Sarah Williams

im in basically the same boat passed general like 6 months ago and the band plan vs actual rules thing confused me forever. what helped me was just pulling up 97.301 on the ecfr website and comparing it directly to the ARRL chart side by side, after doing that once it kind of clicked for me still not 100% sure on all the third party stuff tbh

honestly my take is just get the dipole higher if you can. like 30 feet on 40m is pretty low, thats not even a half wavelength up. if you could get it to 45 or 50 feet the low angle radiation improves quite a bit and you might be surprised. easier than dealing with radials too. i went through this same thing and ended up just building a taller support instead of switching to a vertical. worked way better for me personally. ymmv obviously depending on what directions you care about.

the 300-400ms thing is pretty normal unfortunately with RemoteHams depending on where your servers are routing through. one thing that actually helped me was switching from the default opus codec settings to a lower bitrate but also bumping up the buffer size slightly rather than lowering it — sounds counterintuitive but it made the timing more consistent even if the absolute delay was similar. the inconsistency was what was killing me on SSB. also check what your actual round trip time is to the RemoteHams server node you're connecting through. if you're going coast to coast or through a non-optimal route that alone can add 80-100ms before you even account for audio buffering. there's a ping display somewhere in the client, i forget exactly where but it's in there. if that number is already high then no amount of codec tweaking is gonna fix it, you'd want to look at whether there's a closer relay option or set up your own direct connection if you own both ends of the setup. on the echolink bridging thing - honestly i never tried it but i dont see why you couldnt run both on the same remote machine, like have the radio connected to RemoteHams for your own remote access and also keyed into an echolink node independently. they'd just be sharing the same radio which could get weird. might be more trouble than its worth unless you had a really specific use case in mind.

dont stress too much about knowing every single one, even guys whove been doing this for years have to look up the obscure ones sometimes. the ones that actually come up day to day are maybe 15-20 at most. QRP is another one worth knowing if you get into low power operating, it just means low power transmission. and 73 isnt a Q code but you'll hear it constantly, it just means best regards basically, its the standard sign-off. people also say 88 which means love and kisses but thats more of an old timer thing mostly sent to close friends or significant others over the air

yeah i did the front end work on mine maybe six months ago, slightly different approach though — i went with the toroid swap on the input transformer rather than the cap replacement path. similar results from what you describe. 40 and 80 are the big winners for sure, the ADC on that radio is good but it really appreciates having a cleaner signal handed to it before it even starts working. the bandpass filter mod is a whole other thing, that one takes more time and you need to be comfortable pulling the board partially. i started it and then chickened out when i realized i had a contest weekend coming up and didnt want the radio in pieces. still havent finished it tbh. the improvement from just the front end work was good enough that i havent felt urgent about it. one thing i'd say — if you havent already, recalibrate the IP3 reference point in the menu after doing hardware mods. not sure it actually changes anything but it felt like the right thing to do and at least a couple people on the icom groups swear it matters.

not a dumb question at all, everyone goes through this. yeah you basically have it right — CTCSS is a continuous tone that rides below the audio you can hear, and most repeaters are set up to require it so they dont open up for random noise or interference. without the right tone your signal hits the repeater but the repeater just ignores it, which is exactly what youre describing. repeaterbook is usually pretty reliable for tone info but it can be out of date sometimes, especially for smaller club repeaters. best thing honestly is to just shoot an email to whoever is listed as the trustee or check the clubs website if they have one. most club sites list the repeater info and the required tone right there. and yes there are open repeaters that dont require a tone — they run carrier squelch instead of tone squelch, meaning any signal opens them. those are getting less common though because they tend to get tripped by interference a lot. once you get the tone sorted youll probably be good to go, baofengs are a little fiddly to program but once its in there it works fine

i dont even have anything to do half the time i just spin the dial on 40 meters after dinner and listen to whatever comes through. caught some guy last night from louisiana telling another guy about his chicken coop situation for like 20 minutes. didnt key up or anything just kind of vibed with it. there's something about the way 40 opens up after dark that i cant really explain to my wife or anyone who doesnt do this hobby. anyway just wondered if anyone else does this or if im weird lol

yeah same here, i caught a really long opening into europe last weekend on 10 ssb, worked like 8 or 9 countries in an hour which for me is kind of unheard of. i was honestly just gonna check the band real quick and ended up staying on for two hours lol. my neighbor who got me into the hobby keeps telling me to watch the DX cluster more which i keep forgetting to do but when i finally pulled it up that day there were spots everywhere. if you arent using pskreporter or the dxcluster when the band opens youre missing half the fun honestly

