Nicole Jackson

welcome to the hobby, you're gonna love it once you get that first contact. so here's my honest take - the Baofeng is tempting because yeah, 25 bucks, but the programming is genuinely a pain and the build quality is... fine. it works but just barely sometimes, and the receive audio on a lot of them is kinda muddy. that said a lot of people start there and it's not the end of the world. if you can stretch to the Yaesu FT-60 i'd really point you that direction. its a tank, the audio is clear, and it just works the way a radio should work without fighting you. dual band covers you for 2m and 70cm which is what pretty much every local repeater is going to be on. memory channels matter more later when you're traveling or going to hamfests and want to pre-load stuff, but starting out you probably wont even use half of what any radio gives you. WIRES-X is Yaesu's internet linking system - basically connects repeaters over the internet so you can talk to people far away. some local repeaters support it, some dont, just depends on what's in your area. the FT-60 doesnt do APRS though, for that you'd eventually want something like the FT2DR or yeah the TH-D74 if budget allows someday. but dont get ahead of yourself, get on a repeater first and have some fun

man i remember being exactly where you are, that 13-14 plateau is real and i think almost everyone hits it. what ended up breaking me through was stop practicing at a comfortable speed and start listening to stuff that was just slightly faster than i could handle, like uncomfortable but not incomprehensible. your brain kind of gets forced to stop sounding out each dit and dah individually and starts recognizing whole letter shapes. took me probably another 3 months of that before 20wpm started feeling normal rather than panicked. also honestly just get on the air. i know you said youd freeze up and yeah you will the first few times but everyone on CW was a beginner once and the slow QSO frequencies are genuinely patient. W1AW schedule is good too just for listening, try copying their bulletins at whatever speed and check yourself against the printed version on the arrl site. the gap between what you think you copied and whats actually there tells you a lot about where your weak spots are.

cold weather battery drain caught me off guard too my first time out. lithium cells handle the cold way better than the lipo packs, made a huge difference for me. also maybe look into the linked dipole if you havent, bit more setup but at least its not flapping all over the place in the wind like a random wire does

yeah the buddipole thing is real, i went through the same thing. ended up just leaving mine at home for anything time-sensitive and running a linked dipole cut for 40 and 20 instead. takes like 3 minutes to throw up if you know the drill and zero tuning fussiness. the buddipole is cool for experimenting but during an actual exercise when youre supposed to be demonstrating capability it just becomes a stress thing on the generator vs battery - what everyone else said. also worth checking if your 7300 firmware is current, there was a period where mine was pulling weirdly high standby current and i couldnt figure out why the battery was draining faster than expected. probably not your issue but worth knowing

the alternator whine is almost always a grounding issue in my experience, not actually a power filter problem. where are you grounding the radio chassis? if its going to the body of the truck somewhere far from the battery that can cause all kinds of noise. best thing is to run a dedicated ground wire from the radio chassis back to the battery negative, same gauge as your positive lead. i fought this same thing in my jeep for months before someone finally told me to stop messing with filters and just fix the ground. fixed it in about 20 minutes after that. also check that your coax shield is properly grounded at the antenna mount. a poorly grounded antenna can dump a lot of RF noise right into the audio path too. the NMO mounts are great but if theres paint between the mount and the metal you wont have a solid RF ground there.

im kind of in the same boat as you, been chasing DXCC for about a year now and sitting around 115 entities confirmed on lotw. one thing nobody told me early on that wouldve saved me some headache — make sure your callsign on lotw exactly matches what the other station uploaded or the confirmation wont match up. had a few that just wouldnt confirm for the longest time and that turned out to be the issue with one of them, the dx station had logged me with a slash portable suffix i didnt realize they did. also just a tip, keep an eye on the dx bulletins and stuff like dx world dot net for upcoming activations. some of those rare entities you might be missing could pop up with a dxpedition and that can jump your count fast.

haha yeah the first few are always a mess, dont worry about it. i remember my first one i forgot to bring a pen and had to log contacts in my phones notes app while simultaneously trying to hold the antenna wire off the ground with my foot. its kind of part of the charm honestly. once you do like five or six activations you get a system down and it starts feeling a lot smoother. the wire deployment thing gets way easier when you figure out what works for your specific antenna, i switched to a linked dipole and just use a fiberglass mast now instead of messing with trees every time.

