Mark Thomas

The key thing I learned: we must cooperate in selecting transmitting channels and making effective use of frequencies. No exclusive use of any frequency, and no amateur operator shall cause interference to other communications.

oh man W6/CT-067 is a fun one, i did that maybe three years ago with a buddy. the trees near the top are kind of small and at weird angles but i managed to get a wire up with some creative use of a fishing pole. bring some paracord just in case, way more useful than i expected. one thing nobody told me before my first activation was to just be patient at the start. i panicked after like four minutes thinking nobody was listening and started moving around the band, and then of course i missed a small pileup that built up on my original frequency. just call CQ for longer than feels comfortable, chasers are out there trust me, especially on a weekend.

went through almost this exact same decision about 18 months ago. ended up with the RSP1B and honestly have zero regrets for monitoring use. the jump from an RTL dongle on HF is pretty significant, the noise floor difference is noticeable right away especially if you have a halfway decent antenna. SDRuno takes some getting used to but once you get the IF bandwidth and gain settings sorted it really does perform well. the HackRF thing is interesting but i think a lot of people buy it for the transmit capability and then dont really use it that much. also the HackRF ADC is only 8-bit which people dont always mention, the RSP1B is 14-bit and that makes a real difference for dynamic range when youve got strong signals nearby. if youre not specifically needing to transmit or do anything exotic in the 1-6 GHz range i think the SDRplay is the smarter buy for monitoring work. you can always add a HackRF later if you need it for a specific project.

the koch method is what got me over the hump after trying and failing the old way a couple times. the basic idea is you start with just two characters at full speed — like 20wpm — and you practice until you can copy them at like 90% accuracy, then you add a third character and so on. the whole point is your brain learns to hear the sounds as letters directly instead of counting dots and dashes which is what kills most people. lcwo is fine honestly, i used it for a while. just hamster and morse code ninja on youtube are both pretty good too, morse code ninja especially has a ton of free audio files you can download and practice with at different speeds. the other thing i'd say is dont try to rush it. most people quit because they set the speed too low trying to count the elements and then they can never get faster. set it uncomfortable from the start. takes longer to get going but you dont build bad habits

the single yagi thing is real, not a myth. people were skeptical when JT65 came along and sort of changed everything for weak signal work and EME specifically. with a decent 2m yagi, maybe a 17-19 element long boom design, and a good preamp you can absolutely make contacts. not thousands of them, but enough to know you're doing it. the 9700 is a solid choice for this, it has a decent noise figure on 2m but youll still want an external LNA at the feedpoint, not in the shack. that distinction matters a lot because every bit of coax between the antenna and the first amplification stage adds noise. something like an SSB Electronics or a Kuhne unit is what most people run, and yes it needs to be relay switched because you do not want to TX through an LNA, you'll destroy it pretty fast. a lot of guys use a separate relay or a sequencer to make sure the preamp is bypassed before the PA keys up. get the sequencing right before anything else, its the thing that bites people. realistic expectations: you probably wont work anyone on CW EME with that setup but JT65B is a different story. check the moon schedule, get on during a busy period when the moon is at a good elevation for both stations, and you will be surprised. i worked my first EME contact with a single 15el M2 and a 100w brick before i even had the station properly optimized.

Practice test sites like Ham Radio Prep use questions taken exactly from official test pools and are always up to date with the latest changes. Just make sure whatever resource you're using shows "2022-2026" for the Technician pool.

been working on this direct conversion receiver for 40m and the vfo just wont stay put. using a 7.030 crystal in a colpitts circuit but it drifts like crazy when it warms up. tried different caps in the tank but no luck so far anyone dealt with this before? thinking maybe i need to go with a different oscillator design or add some kind of temperature compensation but not sure where to start

the mars mod is fine but if youre doing emcomm stuff and need out of band TX regularly id honestly just look at getting a used commercial radio down the road. not knocking the 857 at all i love mine, but trying to do serious cross-band or NVIS work outside normal allocations on a modded ham radio is kind of a gray area depending on your coordinator. anyway on the fan thing — some guys also just prop the radio up so theres more airflow underneath. low tech but combined with the resistor mod it makes a noticeable difference. also make sure your power supply isnt running hot too, sometimes people blame the radio when the whole shack needs more ventilation

so ive been sitting on doing the mars/cap mod on my FT-857D for probably two years now, kept putting it off because i was paranoid about voiding warranty on a radio i actually use daily. finally just did it last weekend and honestly wish i had done it sooner. the mod itself is pretty straightforward, theres a diode on the main board — D3001 i think from memory — that you either cut or remove depending on which version of the mod you want, and it opens up extended TX. takes maybe 20 minutes if you're not rushing. i did have to remove the bottom plate and the display assembly which was a little nerve wracking but nothing broke. what i actually wanted to talk about though is whether anyone has also done the internal cooling fan mod at the same time. mine runs warm during extended digital mode sessions and ive seen a few threads elsewhere about swapping the stock fan for something quieter and higher CFM. thinking about one of those noctua fans but not sure if the voltage regulation on that circuit is stable enough to not cause issues. anybody gone down that road with the 857D specifically? the 897 mods dont always translate directly and id rather not fry the PA section finding out.

