Kevin O'Brien

so ive been a general for about two years now and i keep going back and forth on whether to bother with the extra. i mostly do HF, some digital, occasional ssb on 40 and 20. the privileges on the extra are appealing obviously especially that little slice on the lower end of 40 where the dx pileups always seem to be happening when im trying to break in with my general privileges but ive been looking at some of the practice questions online and some of that theory stuff is... a lot. like the filter design questions and the transmission line stuff and theres some RF propagation math that i honestly dont remember from school. im not an engineer or anything, just a regular guy who got into the hobby a few years back. anyone go through this recently and can give me a realistic idea of what i was getting myself into before i buy a study guide

so i finally did my first summit activation last weekend, took the ft-818 and a linked dipole up W4T/SU-072 which is only like a 2 mile hike but still, wasnt sure how the setup would go. spotted myself on sotawatch before i left the car which felt weird but apparently thats just what you do. ended up with 14 contacts on 20m and a handful on 40 before the clouds rolled in and i figured id better get down before it got sketchy. the whole thing took maybe 90 minutes on the summit and honestly i was expecting it to be way more of a hassle than it was. the linked dipole over a random tree branch works way better than i thought it would for something that took 10 minutes to throw up.

so i finally pulled the trigger on an ubitx v6 kit after probably six months of just reading about it and watching youtube videos. got it all together over a weekend and honestly the build wasnt as scary as i thought it would be. i did manage to solder one connector backwards the first time but caught it before i powered it up which was lucky. first contact was a guy in ohio running 5 watts on 40 meters and i was just blown away that my little box with like 8 or 9 watts actually made it. i know thats not some crazy DX or anything but for me sitting there with something i actually built it felt pretty significant. been a ham for about 2 years now and mostly just did voice on VHF so getting into HF and especially CW-capable rigs has been a whole new world. anyway my question for anyone who's been doing QRP for a while — is the jump from 5 watts to even 10 watts actually meaningful or is it kind of pointless to chase those extra few watts when i could just focus on antenna work instead. i keep reading that antenna is king but also feel like i dont fully understand where the efficiency gains really come from at these low power levels

so ive been licensed for about 3 years now mostly doing HF and some 2m local stuff but last week i finally tried working through one of the AO satellites after a buddy at the club kept bugging me to try it. used my handheld and a tape measure yagi i built from that old ARRL article and honestly it was way more chaotic than i expected i could hear the linear transponder fine, found my downlink on 70cm no problem, but i could not for the life of me figure out how to actually make a contact. like i was transmitting on the uplink and i could sort of hear myself come back down but by the time i figured out the doppler correction i needed to apply i missed the whole pass. the satellite was only above my horizon for like 6 or 7 minutes and i wasted most of it fumbling with my radio been using Gpredict to track and that part actually works great, got the TLE data updated and the footprint display is really helpful. but whats the deal with doppler on linear transponders exactly — do i need to correct both the uplink and downlink or just one of them? i've seen different things online and some of it is from like 2009 so i dont know whats still accurate. any advice from people who actually do this regularly would be really appreciated

yeah i was in the same boat when i started checking into nets, felt weirdly nerve wracking for just a radio call. what helped me was just listning to the whole net a few times before jumping in so i could hear how other people did their check-ins. after maybe the third or fourth week it felt totally normal. the special event station thing sounds really cool, our club did one last year for a local historical anniversary and it was a blast. i got to log contacts for a couple hours and we ended up with like 200+ contacts in a day. definitely ask the club, worst they can say is its members only but a lot of times they appreciate the extra hands

yeah the stock icom mics tend to be pretty bassy by default, not ideal for SSB. what you want to do is go into the menu and pull up the TX equalizer settings — on the 7300 you can shape the audio response pretty specifically. a lot of guys run a high-pass filter starting somewhere around 300hz and roll off anything above maybe 2700-2800hz. SSB bandwidth is limited anyway so youre not really losing anything by cutting the lows, youre just getting rid of mud that was never helping intelligibility to begin with. also check your compression settings. a little bit of TX compression can really help punch through noise on HF but if you crank it too far the audio gets that nasty pumping sound and intelligibility actually gets worse. id start with compression around 3-4 on the 7300 scale and see how that sits. get a friend to give you a real signal report, not just an S-meter reading, like actually tell you how the voice sounds on the other end.

