Brian Murphy

honestly the rtl-sdr v3 direct sampling is pretty impressive for what it costs but yeah the ADC resolution difference between that and the RSP1A is significant on paper, 8 bit vs 12/14 bit depending on mode. whether that translates to something you actually notice depends a lot on your antenna and local noise situation. if youre in a noisy suburban environment the SDRplay isnt going to magically fix RFI from your neighbors switching supplies or whatever. one thing worth mentioning, have you tried upconverter route instead? an ham-it-up or similar gets you a lot of the HF sensitivity back on the RTL without the full SDRplay cost. probably not as clean but its another option in between. i ran that combo for a while before going to a HackRF and it was pretty usable.

haha yeah the baofeng face is definitely a combination of both things depending on who you ask. honestly for getting started on local repeaters a uv-5r or the slightly newer uv-82 will do exactly what you need. i ran a uv-5r for my first two years and it worked fine. the main complaints are receiver selectivity isnt great so if you're near a busy rf environment you might get some interference, and the stock antenna is pretty mediocre so grab a nagoya na-771 or something similar and youll notice a real difference right away. if you want to spend a bit more and get something that feels a lot more solid and has better receiver performance, the yaesu ft-65r or the wouxun kg-uv9d are both in your budget range and worth considering. the yaesu in particular is pretty straightforward to program without even needing the software, which some people appreciate. chirp works with most of these anyway so programming isnt usually the nightmare it used to be. just buy the programming cable when you get the radio, dont try to make one yourself like i did the first time

so i finally participated in one of those full-scale simulated disaster exercises our county ARES group puts on and wow i was not prepared for how different it feels versus just practicing nets at home. we had a scenario where a major flood had knocked out all repeaters and we had to coordinate with the EOC using only simplex and some HF. on paper it sounds simple but when youre actually in the middle of it and people are throwing traffic at you faster than you can log it, things get chaotic real quick. a few things i noticed right away — my logging was a complete mess. i was trying to use my laptop but the scenario had us assume no internet so i switched to paper mid-exercise and my handwriting was basically illegible under stress. the other thing that got me was how bad i was at prioritizing traffic. like i know the theory, life safety first, welfare traffic second, etc, but when someone hands you a stack of messages and someone else is calling you on the radio at the same time it just falls apart a little. the experienced operators made it look so easy and watching them helped a lot honestly. one of the elmers in our group kept reminding me to slow down on the mic and just breathe, which sounds obvious but i really needed to hear it. anyway curious if anyone else has been through these kinds of exercises and what surprised you the most the first time around

yeah 10 meters has been something else lately. i was skeptical when people kept saying the cycle was peaking but i fired up the ol' 7300 last weekend just to see and ended up in a pileup for a station in South Africa which i definitely did not expect on a random Saturday morning. ran about 100 watts into a vertical and it was like shooting fish in a barrel almost. propagation gods were smiling i guess. on the Icom thing — i wouldnt get too excited just yet. remember all the chatter about an IC-9700 successor that turned out to be nothing for like two years? i'll believe new rigs when i see them at Dayton or in an official press release. that said if they do something interesting with DSP and maybe a better waterfall display i'd probably be tempted, the 7300 has served me well but nothing wrong with looking right. the hamfest tip is solid advice for anyone newer to the hobby. i got my first HF rig at a hamfest, a beat up old Kenwood that needed a little work but it got me on the air for way less than anything new would've cost. just poke around, talk to people, most folks are happy to let you look things over before committing to anything.

so ive been on HF for about two years now running an IC-7300 and i keep getting reports that my audio sounds kind of muffled or like im talking through a blanket. i thought the 7300 had decent audio processing built in but something isnt clicking for me. my mic gain is sitting around 50% and the compression is on but not cranked. i did the whole ALC thing and kept it just barely moving which is what i read online. speech processor is on at like 3 or 4 out of 8. people can copy me fine most of the time but on 40m when theres a pileup or just a little qrm i notice folks seem to struggle more than they should. my signal reports on a meter are fine, like 57 or 59, so its not a power issue. i wonder if its an eq thing? or maybe my mic placement? im using the hm-219 that came with the radio. would a different mic actually make that much of a difference or am i chasing the wrong thing here

i just passed mine last month so this is pretty fresh for me. the oscillator and filter stuff tripped me up too but theres a guy on youtube who does like 20 minute explainers on the harder theory sections and after watching those it actually made sense. i cant remember the channel name right now but if you search extra class theory you'll find it. the test itself felt harder than general but not impossible. i think i missed like 4 questions which still passes. the privleges on 60m are also kind of interesting if you ever do emcomm type stuff but thats a whole other thing

so i spent most of saturday running coax and power cables through the cab of my F-150 and got the FT-857D sitting in a RAM mount between the seats. runs great, TX and RX both seem fine, making contacts on the local 2m and 70cm repeaters no problem. but theres this high pitched whine in the audio that changes with engine RPM. goes higher when i rev the engine, lower at idle. classic alternator whine i think but im not totally sure since ive never dealt with it before in a mobile install. i ran the power cable directly to the battery with an inline fuse which i thought was the right way to do it. the ground goes to a bolt on the frame pretty close to where the negative battery terminal grounds. antenna is a diamond NR770RHBK on a lip mount on the trunk lid. i dont think the antenna has anything to do with it but figured id mention it. anyone dealt with this before? is it definitely the ground or could it be something else. i read something about ferrite cores on the power leads but wasnt sure if thats just snake oil or actually does something

