Mark Taylor

so ive been wanting to get into ham radio for a while now and finally decided to just go for it and take the technician exam. i downloaded a couple things but honestly im not sure if im studying the right stuff. like i found this one pdf that says its the question pool but then i read somewhere that they update it every few years and i dont know if what i have is current. also does anyone actually memorize all the questions or is there like a smarter way to go about it. some of the electrical stuff is going over my head a bit, especially the math parts with ohms law and all that. im not totally clueless with electronics but its been a while. any tips appreciated, i want to take the test in the next month or so if i can

yeah the JS8Call activity thing is a real problem and its kind of a chicken and egg situation. not enough people on so others dont bother checking. what i've found is 14.078 USB on 20m has the most activity, usually late afternoon into evening eastern time at least for north america. there's also a loose group that does a morning net on 40m, 7.078 i think but dont quote me on that.
the conversational angle is exactly right though. FT8 is a contact machine, i can work 80 countries in a weekend but i couldnt tell you a single thing about any of those operators. JS8Call i've actually had extended chats with a guy in scotland and swapped antenna info and everything. totally different vibe. the store and forward message thing is underrated too, kind of like a slow packet radio system which is cool in its own nerdy way.
FT4 is even more robotic than FT8 if that helps put it in perspective, purely contest exchange stuff. for weak signal rag chewing JS8Call really is the best option right now just gotta find when people are actually on

went last year for the first time and yeah the flea market is hit or miss but i found a barely used LDG tuner for like 30 bucks so i cant complain. the forums and talks are actually pretty solid if you pick the right ones, sat in on one about WSPR propagation stuff and it was way better than i expected. definitely worth going at least once imo

ok so I passed my general last month and ive been trying to figure out where I can actually transmit on 40 meters. I looked up the band plan but honestly it just made me more confused. like there's the FCC allocation which shows what frequencies are legal, but then there's also the ARRL band plan which seems different? and people keep saying stuff about band edges and not operating too close to them but I dont really understand why that matters.
also someone at the club told me to stay away from 7.200 and 7.125 but didnt explain why really. is that just a convention thing or is there an actual rule? im using an ic-7300 if that matters

nice work on the activation. HAMRS is what most people i know use for field logging, works on phone or tablet and spits out the ADIF format the pota site wants. way easier than paper transcription once you get used to it. i did paper for my first couple activations too and its fine but yeah the app makes life easier
one thing i'd add — if you can get a second antenna or at least be ready to jump bands you can really pile up contacts fast. i usually start on 40 to get my 10 then if conditions are decent ill throw a few CQs on 20 too. some parks you can even do a two-fer if you're on a boundary between two park references which is always fun

yeah the power cable thing gets almost everyone the first time. ive seen guys chase RF noise for months and it almost always comes back to either a bad ground or not going direct to battery. the alternator whine is the worst, especially in newer trucks with all the electronics they cram in there. glad you got it sorted.
as for the Diamond antenna, i ran one for about two years on a chevy colorado and the base connector was totally fine, never had any issues with it getting loose or corroding. what i did do was put a little dialectric grease on the SO-239 after i first put it together just as a precaution. probably overkill but it made me feel better. only reason i stopped using it was i finally drilled the roof and went with a lip mount, which is a good middle ground if you dont want a hole all the way through the sheetmetal.

so i passed my technician exam on the 14th and been lurking on the local repeater for like 5 days trying to work up the nerve to key up. finally did it yesterday evening, just said my callsign and that i was new and someone came back to me from Boise which is like 340 miles from here. we only talked for maybe 3 minutes but i was shaking the whole time lol. anyway just wanted to share that somewhere because none of my friends care about this stuff and my wife just smiled and nodded when i told her

i built almost the exact same thing last year, NE602 and LM386, and had the flangy issue too. what fixed it for me was paying more attention to the local oscillator leakage. my BFO was bleeding into places it shouldnt have been and causing all kinds of weirdness. shielding the oscillator section made a noticeable difference, i just used some copper clad board scraps soldered around it. might not be your problem but worth checking before you go rebuilding the whole audio chain.

totally get where you're coming from, i was the same way when i first started paying attention to this stuff. the short version that actually stuck with me was basically — SFI above 150 and you start seeing 10m come alive, above 200 and it can be absolutely wild. below 100 and the higher bands are usually pretty dead, 40m and 80m become your friends
the other number worth keeping an eye on is the K-index, which is geomagnetic activity. you want that LOW, like 0 or 1 ideally. even with great solar flux if a geomagnetic storm kicks up the K index goes to 4 or 5 and propagation just falls apart, ive had it happen right in the middle of what should have been a great opening. DXMaps.com is pretty good for seeing live spots and you can kind of watch the bands wake up in real time, helps it click faster than reading about it

the impedance stuff tripped me up too, i just kind of brute forced the formulas long enough to pass and moved on lol. been a General for like 3 months now and have been having a blast on 40m in the evenings, already worked a handful of countries which i never wouldve done on VHF
one thing i will say is dont sleep on 17m if conditions are decent, i stumbled onto it kind of by accident and its way less crowded than 20m

so ive been running FT8 for about a year now and i get the appeal, log contacts fast, works when the band is barely there, its great for chasing DX when you cant really hold a CW or SSB qso. but theres something that bugs me about it — its not really a conversation is it. youre basically just exchanging grid squares and signal reports and thats it. felt hollow after a while.
anyway someone on our local club net mentioned JS8Call and i set it up last weekend and honestly its a pretty different experience. still works on weak signals, not quite as deep in the noise as FT8 but close enough, and you can actually type back and forth like a slow keyboard QSO. reminds me more of the old PSK31 days where you could actually chat with someone.
my question is whether people who use JS8Call seriously are running it on 40m mostly or somewhere else. ive been hearing activity around 7.078 but its pretty sparse compared to the zoo on the FT8 frequencies. also whats the typical power people run — ive been doing 25w and getting some responses but not a ton. wondering if im just not finding where the activity is concentrated or if JS8Call just doesnt have the user base to make it worth monitoring regularly.