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

the exam itself is 35 questions and you need 26 right to pass, so you have some room to miss things. i remember blanking on a couple of the more obscure regs questions and still passed fine. the electrical theory section is probably the part where most people struggle but there are really only a handful of formulas that come up and they tend to repeat in different forms so you'll start recognizing them one thing i'd say is dont skip the operating procedures and regulations sections even if they seem boring, those are usually pretty easy points and you dont want to lose them because you only studied the technical stuff. took me maybe 5 weeks of casual studying and i went in feeling pretty confident. once you get your general the HF bands open up and its a whole different world, 40 meters at night especially can be wild

so i just got my technician license a few months ago and ive been reading about CW operating and it honestly sounds kind of cool but i have no idea where to even start with morse code. like do people still actually use it and is it even worth learning if you dont need it for the license anymore i tried looking up some youtube videos but there are so many different approaches and some people say to learn it one way and others say that way is totally wrong and now im just confused. someone at my local club mentioned something called the koch method but i dont really know what that is or if i should just buy one of those practice tapes or whatever. is there an app or something people use these days basically just looking for where to start i guess, dont really know what questions to ask

check your IGSERVER line and also make sure IGLOGIN actually has the right callsign-ssid format. i had mine set as just my base call without the ssid and it connected fine but wasnt passing authentication properly. also worth looking at the direwolf log output when it starts up — if the igate login fails it does print something but its easy to scroll past. another thing to check is whether your firewall is blocking outbound on 14580, had that bite me once on a fresh pi install.

yeah the arduino as a buffer between the pi and anything RF-adjacent is honestly the right call, i burned a pi zero doing exactly what you're trying to avoid. the 3.3v GPIO pins on those things have basically no protection and if you get any transient from the radio side youre just toast. for the audio levels in direwolf there's a section in the config file where you can set ADEVICE and then tune the input gain — but honestly the sabrent cards are kind of hit or miss for this. i swapped mine out for a cheap CM108-based dongle and the decode rate went up noticeably. direwolf has a built in audio level monitor you can run from the command line, just do direwolf -t 0 and watch what it shows you before you start chasing hardware problems. what are you planning to trigger with the relays btw, like antenna switching or something else entirely

i had almost the exact same debate with myself last spring. ended up building a fan dipole instead of going vertical and i dont regret it, covers 40 and 20 without a tuner and fits in my backyard without any ground work. probably not the answer you were looking for but worth considering if radials are the main thing putting you off the vertical idea

yeah 40m has been real good to me lately too. propagation feels like its finally cooperating after that rough stretch we had. i worked into the UK last tuesday around 0100z which i wasnt expecting at all, just happened to be spinning the dial and caught a strong signal. those random contacts are the best ones honestly

congrats on the first solo, 32 in 90 minutes on 10w SSB is actually pretty solid especially if condx weren't cooperating. don't be too hard on yourself there. for self-spotting without cell — a lot of activators use the APRS-to-POTA gateway which basically lets you send a spot through your radio if you have an HT or any rig that can hit a local APRS digipeater. you text a specific format to SMSGTE or use a dedicated APRS message and it pushes the spot to the pota.app hunters. takes a little setup beforehand but once you figure it out it works pretty reliably even in places with zero cell. alternatively some guys bring a little satellite messenger and use that but thats obviously more gear to haul out. on the exchange thing — yeah you handled it fine. POTA doesnt have a rigid exchange like a contest, most people just do callsign and a signal report and thats it. some hunters dont even bother with the report they just confirm the QSO. as long as youre logging the callsign and the park reference youre good. the partial call pileup thing does get easier, just takes reps. try to write down the fragment you heard and come back to it if the pile clears a bit.

ok so ive been listening to a lot of HF lately and people keep using all these weird abbreviations and i cant figure out half of them. like i get QSL means like a confirmation card or whatever but then i heard someone say QRM and QRN in the same sentence and i wasnt sure if those were the same thing or different. and then theres stuff like QSB and QRZ which i think i know but im not totally sure. is there like a master list somewhere or do people just kind of learn these over time? also heard someone say 73 at the end of every contact, is that a Q code too or something else entirely

im in the same boat as you more or less, been licensed about a year. what i do is i just use phonetics every time because i kept second guessing myself otherwise. foxtrot uniform november or whatever. after a while it just comes out automatically and you stop thinking about it. the NATO ones are the standard and people recognize them immediately, i tried making up my own once early on because i blanked and the other op asked me to repeat twice lol so just stick with the real ones

yeah the tech privileges on HF are kind of a weird patchwork, totally get the confusion. basically as a tech you get CW privileges on 80, 40, 15, and 10 meters, but the phone stuff is only on 10 meters and only in a specific segment — i think its 28.300 to 28.500 MHz for SSB. you also have some RTTY and data access on certain bands too but honestly for a new tech the main thing people care about is that 10 meter phone allocation. power limits — general rule under part 97 is 1500 watts PEP output for most amateur bands but there are exceptions depending on band and location and mode. as a new tech with whatever HT or entry level rig you probably have, you wont be anywhere near that anyway so dont stress too much about it. the ARRL has a really good privileges chart on their website that lays it out way cleaner than the actual FCC document does, i'd start there honestly.