Diana Washington

Many hamfests include meetings, seminars on technical and operational aspects, and license exam sessions. Check the schedule beforehand - the forums can be just as valuable as the flea market. I always leave with more knowledge than gear, though that's saying something!

the thing that got me the first time i actually deployed was not having any way to charge the battery. had a great 50ah battery, used it all up overnight, and then just had a dead kit. a small folding solar panel or even just the right cables to charge off a vehicle would have saved me. i use a Renogy 100w panel now and keep a DC-to-DC charger in the kit permanently. also dont forget a headlamp, not a flashlight, a headlamp specifically. when you're trying to connect coax at 2am with both hands you'll understand why. i've also started keeping a printed copy of my most used frequencies and the local ARES net schedules laminated in the front pocket because i always think i'll remember them and i never do once the adrenaline kicks in. sounds like you're off to a solid start honestly, the 891 is a great choice for portable ops.

so ive had my General for about 3 years now and i mostly just do some local repeater stuff and occasionally mess around on 40m SSB when the bands are cooperating. a buddy at the club keeps telling me i should just go ahead and get my Amateur Extra but honestly im not sure the theory stuff is gonna be worth it for what i actually do on the air. like i looked at some of the practice questions and some of it is pretty deep — filter design, transmission line theory, all that. i dont really build my own equipment or anything so im wondering if people who went through the Extra exam actually use any of that knowledge day to day or if you just kind of memorize the question pool and forget it after. also is the extra portion of the bands actually that much less crowded? someone told me the CW portions arent really usable if you dont do CW which is probably true i guess. just trying to figure out if its worth a few months of study

Our club rolled out a different meeting format by streamlining the business portion to allow for scheduled program and discussion activities, but we're still struggling with attendance. I've seen other clubs do homebrew nights which seem like a fantastic opportunity to share passion and celebrate the DIY spirit that makes amateur radio rewarding. What activities have worked well for your club to keep members engaged beyond the usual "show and tell" presentations?

im kind of in the same boat as you actually, been at it for about 3 months. what helped me was just listening to stuff even when i couldnt copy it, like having a CW net on in the background while doing dishes or whatever. feels dumb but i think it helped my brain start recognizing the rhythm. also the W1AW code practice transmissions are free and they announce the speed so you can kind of gauge where youre at. i still cant copy much above 10wpm but its getting better slowly i think

honestly the extra HF segments are worth it alone if you do any serious operating. the 40m extra portion is noticeably less crowded especially during contests when the general portion turns into a zoo. same deal on 80m, that extra 25khz on the low end is where a lot of the good DX parks itself. as for the theory — yeah you memorize a lot of it for the test and dont really think about it again unless you get into building stuff or troubleshooting weird antenna behavior. but i actually found studying for it kind of made some things click that i always just sort of handwaved before. like i finally actually understood why my antenna tuner was doing what it was doing. took me about 6 weeks of studying maybe an hour a night using the hamstudy site and i passed first try. the math sections look scarier than they are, most of it is plug and chug with formulas they basically give you the context for.

Just finished a similar project scaling my 6M beam down to 10M. The element diameter correction was about 1.5% for that size change. The accuracy of NEC-2 engine can't be compared to the much more expensive NEC-4 engine that's used in EZNEC Pro/4. That's not to say EZNEC+ is not useable – it's just not quite as accurate. In practice, I found EZNEC+ gave excellent results provided you took the slight frequency upwards 'bump' into account.

so ive been a general for about two years now and i keep going back and forth on whether to bother with the extra exam. like i use most of the general privileges already and i honestly dont operate that much on HF right now, mostly 2m and some 70cm local stuff. but part of me just wants to do it to say i did it i guess. the thing is i looked at the question pool and some of that stuff is genuinely hard. the filter theory, the transmission line stuff, some of the amplifier questions... i passed my general without too much trouble but extra feels like a different animal. is there actually that much practical benefit or is it more of a prestige thing? and how long did people spend studying before they felt ready

so ive been planning this for about two months now and tomorrow is finally the day. going up W6/CT-067 which isnt a super high pointer but its close enough to drive to the trailhead and the hike isnt too brutal. i've got my KX2 packed with a 20m end fed, planning to run maybe 10 watts, throw the wire up in a tree if theres one up there (i checked the photos and there seem to be some scrubby ones near the summit so fingers crossed). my main worry is that ive never actually done an S2S contact before and i kind of want one for the log but i dont know how to find who else might be activating at the same time. do i just check SOTAwatch3 the morning of and look for spots? also is it bad form to self spot if nobodys picking me up on the cluster? i feel like i read conflicting things about that. im licensed since last year so still pretty new to all this. any advice appreciated, even the obvious stuff i might be overlooked.

yeah that monitor mode trick is actually useful, if you're hearing lots of traffic but nobody's digi'ing you it could just be collisions. busy channel plus your beacon rate being too agressive and youre gonna step on other packets constantly. i dropped mine down to like every 10 minutes when im just parked and it helped a lot. also some of the older WIDE1-1 digis in certain areas are kinda flaky and just dont respond well to certain TNC timing. not much you can do about that except try a different path maybe just WIDE2-2 and see if a different digi picks you up.

