Kevin O'Connor

yeah the neophyte is a good starting point, built one myself a while back. the hum thing drove me nuts too. one thing i havent seen mentioned much is the ground plane situation, like if youre building on perfboard or whatever and your ground traces are long and shared between the audio and RF sections you can get all kinds of weirdness. i ended up running a dedicated heavy ground wire back to the power entry point from the audio amp and that helped a lot. also seconding the battery suggestion, that will tell you fast whether its supply noise or something structural in the circuit

yeah i did the mars mod on mine years ago, pretty straightforward on that radio. the only thing id say is double-check your SWR before you actually transmit anywhere outside the ham bands cause the lpf sections arent really optimized for everything in between and you can get some weird harmonic stuff depending on the frequency. probably not a big deal at qrp levels but worth knowing.

yeah the baofeng programming is a little annoying until you get used to it, i'd honestly just download CHIRP and program it from your computer, way less headache. also 100hz is kind of an unusual tone now that i think about it, most around here use 103.5 or 127.3 but every club does their own thing so could be right. one thing about repeater etiquette thats worth knowing — if the repeater is linked into a network like Echolink or IRLP or one of the Allstar systems, there might be people from way outside your area listening. not a big deal just something to be aware of. i was on a local machine once not realizing it was linked and ended up in a conversation with a guy in florida which was kinda cool actually.

so ive been trying to get Winlink going for a few weeks now and i think i finally understand most of it but the gateway stuff is still tripping me up. running Winlink Express on a windows 10 box, got a Signalink USB hooked to a Kenwood TM-V71A on 2m. the radio connects fine to the local RMS gateway i can see it in the gateway list and it shows within range. i did get one successful message through like two weeks ago but since then nothing goes through and i cant figure out if its my end or the gateway. what im confused about is the difference between an RMS relay and a regular RMS gateway. like the documentation kind of explains it but then also doesnt. is a relay just for when theres no internet on the gateway side? i thought all the gateways had to be internet connected to forward to the CMS anyway. also when i set up a session it just sits there saying waiting for channel activity and never connects. ive tried at a few different times of day. the squelch is open on the gateway frequency and i can see the little VARA FM or packet activity light blinking on the gateway side when others connect. so it seems like the gateway is fine. should i be worried about my audio levels? the Signalink is set pretty much out of the box, i bumped the TX knob up a tiny bit. running Winlink Express with VARA FM, not packet, maybe thats an issue. someone in my club said VARA FM needs the full licensed version to do anything useful but i thought the free version still works just slower. any thoughts appreciated, this is driving me a little nuts

the waterfall thing is real, i had the exact same reaction when i moved to a SDR-based setup a while back. once you've used one you kinda wonder how you ever found anything without it especially on the lower bands where stuff is scattered everywhere. 40m on a friday night looks like rush hour traffic on that display. on the receiver comparison — from what ive read the 590 has a slight edge in close-in dynamic range but its not really something you'd notice unless you're doing serious contesting or working a pileup right next to a strong station. for normal operating the 7300 holds up fine. let us know how it does in a contest, id be curious to hear your take after running it for a few hours under pressure.

dont stress about memorizing all of them at once, I tried to do that when i started and it just made my head spin. the ones that come up constantly on HF SSB for me are QRM, QRN, QSB which is signal fading, QRP which most people know means low power operation, and QRO is high power. QSK is full break-in CW if you ever get into morse. honestly just keep a little cheat sheet next to your radio for a while, thats what i did for the first year and nobody on the air knows or cares

honestly the difference is pretty marginal at those heights, especially if your inverted V apex is already decent. the flat top picks up maybe a db or two broadside and the radiation angle is a bit lower which helps for dx, but if youre mostly doing domestic rag chews on 40 you probably wont notice much. ive had both setups at various points and the flat top felt a little punchier but i couldnt swear to it being the antenna vs just band conditions that day. the real argument for flat top is if you can get it significantly higher than the apex of your V — like if your V is at 35 feet and you could do a flat top at 50 feet, then yeah its worth it. but swapping one 35 foot configuration for another 35 foot configuration, the math just doesnt favor making your life complicated over it. id save the energy for getting more height if thats ever an option.

the feedline is probably eating more than you think, especially if thats older RG8X. at 146 MHz youre looking at maybe 2-2.5dB loss over 40ft which isnt catastrophic but its real. at 440 its pretty ugly though, closer to 5-6dB and thats essentially cutting your power in half and then some. as for the collinear vs yagi debate — for hitting multiple repeaters in different directions a collinear is the obvious answer. a yagi makes sense if you had ONE direction you cared about, like a distant linked system or simplex with a buddy. but the gain difference between a X50 and say a Diamond X300 or a Comet GP-9 isnt huge. maybe 3dB real world. thats noticeable but its not going to turn a marginal path into full quieting if the path is genuinely difficult. i'd honestly look at whether the repeater itself has a good antenna before assuming its your end.