so i finally got activated for the first time last weekend, we had a pretty serious flooding situation in the county and our emergency coordinator called everyone in. ive been doing the training nets and ICS courses for about a year now and honestly i thought i had a pretty good handle on things but being there in the actual EOC is just... different. the noise level, everyone talking over each other, trying to keep a net log while also monitoring two frequencies, its a lot more to juggle than the training exercises made it seem. one thing that caught me off guard was how much of the actual communication ended up being on simplex VHF rather than the repeater we always practice on. the repeater was getting hammered and the EC made the call to move some traffic off it. i had my HT and a mag mount on my car so i was okay but some of the guys who only had handhelds were really struggling with range especially when they were deployed to the shelter sites. anyway not really asking anything specific just thought id share since ive seen a lot of threads here about whether ARES training is actually worth doing and... yeah it is. you still wont be fully ready until you do the real thing but the training absolutely helped. just wish id practiced more with my logging under stress i guess

yeah the alert thing isnt mandatory but i started doing it before my activations and it honestly makes a huge difference for the QSO count, you get people sitting there waiting for you which is kinda nice. i use the pota.app spots page sometimes too even though its POTA not WWFF, some of the chasers watch both. also totally get what you mean about operating outside being better than home, i cant really explain it either but there's something about it that just feels different

yeah dont overthink it, just get on and make some noise. i remember my first contest i was terrified to transmit and just listened for like two hours lol. the search and pounce thing basically just means youre tuning around finding stations that are already calling CQ and working them one at a time instead of setting up on a freq yourself and having people call you. running is harder, you gotta have a decent signal and a clear spot on the band. start with S&P for sure. also check out the ARRL website they post the contest calendar and the rules for each one. there are some smaller contests before CQ WW that might be good warmups, the state QSO parties are usually pretty low key and friendly

yeah the logging thing tripped me up too when i was newer to this. i actually kept a little pocket notebook just for myself during activations separate from the official log because i found i could jot stuff faster in shorthand and then transfer it over when things slowed down. probably not ideal from a purist standpoint but it worked and nothing got lost. your mileage may vary on whether your EC is ok with that approach though. one thing i'll say — 18 hours on your first real activation is no joke, thats a solid chunk of time. did you do shift rotations or were you basically there the whole stretch? our group has had some issues with people burning out during longer events because nobody wants to be the one to say they need a break. relief operators are underappreciated i think.

so ive been working on this for maybe three weeks now, started with a simple regen receiver kit i got from a supplier online but ended up just going full scratch build after i got bored with the kit. using an FET i had laying around from an old project, hand wound the coil on a pvc pipe former, maybe 80 turns of 26awg i think, tapped at around 15 turns from the bottom for feedback. it receives fine actually picks up AM broadcast pretty clearly and i got some SW stuff on 40m which was exciting. but theres this oscillation that kicks in when i advance the regen control past like halfway, it doesnt just go into oscillation gradually it kind of snaps into it hard and then i get this loud squeal through the headphones. ive read that regens do this but i thought you were supposed to be able to back off the feedback and sit right at the threshold. mine just goes from barely regenerating to full squeal with almost no usable range in between. not sure if its my lead dress, the coil placement, or maybe the feedback tap is wrong. the detector and audio stage seem fine on their own. anyone dealt with this before

congrats on your first activation. im still waiting on mine, been doing the monthly nets and went to the SET back in october but havent been called up for anything real yet. question - did you end up using ICS213 forms for the message traffic or was your group doing something different? our EC keeps telling us to practice those but honestly the format still confuses me a little bit

so ive been licensed about 8 months now (general class) and just recently started getting into actually chasing DX instead of just ragchewing on 40m with the local guys. a buddy at my club mentioned cluster spotting and said to check out dxwatch and also qrz has some kind of dx cluster built in now? im honestly not sure im using these things correctly though. what i've been doing is just refreshing dxwatch manually and when i see something interesting i run over to the radio and try to find it on the frequency listed. half the time by the time i get there the frequency is just noise or a pile-up so thick i cant even tell wheres the dx station is. the qrz one seems to have slightly different spots sometimes too, like theyre pulling from different sources maybe? is there a better workflow here or some app that makes this less chaotic? im on windows if that matters. also somebody mentioned something called DX4WIN but that sounds like it might be more of a logging thing than a spotting thing. just trying to figure out how all these pieces fit together honestly