the ALC thing trips up a lot of people. the way i think about it — ALC is there to protect the finals, not to be your audio leveler. if youre riding it hard constantly youre already clipping before the ALC even kicks in and that sounds terrible on the other end, kind of splashy and distorted. what you want is mic gain set so youre just tickling the ALC on peaks and then if you want to punch through QRM thats where the processor helps, but the processor should be working on clean audio not already-clipped audio. on the desk mic question honestly yeah it does matter but maybe not as much as the settings. i ran a Heil PR-40 for years and it sounds great but i also know guys with a basic MD-100 who sound fantastic because theyve taken the time to actually set the thing up properly. the 7300 has that bass cut and treble boost option in the menu somewhere — think its under the TX tone settings — and rolling off some of the low end actually helps a lot for voice intelligibility especially in a pile up situation where youre trying to cut through. the real test is always getting an honest signal report from someone who will actually tell you the truth, not just 59 59 73.

the TCXO is absolutely worth it if you do any FT8 or JS8 work, without it i was drifting enough to cause decoding issues in cold temps specifically. picked one up secondhand for like 35 bucks and the install took maybe 20 minutes if you're comfortable with small connectors. big difference for weak signal digital stuff. as for the Collins filter, i did that mod on my 897D which is basically the same guts and yeah it tightens things up noticeably on SSB. its not going to make it into an IC-7300 but if you're already invested in the platform it makes sense. the interference rejection gets meaningfully better in the 2-3 kHz range, you'll stop hearing as much of your neighbor's QRM bleeding in. just take your time on the alignment afterwards. only thing i'd say is if you're thinking about upgrading rigs in the next year anyway, maybe skip it. but if you're keeping the 857 for portable work long term, do both mods. that rig is genuinely underrated for backpack ops once you get it sorted.

so i just got my technician license about three weeks ago and i've been sitting on my baofeng too scared to actually key up on anything. finally worked up the nerve to try the local repeater last night around 8pm and some guy came back to me right away. we talked for like 20 minutes about nothing really, just my setup and where i lived and whatever, but man it felt so weird hearing someone respond to my callsign for the first time. KD9 something, i forget, he was super patient with me stumbling through the whole thing. i kept forgetting to say my callsign at the end of transmissions and he reminded me like twice lol. anyway just wanted to share because i've been lurking here for months reading everything and it feels good to finally be on the other side of it

okay so i passed my technician exam like three weeks ago and ive been mostly just doing 2m and 70cm stuff but i want to try HF at some point. i keep reading different things online about what technicians are actually allowed to do on HF and honestly its getting confusing. like i know theres something about 10 meters and some privileges there but what about the other bands? and someone in my local club told me i could do something on 40m but only CW? i dont have a CW key or anything so that part doesnt matter much right now but i just want to understand the rules before i accidentally transmit somewhere im not supposed to. also does the FCC actually enforce this stuff or is it more like an honor system, asking because i saw some posts saying the FCC doesnt really monitor much anymore

yeah this confused me for a while too when i started HF. the short answer is DXwatch, the QRZ spot data, and what logging programs pull from are all basically fed from the same underlying cluster network — the DX Spider network and a few others that all share spots between nodes. so theyre not identical but pretty close, usually within a minute or two of each other. what most people end up doing is running something like Log4OM or DXKeeper (free, part of DXLab suite) which connects directly to a telnet cluster node and then flags spots on a bandmap in real time. makes it way easier than tabbing around. for just getting started though honestly DXwatch with the auto-refresh on is fine, dont stress about having the perfect setup right away. the QRZ spot thing at the bottom of callsign pages is usually only a few minutes behind so its decent enough for casual use, its just not as fast as a direct telnet connection would be. WSJT-X is kind of its own thing — it can pull from PSKReporter which is specifically for digital weak signal contacts, thats a bit separate from the traditional CW and phone spotting clusters. they dont really talk to each other directly.

the doppler thing trips up almost everyone starting out. on FO-29 the downlink is around 435.800 and yes the shift can be close to ±10kHz at the start and end of a pass, so if your correction isnt actually working youll be chasing the signal the whole time and probably miss it entirely especially on a low elevation pass like 35 degrees which goes by really fast. one thing worth checking — in gpredict go to Edit > Preferences > Interfaces and make sure you actually have a radio device configured there, a lot of people set up the CAT port but forget to actually connect it to the SDR# virtual cable or whatever routing youre using. the doppler correction wont do anything if that handshake isnt established. also on the linear transponders, yeah youre uplink and downlink are inverted so USB on uplink gives you LSB on downlink or however the particular bird is set up, the amsat status pages have the current mode for each satellite. FO-29 has been a bit sketchy lately in terms of when its actually in linear mode vs beacon only so worth double checking before a pass. try a high elevation pass first, anything over 50-60 degrees will give you a much longer window to actually hear something and sort out the tuning.

