after another on the same frequency for very high QSO rate. Focus on finding good run frequencies and holding them longer. Don't give up a frequency after just 2-3 CQs with no answers.

Welcome to the hobby! Be courteous to new operators and offer help when appropriate. Remember, we all started somewhere; patience and encouragement go a long way. Each net has its own style - some want just calls, others like name/location. Listen to a few to get the feel for it. You did great!

so ive been putting this off for like two years but finally cracked open the 857D last weekend to do the TX expand mod. for anyone who hasnt done it, its just a couple jumpers on the main board, takes maybe 20 minutes if you dont fumble around like i did finding the right pads. the service manual marks them pretty clearly once you actually look at the right page. anyway the point isnt really the mod itself, its that while i had the thing open i noticed the stock cooling situation is kind of a joke. the fan is tiny and it basically only kicks on at full duty when the rig is already warm. ive seen people add a secondary fan or at least swap to a higher CFM unit, thinking about doing that next since i run it mobile and in the summer the PA can get pretty toasty on long ragchews on 10m. anyone done the fan swap on one of these? or any other mods worth doing while its already open? i saw something about a receive preamp mod a while back but cant find the thread now.

haha yeah mine was terrible too, i called CQ on 40m like two days after getting my general and some DX station came back to me and i panicked and just started reading my callsign over and over. the guy eventually gave up i think. took me a few weeks before i felt comfortable just having a normal sounding contact. dont sweat it, everyone sounds awkward at first and the regulars on repeaters have heard it all a hundred times

so i passed my technician exam like three weeks ago and i got my callsign and everything but im still kind of fuzzy on what frequencies im actually allowed to use. i know i have VHF and UHF mostly but somebody at my club meeting said something about how techs have some HF privileges too and i wasnt sure if he meant like just CW or voice too. i looked at part 97 for about 20 minutes and honestly it kind of made my eyes glaze over, the language is just really dense. is there somewhere that explains this in plain english or does someone just want to give me the quick version of what im working with here

im kind of in the same boat as you, been at it maybe 3 months now and the on-air stuff is SO different from practice. one thing that helped me was finding recordings of actual QSOs on youtube and just listening to those instead of the app sometimes, gets your ear used to the rhythm of real operating rather than the robotic practice tones. also what paddles did you end up with off ebay if you dont mind me asking, trying to figure out if i should upgrade from the one im using

so i finally participated in my first full-scale SET (simulated emergency test) after being an ARES member for about eight months and honestly i learned more in those six hours than i had in probably the previous four months of nets and training sessions combined. figured id write up some thoughts while its still fresh because some of this stuff genuinely surprised me. the scenario was a fictional earthquake that knocked out a chunk of the county's infrastructure and we were tasked with providing comms between the EOC, a couple of shelter sites, and the hospital. sounds simple enough on paper but when you're actually doing it the little things just pile up. my antenna situation at the shelter site was terrible because i hadnt really thought through where i'd actually be deploying versus just running stuff from home. had to jury rig a dipole off a fence and a car door which worked but was not exactly ideal. also discovered my go bag had a power strip but i forgot to actually test whether the inverter i packed could handle my radio plus the laptop. spoiler: it couldn't, at least not great. the bigger lesson for me was message handling. i've done winlink stuff before but in a real scenario where the net control is juggling six stations and people at the shelter are handing you actual written messages with semi-legible handwriting, it gets chaotic fast. i was transposing numbers in addresses and had to ask for repeats more than i'd like to admit. anyway curious if anyone else has done these exercises and what kind of stuff caught you off guard the first time, or really any time honestly. feels like every one of these you find something new that needs work.

totally get the confusion, it tripped me up too when I first started. here's how I think about it — LoTW is the one that really counts for ARRL awards like DXCC and WAS, so that's the most important one to keep up with if you care about awards at all. I just batch upload my log every week or two through TQSL, takes like 2 minutes once you've done it a few times. eQSL is kind of its own thing, some people swear by it especially for certain awards and it has a nice visual card thing going on, but a lot of serious DXers dont really bother with it. i do upload there too just because why not, but it's not my priority. paper cards are honestly kind of a separate hobby within the hobby at this point lol. i still send them for special contacts — first DX, new country, something memorable — but i dont send one for every qso, that would be expensive and time consuming. the bureau is slow, like months slow, but its cheap. direct mail is faster but costs more obviously. dont stress about doing all three for every contact. get LoTW working reliably first, thats the main thing.

