Melissa Baker

I did mine about 6 months ago and experienced similar display quirks for the first week. They eventually cleared up on their own. Make sure you used proper ESD precautions and documented everything with photos - those ribbon cables are finicky!

so ive been checking into the Tuesday night 2m net through our local club for about 3 months now and honestly its become one of my favorite parts of the hobby. started doing it mostly cause the elmer who helped me get licensed kept bugging me to try it and im really glad he did. theres something kind of weirdly comforting about knowing every week at 7:30 theres gonna be a bunch of people on frequency just... talking and checking in.
anyway i heard there's a big special event station coming up for some kind of anniversary and i have no idea how those work. like do you just call them like a normal QSO or is there some kind of procedure? also does anyone know a good place to find net schedules because i feel like im missing stuff that goes on outside my immediate area. tried googling it but kept getting old pages that havent been updated since like 2015 or something.

so ive been using an RTL-SDR v3 dongle for about a year now, mostly listening to airband and some amateur stuff, occasionally poking around on 40m with it and SDR# on the laptop. works fine honestly but i keep reading that the dynamic range is pretty limited and ive definitely noticed it gets stomped on bad when theres strong signals nearby, like there's a pager transmitter about 2 miles from me and it just wrecks everything in a wide chunk of spectrum.
anyway been looking at upgrading and the two things im actually considering are the SDRplay RSP1A (usually see it around $110 or so) and the HackRF One which is more like $300-350 for a legit one from Great Scott Gadgets. i know the HackRF can transmit which is sort of interesting but im not sure i actually need that, mostly i just want better reception sensitivity and to get rid of the blocking issue. someone on reddit mentioned the RSP1A has hardware filtering but i dont really understand how that helps practically.
does anyone actually use both of these or has compared them side by side? the specs sheets dont really tell me what i want to know about real world use. running SDR# mostly but ive played with SDRangel a bit and that crashed constantly so i gave up on it

oh man i went down this exact rabbit hole last winter. what helped me a lot was just bookmarking the DXwatch page with my filters already set in the URL, that way when i open it its already showing just 20m and 17m CW which is mostly what i work. small thing but it saves time when a spot pops up in a chat or something and you want to check the band quick.
also the QRZ logbook has a feature where it'll flag entities you havent worked before right in the lookup — if youre already logging on QRZ that might save you a tab since you dont have to cross reference separately. i only noticed it like a year into using QRZ and felt kinda silly for missing it that long haha

yeah what he said about the rate drop being normal is true but also like... are you doing anything with packet or skimmer? even just having bandmap data feeding in changes everything for figuring out where to go when a run dries up. i know some categories dont allow it but if youre just trying to improve your operating it's worth at least experimenting with assisted to see how you'd use the information if you had it.
SO2R is kind of addictive once you get into it but the audio management alone took me probably two full contest seasons to really get comfortable with, youre essentially trying to copy one radio in one ear while transmitting on the other and having a qso and its a lot going on. N1MM has decent SO2R support and there are guys who've done it with pretty modest gear but honestly the first upgrade i'd make in your situation isnt a second radio its just more seat time and maybe going back and listening to recordings of your operating if you ever do that

I did mine about 6 months ago and experienced similar display quirks for the first week. They eventually cleared up on their own. Make sure you used proper ESD precautions and documented everything with photos - those ribbon cables are finicky!

not a dumb question at all, this trips up a lot of new generals. so yeah the 7.175 vs 7.200 thing is a region issue — in ITU region 2 which is the americas, us general class phone starts at 7.175 MHz. the 7.200 figure you might be seeing is probably from older references or non-US band plans.
the band edge thing is important and your friend was right to mention it. when you're on USB, your actual transmitted signal extends upward from your dial frequency, roughly 3 khz or so depending on your audio passband. so if you tune to 7.300 which is the top of the 40m allocation for us hams, your signal is actually sticking out above the band edge and thats an FCC violation not just bad manners. most people stay at least 3 khz down from the edge to be safe, some go more. same deal at the bottom, on LSB your signal goes downward from the dial so you have to think about that too.
the ARRL band plan is worth bookmarking, it shows both the legal limits and the gentlemans agreement stuff like where cw guys hang out vs phone etc.

