Andrew Martinez

oh man i remember feeling exactly like this when i first got my ticket. the net thing - yeah calling your callsign when net control asks for emergency traffic only is a little awkward but honestly most net controls are used to new folks doing that, nobody's going to hold it against you. next time if net control says emergency traffic only and you dont have any, just stay quiet until they open it up for general check-ins. most nets have a pretty clear structure if you listen to a few in a row you'll start to hear the pattern. as for calling CQ on your own - just do it. seriously. find a clear frequency, listen for a while to make sure its actually clear, maybe ask if the frequency is in use, then go for it. worst case nobody comes back to you which happens to everyone including guys who've been doing this for decades. the whole point is to get on the air and make contacts. you cant really learn this stuff by just listening forever, at some point you gotta transmit

so ive been licensed for about three months now (technician) and i got a baofeng uv-5r to start out, yeah yeah i know, but anyway im trying to get into the local 2m repeaters in my area and im having a really hard time figuring out the tone stuff. like i can hear people on the repeater just fine but when i key up nobody seems to hear me or the repeater doesnt open up. i looked up the repeater directory and it says the tone is 100.0 Hz for the input but im not totally sure if im setting the transmit tone or the receive tone or both or what. the baofeng menu is kind of a nightmare honestly. also someone at my local club mentioned something about a courtesy tone and waiting for it before you transmit and i wasnt sure what that was about either. just feeling a little lost with all this and dont want to step on anyone or come across as rude when i finally do get it working.

i just passed mine like six weeks ago so pretty fresh for me. the math stuff i was worried about too but theres really not that much of it and a lot of the formulas you kind of just memorize for the test and then slowly start to actually understand later when you use it. the electrical theory section was the part i had to read through a couple times but it wasnt killer. one thing i didnt expect was how much the band plan stuff matters, like knowing which segments are phone vs cw vs digital, that shows up on the test more than i thought it would. get a cheap HF rig or even just start listening on a SDR dongle to the HF bands before you take the test and it honestly helps the whole thing make more sense

had almost the exact same thing happen on my 7300 about a year ago. turned out to be a cold solder joint on the directional coupler section of the RF board — you can actually find the service manual floating around online if you search hard enough, and the coupler is on the main RF unit somewhere around the antenna relay. what i did was just reflow the joints around that whole area and it came back to life. not saying thats definitely your problem but its a pretty common failure mode on these, especially if the radio runs warm a lot or youve been doing any digital modes at higher power levels for extended periods. also worth checking the antenna relay itself — the 7300 has a relay that switches between the main and sub antenna ports and i've heard of those getting intermittent. you can usually hear it click when you key up. if its clicking but the SWR is still weird, probably not the relay, but if its intermittent or sounds different than usual thats another thing to look at.

Couple things to check — first make sure your PTT is actually releasing fast enough after the initial transmission. The Signalink has that tail delay pot on the inside and if its set too long the gateway thinks the channel is still busy when you're actually done transmitting. Had this exact issue for two weeks before i figured it out. Also double check that your Vara FM is set to the right soundcard device, sometimes after a windows update it silently switches back to the default audio device and then everything looks fine on your end but the audio path is broken. Also worth checking if someone else is actively using that gateway when you're trying to connect. The RMS gateways only handle one session at a time on VHF so if another station grabbed it first you're just gonna sit there and timeout. Try a few different times of day and see if the behavior changes.

ran both at my old QTH for a few years so i can actually give you a real comparison here. the vertical wins on low angle, no question, but — and this is a big but — that radial system really matters more than most people want to admit. i had a quarter wave vertical with like 8 radials and it was honestly worse than my droopy dipole until i got the radial count up past 30 or so. once i did that the dx paths opened up noticeably, particularly to europe and south america in the evenings. that said if your space is tight and you cant lay down a decent radial field then a dipole even with some end bending is probably going to perform better in practice. a bent dipole loses some efficiency but not as much as people think if the bends arent too severe. i had mine with the last 10 feet or so angled down at about 45 degrees on each side and it worked fine. noise floor was also way lower on the dipole which made weak signal work a lot easier even if the signal itself was a touch stronger on the vertical. honestly for your situation id try the resonant dipole first since you already have the infrastructure mostly there — just pull the G5RV down and put up a proper cut dipole and see where you're at before spending money on a vertical and all the radial wire you'd need.

