Jennifer Smith

the koch method is basically where you start with just two characters at full speed, like 20wpm, and you dont move on until you can copy them reliably, then you add one more character at a time. the whole idea is you never learn to read the dots and dashes visually, you just train your ear to recognize the sound as a whole. lcwo.net is free and does exactly this, i used it for maybe 15-20 minutes a day for a few months and it genuinely worked. there is also an app called morse mania that a lot of people like for mobile practice. dont bother with the paper chart thing, that really does just slow you down because your brain tries to count instead of hear. 5 wpm is honestly achievable pretty quickly once things start clicking, the jump from recognizing letters in isolation to copying actual words is the hard part but it comes. just be consistent, even 10 minutes a day beats an hour on the weekend

so ive been licensed for about 3 years now and mostly just did local stuff and some casual HF but i finally got serious about DXCC this past winter and im sitting at like 112 confirmed on Logbook of the World right now. feels like a lot of the easy ones are done and now im staring at a list of entities that only show up when theres a big DXpedition. my question is kind of about strategy i guess. like do most people focus on just getting to 100 confirmed first and applying for the basic certificate, or do you keep grinding and try to knock out WAS and maybe WAZ at the same time? i feel like chasing all three simultaneously is making me scatter my efforts all over the place and i end up missing good openings because im trying to work some weird state on 40m instead of staying on the DX frequency. also how does the whole credit submission thing work when you have a mix of LoTW confirmations and paper QSL cards — do i have to send everything in at once or can i submit additional credits later after i apply for the initial award? ive read the ARRL page on it but honestly it was kind of confusing.

oh man, the weight thing confused me for a long time too. basically weight adjusts the ratio of mark to space within each element — if your dits and dahs sound like they're bleeding together, try backing the weight down a little from center. most people run it pretty close to 50 but even small adjustments make a big difference. the MFJ keyers can be a bit finicky with that pot honestly, sometimes they dont track smoothly across the range. for the paddle adjustment itself, the gap between your paddle contacts is huge. if the gap is too loose (too much space) you'll be working harder and overshooting, if its too tight you get accidental touches. I'd close it down until you just barely stop getting false triggers, then open it just a hair. takes some fiddling to find the sweet spot for your particular hand pressure. the squeeze keying thing — dont even worry about it yet. seriously. learn to send clean single-lever style first and get your muscle memory built up. squeeze mode is great but it adds a whole layer of timing complexity that'll just frustrate you at this stage. plenty of ops barely use it anyway. LCWO is good but if you're falling behind try the Koch method and just do two characters at a time until you're at 90% and then add the next one. dont try to hear code slower than you actually want to operate — keep the character speed at like 18-20 wpm even if the word spacing is wider. Farnsworth method. way better than learning slow and having to unlearn it later.

so i just got my technician like two months ago and ive been listening a lot before actually transmitting much. i notice some people on the local repeater spell out their callsign every single time using the nato phonetic alphabet thing and other people just say it normal. is there a rule about when you have to do it or is it just a preference thing? i tried using them once and kind of blanked on what X was lol. also is it always NATO or do people use other versions sometimes because i heard someone say something like Easy instead of Echo once and that threw me off

So ive been trying to get Winlink Express working for about two weeks now and im losing my mind a little. Background: i have a Signalink USB hooked up to an IC-7300 and im trying to connect to a local RMS gateway on VHF. The software sees the audio device fine and i can watch the waterfall in Vara FM but when i actually try to connect to the gateway it just sits there for a bit and then kicks back a failed connection error. No idea if its a timing issue or my audio levels or what. I set the dial frequency to 144.950 which is what the gateway is supposedly on according to the RMS list, and i matched the SSID. The gateway shows as active on the Winlink maps page but i dunno if that just means it checked in recently or if its actually sitting there waiting for connects. Is there like a status page or something that tells you if a specific node is accepting connections right now? Also i read somewhere that you're supposed to leave your callsign in a specific format in Winlink Express settings but i didnt totally understand if the SSID matters for the initial handshake or not. Im licensed, extra class, just new to this whole digital packet side of things.

yeah the Gpredict CAT control can be a little finicky depending on your rig settings, double check the CI-V address if it seems like its not actually moving the VFO. had that problem for like two weeks before i figured out i had the wrong address set and it was just not doing anything lol also AO-7 can be weird because it switches modes depending on eclipse/sunlight and sometimes its just not in mode B when you expect it to be, worth checking the current status before a pass so you dont waste time