mic placement makes a huge difference and nobody talks about it. i was getting the same complaints for months and turned out i was just holding the mic too far away and slightly off axis. once i started keeping it like an inch or two away and talking across it instead of directly into it the reports got way better almost immediately. also check if you have any fan noise or shack background noise getting picked up, that can mask your voice more than people realize especially when the band gets noisy and the other station is trying to pull you out of the mud

yeah what he said about the ALC is spot on. i ran a PR-40 on a 7300 for two years and the mic gain sweet spot for that combo is way lower than you'd think. also one thing nobody mentions is the bass rolloff in the 7300 menu settings — theres a TX bandwidth and an TX bass/treble EQ buried in there and the defaults are not great for voice clarity on SSB. SSB really doesnt need a lot of low end, anything below like 300hz is mostly mud on the band anyway, cutting some of that actually makes you sound clearer and punches through QRM better too. takes some tweaking but its worth going through the menus properly once instead of guessing at it forever.

not dumb questions at all, these are the exact things that trip everybody up at first. the CTCSS thing — you need to find out what tone YOUR specific repeater requires, not just guess 100hz. most repeater clubs post their info online or in a directory like repeaterbook.com, look yours up by frequency and it'll tell you the input tone you need to transmit. the tone the repeater sends OUT on its signal is different from what you need to send IN, though a lot of repeaters use the same tone for both. as for just calling out on a quiet repeater, what you did was totally fine and honestly the right thing to do. just say something like "this is [your callsign] listening" or even just your callsign. sometimes nobody is around monitoring, sometimes people are around but not paying close attention. try different times of day — a lot of the regulars do a morning commute check-in kind of thing, early evening tends to be active too. just keep at it, once you make one contact the rest feels way more natural.

so i passed my technician exam last thursday and just got my callsign showing up in the FCC database yesterday. been lurking on the local 2m repeater for like two weeks before that just listening and honestly it was kind of intimidating, everyone sounds so comfortable and natural on there. anyway i finally keyed up this morning and just said my callsign and that i was a new ham checking in. a guy named Walt came back to me right away and we had a solid 10 minute QSO about nothing in particular, he asked where i was operating from and what radio i had. i have a baofeng uv-5r which i know isnt the fanciest thing but it got the job done. Walt said he remembered his first QSO and seemed genuinely happy to talk. felt good honestly. just wanted to share because i dont really know anyone else who does this hobby and had nobody to tell lol

so ive been at this for about 3 months now, finally got my general and immediately dove into CW because honestly that was the whole reason i got into ham radio in the first place. picked up a cheap single lever paddle off ebay and hooked it to a MFJ keyer and... it sounds awful. like the dits and dahs are all clumped together or sometimes theres these huge gaps where there shouldnt be. i can send the alphabet slowly if i concentrate real hard but the moment i try to speed up even a little it just falls apart. ive watched a ton of youtube videos and i get the concept, squeeze keying vs just using it as two separate straight keys or whatever, but my hand just doesnt cooperate. is this a technique thing or could something actually be wrong with the paddle tension or contact gap? the contacts feel pretty loose to me but i dont really have anything to compare it to. been thinking about just going back to a straight key for a while to build up the rhythm but i dont want to develop bad habits either. any thoughts from people who have been through this?

LoTW is definitely the way to go if you want credits to count efficiently — most serious DXers upload their logs there regularly and when both sides match up you get a confirmed credit automatically. cards still matter for some things, some awards require a certain number of paper QSLs or the DX station might not even be on LoTW, but for your basic DXCC Mixed you can get a long way on LoTW alone for DXCC you're working toward 100 confirmed entities out of the 340 or so on the current list. band endorsements are separate — so if you want DXCC on 20m AND 40m you'd need 100 confirmed on each. most people start with Mixed which pulls from all bands combined as for what to chase, honestly when you're starting out just work everything you hear that sounds new. get your log building. once you're past 100-150 you'll start feeling the gaps and that's when you get more strategic about it. check DX summit or DXwatch to see what's being spotted and just get on. the first hundred comes faster than you think if you put in the time