so ive been running an RTL-SDR v3 dongle for about a year now, mostly doing ADSB and poking around on the local repeaters with SDR# and its been fine for what it is. but im starting to feel the limits of it, mostly the dynamic range issue when theres a strong local FM broadcast tower about 2 miles from my house. thing just gets swamped and i lose a lot of stuff in that part of the spectrum. anyway ive been looking at either the SDRplay RSP1A or maybe stretching to a HackRF One. the price difference is pretty significant, RSP1A is like $110 and the HackRF is closer to $350 for a legit one, more if you want the portapack thing. my main use case is receive only honestly — weather sat decodes, some WSPR spotting, maybe poking at trunked systems with DSD+ eventually. i dont really need to transmit anything. the SDRplay software (SDRuno) looks kinda clunky to me from youtube videos but i know some guys swear by it. anybody run both and have an opinion? also wondering if the RSP1A plays nice with SDR++ because i really dont want to give up that interface, its so much cleaner than everything else ive tried.

yeah the timing thing is huge and most people completely ignore it. the pile sounds like one continuous roar but if you actually listen there are these micro-gaps right after the DX station sends the callsign of whoever they just worked. thats your window. you have maybe half a second before the whole mob keys up again. the other thing i do, especially on CW, is watch where the DX op is tuning. sometimes they sweep up or down looking for cleaner signals and if you can anticipate that movement you can be sitting right in their path. took me a long time to realize this wasnt luck, they do have a pattern. on phone it's harder to read but on CW you can see exactly where they're listening on the panadapter and just... be there waiting quietly. power isnt always your friend either, totally agree with your experience. clean signal with good timing beats raw watts most of the time. ive seen guys running a kilowatt just absolutely burying everyone including themselves.

Gordon West has study books that have been around forever, some people swear by them. personally i think hamstudy.org is all you need for tech, save the books for general or extra where the material gets more involved. one thing i'd say is dont just memorize answers without understanding anything because even a little bit of context helps them stick. especially the band plans and what technicians can actually do vs what you think you can do, that part confuses a lot of new people. also check if there's a VE session near you through the ARRL website, some areas have them pretty frequently and some you have to wait a while so look that up sooner than later

honestly i was in the same boat not too long ago and what i ended up doing was just focusing on LoTW first since thats what most people i worked were using. got the certificate sorted, downloaded tqsl, and just started uploading my logs after each session. took a little while to get the hang of it but its pretty straightforward once you do it a few times. the paper card thing is kind of a whole separate rabbit hole lol. i ordered some basic cards from one of the online places and yeah its a nice feeling to get them in the mail and send them out. some of the older operators really appreciate getting a physical card. but if youre doing a lot of FT8 and digital modes most people just do LoTW and dont worry about paper at all. totally up to you how deep you want to go with it

so ive been licensed about two years now and mostly just been ragchewing and doing some local nets but lately i got kind of bitten by the DX bug pretty bad. started logging contacts more carefully and realized i might actually have enough entities to apply for basic DXCC if i can get the cards confirmed. my question is about the confirmation side of things — i have maybe 35 entities confirmed on lotw already and a bunch more in my log that i havent gotten any confirmation on. do i have to wait until i have all 100 confirmed before i apply or can i apply with like 80 and add more later? i read something about endorsements but im not totally clear on how that works. also is WAS worth chasing at the same time or does that kind of distract from DXCC? feels like they use different bands and modes in different ways. i did work all 50 states already i think but again confirmation is the issue. just trying to figure out where to put my energy honestly.