so i picked up an IC-2300H a couple months ago and it sat on my desk forever because i kept putting off doing the install. finally got around to it last weekend and got it bolted under the dash in my F-150. runs power direct to the battery with a fused line, antenna is a Tram 1185 on a lip mount on the trunk... wait no its a truck so the bed rail. anyway. the radio works fine but im getting what sounds like alternator whine when the engine is revving. its that rising pitch thing that follows the RPMs. i put a noise filter on the power line but it didnt really help much. the antenna coax runs kinda close to the firewall and im wondering if thats part of it. also the mic cable sort of drapes near the steering column which probably isnt ideal. anyone dealt with this before on a newer truck? ive seen people mention bonding straps but not totally sure where to put them or how many. dont wanna go drilling holes everywhere if i dont have to.

so ive been trying to figure out if its worth making the drive out to the Tri-County hamfest, its like 2 hours from me and last time i went a few years back the swap meet tables were kind of sparse. wondering if anyone here has been recently and if its still worth the trip. mostly looking for a decent HF rig or maybe some coax at a reasonable price, not paying shipping if i can help it.

honestly if youre passing the practice tests consistently you're going to be fine. the real test felt easier to me than the hamstudy drills because you only need 26 out of 35 right, which is a lot of room for error. they do give you scratch paper at most sessions, at least every VE session ive been to has, but double check with whoever is running yours just to be safe. the one thing that tripped me up was just nerves more than anything technical. i kept re-reading questions and changing my answers when my gut was right the first time. dont do that. also the pool repeats a lot so if you've seen like 500 practice questions you've probably seen almost everything already just worded slightly different sometimes.

so i got my general back in the spring and a buddy of mine whos been in ARES for a few years kept bugging me to join up with the local group. finally did it last month and went to my first monthly net and a tabletop exercise they ran. it was pretty fun honestly, a lot more organized than i expected but also kind of intimidating because some of these guys have been doing this for decades and know their stuff cold. my question i guess is what actually happens when theres a real activation? like the training exercises make sense, you practice ICS forms and check-ins and whatever, but ive never been called out for an actual event. do they just call your cell phone? is there a specific net you monitor? our EC mentioned something about a calling frequency but i missed that part of the meeting. also should i be bringing my own gear or does the served agency have stuff? i have a decent HT and a mobile rig in the truck but nothing fancy. just trying to not show up useless if something actually happens.

honestly i went through the same thing when i first got on HF. for me the big fix was just turning mic gain down way more than felt right — like it felt too low but the reports got way better. also make sure speech compression isnt cranked, the 7300 has that built in and it can make audio sound really harsh if its set too aggressive. i keep mine around 3-4 and that seems to work okay for most conditions

okay so ive been listening on HF for a few weeks now and i keep hearing all these weird short codes and letter combos and i cant figure out what half of them mean. like QSL, QRM, QSB... i know QSL is like a confirmation card thing? but then on PSK31 i see people typing stuff like 73, 88, OM, YL, and i honestly dont know what half of it means in context. i looked up a list online but it doesnt really explain when you actually use them or why. is there like a good resource or can someone just explain the common ones, at least the ones youll actually hear on the air vs the ones that are kind of obsolete now

yeah this is exactly why i never really got into FT8 that much. i mean i have it set up and i'll fire it up if the bands are terrible and i want to at least make a contact or two but its not satisfying in any real way. JS8Call scratches the itch way better for me personally. the relay/store and forward stuff is actually kinda clever too if you havent dug into that yet. PSK31 is still alive on 20m if you look around, usually mid afternoon here on the east coast. the problem is you need decent conditions and most people seem to have migrated away from it. i keep a PSK31 window open sometimes just to see whats happening and you do still get some ragchew type contacts but its definitely not what it was in like 2008 or whatever. RTTY contesting is where i get my digital fix honestly, theres something about the sound of it that just feels right and the exchanges actually mean you had to, you know, copy something.

