Jennifer Williams

yeah repeaterbook is the go-to. one thing i'll add is that some repeaters around here are linked into systems like IRLP or Allstar and those can have their own quirks — like sometimes a linked repeater is in the middle of a net happening on another node and you have no idea because you can only hear your local side. kind of caught me off guard the first few times. anyway welcome to the hobby, repeaters are a great way to get comfortable before you venture onto HF or whatever

yeah the activity thing is the frustrating part honestly. i check in on JS8Call maybe once a week and sometimes its hopping and sometimes its dead. theres a net on HF that uses it, i forget which one, but that might be worth looking up if you want guaranteed activity at a specific time rather than just hoping someone is around. FT8 kind of ate everything else for casual weak-signal stuff which is a shame. WSPR at least has a clear purpose and people run it all the time but the middle ground modes like JS8 and Olivia just sort of struggle for users. not saying give up on it, just that expectations matter.

ok so i just got my technician license like three weeks ago and ive been listening to a lot of repeater traffic in my area trying to get comfortable before i actually key up. sometimes people spell out their callsigns using the nato phonetic alphabet and sometimes they just say the letters normally. im trying to figure out if theres like a rule about when you have to do it or if its just a preference thing. i dont want to sound like an idiot when i finally transmit but i also dont want to over do it and sound like im trying too hard. my callsign has a couple letters that sound similar so i guess that might matter too. anyone know the actual deal here

congrats on the first build and first QRP contact, that 559 at 5w is genuinely solid especially with a random wire. the battery warmth is probably fine honestly, lipos do get a bit warm under load and as long as its not hot to the touch or swelling you're likely okay. the main thing with lipos is keeping an eye on the voltage -- if it drops too low during TX that can cause all kinds of weirdness with the finals. a simple cell voltage checker from amazon is like 3 bucks and super handy. for getting more contacts on low power the biggest thing i'd say is patience and timing. find a relatively clear frequency, listen for a while, and call CQ when the band sounds like its in decent shape. early morning on 40m can be magic with QRP. also if you havent tried FT8 yet, that mode was basically made for low power situations -- you can work DX with 5w that would be near impossible on SSB. some purists don't like it but hey, a contact is a contact when you're learning

so ive been on FT8 for a while now and yeah its great for working new entities and all that but honestly after a while it feels like youre just clicking buttons and watching a waterfall. theres no real communication happening, just signal reports and 73 and done. heard about JS8Call and that it was built on the same weak signal foundation as FT8 but lets you actually type messages back and forth. been thinking about switching over for some of my HF time but dont really know anyone running it in my area. also curious how the timing/sequencing works compared to FT8 — i know FT8 is locked to 15 second slots and JS8Call has a few different speed modes? my radio is an IC-7300 going into WSJT-X right now with VARA and stuff already set up for winlink so i dont think the hardware side is a problem. just wondering if its worth learning another piece of software and if theres actually activity on JS8 or if its kind of a ghost town these days compared to FT8

yeah what he said about LoTW is right. i went through the paper QSL route years ago before LoTW was really a thing and it was honestly kind of a pain, keeping cards organized, getting them all sorted by entity, mailing them in... LoTW is just so much cleaner even if setting it up the first time is a little confusing with the certificates and all that. one thing nobody told me starting out - keep a separate log or at least a notes column for which entities you still need vs which ones you have confirmed. i spent a bunch of time chasing stuff i already had confirmed because i wasnt tracking it properly. DXKeeper or even just a spreadsheet does the job fine

honestly the best thing i ever did was slow way way down. like embarrassingly slow. i know 15 wpm feels right because thats kind of where you want to end up but your hands and brain arent there yet and you're just reinforcing bad muscle memory by pushing it. drop to 10 or even 8 and focus on making every character sound clean and crisp before you speed back up. on the iambic A vs B thing — most people cant tell the difference either and it genuinely doesnt matter that much when you're starting out. what does matter is getting the weight set right on your keyer. on the 7300 i think its in the keyer menu, try bumping the weight up just a tiny bit if your dits are sounding too light or getting clipped. and honestly the sidetone pitch makes a bigger difference to how comfortable it feels than people give it credit for — try somewhere around 600-700hz if you havent already, some people like it higher but that range works for most ears. the good news is the BY-1 is a solid paddle and wont hold you back at all. keep at it, three months in and actually getting on the air is further than a lot of people get.