I'm a newly licensed Tech and want to learn CW to get on 15m and 20m. Completely new to Morse code - never touched it before. What's the most effective way to start from scratch? Should I use apps, online trainers, books, or find a local Elmer? Also, how long does it realistically take to get to a usable speed for QSOs?

oh man i remember this wall so well. what helped me more than anything was keeping the character speed high even when the overall wpm felt slow -- like set your Farnsworth spacing so the letters themselves are sent at 15-18wpm but with big gaps between them. that way your brain learns the sounds of the characters at real speed instead of building a habit around slow dits and dahs that youll have to unlearn later. LCWO has this built in actually, just mess around with the effective speed vs character speed settings. also the 20 minutes a day thing is fine dont stress about it, consistency beats marathon sessions in my experience. i went from about 6wpm to around 22wpm over maybe 18 months doing 15-20 min most days. just dont skip more than a couple days in a row or you'll feel like you're starting over. and honestly just get on the air even if you feel not ready, even just listening to QSOs on 40m while you're doing dishes or whatever really helps your brain absorb the rhythm of real code

so i finally decided to stop chasing from home and actually get out and do an activation. picked what looked like a pretty easy summit, W4T/SU-068, the trailhead was only about a mile from a pulloff and the elevation gain wasnt too bad on paper. packed up my KX2, a 40m end fed, some paracord, maybe 3 hours of food and water because i figured how long could this really take well. the trail was overgrown and i missed a turn and ended up adding like an extra mile each way, and by the time i got to the activation zone i was pretty tired and kind of rushed setting up the antenna. got it draped over a branch at a bad angle and my SWR was showing something ugly. managed to coax 4 contacts out of it before a storm started rolling in from the west and i had to pack up fast technically i think i qualified the summit? i got 4 QSOs but one of them i'm not 100% sure i gave them my callsign correctly because the wind was picking up and things got chaotic. does that count or do i need to be sure all 4 were clean. also for next time, any tips on getting wire antennas up faster when you're alone and in a hurry. the branch method felt super sketchy

yeah the noise thing is real, we had a drill last fall where someones genny was just droning the whole time and it got old fast. but honestly for 6 hours i wouldnt stress it too much just keep the thing away from everyone. one thing i started doing for portable ops is carrying a watt meter inline all the time so i actually know what im pulling instead of guessing. the 7300 at 50w is way less than at 100w obviously but also depends a lot on your mic gain and how compressed you're running, sometimes people are suprised how much they're actually drawing vs what they thought. might be worth running your setup at home for an hour and just watching the actual numbers before saturday.

yeah you do need to apply to get the actual award credit recognized officially, the lotw confirmations dont just automatically become DXCC credits until you submit an application through arrl. but heres the good news — once you apply and pay the fee, all your current lotw confirmations get counted at once so those 60 will all be reviewed together. after that you just apply for updates as you work new ones. and yes WAS and WAZ are totally separate awards with separate applications, but the same lotw QSOs can count toward multiple awards simultaneously, you dont rework anything. like if you work a station in Texas it can count toward WAS for Texas AND if it was the right band/mode it might count toward a specific WAZ zone. lotw is smart enough to track it all per award type once you submit for each one separately. for logging software honestly just try Log4OM or DXKeeper, both free and both have really solid award tracking built in. DXKeeper in particular shows you exactly where you stand on DXCC, WAS, WAZ all at once and syncs with lotw. took me a while to set it up but once it was going i was hooked