been running a remote setup through RemoteHams for about two years now, base station is at my parents place in a rural county and i operate from my apartment. latency is totally workable for SSB if your internet on both ends isnt garbage — i run it on maybe 15-20ms round trip and you do get used to the slight delay. you kind of learn to pause a half beat longer before replying in a QSO and most people on the other end have no idea youre remote. the software itself is pretty mature at this point, the RCForb client works well, and the server side runs fine on a cheap windows box at the remote end. you do need a decent audio codec setup and you have to think carefully about VOX or keying — i use a CAT-controlled rig with the RCForb interface and it handles PTT cleanly. for Echolink thats really a separate thing, theyre not integrated, different protocols entirely. if you want internet linking you're looking at either IRLP or Echolink as its own node situation, they dont really overlap with the RemoteHams ecosystem unless you manually bridge something which i wouldnt bother with. the SDR-only route for remote RX is genuinely fun but yeah the TX problem is the whole thing. i looked at pairing an Airspy with a remote antenna and doing SDR rx plus a separate PTT relay chain for TX and it gets complicated fast, lots of latency problems and sync issues. RemoteHams just handles all that more cleanly if you have a real transceiver at the remote end.

so i got my general back in march and ive been mostly just ragchewing on 40m but a buddy at my local club keeps telling me i need to try CQ WW this october. i guess its the big one? he made it sound like the bands just completely transform for a weekend and you can work like 100 countries if you sit at the radio long enough. i dont have anything fancy, just a Yaesu FT-891 and a wire dipole up about 30 feet in the backyard. running 100w. is that even enough to make contacts in something like CQ WW or am i just gonna be calling CQ into the void the whole time. also do i need any special software or can i just log on paper for a casual entry. im not trying to win anything just want to experience it i guess. also someone mentioned SOTA activations count toward something during the contest weekend? or maybe i misheard that, not sure how those two things connect

haha the coax thing is a real fear, i literally did that on my second activation. now i have a dedicated SOTA bag that stays packed and i just top off the battery before i go. on the alert vs spot question — dont stress too much about it. the alert is just a heads up, nobody is sitting there with a stopwatch waiting for you. when you actually get set up and ready, throw out your spot and the pile will come. if you're running late just update the alert time if you can, but even if you dont most chasers understand that mountains don't always cooperate with schedules. the ones who've been doing this a while have hiked enough trails to know a 45 min estimate can turn into an hour fifteen real fast. one thing i'd say — once you spot yourself, give it maybe 30 seconds and then just start calling CQ SOTA on your chosen frequency. don't wait for someone to find you, just start calling. the response is usually pretty quick and honestly that first contact from a summit is one of the best feelings in the hobby. good luck up there

so i've been running an old Kenwood TS-570 for like 8 years and it's been totally fine but i kept seeing people talk about the 7300 and eventually i just caved and bought one used off QRZ classifieds. paid about 950 for it which i think was fair given it came with the original box and looked barely touched. anyway couple weeks in and i have some thoughts. the waterfall display is genuinely useful and not just a gimmick like i expected it to be — i actually find myself hunting for signals visually now which i never did before. the receiver feels a bit different from the Kenwood, not sure if better or worse exactly, just different. maybe slightly quieter on 40m but that could also be band conditions, hard to say. one thing that's bugging me is the menu system, there's a ton of stuff buried in there and the touchscreen is responsive but it's small and i keep hitting the wrong thing. probably just need more time with it. anybody else found stuff in the menus that's actually worth messing with or are most of the defaults fine to leave alone?

so ive been using Log4OM for probably two years now and generally i like it, the interface is clean and the cloudlog sync actually works pretty reliably for me. but every contest season i end up fumbling around trying to get it to play nice with WSJT-X and honestly the cabrillo export has burned me more than once. last time i submitted a log to the state QSO party and apparently a bunch of contacts got dropped or something, i never really figured out why. a buddy of mine keeps telling me to just switch to N1MM and be done with it, says it handles contests way better and the WSJT-X integration through the UDP port is rock solid. but i do a lot of casual DX chasing between contests and from what i remember N1MM's everyday logging is kind of bare bones? like you're not getting the station lookup or award tracking stuff Log4OM does pretty well. curious if anyone runs both or has a workflow that doesnt feel like constantly switching gears. do people just keep two separate logs and merge them or what

haha the baofeng rite of passage, we've all been there. congrats on the ticket. what repeater you on? im in the midwest if thats anywhere near you might hear you on the air sometime