yeah you basically just pick them up over time honestly. the ones you really hear all the time are QRM which is interference from other stations, QRN is natural static like from lightning and storms, QSB is when your signal is fading in and out, QRP means low power operation like 5 watts or under, and QRO is the opposite running high power. QRZ is somebody asking who is calling them, you hear that constantly. QSY means moving to a different frequency. theres a full ITU list online somewhere but honestly half those codes you will never hear on the air. the ones i listed plus the ones you already know cover probably 90% of what you'll encounter on a normal day.
as for 73 vs 88 — 73 is best regards, basically your standard friendly goodbye, everybody uses it. 88 is love and kisses and its traditionally only sent to a woman or a close female friend. some people think its outdated or whatever but thats the traditional meaning so just stick with 73 unless you actually know the person well

the 1.8:1 isnt bad at all for a first build honestly, most tuners will handle that no problem and depending on your rig it might not even complain. but yeah the lack of a balun is something to think about, especially with an inverted V because the feedline is basically hanging right underneath the antenna and common mode current on the coax shield can mess with your pattern and also make the SWR readings a bit jumpy or weird. you might be chasing a moving target if the feedline is radiating along with the antenna.
a simple choke balun made from winding the coax into a coil of about 8-10 turns right at the feedpoint can help a lot, doesnt have to be fancy. or even a 1:1 current balun if you have one kicking around. try that before you trim more, because once you cut the wire shorter thats kind of it unless you have more to splice in. if the SWR actually shifts or improves after the balun thats your answer on whether common mode was the culprit.

so ive been messing around with an RTL-SDR V3 for about 6 months now and honestly its been great for learning but im starting to hit the limits of it, especially on HF. the direct sampling mod helps but its pretty noisy and i feel like im missing a lot. a buddy at the club keeps telling me to just grab an SDRplay RSP1B and call it day but thats like a 100+ dollar jump and im not sure if its actually worth it for what i do which is mostly just scanning shortwave stations, some utility stuff, and occasionally trying to decode WSPR spots off the air.
ive read a bunch of reviews but they all feel kind of written by marketing people if that makes sense. just wondering if anyone here has actually used both and can tell me if the RSP1B really does pull weaker signals out compared to the V3 with the direct sampling hack. the dynamic range thing keeps coming up in specs but i honestly dont fully understand how that translates to real world use.
not opposed to spending the money if its actually going to make a difference but i dont want to buy something just to say i have it

so ive been using an RTL-SDR v3 dongle for about a year now, mostly listening to airband and some amateur stuff, occasionally poking around on 40m with it and SDR# on the laptop. works fine honestly but i keep reading that the dynamic range is pretty limited and ive definitely noticed it gets stomped on bad when theres strong signals nearby, like there's a pager transmitter about 2 miles from me and it just wrecks everything in a wide chunk of spectrum.
anyway been looking at upgrading and the two things im actually considering are the SDRplay RSP1A (usually see it around $110 or so) and the HackRF One which is more like $300-350 for a legit one from Great Scott Gadgets. i know the HackRF can transmit which is sort of interesting but im not sure i actually need that, mostly i just want better reception sensitivity and to get rid of the blocking issue. someone on reddit mentioned the RSP1A has hardware filtering but i dont really understand how that helps practically.
does anyone actually use both of these or has compared them side by side? the specs sheets dont really tell me what i want to know about real world use. running SDR# mostly but ive played with SDRangel a bit and that crashed constantly so i gave up on it

so ive been using an RTL-SDR v3 dongle for about a year now, mostly listening to airband and some amateur stuff, occasionally poking around on 40m with it and SDR# on the laptop. works fine honestly but i keep reading that the dynamic range is pretty limited and ive definitely noticed it gets stomped on bad when theres strong signals nearby, like there's a pager transmitter about 2 miles from me and it just wrecks everything in a wide chunk of spectrum.
anyway been looking at upgrading and the two things im actually considering are the SDRplay RSP1A (usually see it around $110 or so) and the HackRF One which is more like $300-350 for a legit one from Great Scott Gadgets. i know the HackRF can transmit which is sort of interesting but im not sure i actually need that, mostly i just want better reception sensitivity and to get rid of the blocking issue. someone on reddit mentioned the RSP1A has hardware filtering but i dont really understand how that helps practically.
does anyone actually use both of these or has compared them side by side? the specs sheets dont really tell me what i want to know about real world use. running SDR# mostly but ive played with SDRangel a bit and that crashed constantly so i gave up on it

I did mine about 6 months ago and experienced similar display quirks for the first week. They eventually cleared up on their own. Make sure you used proper ESD precautions and documented everything with photos - those ribbon cables are finicky!

so i finally finished my first scratch built QRP rig, been working off the EMRFD book and a few youtube builds for reference. its a 40m CW only thing, probably putting out around 3-4 watts measured into a dummy load. honestly i was expecting total disaster but the dang thing actually oscillated on the right frequency and i made a contact into ohio from kentucky on the first real try which i thought was pretty cool.
anyway my question is about efficiency, im noticing the final transistor (2n2222a) gets pretty warm after like 10 minutes of operating even at this power level. is that normal or am i doing something wrong with the bias? i copied the design pretty closely from the book but i might have gotten a resistor value wrong somewhere. also wondering if anyone has tips on enclosures for portable use, right now its just sitting on a piece of plywood which works but isnt exactly field ready.
also for what its worth the receiver side is a direct conversion setup and its workable but kinda rough, lots of audio hum that i cant quite track down. might be a grounding thing. anyway loving qrp so far, wish i had gotten into building years ago