Thomas Bradley

yeah what he said about the tone. I went through the same thing honestly, felt like I was talking into a void for like a week before someone told me. one thing i'll add — some repeaters also have a carrier squelch mode where they dont require a tone at all, but those are getting pretty rare these days. most of the linked systems especially, the ones that tie into echolink or the statewide nets, they almost always need the tone set or you just wont get in. the baofeng menu system is honestly kind of a pain to navigate if you havent used chirp yet. if you havent, look into it, you can program all that stuff way easier from a computer and it saves a lot of headaches with those radios

so ive been chasing 3D2/R for a few weeks now and honestly getting nowhere, just getting stepped on constantly or the DX just never seems to come back to me even when i think im in the right spot. been licensed about 6 years so its not like im brand new to this but pileups specifically have always been my weak point. anyway last weekend something finally clicked. i stopped trying to transmit right when the DX finished — everyone does that, thats the problem. i started waiting maybe half a beat, like just a fraction of a second after the crowd jumps in, then i keyed up. and i also started really listening to where the DX was pulling from in the split. he was consistently coming back to stations about 2 kHz up from where the bulk of the pileup was sitting so i just parked there and waited my turn basically. running about 500w into a 4el yagi at 45ft so not a pistol station but not a big gun either. i think the timing thing honestly made more difference than anything power-related. curious if anyone else has had luck with specific techniques or if its just always going to be a chaos lottery

Working on setting up my first RMS Packet gateway for the local ARES group using a Yaesu FT-2980R on 2 meters. RMS Packet is simple to install and run, and requires a minimum of computer and radio equipment, with VARA FM and Soundmodem programs running minimized in the background. However, I'm running into consistent audio level issues - VARA FM shows red levels frequently and connections fail. Radio specs: FT-2980R set to 25W, deviation at factory settings. Interface: Digirig with recommended cable. Has anyone dealt with similar overdriven audio problems? I've tried reducing both TX and RX audio levels but still getting the red indicators.

so this has been driving me nuts for about two weeks now. my 7300 is behaving totally normally on every band except 40m where im only getting maybe 30-35 watts out at full drive when i should be seeing closer to 100. the ALC looks a little weird too, kind of jumpy when it wouldnt normally be doing that. i swapped coax and tried a dummy load so its definitely not the antenna system. SWR is flat on the dummy. the rig reads its own output power the same way my external meter does so at least the metering isnt lying to me. ive had it about 3 years, doesnt get run super hard, mostly digital modes at 50% power. nothing got wet, no lightning nearby that i know of. just woke up one morning and 40m was soft. havent opened it up yet because i kind of wanted to see if anyone had seen this before before i started poking around. anyone dealt with something similar on one of these?

welcome to the hobby, congrats on the ticket. the ft-65 is honestly worth the extra money if you can swing it, the audio is a lot clearer and the thing is built like a tank compared to the baofeng. that said i started with a baofeng uv-5r and made plenty of contacts with it so dont let anyone talk you out of it if budget is tight. get on that local repeater and just say hi during a net or whatever, most hams are pretty friendly to new folks. your first qso will probably feel a little awkward but after like two or three of them it just clicks. good luck and 73.

have you looked at the antenna rotator controller project that W4/VE3KL or whoever published on QRZ a while back? cant remember who it was exactly but there was a pretty well documented one using a Raspberry Pi instead of arduino, talked to rotctld directly which is nice if youre running linux. might be overkill depending on what you want though, arduino is probably fine if you dont need the network stuff

nice work on the DX too, 17m can be really good for that kind of thing when conditions cooperate. i did a WWFF activation at a wildlife refuge last fall and also worked a couple european stations which was a first for me on QRP. theres something about being out in a nature reference that just makes the whole thing feel more meaningful than a regular contact i dunno how to explain it one thing i'd add to what the other guy said — make sure you take a photo or two of your setup in the field because some of the regional WWFF coordinators like to see evidence especially for new references or disputed ones. probbaly not required for a well-known KFF ref but good habit to get into

