Brian Murphy

so ive been building this 40m direct conversion receiver on and off for about 3 months now, based loosely on the NE602 front end design with an LM386 audio stage bolted on the back end. got it receiving signals finally which felt like a huge win but the audio is just terrible. like there's this low frequency hum that kind of pulses and i cant tell if its mains pickup, oscillator leakage getting into the audio, or what. i built it on ugly style construction on a piece of copper clad so shielding isnt really a thing yet. i did wind my own toroid for the BFO and im not confident the inductance is right. measured it with my cheapo LCR meter and it came out within maybe 10% of where i wanted it. the oscillator does seem stable enough once it warms up, takes like 5 minutes before it settles down though. tuning range is there, im hearing SSB stations so the basic idea is working. has anyone dealt with hum like this in a similar build, wondering if its worth trying to put the whole thing in a metal enclosure first before chasing other problems, or just keep debugging on the bench as-is?

this is something ive been struggling with too, im pretty new to chasing DX seriously and pileups feel kind of chaotic and overwhelming. like i genuinely cant tell where to even start sometimes. one thing i read was to try calling on the edge of the pileup spread but i tried that a few times and it didnt seem to do anything, maybe i was doing it wrong or the timing was off idk. does it matter much which band youre on for technique? i feel like 17m pileups behave different than 20m ones but that might just be my imagination

so ive been running FT8 for about a year and a half now and yeah its great for racking up contacts and working DX i wouldnt have a shot at otherwise on 100w and a dipole, but honestly after a while it starts to feel like im just clicking buttons and watching a map fill up. theres no... conversation? you know what i mean. anyway i stumbled onto JS8Call a few months ago and have been poking at it on and off. the concept is cool - basically takes the weak signal magic of FT8 but lets you actually type messages back and forth instead of the scripted exchange. ive made a handful of contacts on it but activity seems pretty sparse depending on when and where you look. 40m has been the most useful for me so far. my question i guess is whether people here actually use it regularly or if its more of a novelty. like is there a time of day or frequency setup that works better. also curious if anyone has tried running it for any kind of emcomm or preparedness stuff since ive seen some groups mention it for that purpose. the store-and-forward relay thing seems interesting but i havent fully wrapped my head around how that works in practice. not trying to abandon FT8 entirely just wondering if JS8Call is worth putting more time into or if im better off maybe getting into PSK31 if i want actual qso-style contacts

yeah the diode mods on those yaesu radios are pretty well documented, ive done similar on an older FT-897 and its basically the same board layout in a lot of areas. the extended rx is nice but like you said dont expect miracles on the high end. on the DSP filter question — the sherwood mod is probably about as good as youre gonna get without going external. the 857's IF architecture isn't exactly what id call flexible, so you're kind of working within tight constraints. i know some guys have gone to running an outboard audio DSP like a timewave or even just a cheap SDR as a panadapter and monitoring both simultaneously, which sounds overkill but honestly if youre doing a lot of 40m contesting or just working crowded bands it makes a real difference for weak signal work. the radio itself is only gonna give you so much. did you do anything to the PA section? thats the other area people mess with on these, some guys rebias the finals slightly for cleaner output at lower power levels but i never bothered on mine.

nice work. 40m to europe with 30w and an endfed in the trees is totally doable, propagation was actually pretty decent last weekend from what i saw on the cluster. i did a WWFF activation in the spring at a wildlife refuge and had similar results, people really do hunt these references. some of the european operators are super serious about collecting new ones. one thing i'd add — if you want to alert people ahead of time next time, you can post a spot on parksnpeaks or just use the wwff spotting network. made a big difference for me when i announced i was going out, pile was way bigger than when i just showed up cold

so i just got my technician a few months ago and ive been trying to figure out when its actually expected to use the NATO phonetic alphabet versus just saying your callsign normally. like on the local 2m repeater people just say their call straight out most of the time, no phonetics, but then i heard a guy on HF doing it every single time without fail and it made me wonder if theres a rule or if its just a habit thing. also i keep second guessing myself on some of the words. i know alpha bravo charlie and the common ones but then i get to like X and i blank out, is it xray or something else. and does it matter if you use the wrong word as long as the other person understands you or is that gonna annoy people

so ive had this 857D sitting on the bench for about two months waiting for me to get around to doing the extended TX mod and i finally did it last weekend. the mod itself is straightforward, theres that one diode on the main board you clip and suddenly you've got coverage way below and above the normal amateur bands. took me maybe 20 minutes including the time i spent second-guessing myself and looking at the service manual three times to make sure i had the right component. anyway the reason i bring this up is i also went ahead and did the MARS/CAP mod at the same time since i had the lid off anyway, and while i was in there i noticed the stock cooling fan setup is kind of a joke. the thermal management on these radios is not great especially if you're running any kind of digital modes for extended periods. i ended up sourcing a slightly higher CFM fan that fits the same mounting points and wired it to run at a lower voltage most of the time but i jumpered it so it kicks to full speed when the PA gets warm. temps are noticeably better on FT8 sessions now. has anyone else done any internal work on the 857 or 897 series? curious if theres anything else worth doing while i have the tools out. i was thinking about recapping the audio section but not sure if thats actually gonna make a noticeable difference or if im just looking for things to do at this point