oh man i didnt even know WWFF was a thing until like two months ago, been looking into it since i got my general. so you can just activate any nature reserve or does it have to be a specific listed reference? i looked at the WWFF directory and there seem to be a ton of references near me but i wasnt sure if theyre all active or what the process is to actually register an activation before you go out

so ive been a Tech for about two years now and mostly just messing around on 2m and some 70cm stuff, did some APRS, got into a few nets. but lately ive been really curious about HF and a buddy of mine keeps telling me i should just go ahead and upgrade to General because its not that bad. i guess my main question is how different is the General exam from the Tech exam and what kind of stuff do i actually need to know that i dont already know? like i remember the Tech exam had some electrical stuff and rules and all that, is General a lot more of the same or is there stuff thats totally new territory. also not sure how long i should study before i feel ready, i tried reading through the ARRL book once and kinda got lost in the HF propagation sections. any advice would help, im not in a huge rush but would like to get on HF before the summer when conditions are supposed to be good

I just got WSJT-X running and made my first FT8 contact to Europe yesterday! The 15-second transmission cycles and quick 60-90 second QSOs are perfect for building confidence. Still learning when to use which bands - any recommendations for a new Tech trying to maximize activity?

okay so the biggest thing i wish someone had told me early on is to NEVER learn it visually. like dont sit there memorizing dit dah dah is W on a chart. your brain will hit a wall around 10-12 wpm and you'll have to relearn everything anyway. the whole idea with Koch method is you start with just two characters, K and M i think, and you copy them at full speed like 20wpm right from the start but the spacing between letters is stretched way out so you have time to think. then you add one letter at a time as you get accurate. it sounds weird but it works way better than starting slow and trying to speed up later. for actual resources, lcwo.net is free and its basically the Koch method in a browser. a lot of people also use the Just Learn Morse Code software though i think thats windows only. give it more than a week though, like seriously the first month feels like nothing is sticking and then one day it kind of clicks. i was probably 6 weeks in before i stopped hating it

so ive been running an RTL-SDR v3 dongle for probably two years now and honestly its been great for what it is, picked up ACARS, some NOAA weather sat stuff, did the whole ADS-B thing with dump1090 for a while. but lately im wanting to do more and the limitations are starting to bug me especially the dynamic range and the noise floor on HF even with the direct sampling mod. been looking at either the SDRplay RSP1B or just jumping straight to a HackRF One. the price difference is pretty significant, SDRplay is what like $110-120 and HackRF is closer to $340-350 depending where you get it. i know the HackRF can transmit which is cool but im not sure i actually need that for what im doing. mostly just wanna do better HF monitoring, maybe some trunked P25 stuff, and eventually try decoding some weak signal digital modes. anyone gone from RTL-SDR to one of these and can actually compare? not looking for a spec sheet just wondering what the real world difference felt like

the x50 is a solid antenna and honestly underrated for portable use. i tried bringing a 7 el yagi up a hill one time and by the time i got to the top i was so winded from carrying all the pieces that i just wanted to go home lol. depends a lot on how far you're walking and how much you care about the extra contacts. if your paths are line of sight to the repeater anyway the collinear is probably fine and the gain difference wont matter much in practice.

the inverting transponder thing is what gets everybody at first, dont feel bad. basically if you drift down in the passband on rx you need to tune UP on tx to compensate, it feels completely backwards and your brain fights you on it. once it clicks it becomes automatic but it takes a few passes to rewire yourself. for finding yourself — easiest trick is to use a very short low power transmission, like just tap the PTT for half a second with like 5 or 10 watts, and really listen for where you land. dont try to hold a full over until youve actually located yourself in the passband. a lot of guys new to linear birds just key up and wonder why they cant find themselves and its because they blasted a 10 second transmission before verifying anything. also with the 9700 and gpredict, make sure you have the doppler correction actually set up for the right VFO assignments. the 9700 has that CAT setup where you can have it track both uplink and downlink simultaneously but you have to tell gpredict which is which and i've seen people have them swapped without realizing it. check the tracking module settings, there's a control port configuration that matters.

As control operator, you're ultimately responsible for all transmissions from your station, period. Whether someone operates in person at your shack or remotely, you must ensure they follow Part 97. Section 97.101 requires cooperation in frequency selection and prohibits causing interference - that's on you as control operator.

so ive been going back and forth on this for a while and i figured id just ask here since there's people who've actually tried both. i have a pretty standard 40m dipole up about 30 feet, fed with coax, nothing fancy, works fine for local stuff and some regional contacts but i feel like im missing DX that other guys in the area seem to be working with no problem. a buddy of mine runs a vertical on a ground mounted radial field and swears by it for DX on 40, says the low angle radiation beats a dipole at that height every time. and yeah theoretically i get it, a dipole at 30ft on 40m is only like 0.2 wavelengths up so it's more of a NVIS cloud-burner than a DX machine. but ive also read plenty of stuff saying a good dipole can still compete if the vertical has a mediocre radial system. my question is really whether its worth pulling the dipole down and putting up a vertical, or if i should just try to get the dipole higher. getting it higher is kind of a pain because of my lot layout but not impossible. the vertical option would be easier to install but id have to lay radials which is also a whole project. anyone gone through this same decision?