i've never been but my elmer keeps telling me i should go at least once just for the experience. maybe this is the year, how do you even find out about the carpool thing is that through your club's email list or what

so ive been licensed for about 3 months now (tech) and i keep hearing people talk about nets and how great they are for actually getting on the air and talking to people. i finally found a local 2m net that meets tuesday nights and i tuned in last week just to listen. it seemed pretty straightforward but when it came time to actually check in i totally chickened out lol the net control was calling for check-ins and i just froze up. im not even sure what i was supposed to say — just my callsign? my name and location too? do i wait for a pause or just jump in whenever? i dont want to step on anyone or do it wrong and embarrass myself. also noticed they mentioned something about a special event station operating that weekend tied to the net, not sure how that works either or if that's something i'd even be able to work from here. any advice would be great, been sitting on the sidelines too long

Honestly the FT-60 is kind of the classic answer to this question and for good reason. It's built like a tank, the receiver is actually decent unlike a lot of the cheap Chinese stuff, and Yaesu has been making radios forever so you know the firmware isn't going to do something weird. I've had mine for probably 8 years and it's been dropped, rained on, sat in a hot car all summer — still works perfectly. Programming it manually takes a few minutes to figure out but once you get the hang of the menu system it's not bad, and if you use CHIRP software it's dead simple. The baofengs are fine for what they are but the receivers can be a bit deaf on weak signals and the spurious emissions thing is real — they're not part 97 compliant out of the box technically speaking. For casual repeater use most people don't care but worth knowing. If budget is really tight the UV-5R will get you on the air and that's what matters. But if you can stretch to the FT-60 I think you'll be happier long term. For APRS down the road look at the Yaesu FT3DR or similar dual band digital HTs — they have built in GPS and the whole thing just works. But that's a later purchase, get on the air first.

so i got my technician a while back and been thinking about eventually going for general and then extra but honestly the thing that keeps pulling me back is morse code, i know its not required anymore but i keep reading about how much people enjoy it and how it opens up more of the bands and i kind of want to learn it for real problem is i have no idea where to start. i downloaded like three different apps and none of them feel right, one of them just shows me the dots and dashes on screen which i heard is the wrong way to do it? my brother said to just memorize the chart but that sounds like a disaster. is there a method that actually works or is it just one of those things where you grind through it and eventually it clicks also does anyone know roughly how long it takes to get to like 5 wpm or whatever you need to make an actual contact, im not trying to become some cw contest station just want to be able to have a basic qso someday

oh nice, which reserve is it if you dont mind sharing? i try to chase as many of the nature references as i can on weekends, would love to look for you on the cluster. im still fairly new to all this but WWFF got me into portable operating way more than i expected, something about the whole nature angle just makes it feel more worthwhile i guess. good luck with the buddistick, hope the trees cooperate for a decent counterpoise situation lol

DXwatch is what i use pretty much exclusively now, i stopped bothering with the QRZ spots tab a while back just personal preference. one app thats worth looking at if you havent already is DX toolkit or even just the web version of DX summit - sometimes the interface is cleaner depending what device youre on. dont stress too much about having every tool running at once, pick one and get comfortable with it first honestly

so i got my technician license a few months ago and ive been reading about CW and honestly it sounds really interesting but i have no idea how to actually start learning it. like do people still actually use it on the air or is it just a thing people do for fun at this point? i downloaded a couple apps but i dont really know if im doing it right or if theres like a method i should follow. some people told me to just listen to it a lot and others said to start sending right away and im getting contradictory advice everywhere. i guess my main question is just... how did you learn it and what actually worked

yeah the cluster thing confused me too when i first got into DX. the short version is there are multiple cluster networks and they do share spots with each other most of the time but not always perfectly — so you'll sometimes see the same spot twice with slightly different timestamps or one network will have a spot the other doesnt for a few minutes. DXwatch, DX Summit, and the cluster feed on QRZ are all pulling from overlapping but not identical sources depending on how they're configured. for filtering, DXwatch lets you set your continent and mode preferences which helps a lot. i usually filter to just the bands that are open based on what the solar data looks like and ignore spots older than like 10-15 minutes because conditions change fast. the "dupe" spots are annoying but you get used to spotting which ones are legit pretty quick — if three or four different callsigns spotted the same station within a few minutes its probably real. one thing worth trying is DX4WIN or even just using an app called DX Toolkit if youre on android, some of them will tie into your logging software and alert you when something you need gets spotted. took my DX chasing to a whole different level once i set that up honestly