I actually made almost the exact same upgrade like 8 months ago, also came from a UV-5R. went with the FT-60R and have zero regrets. the audio is so much clearer and the battery honestly lasts me a whole weekend camping without a recharge. one thing that threw me off at first was programming it manually is a bit of a pain compared to the Baofeng chirp setup but once you get CHIRP working with it it's totally fine. if you're mostly doing local repeater stuff you really dont need APRS right away anyway, you can always add a TNC or upgrade later when you actually need it.

so im a relatively new ham, got my general back in the spring and ive been mostly just doing casual ragchews on 40m and some digital stuff on FT8. but i keep hearing people talk about contest season like its this big deal and honestly i dont really know where to start or what to expect. like i know CQ WW is coming up and everyone seems to lose their minds over it, and i tried to get on during ARRL Field Day back in june but my club setup was kind of a mess and i spent more time holding an antenna pole than actually operating. i did make a few contacts though which was cool. also been seeing a lot of SOTA activity on the spotting clusters lately which looks interesting but thats more of a portable operating thing right, not really a contest? anyway my setup is pretty modest, just a dipole up about 25 feet and a used ic-7300 i got a few months ago. should i even bother trying CQ WW or is it just gonna be a wall of noise and frustration for someone at my level? any suggestions on what upcoming events are worth getting on for would be appreciated, trying to figure out what to actually put on my calendar here

so ive been playing around with cluster spotting for a few months now and i think i kind of understand whats going on but not totally. basically i have QRZ pulled up in one tab and DXwatch in another and im watching the spots come in and trying to tune to whatever looks interesting. sometimes i catch the DX sometimes i dont even hear anything on that frequency. my question is i guess — is there a better way to do this? like is there an app that combines things or should i be using a dedicated cluster client instead of just the website. i saw people mention DX4WIN and some others but im not sure if those are still a thing or if everything moved to web apps. also does it matter which cluster node you connect to or are they all basically seeing the same spots running mostly HF, got a 40m dipole up about 25 feet which isnt great but its what i have right now. just got my general last spring so still figuring all this out

yeah the gmail spam thing got me too when i first set this up, spent like two days thinking my radio path was broken. its almost always the receiving end. i just use a second winlink account as my test destination now, way less headache. one thing i'll add - if you're on IC-7300 make sure your USB audio levels are dialed in for Vara, that can cause weird partial connects that look clean on the surface but the packet error rate is high enough that stuff gets dropped. check the waterfall and make sure youre not overdriving it

yeah the AGC mod is worth doing honestly. the stock AGC on those rigs is way too aggressive for weak signal work and once you slow it down a bit you can actually hear stations fading in rather than the rig just clamping down hard and releasing weirdly. there's a cap swap in the AGC loop, pretty sure its C1045 or somewhere around there, dont have the schematic in front of me right now. took me maybe 45 minutes and it changed how the rig felt to operate more than almost anything else i did to it. the murata filter idea is interesting, i hadnt heard of pulling one from a 756 Pro for that purpose. what shape factor did you end up using and did you have to do any impedance matching or did it drop right in? asking because i have a 897D that has pretty much the same front end architecture and im always looking for an excuse to crack it open.

went through the same confusion when i upgraded honestly. what finally made it click for me was just downloading the ARRL band chart and keeping it next to the radio for a few weeks. after a while you just kind of know where you are. the digital stuff on 40 is generally down around 7.070-7.125 area which as a general you can get into no problem. just watch yourself near 7.125 because that bleeds into the extra/advanced phone territory and things get crowded there on weekends

I've been working on CW for about 6 months now and started making good progress from 5 WPM up to around 10 WPM. But now I feel completely stuck! This 10 wpm barrier seems to be where many folks give up out of frustration. I can copy individual characters fine, but when I try to go faster everything falls apart. Is this normal? What's the best approach to break through to 15-20 WPM? I've heard about something called the Koch method but don't really understand it. Any elmers out there who've been through this and can share what worked for them? Really don't want to give up - I love the idea of CW but this plateau is discouraging.

i went from a 7300 to a 7610 and then back to running the 7300 again lol. sold the 7610 to fund an amp and some antenna work and honestly the antenna stuff did more for my operating than the radio upgrade ever did. the 7610 is a nicer radio dont get me wrong but if your shack setup is already sorted and you just want better results on HF, more aluminum in the air will beat a better receiver most days.

so i was just messing around on 10 meters saturday afternoon, wasn't really expecting much honestly, and all of a sudden the band just blew wide open. i was hearing stations from brazil, argentina, even caught a couple from europe which i haven't done on 10m in a while. ran barefoot with my dipole and still managed to work like 14 countries in maybe two hours which for me is pretty unreal. also noticed a bunch of guys were talking about the new Icom IC-905 being in stock at a few dealers finally, don't know if anyone here has actually gotten their hands on one yet but the reviews ive been seeing look pretty solid for the microwave bands. been curious about getting into 1.2ghz for a while now so might be something worth looking at when i have more fundss in the operating budget lol. anyway just wanted to see if anyone else was on during that opening or has news on other stuff going on, feels like the hobby is picking up again lately which is nice to see.