yeah you basically have the concept right -- run on radio 1, hunt mults or fill in the S&P gaps on radio 2. but the real gain isnt just the mults, its that dead time between callers. even in a good run there are gaps where youre just waiting and if you can throw out a call on radio 2 during those 3-4 seconds youre compressing a lot of wasted time over a 24 or 48 hour period. the rate difference between a clean SO2R operator and a single radio guy adds up more than you'd think. that said the 7300 and the 1000mp combo is a bit of a mismatch for SO2R because youre going to have a harder time getting them to talk to the logging software in sync. N1MM handles it but the bandmap coordination works way better when both radios respond similarly to CAT commands. the 1000mp can be a little quirky. the bigger issue honestly is the antenna situation -- if youre transmitting on radio 2 anywhere near the frequency radio 1 is listening on youre going to either blow a preamp or just hear nothing but splatter. you need either really good bandpass filters or separate antennas for each band and that gets expensive fast. for 4-5 contests a year i'd say get your single radio game dialed in first, work on operating discipline, and maybe try SO2R for real during a low-stakes contest just to feel it out before committing to the filter investment.

NE602 into LM386 is a pretty standard combo, i built almost the exact same thing for 20m last year. the 386 is just kind of a noisy chip in my experience, some people swap it out for an LM380 or even just an op-amp audio stage and say it helps. but honestly for 40m direct conversion that phasey audio might just be what you have to live with unless you want to add a phasing network. the rumble is weird though, what are you running it off of? wall wart or battery? if its a wall wart i'd try a battery just to rule out the supply even if your scope says its clean, scope isnt always gonna catch everything.

So ive been meaning to do this for like two years and after the storms last month kind of woke me up a bit I actually started pulling stuff together for a real go-kit. Right now I've got my FT-891 set aside for it, a 40ah LiFePO4 battery, my SignaLink for digital modes, and I threw in a roll of coax and a random wire antenna I built last summer. Also got a small inverter in case I need to run anything off car power. What I'm not sure about is the accessories side of things — like do I need to bring a full logging setup or is paper fine for most activations? And how do people handle power monitoring, do you all just use a wattmeter inline or is there a better way to keep an eye on battery state. I feel like there's probably a bunch of obvious stuff I'm forgetting and won't realize until I'm actually deployed somewhere and it's too late. Been doing ARES stuff for about 8 months so still getting my feet under me with the served agency expectations and all that.

i went through this same thing last winter. what finally clicked for me was switching to listening to actual on-air CW every single day even if i couldnt copy most of it. just having it in your ears while you do other stuff around the shack seems to help your brain get used to the faster rhythm. also W1AW practice sessions are great for this, they do broadcasts at different speeds and you can kind of chase your target speed. one other thing — are you recognizing letters as sounds yet or are you still counting dits and dahs in your head? because if its the latter thats probably your bottleneck right there, you kind of have to get past that to go any faster.

sounds like the keyer might be in reverse mode or something. most modern keyers have a way to swap the paddle assignments, check if theres a menu setting for dot/dash reverse. on the 7300 i think its buried in the keyer settings somewhere but i dont remember exactly where. worth checking the radio manual too since it might be a radio setting not the paddle

dude i was so scared my first time checking into a net i gave my callsign wrong lol. said it backwards somehow. just keep showing up, thats really the only way to get comfortable with the procedures. nobody expects new hams to know everything right away and if they do theyre being weird about it.

so i finally worked up the nerve to check into a local 2m net last night, been licensed for about 4 months now and mostly just been listening. the net control called for check-ins and i keyed up and gave my call but i guess i did something wrong because he repeated instructions and i felt like everyone knew it was aimed at me lol. anyway i wasnt sure when to just say my call vs when to give my full info, and i didnt know if i was supposed to wait for him to acknowledge me before i said anything else or just go for it. also someone was doing a roundtable thing and i genuinely had no idea when it was my turn to talk. is there like a good resource for learning how nets actually work in practice? the license exam definitely doesnt prepare you for this stuff