totally understand the overwhelm, i went through the same thing about two years ago. honestly for where you're at, the FT-60R is a really solid first radio — its not fancy but its built well, audio is loud and clear, and the receive is noticeably better than the cheap chinese stuff. battery lasts forever too which matters more than you'd think when you're just learning the ropes and forget to charge things. the VX-6R is great but youre paying extra for the waterproofing and some other bells and whistles that you probably wont use right away. unless you hike in the rain a lot or something. tri-band is nice to have eventually but honestly on 2m and 70cm youll find 95% of the repeater activity anyway so dont stress about that. for APRS from a handheld you'd either want something like the FT3DR or FT5DR which have it built in, or you can pair a regular HT with an external TNC and your phone using something like APRSdroid — thats actually how a lot of people do it. the built-in APRS radios are pricier but man they're convenient once you get into it. if budget is a real concern the baofengs work, people use them, but plan on spending some time on the programming software to get them set up right and dont expect the receiver to ignore interference as well as the japanese radios do. anyway welcome to the hobby, youre gonna have fun with this

so ive been putting off doing a proper mobile install on my F-150 for like two years now and i finally ordered a Yaesu FTM-400 and a dual band mag mount to start with (yeah yeah i know mag mounts arent ideal but baby steps) and now im staring at the firewall trying to figure out how to get the coax inside without just cramming it through the door jamb which i did on my old car and hated every second of it there's a factory grommet on the passenger side that looks like it might have an unused hole but i cant tell if theres anything running through it already or if poking through would cause problems. i dont really want to drill if i can avoid it. anyone done this on a newer Ford truck or just in general have a good method for running coax through the firewall without making a mess of things

yeah i ran almost exactly this setup for about a year, 7300 plus a rtlsdr on the same box at my remote site. what i found is RemoteHams doesnt really play nice with a simultaneous SDR stream unless you throttle the SDR sample rate way down, like 1.024 Msps or even lower. the panadapter looked terrible but at least it didnt kill the rig audio. eventually i just moved the SDR to a separate pi and ran SDR-connect or whatever its called now on a different port, kept them totally separate and the bandwidth issues mostly went away the audio sync thing you mentioned is a known pain with RemoteHams when the connection gets flaky. theres a jitter buffer setting buried in the client config that helped me a lot, i think i set it to something like 200ms which adds a tiny bit of latency but way better than the choppy garbage i was getting before. not sure where your packet loss is coming from but if its on the remote site end theres not a ton you can do except get a better connection or add a 4g backup

magmounts get a bad rap but honestly a lot of it depends on the mount and the antenna. a cheap no-name magmount with a thin coax is gonna perform like garbage yeah, but something like a Diamond or Larsen on a decent mag base with RG-58 is actually fine for hitting local repeaters. youre not gonna win any DX contests with it but for everyday VHF/UHF mobile use it does the job. that said if this is gonna be a permanent install and you care even a little about signal quality, just drill the hole. i know it feels like a big commitment but once its done you forget about it and the NMO connection is just so much cleaner electrically. ive had both and theres no contest when the antenna is properly mounted to the vehicle body with a good ground plane. the magmount always had this slight tinny quality to received audio on weak stations that went away completely when i switched. for the firewall on the F-150 i think there's a rubber grommet on the passenger side that people use, might want to check the truck forums too honestly they know their specific rigs better than we do sometimes

i cant speak to SO2R specifically cause i havent done it but i did want to mention that even without the second radio there's a lot of rate optimization stuff that probably has more low hanging fruit depending on your setup. like are you running N1MM with the bandmap fully configured and all your packet spots feeding in? i was leaving probably 50-80 QSOs per contest on the table just because my logging keyer timing wasnt dialed and i was waiting too long between exchanges. shaved like 400ms off my CW sending gap and it was noticeable over 24 hours. also the SO2R question kind of depends on what's limiting your score right now. if youre rate-limited because you run out of callers and have to S&P, yeah second radio helps. if youre limited by antenna or location then maybe not as much. just throwing that out there before you go build a whole second station