nice work on the activation. im pretty new to chasing myself and i can tell you i absolutely just tune around looking for CQ SOTA, i check sotawatch but half the time the alerts are wrong or the activator is already done by the time i see it lol. so yeah dont be surprised when chasers appear out of nowhere, thats just how it goes.

im in basically the same situation lol, been trying to get AO-73 contacts for a couple months. one thing that helped me was just listening for a while before trying to transmit, like really getting a feel for where signals are sitting in the passband and how theyre moving. also i found that if i tune my downlink receiver to a beacon or a signal i know and keep that stable, then my uplink is probably in roughly the right place too. its a bit by ear but it works when you cant automate everything. the inverting thing the other guy mentioned is real and it messed me up a lot at first. i kept tuning the wrong direction and chasing my own signal further off frequency.

so ive been licensed for about 3 years now and mostly just done casual operating, ragchews, some local nets, that kind of thing. but lately ive been getting really into DX and i started logging everything carefully with the intent of actually going for DXCC at some point. i hit 100 confirmed on LoTW last week which i guess technically means i can apply, but im confused about a few things. first — do the contacts have to all be on the same band or mode or is it just any 100 entities confirmed? ive got mine spread across 40m, 20m, 17m, and a handful on 10m from when the band was open last fall. also whats the deal with deleted entities? i see some old timers talking about contacts with places that arent on the current list anymore and whether those count. not that i have any of those, just curious how that works. and WAS — is that totally separate from DXCC? i have maybe 35 states confirmed and wasnt sure if i should be focusing on one or the other or just work everything and sort it out later. feels like i should have a strategy but honestly i might just be overthinking it.

yeah dont stress too much about it, the tech exam really isnt that bad. i remember being in your exact position and thinking i needed to know everything about electronics theory and propagation and all that. you really dont, at least not for the exam. the question pool is public and the test is pulled directly from it so what you see in practice is literally what you get. one thing i'd add is to not just memorize the answers blindly if you can help it — understanding even a little bit of why the answer is correct makes it stick way better and also just makes you a better operator down the road. but if youre really crunched for time, pure memorization gets people through it every day. good luck, the hobby is worth it

yeah same thing confused me when i was starting out. the charts people post online sometimes mix up the FCC allocations with the ARRL suggested band plan and they're not the same thing at all. one is legal and one is just kind of a gentlemans agreement type thing. i just bookmarked the actual part 97 page and that cleared a lot of it up for me, even though its not exactly fun reading lol

JT65 changed everything for EME, honestly. before that you basically needed a big array and a ton of power just to have a shot at it, now people are making contacts with setups that would have been considered laughable back in the analog days. that said your single yagi is still probably going to be a real limiting factor even with digital modes — not impossible but youre going to be working the biggest stations only and your schedule fill rate will be frustrating. the 4-yagi array thing is pretty much the sweet spot for a serious but manageable home station in my opinion. four 17el or similar antennas with a proper power combiner and a good H-frame mount, get your coax losses down as low as you can, and run whatever power your radio and amp can put out legally. noise figure matters a lot on EME, like a 0.5dB improvement in your system NF actually makes a noticeable difference in what you can decode, so dont cheap out on the preamp or the coax between it and the antenna. sequencer too, you absolutely need a sequencer or youll blow the preamp eventually during transmit. CW is still happening but its mostly the big guns running kilowatt-class amps and large arrays talking to each other. if you want to actually build up a respectable EME initial count without losing your mind, JT65 on 144 is where the activity is.