oh man the ICS forms thing is so real. i've been doing emcomm stuff for probably 15 years and i still see experienced operators freeze up when they have to do written traffic under any kind of pressure. the thing that helped me most early on was just printing out a stack of blank 213s and practicing at home, like actually writing out fake messages start to finish until the format was completely automatic. sounds tedious but it works. the repeater tone thing is classic too and honestly thats a planning failure more than a you failure. whoever set up the drill should have had a pre-drill checklist that included confirming everyone had the correct CTCSS programmed. we had almost the exact same issue during a SET a few years back, operator couldnt get into the machine for nearly ten minutes because he had the wrong tone from an old frequency list. after that our EC started requiring everyone to do a radio check on the designated freqs like 30 minutes before any activation. simple fix. keep going to the drills though, seriously. the people who show up twice and think they've got it figured out are usually the ones who disappear when a real event happens. the ones who keep coming back and treating each drill like it actually matters are worth their weight in gold when things go sideways for real.

yeah what he said about the dynamic range is accurate in my experience. i went RTL-SDR -> RSP1A and never really felt the need to go HackRF since i wasnt doing any transmitting experiments. SDR++ works great with the RSP1A too, the sdrplay driver integration is solid these days, had some issues a couple years ago but thats been sorted out for a while now. WSPR decoding with WSJT-X piped through a virtual audio cable works fine once you get the levels right, thats probably an afternoon of fiddling the first time but nothing terrible

welcome to the hobby first of all, congrats on passing tech. so yeah you've basically got the right idea. the sequential process is automatic — FCC just assigns you the next available call in your district based on your license class, you have zero say in it. once that call is in the system and your license is actually granted (not just the CSCE, the actual license showing in ULS), you can apply for a vanity call pretty much right away, no waiting period that I know of. the fee thing is real, it's $35 now for a vanity application I believe, and that covers a 10 year license term. used to be free which a lot of old timers are still grumpy about but whatever, it is what it is. your uncle is right that call format availability depends on license class. 1x2 calls like W6AB or K4XY are reserved for extras only. as a tech you'd be looking at 2x3 format calls in your district. upgrade to extra and a whole lot more options open up, including those shorter prestige calls if any are available in your district. some districts have way more available than others so it kinda depends where you are.

Field Day is absolutely where I'd point any new ham first. It's genuinely low pressure even though people take it seriously — most clubs are happy to have an extra body in the chair, and you can jump on SSB and just start calling stations without feeling like you're gonna mess anything up. The logging software question kind of depends on your club honestly, most of them will already have N1MM or something running on a laptop and you just sit down and they show you how it works in about five minutes. CQ WW is a blast but it can be a bit of a wall of noise if you've never done it before, especially on phone. The rate gets really high during the opening hours and if youre not used to contest exchanges it gets confusing fast. I'd still say jump in even if you only work a handful of stations, you learn a ton just sitting there. For a first solo contest though maybe look at something like the ARRL 10m contest or one of the state QSO parties — the exchanges are simple and it's not quite as intense as WW. SOTA is a whole different animal, totally worth doing eventually but yeah you need to think about your portable setup, antenna, battery situation etc before you head up a hill. super rewarding though once you get it dialed in.

so ive been using WSJT-X for most of my operating the last couple years, mostly FT8, and it logs to its own adif thing and i import that into Log4OM which works fine for day to day stuff. but i keep hearing that if you do any contesting at all you really should just learn N1MM and be done with it. the thing is i dont do a ton of contesting, maybe the occasional state QSO party and i jumped into CQWW last year for a few hours just to see what it was like. my question is basically whether its worth having two separate logging programs going or if N1MM can just handle everything including importing my WSJT-X logs on a regular basis. i tried N1MM briefly and it felt like flying a 747 when i just need to drive to the grocery store if that makes sense. Log4OM is comfortable for me, has all my contacts organized the way i like, awards tracking, the whole thing. does anyone actually run N1MM as their main everyday logger or is it pretty much contest-only for most people? and does the WSJT-X integration work well in N1MM or is that still kind of clunky