Jennifer Kim

so i finally got around to building a proper dipole for 40 meters instead of just running my random wire forever. cut both legs to about 33 feet based on the 468/f formula, soldered up a SO-239 at the center with some 14 gauge stranded i had in the garage. got it up in an inverted-V config, apex at maybe 25 feet which i know isnt ideal but its what i have. thing is the SWR is reading like 1.4:1 around 7.150 but then climbs pretty fast toward the high end of the band, like 2.8:1 by 7.250 or so. low end of the band is fine, like almost flat. i was expecting it to be a bit off center but it almost feels like one leg is longer than the other even though i measured both. feeding it with about 50 feet of RG-8X into the shack. should i just trim a few inches off each leg and see where it lands, or is the coax doing something weird here? i dont have a antenna analyzer, just the built-in SWR meter on my 7300 which i know isnt the most accurate thing in the world.

so ive been licensed for about 6 years now and done a fair amount of HF DX but EME has always been this thing in the back of my head that i want to try before i get too old to climb towers and mess with big antennas. my current setup is basically useless for it, i have a tribander at 40ft and thats pretty much it. from what ive read you basically need a dish or a big yagi array on 2m or 23cm, a low noise preamp right at the feedpoint, and a decent amount of power. but the specifics are where i get confused. like how much is enough to actually make contacts these days with JT65 being a thing? i know back in the day you needed a huge array and a kilowatt but i thought digital modes changed the equation quite a bit. is a single long yagi on 2m with like 500w even remotely usable or am i just wasting my time thinking about it also curious what the typical rx noise figure needs to be. ive seen guys talk about 0.3-0.5dB NF being important but not sure if thats for cw/ssb or if digital gives you more headroom there

yeah the chart method is pretty much universally considered the wrong approach, youre basically training your brain to do math instead of just hearing the sound and recognizing the letter. the guy at the hamfest was right even if he wasnt helpful about it. most people these days swear by the Koch method, theres a free program called LCWO dot net that walks you through it and its honestly pretty solid. the idea is you start with just two characters at full speed like 20wpm, get comfortable with those, then add one character at a time. sounds counterintuitive to start fast but it prevents you from counting dots and dashes in your head which is the bad habit you want to avoid from day one. there's also an app called Morse Toad and another one called Ham Morse, both decent for mobile practice. i used LCWO and just did 15 minutes every single day and could copy basic qso stuff in maybe 3 or 4 months, maybe less if youre more consistent than i was. the real turning point for me was just tuning into W1AW code practice on hf, even when i could only get like every third word it helped a lot just hearing real on air stuff

So if you havent seen it yet, Icom dropped some info about the IC-7760 at Hamvention this year and honestly the ham community is kind of split on it from what ive been reading. looks like it separates the control head from the main unit which is something a lot of people have been asking for for ages. the remote head thing is actually pretty slick if it works the way they're showing in the promo material. also heard the 10 meter band has been absolutely cooking lately, like genuinely some of the best conditions ive seen in years. worked a bunch of south american stations last weekend with my barefoot IC-7300 and pretty modest wire antenna which surprised me. solar cycle 25 keeps delivering i guess. anyway curious if anyone here is planning to pick up the 7760 when it actually ships or if you're waiting to see how the first batch reviews come out. i always wait a year on new rigs personally after that whole thing with my first radio purchase but thats a story for another time

congrats on the first one, 11 contacts is a solid start especially if you were nervous. that pile waiting on frequency thing is totally normal once you start posting alerts the night before, chasers take SOTAwatch pretty seriously and some of them have you on a schedule basically. dont let it rattle you, just take your time, go QRS if you need to, they'll wait. on the 2m thing — it really is regional. out west a lot of activators bring a handheld just for local VHF chasers who can't do HF or are just nearby, and sometimes it's the only way to get your 4 contacts if propagation is being stubborn. but plenty of activators never bother with it and do just fine. i usually toss my vx-6 in the bag just in case but honestly most of my contacts are on 40 anyway. for the points question — yeah each unique summit only gives you activator points the first time you activate it, after that it still counts toward your log and you might need it for a specific summit if youre chasing a complete range or whatever, but the activator points are one-time per summit. the full rules doc has a table that explains it but the short version is: unique summits = unique points.