so ive been licensed for about 6 years now, mostly HF stuff, some VHF contesting here and there, and EME has always been this thing in the back of my mind that seems completely insane but also kind of amazing. bouncing signals off the moon. i mean come on. anyway i started reading about it more seriously and im genuinely confused about where the baseline is. like i see some guys talking about working EME with a single yagi and 100w which sounds impossible to me, and then other guys with these massive dish setups that look like they belong at a university. so whats actually realistic for a first timer who doesnt have a farm to put antennas on. im in a suburban lot, maybe 60x100ft backyard, have a solid 144mhz setup already (ft-991a and a 9 element yagi for local VHF). also how does the digital mode stuff work for this, ive heard JT65 mentioned a lot. is that basically mandatory now or do people still do CW moonbounce. genuinely curious how a contact even works logistically given the path delay.

yeah 4 QSOs counts, you just need 4 to qualify so you're good. the wind thing is real, i use a cheap fishing pole as a mast and just guy it out with some paracord now, makes a huge difference. also yeah self spotting from the summit is kind of essential, the SOTAwatch alerts help but chasers are watching the spots way more actively. get the SOTA Goat app or just use the web spot page. you'll get it dialed in, first few activations are always a little chaotic

yeah i went down the DIY VPN rabbit hole and its definitely doable but took me way longer than i expected to get everything playing nice together. the rigctld stuff is finicky and if you want PTT to work reliably over the remote link thats another whole thing to sort out depending on your interface. RemoteHams at least has most of that wrapped up in one package even if you're giving up some flexibility. i think for most people who just want to operate and not spend weekends debugging systemd services its probably the easier path

yeah what he said about levels is spot on. i spent probably two weeks chasing what i thought was a propagation problem and it turned out my mic gain in the 7300's menu was way too high. the IC-7300 has that built in USB audio and theres like three different places you can adjust gain which is honestly kind of annoying. go into the menu and look at the USB AF output level, make sure that one is set reasonable before you start tweaking anything in Windows or SignaLink. one other thing - are you on the latest version of VARA? there was a version a while back that had some weirdness with certain gateway handshakes and it drove people nuts. Winlink Express itself also pushes updates pretty regularly, worth checking you're current on both.

so i decided i want to get my technician license and ive been kind of poking around online trying to figure out how to study for it but theres like a ton of different resources and honestly i dont even know which ones are actually good vs just like filler content someone at work told me just to memorize the question pool and that'll be enough to pass but that feels weird to me, like i want to actually understand what im studying not just parrot answers back. is that dumb? should i just do the memorization thing and worry about understanding it later once im actually on the air also is the question pool the same everywhere or does it change depending on what state you take the exam in. i genuinely have no idea how any of this works yet

i have a similar truck setup and what i ended up doing was a mirror mount on the passenger side mirror arm, its not perfect but the ground plane is decent enough and the coax run is pretty manageable going in through the door seal. SWR on both bands came out really good actually, under 1.3 on 2m and maybe 1.5 on 70cm if i remember right. only downside is you have to be a bit careful in tight spots or parking garages because the antenna sticks out a bit further than you'd expect

so ive been interested in ham radio for a while now, my neighbor does it and i finally decided to just go for it and get my license. im trying to figure out the best way to study for the technician exam but theres so much stuff out there i dont even know where to start. i downloaded the question pool from the arrl website i think but its like 400 questions and i just stared at it for a while and closed it lol. is there a specific study guide people like or do most folks just memorize the question pool? i heard you can kind of just brute force it by memorizing answers but that seems like it might bite me later if i actually want to understand the stuff. anyway just looking for what actually worked for people who went through this recently

honest answer? just work everything you can hear and upload to LoTW regularly and all three will start filling in on their own without you stressing about it too much that said if i had to pick a starting point for someone with your setup WAS is probably the most achievable in a reasonable timeframe because working stateside is way more forgiving propagation wise and you dont need to stay up until 2am hunting a rare pacific island or whatever DXCC starts getting addictive fast though, once you hit 100 confirmed you'll want 150 and then 200 and before you know it you're researching what bands the T8 or whatever is going to be on. its a trap in the best possible way. just make sure your LoTW account is set up properly and you're logging everything from day one because there's nothing worse than realizing you worked a rare entity six months ago and didn't log it right

yeah the theory jump is real but its not unsurmountable or whatever the word is. i was scared of the math too but most of the actual exam questions you can work through with just ohms law and some basic formulas, you dont need to be an engineer. just spend a few weeks on hamstudy.org and youll start to recognize the patterns. the filter Q stuff tripped me up for a while but once it clicks it clicks.

