Kevin O'Brien

ok so I just upgraded to general last month and I know I got more privileges now but im honestly still confused about the actual frequencies I can use on 40 meters. like I know there's a portion that's phone and a portion that's CW but every chart I find online looks slightly different and some of them say things like "band edge" which I dont really understand either. my elmer told me to stay away from the very edges of my allocation but didn't really explain why. is it a legal thing or just a courtesy thing? and is the ARRL band plan the thing I should be following or is that just a suggestion? sorry if this is a dumb question I just dont want to accidentally transmit somewhere I shouldnt

so ive been licensed for about 6 years now, mostly HF stuff, some 2m meteor scatter here and there, but EME has always been kind of the holy grail thing in the back of my mind. figured id ask here before i go down a rabbit hole that costs me three months of research and probably money i shouldnt spend main question is whats the realistic minimum setup to actually make contacts on EME these days. i know back in the day you needed a massive array and a moonrise window and basically a team of people but ive been reading that JT65 and the digital modes changed that a lot. is that true or are people overselling how accessible it is now on 2m specifically im wondering if a single yagi situation is even viable or if im wasting my time without at least a 2x8 array or something. i have a IC-9700 already so the radio side might be ok, and i could swing maybe a medium sized yagi, probably 15-18 elements. preamp would be a mast mounted MGF1302 based unit i think. just not sure if the whole thing comes together or if im just going to sit there calling and hearing nothing also the tracking thing - do people actually build their own az/el rotors for this or is there decent commercial stuff that isnt completely insane in price

so ive been running my remotehams setup for about 8 months now and everything was working great until last week. now when i try to connect from work the audio keeps cutting out every few minutes and sometimes the frequency just jumps around by itself. at home on the same network everything seems fine though anyone else seeing this kind of behavior? im wondering if its something on their end or if my internet at work is just getting flaky. the connection shows as good in the client but something is definitely not right

Remember you only need 26 out of 35 questions correct to pass, so you can miss up to 9 questions and still get your license! I used the ARRL manual alongside HamStudy and found that understanding the 'why' behind answers helped more than just memorizing. Don't skip questions during practice - always guess since you have a 25% chance of getting it right.

We've been running AllStar for three years now - audio quality is fantastic and the flexibility is unmatched. Linked and repeated audio is superb. Setup takes more effort than EchoLink, but the control you get is worth it. Can link multiple nodes permanently or on-demand.

so ive been thinking about getting into CW for a while now, mostly because i keep hearing people talk about how much better it is for weak signal stuff and i finally got my general ticket so i figure now is as good a time as any to try the thing is i have no idea where to even start. like do you just memorize the dots and dashes on a chart or is there some better way to go about it? i downloaded a couple apps but they all seem kind of different in their approach and i dont know which one to actually stick with. someone at my club mentioned the Koch method but i didnt really follow what they were explaining i guess what im asking is how did you guys actually learn it and what would you do differently if you had to start over

so ive been meaning to do this for like two years and after the ice storm last month that knocked out power for four days i finally got serious about it. got a Yaesu FT-891 that im planning to use as the main rig, got a 40ah LiFePO4 battery from a local guy, and i have a random wire antenna i can throw up pretty quick. also have a SignaLink for digital modes since our local ARES group does a lot of Winlink traffic. what i keep second guessing myself on is the little stuff. like i have the big pieces but i feel like when i actually need this thing its gonna be the dumb stuff i forgot. do you guys keep a printed frequency list in the kit or just rely on memory? and what about logging, are people still doing paper logs for field stuff or is everyone running some laptop with their kit these days. also not sure how much coax to keep in the bag, right now i have one 25 foot run of RG8X but im wondering if i should throw in another piece just in case. anyway if anyone has a checklist or just wants to share what ended up being the thing they almost forgot id love to hear it.

so ive been going back and forth on this for like three weeks now and figured id just ask. im trying to decide between putting up a simple 40m dipole fed with coax up in my backyard versus one of those ground mounted verticals. my lot is maybe 80x120 feet so not huge but not terrible either. i have two decent anchor points, one on the house and one on a tree that's probably 35 feet up. the vertical stuff i keep reading about sounds appealing because of the low angle radiation for dx but then every elmer ive talked to says just put up a dipole and work the world. i mostly want to do dx chasing on 40 and maybe 80 once i get comfortable. not really interested in contests just ragchewing and trying to grab some interesting callsigns. the other thing is i live in a pretty average suburban neighborhood, not super strict HOA but i try not to draw attention either. thoughts? am i massively overthinking a pretty simple decision here