so i got my general back in march and ive been mostly just rag chewing on 40m and doing some SOTA activations which have been really fun honestly. but everyone keeps telling me i need to try a contest and CQ WW is coming up and i just... dont even know where to start. like do i need special software, do i just tune around and call people, how does the exchange work. i looked up the rules on the CQ website and it kind of made sense but also kind of didnt. also is Field Day a contest or not because ive gotten like three different answers on that lol. my club does a Field Day setup every year and i went last year before i had my ticket but i didnt really understand what was happening. this year i actually want to operate and not just watch people stress out over the generator. anyway if anyone has done CQ WW or even just ARRL sweepstakes or something similar and wants to give me the quick rundown id really appreciate it. im running a modest station, IC-7300 into a dipole up about 30 feet, nothing crazy but it works ok for local stuff.

so ive been a ham for about 3 years now and just got my general last spring, and our local ARES group keeps talking about go-kits and being prepared and honestly i always nodded along like i knew what i was doing but i really dont have anything put together. we had a pretty bad storm roll through last month and there were a few hours where i was thinking, okay if someone actually needed me to go set up somewhere i would show up with... my HT and a prayer basically. so i started doing some research and now im kind of overwhelmed because some people have these giant pelican cases with everything imaginable and other people say just keep it simple. my situation is i live in an apartment so i cant have a big antenna setup or anything permanent, and i drive a small car. i do have an IC-7300 at home and a Baofeng for portable stuff. was thinking maybe a budget around 3-400 dollars to start pulling things together. anyone else build one from scratch and have opinions on what actually matters vs what you think you need but dont?

yeah the 857 uses separate driver transistors for different band groups and 40m shares a stage with some of the other HF bands if i remember right, but the final amp switching is done through band pass filters and a switching network so it could also be a relay or PIN diode not fully switching over. those PIN diodes are a known weak point on the yaesu HF portables especially if the radio ever saw any RF feedback or a bad SWR event. what i'd do first before pulling the PA apart is check the voltages going into the driver stage on 40m versus a working band. if the bias looks right then you're probably looking at the filter switching. theres a service manual floating around that has the voltage charts, way more useful than the schematic alone. also worth checking if the low power follows you if you switch to 39.something vs 41.something — if it drops off sharply at the band edge that points more toward the LPF relay than the PA itself.

I use the DX Spots app daily and it works well for basic monitoring. Would love to see UTC time in the app and a dark mode option though. For alerts, I tried HamAlert but had issues with triggers not working consistently - only getting alerts for 2 prefixes in my list despite knowing these prefixes are being spotted on the cluster.

yeah the spotting thing is always a nice surprise the first time, someone with the app sees your self-spot and suddenly youve got a pileup waiting. KX2 is such a solid choice for that kind of thing too, ive been running one for POTA for about a year and a half and its never let me down. only thing i'd say is maybe look into a slightly bigger lipo eventually, the 3ah can get a little dicey if youre running higher power for a while but for QRP it's probably fine

the doubling up on transmissions thing drives me crazy, ive been in drills where it just devolves into people talking over each other and nothing gets through. kind of makes you realize how much we take the normal repeater etiquette for granted when theres actual stress involved. one thing our group tried was assigning each shelter a specific check-in window instead of open net format and that helped a lot with the chaos, at least in our scenario.

ok so i passed my technician exam like two months ago and ive been trying to figure out exactly what im allowed to do. i know i have HF privileges on 10m but beyond that im honestly lost. i keep reading Part 97 and it just doesnt click for me the way the question pool made it seem like it would. my main confusion is around like... content? i know you cant broadcast music or use it for business but what counts as business exactly. like if i mention my job or something in a QSO is that a violation or is it more about like actually conducting transactions. also is there a rule about how often you have to ID because i thought it was every 10 minutes but someone at my club said something different and now im second guessing myself. sorry if this is a dumb question, just dont want to accidentally step on someones toes or worse get in trouble with the FCC before ive even really gotten started

i was in the same boat not too long ago honestly. one thing that helped me was just picking one tool and sticking with it for a while instead of trying to watch three at once, its kind of overwhelming at first. i use the QRZ one mostly just because im already logged in there for logging anyway. the spots arent always instant but for casual DX hunting its fine