So ive been running a Diamond X510 on the roof for a couple years now and its been fine for local stuff on 2m and 70cm, decent gain, no complaints really. But lately im noticing the 70cm side just doesnt reach the repeater about 22 miles out as reliably as id like, especially when the weather does weird stuff. Somebody at the club suggested just throwing a yagi up there pointed at that repeater since its the main one i care about on that band anyway. The thing is im not sure its worth the trade off. Right now the collinear covers everything in all directions which is nice for simplex calling around and hitting different machines. If i put a yagi up for that one repeater im basically committing to a fixed path and losing the omni coverage. Unless i do both antennas which means another feedline run and honestly my coax situation on the roof is already kind of a mess. Has anyone actually switched from a collinear to a dedicated yagi for a single path like this and found it worth it, or did you end up missing the omni too much and putting the collinear back up?

oh man yeah that 12-14wpm plateau is SO real, almost everyone hits it. what you're running into is basically your brain switching from hearing individual dots and dashes to needing to hear whole characters as sounds, and then eventually whole words. its a rewiring thing and it takes time but theres a few things that helped me get unstuck. first thing, and this is the one most people dont want to hear, is to actually bump your character speed UP even if your overall copying speed stays lower. like set G4FON to send characters at 20wpm but with longer gaps between them (thats basically the Farnsworth method). forces your ears to learn what the letters actually sound like at speed instead of counting dits. took me a couple weeks of that before stuff started clicking again. also are you writing everything down or trying to copy in your head? at some point you really gotta let go of the pencil and just listen. writing slows your brain down when youre trying to push speed. just my experience anyway, took me probably 4 months of daily practice to get comfortable at 20 and im still not winning any speed contests

The Baofeng CTCSS thing trips up a lot of new folks. When you're in the menu look for the T-CTCS option, not R-CTCS — the T is for transmit which is what you need for accessing the repeater. R-CTCS is for squelch on receive and most people dont bother with that unless they want to filter out other traffic. If you've only set one and not the other double check which one it actually is. As for the courtesy beep — yeah most repeaters have a little tone or beep that plays right after someone releases their PTT. It's basically the repeater saying "okay the channel is clear now you can go ahead." The polite thing is to wait for that beep before you start your next transmission, gives everyone a chance to jump in if they need to and also lets the repeater reset properly. Talking over people is usually just someone not waiting long enough, happens to everyone at first. Just listen for a few days before you key up much and youll get a feel for the rhythm of how that particular repeater works.

25 feet on 40m is pretty low yeah, you're basically getting a cloud warmer at that height. the takeoff angle is going to be somewhere north of 60 degrees which is fine for regional stuff but not great for working across the country. raising it would definitely help more than you'd expect, even getting to 35 or 40 feet makes a noticeable difference on the pattern. the vertical argument is real but your radial situation is the limiting factor there. a vertical with a skimpy radial field is going to have ground loss eating into your efficiency and you might not end up ahead of where you are now. ive seen people put up a vertical thinking itll solve everything and then wonder why its not performing. if you can lay down 16 to 32 radials at least a quarter wave long then yeah its worth considering, but with 60x80 feet you're going to be trimming those pretty short on 40m. honestly id try to get the dipole higher first, its free if you already have the wire and coax. borrow a cheap antenna modeling program like EZNEC or even the free version of 4nec2 and plug in your actual height, it'll show you exactly what the pattern looks like and what you gain by going up 10 or 15 more feet.

had something similar a while back, turned out to be the RemoteHams server software losing sync with the CAT control when the band changed and it was basically confusing the audio routing. upgrading to the newer RCForb server version fixed it for me, not sure which version you're on but worth checking. also 12 up should be fine for this, i run mine on way less and its okay as long as noone else in the house is streaming.

yeah the fleamarket tables go fast, no kidding. i missed out on a barely used tuner last year because i showed up at 10 and some guy already had it tucked under his arm. definitely get there at opening if you can. not sure about the carpool thing im coming from the other direction but ill probably be there saturday morning if the weather cooperates