the CTCSS thing is almost certainly your problem, those baofengs can be tricky to program. T-CTCS is the tone you transmit to the repeater which is what you want, so that part sounds right. but double-check that you actually saved it — on the uv-5r you have to press menu again after selecting the value or it just reverts. a lot of people get bit by that. also make sure your offset is going the right direction. most 2m repeaters are plus or minus 600 kHz and repeaterbook will usually say which. if you're transmitting on the wrong side of the offset you'll just be shouting into the void. as for etiquette — yeah waiting for the courtesy tone is the normal thing. it's that little beep the repeater sends after someone unkeys, kind of signals the squelch tail is done and the system is ready again. waiting for it before you transmit helps avoid people doubling up. you dont have to wait a long time, just a beat or two after the beep. you'll get a feel for it pretty quick once you're actually getting into the machine.

i built one of those last winter, my first real kit build actually. the toroids are annoying like the other guy said but honestly the whole thing came together in maybe two evenings. i was kind of amazed it worked on the first power up. made my first QRP contact like two days later on 40m into a guy in Ohio and i was running 3 watts from a folded dipole in my attic lol. its a good feeling

honestly the mic matters more than people want to admit. those bundle mics are usually pretty mediocre, not terrible but not great either. i switched to an heil pr-781 a couple years ago and got way more reports of good audio. but its not magic — you still have to EQ it right for the rig and set your levels. kenwood rigs have that mic EQ menu buried in the settings, worth digging into if you havent. one thing i dont see mentioned enough is just... monitor yourself. most modern rigs have a monitor function where you can hear your own transmitted audio in the headphones at low level. use it. sounds obvious but i went like two years without doing that and had no idea what i actually sounded like on air.

so ive been thinking about learning CW for a while now and i finally decided to actually do it but i honestly dont even know where to start. i downloaded a couple apps and tried just listening to random QSOs on 40m but it sounds like complete gibberish to me. like i can pick out maybe one or two letters sometimes but then its gone and i lose the thread completely. is there a method people actually recommend or do you just kind of grind it out until it clicks? i heard about the Koch method from someone at the club meeting but they didnt really explain it beyond like oh just look it up. also does it matter what speed i start at because some stuff ive seen says start slow and some says start fast and i genuinely dont know which advice to follow

honestly same experience here when i first tried JS8, sat there for like an hour thinking my radio was broken or something. turns out i had the wrong heartbeat interval set and wasnt actually transmitting as often as i thought. check your settings for the transmission interval, theres a normal and slow and turbo mode and i had mine set weird. also just to throw it out there — FT4 is worth trying if you want something faster than FT8 but still weak signal capable. its basically the same thing but the sequences are shorter so a full QSO takes less time. doesnt feel much more like a conversation but for contest-style operating its pretty fun

the SWR wandering at the band edges on 80 is totally normal, that band is wide and a simple dipole is only going to be resonant across maybe 100-150kHz before it starts climbing depending on how fat your wire is. some guys use a tuner for the band edges or just cut it for wherever they spend most of their time — phone end or cw end. if you're mostly doing SSB phone cut it for around 3.9 and live with the edges. as for the comparison itself yeah a dipole almost always wins on receive over a trapped or loaded vertical especially when the vertical's ground system isnt perfect. the vertical will usually do better at low angles for DX if the radials are good, but for regional and domestic stuff the dipole just has a cleaner signal path. 25 feet isnt great but its not terrible either, you'd definitely see improvement getting it up to 40+ feet if you ever get the chance.

im basically in the same boat as you, got my tech about 3 months ago and ended up going with the Yaesu FT-65 after way too much research. its been pretty solid for me, haven't had any issues hitting repeaters in my area. the only thing i'll say is definitely get CHIRP set up on your computer for programming it because doing it manually through the keypad is kind of a nightmare honestly the APRS thing — my elmer told me the same thing the other guy probably will, just focus on getting on the air first. but if you do wanna go that route eventually the Kenwood TH-D72 is a bit cheaper than the D74 and does APRS too, i've seen them used for pretty reasonable prices

sat-pc32 still works fine honestly, i use it on a win10 machine with no issues and some people swear by it especially for the older sats. but yeah most of the newer guys seem to be on gpredict. i tried switching a while back and it does most things well but the CAT implementation felt a little clunky to me for the 9700 specifically, there was some latency that bugged me. might have been my setup though. one thing that helped me early on was just listening for a full pass without transmitting at all, find a signal in the passband and just track it manually and see how the pitch changes. once you actually hear what correct doppler compensation sounds like vs what it sounds like when its wrong it kind of clicks. also the 9700 has that satellite mode built in which handles some of this but i never fully got it working the way i wanted with external software at the same time

honest answer? some of it you memorize and forget, yeah. but the transmission line stuff and the stuff about impedance matching actually clicked for me when i was trying to figure out why my tuner was acting weird on 40m. like i wouldnt have even known what questions to ask before i studied for the Extra. the filter theory helped me understand why certain rigs sound better on receive than others too. its not like you use the formulas every day but it builds a kind of background sense for troubleshooting that you dont really get otherwise. and the extra HF segments are genuinely less crowded, especially on 75 and 40 phone, so thats a real world benefit right there. i say go for it, study in chunks over a few months and dont try to cram it