So ive been trying to get Winlink going for maybe three weeks now and i think i finally understand about 60% of it. Running Winlink Express on the laptop, got a Signalink USB hooked to my 897D, and im using Vara HF which seems to work okay on the soundcard side at least. My main confusion is around the RMS gateways. Like when i connect to one, am i connecting directly to that station's node and then it forwards my message out through the internet to the Winlink CMS, or is the actual email routing happening differently than i think? I had a message sit in my outbox for like two days before it finally went through and i couldnt figure out if that was a propagation thing, a gateway thing, or something i configured wrong in the client. Also not sure about the peer to peer mode vs going through the CMS. For emcomm purposes whats the actual advantage of p2p if youre just sending to someone who also has Winlink Express — do both people have to be online at the same time for that or does it store and forward somewhere. Cant find a straight answer on this in the documentation, or maybe i read it and didnt understand it.

classic alternator whine, yeah. first thing i'd check is whether your negative lead from the radio is going all the way back to the battery and not just to a body ground somewhere. a lot of guys take a shortcut and ground to the nearest bolt and that introduces all kinds of noise paths. the current has to go somewhere and if the negative isn't a clean direct path back to the battery you get all kinds of fun. also check that your power leads aren't running parallel to any factory wiring for a long distance, especially anything related to the ignition system. i had a similar setup in my old Silverado and re-routing the power cable away from the factory harness made a huge difference. if you've done all that and it's still there, a noise filter on the power line itself (not just the audio) like a cheap Icom or similar inline DC filter can clean things up. some guys swear by them some dont but i've had good luck. the antenna ground thing is probably fine for receive but worth double checking the connection is actually making good metal to metal contact and not just touching paint.

yeah i went through almost this exact thing last spring. ended up just tying a line to a fishing pole and getting my center up to like 38 feet into a pine tree and the difference was noticeable, especially on the higher angle stuff which is more useful for stateside anyway. the DX improved a bit too but nothing crazy. i think people overestimate how much a vertical helps unless youve got a really good ground under it

just gonna say the real word copy thing is huge. i wasted months on random QSO practice files before someone pointed me at the common word lists and it made a real difference pretty fast. also try listening to actual QSOs on 40m even if you cant copy everything, just getting used to the rhythm and the way real operators send helps more than you'd think

Log4OM contest mode is honestly not really where N1MM is at, at least not for anything serious. its fine for like a casual county hunters thing or a simple sprint but if youre doing SS or CQWW where the dupe checking and the multiplier tracking actually matters under rate pressure, N1MM is just built for that and Log4OM isnt. i tried to use Log4OM for a state QSO party last fall and kept second guessing myself on mults because the display just doesnt give you the same at-a-glance info. just keep both installed, theyre both free anyway so theres no reason to pick one over the other. lots of guys run exactly that split.

the 80m band has a ton of traffic nets if you want something more structured, like you check in and net control keeps a list and calls everyone. not super exciting but good practice for proper procedure. i check into one most mornings before work just to hear whats going on. honestly half the time i dont even say much, just listen. special event stations are totally fair game for anyone, worked a lighthouse one last summer and it was one of my favorite contacts. they sent me a really nice QSL card too which my wife actually thought was cool which almost never happens lol

that actually sounds like a pretty solid start, way more thought-out than my first go-kit which was basically just a radio and some hope lol a few things that have saved me during actual activations — an headlamp (not just a flashlight, hands-free matters more than you think when you're trying to write and key at the same time), a notepad that isn't your logbook specifically for message traffic so you dont mix stuff up, and honestly some snacks and water because you'd be surprised how long you might be sitting somewhere before relief shows up the other thing i'd say is dont underestimate how useful a cheap handheld is even if your main rig does everything. if the go-kit is in the truck and you need to walk somewhere or coordinate with someone 50 feet away the HT is way more practical. i keep a BF-F8HP programmed with all the local repeaters just as a backup comm tool separate from the main kit also double check your antenna situation for the 857 — a random wire is great but having a quick-deploy option that doesn't require you to find trees or a mast can matter a lot depending on where you end up deployed

so I've been meaning to do this for like two years and after the storms we had last month I finally got off my butt and started building out a proper go-kit. right now I have my FT-891 packed in a Pelican case with a LiFePO4 battery (the 30ah one from bioenno), a roll of RG-8X, and my SignaLink for digital modes. threw in a power pole distribution block too. my question is -- what am I forgetting. I feel like every time I look at this thing something is obviously missing but I figured I'd ask people who actually do this stuff. I'm not affiliated with any ARES group yet but thinking about joining the county group. mostly I want to be able to set up somewhere and actually be useful if things go sideways locally, not just play radio in my backyard. also not sure what antenna situation to pack. right now just have an end-fed halfwave but wondering if I should have something more portable. any thoughts appreciated

one thing that tripped me up when i started was that Q codes technically are questions when used as questions and answers when someone responds, like QRM? means are you experiencing interference and QRM without the question mark means yes im experiencing interference. in practice on voice nobody really does it that formally though, people just say QRM to mean theres interference and leave it at that. CW ops tend to be a bit more traditional about it also OM means old man which sounds rude but its actually just a friendly term for any male ham, and YL is young lady but gets used for any female operator. you'll hear those alot