yeah the ID rule is 10 minutes and at the end, you had it right. the thing that got me when i was new was figuring out that "at the end" means when you actually sign off not like mid conversation if you decide to pause for a bit also just as a side note — if youre operating on a repeater a lot of them have their own kind of informal norms on top of the FCC rules so it can feel like theres even more to remember but those arent legally binding the way Part 97 is

so ive been building this little 40m CW rig from scratch for the past few months, nothing fancy just a VFO driving a buffer and then a pair of 2N3553s in a push-pull final stage. got it all breadboarded and then transferred to a proper chassis last week. key clicks are clean, sidetone sounds good, but when i scope the output before the LPF it looks a bit ragged on the peaks. not terrible but not the clean sine i was expecting either. the final is running maybe 3-4 watts into a dummy load, SWR is fine, but that waveform just bugs me. i checked the bias on the transistors and it seems okay, maybe a little warm but nothing crazy. could this be a keying waveform issue bleeding through or am i just looking at some harmonic content that the LPF will sort out anyway? i keep second guessing myself because this is my first real homebrew transmitter and i dont have a spectrum analyzer to check the harmonics properly. anyone gone through something similar with a class C final like this?

I have the 5100 in my Tacoma and the head unit mounting was honestly fine once I got a RAM mount setup sorted out. there's a spot on the dash where it sits pretty naturally and the cable is long enough to run it where i needed. touchscreen in a moving vehicle sounds sketchy but in practice i mostly use the knobs anyway so its not really an issue. the D-STAR thing is genuinely nice if the repeater near you is active, i use it a fair bit when traveling because you can look up reflectors and link into stuff from on the road. but if youre just doing tuesday night nets and local chat the 7900 will do everything you need for less money and theres nothing wrong with that. i'd probably go 5100 just because it gives you room to grow into the digital stuff but thats just me.

this is really helpful, im pretty new to DXing and pileups have been intimidating. i worked my first ever pile last month, it was nothing crazy rare just a VP9 station but i still felt like i had no idea what i was doing. kept transmitting and transmitting and nothing. eventually figured out they were listening up but wasnt sure how far up. i think i called like 3 up for a while then gave up and came back later when the pile died down a bit and got through on like the second call lol. is there a good way to figure out the split range when its not announced? do i just have to listen around?

yeah POTA is a bit more chill if you want something similar but dont have to worry about altitude lol. i do both and honestly the park activations are good practice for the field setup stuff before committing to dragging everything up a mountain. congrats on the first summit tho

JS8Call is definitely not a ghost town but its way more region-dependent than FT8. i get pretty solid activity on 40m evenings here in the midwest, usually a dozen or so stations showing up in fldigi — wait no, in the JS8Call client i mean. the 14.078 you mentioned is actually more the 20m JS8 calling frequency, 40m is around 7.078 if im remembering right, might be worth double checking that because it could explain why youre seeing dead spots. the store and forward relay stuff is actually pretty cool for emcomm practice if thats your thing, i did a thing with our ARES group where we used it to pass simulated messages through a relay node and it worked surprisingly well with pretty marginal conditions. for casual ragchewing though yeah it can feel slow. once you get used to the rhythm its fine but the first few sessions feel like watching paint dry honestly. FT8 scratches the DX itch, JS8Call scratches the actual communication itch, i kind of think of them as totally different tools at this point rather than comparing them directly.

hamstudy.org is absolutely legit, thats basically what everyone uses now. the question pool for the technician exam is public so sites like that just drill you on the actual questions that could show up. once you're getting like 85-90% consistently on the practice tests you're probably ready to go sit for the real thing. the tech exam honestly isnt that bad, 35 questions multiple choice, you need 26 right to pass. with an electronics background you'll breeze through the electrical theory stuff, the main things to study are the regulations and the specific band/frequency stuff because that's where people who think they already know everything tend to slip up. i'd give yourself maybe 2-3 weeks of casual studying and you should be fine. find a local ARRL club because they usually run VE sessions pretty regularly and some of them are free or just a small fee

COM port PTT uses RTS pin voltage control, but USB cables can fail or RF gets back into Digirig causing port problems. Bad cables or incomplete connections common - often causes transmitter to lock on transmit. Try different USB cable first.

had something similar happen to a friends FT-991 after a nearby strike, ended up being the low pass filter board had a cap that looked totally fine visually but was shorted. TX path was basically dead, receive was perfect. just something else to check in case its not the finals.