so ive been trying to get into CW for about 3 months now and i finally feel like im at a point where im not completely embarrassed to call CQ but my timing is still all over the place. im using a Bencher BY-1 paddle hooked up to my IC-7300's internal keyer and sometimes the dits and dahs just kind of mush together especially when i try to speed up past like 15 wpm. i've been practicing with the Koch method on lcwo.net which has been really helpful for receiving but when it comes to actually sending on the paddle i think my squeeze technique is wrong or something. like i'll be sending a letter and my thumb will barely touch the dit paddle and i get like 3 extra dits. i have the tension set pretty light because i read somewhere that was better but maybe thats the problem? also unrelated but does anyone else find it way easier to copy CW in their head vs writing it down? im trying to get away from writing every letter and just listening but i'm not sure if thats a good idea at this stage. anyway any advice appreciated, this community has been super helpful when i was studying for my general.

had the HackRF for about 3 years before i picked up an RSP1A and honestly for pure receive the SDRplay walks all over it. the HackRF is great if you genuinely need that TX side for things like replay attacks in security research or want to transmit WSPR on HF without digging out a proper rig, but for monitoring its kind of mediocre. you really do need a decent LNA up front to get anything useful out of it on the lower bands for your satellite stuff the SDRplay is going to be noticeably better. meteor scatter decoding on Meteor-M2 i went from maybe 60% of a pass being decodable with the RTL dongle to getting nearly complete images with the RSP1A. the SDRuno software that comes with it is a bit clunky but it works, and you can use it with SDR# or CubicSDR or pretty much anything via the API anyway only thing id say is if theres even a small chance you want to actually transmit anything in the future, grab the HackRF and just put a cheap LNA4ALL or similar in front of it and accept the slightly worse rx performance. if youre pretty sure its receive only work for the foreseeable future, get the SDRplay, youll be happier day to day with it

so ive been licensed for about 8 years now and done a fair bit of HF DX, some 2m tropo stuff, but EME has always been this thing in the back of my head that seemed completely out of reach. lately ive been going down the rabbit hole reading about it and now im not sure if im more excited or more overwhelmed. from what i understand you basically need a serious antenna setup — like at minimum a decent sized yagi or dish — plus a clean low noise preamp right at the feedpoint, and then a good amount of power on TX. ive seen people talk about 4 yagis, even big dish setups like the old moonbouncers used to run. my question is more like... whats the realistic minimum to actually make contacts these days? im thinking 2m EME specifically. i have a TS-590 but im guessing i need a dedicated 2m rig or at least a transverter. also how does the timing work with JT65 because from what i read the moon has to be up at both ends at the same time which seems like it really limits when you can operate. is there like a specific window each day or does it vary a lot by season and location. im in the midwest so i assume my windows differ from say the west coast. anyway just trying to get a realistic picture before i start spending money. appreciate any input from people who are actually doing this.

honestly if you want an actual conversation on weak signal digital modes have you tried PSK31 at all? i know its not as sensitive as FT8 by like 10-12dB but you type in real time, the other person types back, it actually feels like radio. 20m around 14.070 still has people on it. not tons but its not dead. RTTY too if you want something with more of a contest scene behind it. i use JS8Call occasionally and agree with what the other guy said about 40m evenings. also there's a windows app called JS8Call Monitor that helps you see whos active before you even transmit which helps a lot with the dead waterfall problem.

My callsign phonetically is Kilo X-ray Five Juliet Tango. If conditions are rough, I'll repeat it phonetically several times. ALL amateurs should KNOW those phonetics, and in my experience they DO! It corrects any misunderstandings very rapidly. The key is repetition with clear phonetics when they don't get it the first time.

yeah 10m has been treating me well too. i caught a JA station on Wednesday evening which surprised me because the gray line had already passed. my KX2 into a vertical and the signal was solid 59. these are good times to be a ham for sure. on the Icom thing, i saw a blurry photo on one of the Facebook groups that looked like a new IC-T something but honestly could be anything. i've learned not to get too hyped until they actually announce it properly, got burned waiting on the IC-705 rumors for like two years before that finally came out haha

so i've been interested in ham radio for a while now, my neighbor has a big antenna setup and it got me curious. i looked it up and apparently you have to pass a test to even get started? i found like a hundred different websites and apps and i dont really know which ones are actually worth using vs which ones are just trying to sell me something. im mostly just wondering what other people used when they were studying for the technician exam. did you just memorize the question pool or actually try to understand the material? i feel like i could probably just brute force memorize everything but i dont know if thats a good idea long term. also how hard is the test actually, like be honest with me because some people online make it sound super easy and others act like its a huge deal

Bureau cards can take years to arrive but they do eventually show up! I just got a batch from 2022 contacts last week. The bulk sorting and mailing process means big delays but huge cost savings. Worth it for casual QSOs.