so ive been licensed about 8 months now and finally starting to get into chasing DX a little bit. someone at my club mentioned DXwatch and i've been using it alongside the QRZ logbook and also poking around on the QRZ DX cluster spotting thing. my question is basically — are these pulling from the same spots or are they totally separate networks? because sometimes i see a spot on DXwatch that doesn't show up on QRZ for like 10-15 minutes and other times QRZ has stuff that DXwatch doesnt seem to have at all. also is there a better app for this on android? ive been using Ham Radio Deluxe for logging but the built in cluster stuff feels kind of clunky to me and i keep having to scroll around to find what im actually looking for. a buddy at the club uses some app called DX Sherpa or something like that but i couldn't find it in the play store. not trying to overcomplicate things, just want to know when something is on 17m so i can actually get to the radio before the pile-up is completely hopeless lol

yeah the RMS gateway stores messages locally if it's running in hybrid mode, which most of them are configured to do these days. basically it'll hold your message for up to something like 72 hours (i might be slightly off on that number) and if the gateway has internet it forwards to the CMS right away, if not it waits. you can actually check what mode a specific gateway is in through the Winlink web interface, there's a gateway listing page that shows status and stuff. on the HF side, gateway selection is kind of an art honestly. the propagation display built into Winlink Express helps a little but i mostly just look at which gateways have had recent activity in the session list. a gateway showing activity 2 minutes ago on 40m is probably going to work better than one that hasnt had a connection in 3 hours. also with an attic dipole you might genuinely just be fighting physics on 40m during certain parts of the day — i had a similar setup and found 80m actually worked better for closer regional gateways in the evenings even though that sounds backwards.

I've had the FT-65 for probably a year and a half now and honestly it's become my go-to grab-and-go radio. The audio really is noticeably better than the cheap imports, like you can actually hear people in a parking garage or whatever without cranking it up all the way. Battery life has been good for me — I do a full day at a hamfest and it's maybe half drained, but I'm not keying up constantly either. One thing I'll mention is the menu system takes a little getting used to if you're coming from the Baofeng world. It's not bad, just different. I'd suggest downloading the manual as a PDF before you even plug it in, I spent like 45 minutes figuring out how to set the squelch the first time because i just assumed it worked the same way lol. But yeah for basic VHF/UHF repeater work and simplex hiking use it's really hard to argue with that radio at its price point.

yeah the process confused me too when i went through it a while back. so the short version is you apply directly through the FCC ULS system at wireless2.fcc.gov and there's no fee anymore since they dropped the vanity application fee years ago, which is nice. the 60 day window thing you're thinking of is actually 30 days — after a license expires or gets cancelled there's a 30 day quiet period before the callsign goes into the available pool and then anyone can apply for it during a filing window. as for the district thing yeah you can apply for any callsign regardless of where you live. the district number used to mean something geographically but its pretty much meaningless now since people move around and keep their calls. so totally fine to grab a 1x2 in the first district if one comes up and you're in texas or wherever. the site you're probably thinking of is ae7q.com run by a guy named Art. its not affiliated with the FCC but its incredibly useful for tracking call availability, seeing whats in the queue, looking up when specific calls might become free. most people use that alongside the FCC ULS. definitely not sketchy, its been around forever and the whole community uses it.

yeah what he said about the baud rate — i made that exact mistake when i first got mine. but also, have you tried RF-only monitoring? like pull up aprsisce32 or even just watch aprsdirect.com with RF filtering on to see if your packets are being heard by anyone at all, doesnt have to be your local igate. if nobody's hearing you on RF either then its probably a TX issue or packet format issue. if people hear you on RF but youre not getting gated thats a different problem probably with the igate itself or your path. WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 is fine btw, dont change that. some people overthink the path stuff.

honest answer? at 25 feet your dipole is already pretty low on 40m, which actually means it's probably radiating at a higher angle than ideal anyway. so the vertical argument for DX has some merit in your situation. that said a vertical without a decent radial system is gonna have ground losses that eat up your signal and you might end up worse off than the dipole. the sweet spot is usually at least 16-32 radials on the ground, doesnt have to be buried deep, just laying on the surface works fine and the grass covers it eventually. if you can do that the vertical will probably give you a noticeable improvement into europe on 40m, especially in the evenings when the band opens that direction. if you cant be bothered with radials honestly just leave the dipole up and try to get it higher if theres any way to do that. a dipole at 50 feet beats a poorly grounded vertical every time.

honestly it's not that bad if you already passed tech. the electrical theory stuff does go a bit deeper, like youll see more questions about things like impedance matching and propagation that the tech exam only kinda touches on. but the format is the same, 35 questions and you need 26 right i think. i used hamstudy.org every day for maybe 3 weeks and felt pretty comfortable going in. the HF privileges you get are really solid, you get chunks of 40m, 20m, 15m, and 10m among others which is plenty to start with. 20 meters especially is great for general class ops because there's always someone on there. you wont have the full extra class allocations but you'll be able to do a ton of stuff. just start grinding the question pool and you'll be fine

not a basic question at all, its actually kind of a rabbit hole once you get into it. short answer — yes get on lotw as soon as you can if you havent already. the vast majority of serious DX operators upload to lotw and your confirmed QSOs there count directly toward DXCC credits without needing to mail anything in. paper QSLs still work and some guys love the cards for the wall but lotw is really where the action is for actually submitting toward the award. and yes, DXCC, WAS and WAZ are all tracked separately. DXCC is the big one most people chase first — 100 confirmed entities and you get the basic certificate, then you can keep going for endorsements as you work more. WAS is all 50 US states which sounds easy but some of those low population states can take a while on certain bands. WAZ is the 40 CQ zones thing, that one has a different flavor to it. they're all through ARRL except WAZ which is a CQ Magazine award. easy to get confused at first but it clicks after a while. keep logging everything, even stuff you arent sure about. you'll thank yourself later