so ive been licensed for about 8 months now and i mostly do HF, some 40m and 20m. i get that you're supposed to use phonetics when there's interference or the other station asks you to say again but i feel like half the time people just rattle off their callsign normally and half the time they spell it out phonetically and i cant really figure out the pattern like is there an actual rule about when you use NATO phonetics vs just saying the letters? and does it matter which phonetics you use? i heard some guys using different words than the standard ones, like they'd say something other than Foxtrot for F. is that just a preference thing or are those wrong technically also on SSB specifically it seems like people sometimes do a weird mix where they say their callsign once fast and then spell it out phonetically if asked. is that the right way to do it or am i overthinking this

so i finally did my first WWFF activation last weekend at a local state forest, KFF reference and everything. been meaning to do it for ages and just never got around to it. set up my KX2 with a random wire thrown up in a tree and managed to get 32 contacts in about 2 hours which i think qualifies the reference? i was on 40m mostly but dipped onto 20m for a bit when 40 started acting weird in the afternoon. anyway a few things i wasnt sure about — do i need to submit the log anywhere specific or does it all just go through ADIF upload to the WWFF database? i looked at the website and it was a bit confusing honestly. also is there a standard way to announce activations beforehand or do most people just spot themselves on the POTA/WWFF spotting network when they're out there. i know POTA and WWFF overlap a lot and i was logging for both at the same time which worked fine. also ran into a couple guys who were specifically hunting WWFF references which i didnt even know was a thing, they were really enthusiastic about it. good fun overall, definitely doing more of these.

dont stress too much about it, the alert is definitely just a courtesy thing — not required at all. plenty of people do unplanned activations and just self spot from the summit using the sotawatch app or get someone else to spot them. the 4 contacts do need to be 4 different callsigns though, same person on a different band doesnt count as two QSOs toward your total. at least thats how i've always understood it and my logs have gone through fine. the ft-818 and a linked dipole is a solid setup for a 2 pointer, honestly you'll probably have a pile up within the first few minutes if you self spot. 20m is hit or miss lately but id also have 40m ready, shorter dipole legs and all that. good luck this weekend, the first activation is always a bit chaotic but in a fun way. just remember to stay in the activation zone and youre golden.

so this has been driving me nuts for about two weeks now. my ic-7300 started acting weird where the receive audio sounds like everything is pitched way down, like tuning into a ssb signal and it sounds like a drunk robot even after i zero beat it. but here's the thing — TX seems totally normal according to my buddies on 40m, they say my audio is fine and im on frequency. i thought maybe it was the reference oscillator drifting but it does it right from cold start, doesnt really change much with warmup which makes me think thats not it. ive already done a factory reset and it didnt help. scope shows the IF looks okay but im not super experienced reading that stuff so i might be missing something. the radio is about 4 years old and lived through one summer in my non-airconditioned shack which got pretty hot. anybody seen this before? im wondering if its worth pulling it apart or just sending it to icom. local tech retired last year so im kind of on my own here.

honestly hamstudy.org is probably 80% of what you need. just drill the questions every day and when you miss one, read the explanation, dont just memorize the answer. the electrical theory stuff like ohms law and the basic antenna questions, those are worth actually understanding because you'll use that stuff after you pass too. the regulatory stuff about frequencies and what technicians can do is also pretty heavily tested so dont skip that. i did about 10-15 minutes a day for like 2 weeks and passed with room to spare. the real test pulls directly from the published question pool so if you can consistently score above 80% on hamstudy you're probably fine. three weeks is plenty of time honestly.

the timing thing is really the key and i dont think enough people talk about it. its not just about having the loudest signal, its about reading the rythm of the DX operator. most experienced DXpedition ops have a pretty consistent cadence and once you figure it out you can call at exactly the right moment instead of just blasting away through the whole QSO cycle. ive also noticed that calling a beat or two after the main wave crashes in can get you heard when the op is scanning around for a clear signal. on SSB specifically one thing that helps me is keeping the audio really clean and punchy. i run a little compression but not so much that it sounds like a wall of mush. the op is tired, theyre working hundreds of contacts a day, and a clear crisp callsign cuts through better than a loud smeared one. and yeah absolutely never give your signal report unsolicited in a pileup, that drives me crazy when i hear people doing that. the split operation thing is also worth studying before you just start calling. watch where the op is actually listening and dont assume its just plus 5 or whatever because experienced ops move the listening range around constantly to find clear spots.