yeah what he said about radials is real, i learned that the hard way lol. put up a buddistick type thing a few years back thinking id work everything and it was pretty underwhelming until i actually laid out a proper radial field. then it got a lot better but still not magical or anything. one thing worth mentioning — if you go inverted-V and the ends are kinda low, like under 10ft off the ground, you might get some pattern weirdness and detuning from the ground. not a dealbreaker but something to be aware of. try to get those ends up a bit if you can even if its just rope to a fence post or whatever. your 35ft mast should be fine for the apex on 40m.

yeah 10m has been something else this week. i was just casually spinning the dial tuesday evening not expecting much and ran into a pileup on 28.495 that turned out to be a station in Argentina, jumped in and got him on like the third call which honestly never happens to me. my antenna situation is nothing special either, just a vertical with a mediocre ground plane. the Icom thing im cautiously interested in. if they can get something competitive under $1000 that doesnt feel like they cut every corner it would shake things up a bit. the 7300 was already a game changer when it came out so i trust them to at least make something solid. but yeah, wait and see i guess.

so ive been on HF for about two years now mostly doing digital modes but lately ive been trying to get into SSB phone and honestly the audio situation is kind of frustrating. i feel like every time i listen back on my SDR or ask for reports people say im either too bassy, or the audio sounds like im calling from a tin can, or there's this low level hum that i can only sometimes hear myself. my setup is an IC-7300 going into a Heil PR-40 through their boom arm, and i have the ALC sitting right around where the manual says it should be but i sometimes wonder if the mic gain is too high because the ALC does jump around a lot when i talk. ive played with the TX equalizer settings a bit but mostly i just left them at flat because i dont really know what im doing there. also not totally sure if USB vs LSB even matters for audio quality on a given band or if thats a dumb question. on 40m i always go LSB because thats just what everyone does but on 20m i go USB. is there anything i can actually do to make transmitted audio noticeably better without buying more stuff, or is this just something you dial in over like years of operating

yeah what the previous guy said about T-CTCS vs R-CTCS is spot on. i spent like two weeks wondering why a repeater wouldnt hear me and it turned out i had the tone set on receive only, felt pretty silly. CHIRP makes it kinda confusing with the column layout. one other thing on repeater etiquette — around here at least people usually leave a pause between transmissions so the linking system has time to reset, some repeaters are linked to others over the internet (EchoLink, IRLP, stuff like that) and if you step right on the tail you can cause issues. your local club probably has specifics on how their system works. worth asking someone who's on it regularly

the transition from straight key to paddle took me way longer than i expected too so youre not alone. one thing that helped me was just doing the alphabet over and over super slowly and not worrying about copying anything, just sending. also there are some youtube videos where guys show their hand position on the paddle and i think i had my fingers totally wrong for like the first month lol. what keyer speed do you have it set to?

the power math on this isnt terrible if you're not both running 100w continuously. realistically in a comms exercise you're probably averaging maybe 20-25% duty cycle on transmit, so two rigs at 100w out might actually pull something like 25-30A average combined depending on efficiency of the finals. the 7300 is pretty decent on power consumption, draws around 22A on transmit at 100w and like 2A on receive. the 570 is a bit older and probably pulls a bit more but similar ballpark. two 100ah LiFePO4 packs gives you 200ah usable (basically all of it with LiFePO4 which is nice), so even at 30A average draw you're looking at like 6.5 hours before you're getting low, and thats without any solar input at all. with 200w of panels on a decent sunny day youre probably adding 8-10A back in during daylight. so yeah it should be workable but its tight if the exercise runs long or if conditions are bad and people are cranking power trying to make contacts. personally i'd bring the EU2200i anyway just as backup. leave it off unless you need it. the noise thing is real but you can run a longer cord and stick it downwind, it makes a huge difference. had a similar setup at a public service event last summer and ended up needing the genny around hour 6 when clouds rolled in and the battery was getting low. really glad i had it in the truck.