i went through exactly this last year. ended up getting an arrow 2m/70cm yagi and honestly its fine for what you described, packs down pretty small and the dual band thing is handy. though i'll admit for pure 2m SSB performance its not like a dedicated 2m yagi would be, its a compromise. but for portable use the convenience factor counts for a lot. one thing nobody mentioned — if youre mainly hiking to summits and doing SOTA activations or whatever, you probably also want to think about your radio's battery weight before agonizing too much over the antenna. ive definitely been the guy at the top of a hill with a great antenna and a half dead battery because i optimized the wrong thing lol

Congratulations on getting licensed! Don't worry - everyone feels that way at first. Start by just listening for a while to get comfortable with how conversations flow. When you're ready, try something simple like "CQ, CQ, this is KC1XYZ, new ham looking for a first contact." Most ops are super welcoming to new licensees.

so ive been chasing ZL9 for like three years and last weekend there was a small dxpedition active on 17m and i finally managed to break through after probably 45 minutes of trying. figured id write up what ended up working since i wasted a lot of time doing the wrong things first. first 20 minutes i was just calling on their frequency like an idiot, which obviously got me nowhere and probably annoyed the operator. once i realized they were working split and listening up 3 to 7 i started actually paying attention to the rhythm. thats the thing nobody really told me early on — you have to listen to how the operator is moving through the pileup. some guys work strictly up the band, some jump around, some seem to favor stations that call right when the previous QSO ends vs waiting a beat. what finally got me through was timing my call to end just as i guessed they would key up to listen, and i shifted maybe 1.5 khz above where most of the pileup was sitting. also dropped my call to just the suffix for a couple rounds which felt weird but seemed to work. running about 400w into a 4el yagi on that band so not a big gun but not barefoot either. anyway curious if others have figured out patterns or tricks that consistently work, or if its just luck most of the time

dont worry too much about it, you didnt commit some huge sin or anything. nets do vary a lot though — a traffic net runs very differently from a casual ragchew net and it sounds like yours might be somewhere in the middle. the general idea is that net control is trying to move through the check-in list efficiently so everyone gets heard, especially if there's a long list or the net has a specific purpose beyond just chatting. 2-3 minutes on a single comment during a busy check-in round can slow things down quite a bit, especially if there are 15 or 20 stations waiting. the usual thing is to keep your initial comment to maybe 30 seconds or so and then if people are interested the net control will often open it up for more discussion after the formal check-ins are done. a lot of nets have a "rag chew" period at the end for exactly that reason. and no, just giving your callsign is perfectly fine for some nets, especially traffic nets. for more social nets people usually add their name and maybe signal report but its not required. the guy who emailed you was almost certainly just trying to help, older hams tend to be pretty direct about that kind of stuff and its worth taking it as friendly advice rather than a scolding.

I was in the exact same spot about 8 months ago and I ended up getting the Yaesu FT-65R, it was like $90 at the time and its been totally solid for hitting repeaters. nothing fancy but it works and the audio is way better than the baofeng my friend has. honestly for just getting on the air and learning the basics I dont think you need to spend $300 right away, you can always upgrade later once you know what you actually want

yeah what he said about 14.225, but also check the band plan for your area because some regions have gentlemans agreements about certain frequencies. like 14.230 is pretty popular for digital modes during the day so you might want to listen first before jumping in with phone. i learned this the hard way when i first got my general and stepped on someones ft8 session

welcome to the QRP world, its addicting isn't it. honestly what you're describing is just... QRP. that's kind of the deal. you're going to get into more pile-ups than you break, and some days the band just won't cooperate and you'll feel invisible. the guys who are really good at it learned to pick their spots — calling a station whos already worked down a pileup, or catching someone right when theyre tuning around and haven't got a big crowd yet. tail-ending is good but timing matters a lot more at low power. you want to be the first call right after the dx finishes, not in the middle of everyone else. also dont send your call more than twice when youre calling in, it doesnt help and just clutters things up. one clean transmission with good spacing is better than rapid fire repeats. your antenna is doing a lot of the heavy lifting too — an end-fed up high and in the clear is going to outperform a lot of setups so youre already thinking right. seven contacts including europe on your first outing with 4 watts is genuinely a good day, dont let the ones that didnt hear you get to you

so ive had my technician for about two years now and mostly just been doing local stuff on 2m and 440 but i keep hearing people talk about HF and honestly it sounds like a lot more fun. been thinking about going for my general class but i honestly have no idea how different the exam is from the tech exam or how much studying im looking at. i used the gordon west book for my tech and that worked fine but not sure if thats still the right approach or if theres something better now. also kind of confused about what i actually get access to after passing, like i know general opens up HF but is it all the bands or just some of them? someone at our club meeting mentioned something about phone privileges on 40m but i wasnt really sure what that meant in practice. anyway if anyone has done this recently and can tell me what to expect that would be great, not even sure exactly what im asking but hopefully someone gets what i mean