yeah the D710 absolutely can get stuck on a manually entered position if you ever punched in coordinates at some point — there's a setting in the menu where it prioritizes the internal stored position over the GPS feed. dig into the APRS menu and look for the position input method setting, make sure its set to GPS and not manual. i've seen this trip people up more than once, the radio just happily beaconing wrong coords for months before anyone notices. also worth checking if the GPS puck has a good sky view. 3 miles off sounds like more than just weak signal drift though, that sounds like it might actually be a datum issue or the radio is pulling stale data. what does the GPS indicator on the display show, is it solid or flashing?

yeah the switching PSU thing bites a lot of people, i went through two of them before just getting an Astron and being done with it. heavier but no more hash. the 7300 is pretty sensitive to that stuff. the menu depth is real, i've had mine almost two years and still find things occasionally. the scope is worth learning thoroughly though, the mini scope in the corner during a QSO is actually really useful once you set the span right. i keep mine at like 50kHz so i can see if theres activity nearby without going back to the main display. one thing i'd suggest is spend some time with the NR and NB settings if youre on 40m at night, they arent magic but with some tweaking they help with the usual noise mess on that band. enjoy the radio, its a solid rig for the money.

Meinberg NTP Package is the current preferred option - been using it for over a year with zero timing issues. The built-in Windows sync is garbage for precision timing applications. Install Meinberg and your decode problems will disappear.

so ive been messing around with an arduino mega for a few weeks now trying to get it to handle antenna switching based on what band i dial in on the rig. the idea is pretty straightforward — read the band data output from the radio (im running a kenwood ts-590sg which outputs band voltage on the ACC2 port), decode that with the arduino, then fire relays to switch between my verticals and my dipole depending on band. the relay board i got off amazon is one of those 8-channel 5v jobs and it works fine when i just manually trigger it through serial but im having weird issues where it glitches when i transmit. like the relays chatter or sometimes switch to the wrong position mid-over. my shack ground isnt the greatest and i suspect RF is getting into the arduino somehow even though i have it a good 4 feet from the radio. tried adding a ferrite on the USB cable going to the laptop but still happening. the sketch itself is pretty simple, polling the analog pin every 200ms and comparing against voltage thresholds for each band. wondering if anyone else has dealt with RF getting into microcontrollers in the shack and how you actually fixed it. also curious if a raspberry pi would be better for something like this or if thats overkill for relay switching

honest take: if youre doing HF and you want good results, the RSP1B walks all over the HackRF for receive. the HackRF is a great tool but its a swiss army knife and you pay for that versatility with a receive chain that isnt exactly optimized. the RSPdx is even better if you can stretch the budget a little, the switchable antenna ports and the HDR mode below 2 MHz actually make a noticeable difference for MW and 160m SDRuno is... fine i guess, some people hate it because the UI is kind of a lot, but you can run the RSP hardware in SDR# with a plugin and that works well. for WSPR just pipe it into WSJT-X and you're golden. i ran one for about two years before upgrading and it really is a proper step up from dongle territory, not just a marginal thing

pretty much just feel it out honestly. on a local repeater where everyone knows everyone, yeah people just rattle off their calls without phonetics because the audio is clear and youve heard KD9XYZ a hundred times already. but on HF, especially DX or when bands are noisy, phonetics every single time without question. the whole point is to make sure the other station copies your call correctly, and a busted callsign in the log doesnt help anybody. the rule of thumb i was taught early on was if theres any doubt at all, use phonetics. and if somone asks you to repeat, definitely switch to phonetics if you werent using them. you figured it out the right way actually, that three-repeat situation is exactly why they exist. dont worry about sounding over the top, nobody ever complained that a callsign was too clear.