so ive been a tech for about 2 years now and mostly just been doing VHF/UHF stuff, some APRS, helped out with a few public service events. but lately ive been really curious about HF and everyone keeps telling me i should just go get my General already. my question is how difficult is the exam compared to the tech exam because honestly the tech exam was not that bad but i remember studying for like 3 weeks and still feeling nervous going in. i downloaded the question pool and just kind of skimmed it and some of it looks familiar but then there's stuff about like propagation and operating practices and some electrical theory that I'm not sure i ever really learned properly. is there a certain section that trips people up the most? i feel like the regulations part is gonna be the hardest for me personally but maybe im wrong. also do the HF privileges kick in right away after you pass or do you have to wait for the FCC to update your license or something

i drilled my last lease, just patched it with a rubber grommet and a dab of sealant when i turned it in. dealership never said a word. but i realize thats not for everyone lol the lip mount suggestion above is probably the smarter play. only thing id add is that the coax on those lip mounts tends to get pinched or chafed right at the crimp point over time, especially if the lip flexes at all. just something to keep an eye on if you go that route

yeah the missing balun is almost certainly your problem or at least a big part of it. without a choke balun at the feedpoint the coax shield becomes part of the radiating system and your analyzer is seeing a mix of the actual antenna impedance plus whatever common mode currents are doing. can throw your readings off enough to make a decent antenna look like a mess. honestly just wind yourself a quick ugly balun, like 8-10 turns of the coax in a coil about 6 inches diameter right at the feedpoint, even that'll make a noticeable difference before you go building something fancier. the 150kHz low resonance is also pretty normal for an inverted-V vs a flat dipole. the formula 468/f is really for a flat dipole in free space and when you droop the legs you're effectively increasing the electrical length a bit. 45 degrees isnt super steep but it'll still shift things down some. try trimming maybe 6 inches off each leg and remeasure after you get that balun situation sorted. dont trim too much at once, easier to take wire off than put it back.

ran my own setup for probably three years before i caved and tried RemoteHams last winter. honestly the client is way more polished than i expected. the SDR remote piece does work alongside the main rig control, theres a separate SDR viewer window that pulls the panadapter feed independently so yeah you can have both running at the same time. i was skeptical but it actually works pretty well, the bandwidth usage is reasonable too which i care about because my remote site is on a rural DSL line. the latency thing on SSB you mentioned — RemoteHams has a VOX delay compensation setting that helps a lot, its not perfect but its way better than trying to sync it yourself through raw audio streaming. i still get occasional dropouts on 17m when the band is doing weird stuff but thats mostly my internet not the software. the linking stuff i havent really dug into, i know there are guys using it that way but i mostly just use it for HF operation so cant speak to that part of it much.

so ive been running an old TS-450S for like 12 years and it still works fine honestly but the thing is huge and the filters are getting weird and i keep reading about how the 7300 changed everything when it came out. i know its been out a while now but prices are finally where i can justify it to my wife without a whole conversation about it. my main concern is the panadapter stuff — like is it actually useful day to day or is it one of those things you play with for a week and then ignore. also the 450 has a really good receiver in its own right and i dont want to feel like i traded sideways just because the new radio has a touchscreen. anyone actually compare these two or am i just overthinking it

honestly for where you're at i'd say work on the single radio fundamentals first. not trying to be discouraging but SO2R with intermod problems is just going to frustrate you and you might not even be sure if your rate issues are technique or equipment. the mental load of running two radios when you're still building contest reflexes is real too. things that made a bigger difference for me before i ever touched SO2R: better CQing discipline, learning when to abandon a run frequency and go S&P, and just logging speed so i wasnt losing time fumbling around. N1MM shortcuts especially. also callsign copying accuracy under fatigue, that one sounds boring but late in a 48hr contest it matters a lot more than having a second radio.