Brian Murphy

so ive been a general for about two years now and i keep going back and forth on whether to bother with the extra. like i know you get the full privileges on HF which is the main thing, those little slices at the bottom of 20m and 40m where all the DX stations seem to hang out. but the theory stuff in the exam looks pretty intense. i was looking at some practice questions last night and some of the filter design stuff and the advanced propagation questions just... i dont even know where to start honestly. i guess what im asking is did anyone here feel like they actually learned useful stuff studying for it or is it mostly just memorizing formulas you'll never use again. also how long did it realistically take you to feel ready. i work full time so i cant exactly sit down and study for 8 hours a day

so i just passed my technician exam last month and im finally ready to actually buy something. everyone keeps telling me to get an HT to start out and i get that, but man there are so many of them i dont even know where to start. ive been reading threads for like two weeks and now im more confused than when i started. my main thing is i want to hit the local repeaters, maybe do some simplex, and eventually i'd like to get into APRS if thats something i can do on a handheld. budget is probably under $100 but i could stretch a little if something is really worth it. i see people mention the Baofeng UV-5R constantly and then other people act like suggesting it is basically a crime. then theres the Yaesu FT-60, the VX-6R, some Kenwood thing... i just dont know what actually matters for a beginner vs what is just cool features i wont use for years. is programming these things as painful as it looks? i saw something about CHIRP which seems helpful but even that looked a little intimidating when i watched a video on it.

so ive been sitting on this idea for a while now and finally starting to actually do something about it. i have an old CDE rotator that works fine mechanically but the controller box is pretty beat up and the meter needle is sticky so half the time i dont really know where the beam is pointing. instead of buying a new controller i started thinking why not just build something around an arduino and a couple of hall effect sensors or maybe a pot on the rotator shaft. the basic idea is to use an arduino mega (i have one sitting in a drawer doing nothing) to read the position, display it on a small LCD, and eventually tie it into my logging software through a serial interface so it can autotrack based on the DX station heading. ive seen a couple of projects online that do parts of this but nothing that quite matches what i want to do and a lot of them seem abandoned or the links to the code are dead. anyone here actually built something like this from scratch or even modified an existing design? im decent with the arduino stuff, done a few other projects, but the part im less sure about is the motor drive side — the rotator uses a fairly chunky AC motor and i want to make sure i handle that correctly and dont fry anything. any pointers appreciated

Traffic nets are really not as scary as they sound, I promise. The NTS nets on 80m especially tend to have really experienced net controls who will walk you through sending a formal message if you've never done it. I'd look up the Pacific or Eighth Area nets depending on where you are, they run in the evenings most days. The 40m ones can get noisy depending on conditions but 80m is usually pretty solid after sunset for regional stuff. Also the 10-10 net if you get your HF legs under you, thats a fun one. Not super formal but you get a number and people actually keep track. Good way to work a lot of stations without it feeling like a contest. Anyway yeah just jump in, worst case the NCS asks you to repeat and thats fine, happens to everyone.

yeah ive gone pretty deep on this exact thing. pi zero is fine for light stuff but if youre doing CAT control and want to also run something like fldigi or wsjtx in the background it can get sluggish. i ended up moving to a pi 4 for the main shack controller just because the zero kept choking when i had too many things polling at once. for the 7300 specifically the USB connection is pretty straightforward, rigctld from hamlib handles the CAT side and you can write python scripts that talk to it no problem. the temp sensor stuff is almost easier honestly, DS18B20 is what most people use, one wire protocol, theres a million tutorials. i wired mine up to trigger a 12v relay that controls the exhaust fan on my amp and it took maybe an afternoon including me screwing up the wiring once. the thing that took the longest was writing clean logging integration. i wanted it to sync with my logbook software and that was honestly more software headache than hardware. if you just want the fan automation and basic CAT stuff youll get that working in a weekend probably.