so ive been listening to our local ARES net on 40m for a couple months now and finally got my general ticket last week so i can actually participate. tonight is the first time im gonna try to check in and honestly im a little nervous about it. like i know its just radio but still, talking to a bunch of strangers on a net for the first time feels weird. the net control usually goes through check-ins pretty fast and i keep second-guessing myself on what exactly to say. do i just give my call and say my name and QTH or is there like a specific format this particular net uses? i tried looking it up but the club website hasnt been updated since like 2019 so not super helpful. also is it bad form to check in late, like after the net has already started? i usually get home from work right around when they open the net so timing is tight. any advice would be great, especially from people who remember their first net check-in

the BS170 is the issue imo, or at least part of it. ive built a few QRP rigs with those and they can do 1W but you kind of have to baby them and get everything tuned just right. a lot of guys swap to the IRF510 if they want more headroom but thats a bigger step up and you have to redesign the matching network. for a first transmitter build 200mW is honestly not bad, you can work people with that on 40m CW if conditions are decent, ive done transatlantic with similar power levels. dont get too hung up on the number before you actually try it on the air

so ive been doing contests for about 3 years now, mostly SS and sweepstakes phone plus some CQ WW mixed in. been running single op single radio the whole time and generally doing ok, nothing spectacular but i hold my own. a buddy of mine keeps telling me i need to get into SO2R to really push my rates up and i keep putting it off because honestly the whole setup looks like a nightmare to manage. my current station is an ic-7300 and a spare ts-590sg sitting in the corner doing basically nothing, so the hardware is kind of already there. i know i need bandpass filters at minimum and probably some kind of antenna switching logic so i dont blow up a frontend. the two radios share a tribander up on the tower and i have a 40m dipole so its not like i have amazing antenna separation to work with. the thing is i dont know if the mental overhead of juggling two radios is actually worth it at my skill level. i feel like id just be making more mistakes and losing QSOs rather than gaining them. anyone gone through this transition and have thoughts on whether it actually moved the needle for you?

So we finally got around to doing a full scale simulated disaster exercise with our county ARES group, first one in about two years since everything kind of fell apart during covid. Had maybe 14 operators show up which honestly was better than I expected. The scenario was a major ice storm knocking out power and cell infrastructure across three counties, EOC activation, shelters needing to be stood up, the whole deal. We ran it for about six hours on a Saturday. What surprised me the most was how fast things got disorganized at the EOC net control position. We had a really experienced op running it but the sheer volume of traffic from three different served agencies at once just overwhelmed the logging situation. We were using ICS-213 forms and trying to keep a manual log and it just... got messy fast. Nobody was really at fault, we just hadnt practiced that specific scenario where multiple agencies are all wanting status updates at the same time. Also discovered that two of our operators had never actually done formal traffic handling before. Like they knew the theory but when it came time to pass a formal message they fumbled pretty bad and it slowed everything down. Not throwing anyone under the bus, that's exactly why we do these things. Anyway curious if other groups have run into similar stuff and what fixes you came up with. The after action review was really useful but we walked away with a pretty long list of things to work on before the next one.

congrats man, that first contact feeling doesnt really go away even after years of doing this. well maybe a little but the first one is something else. the elmer thing is real too, most of the old timers on repeaters are genuinely happy to talk to new folks, just keep keying up and youll find your people. whats your general area if you dont mind me asking, always curious where new hams are popping up

yeah i was in the exact same spot like 4 months ago for my first one. what helped me was writing out a little cheat sheet on paper with my exchange info and the park reference number so i wasnt fumbling trying to remember it mid-pileup. also bring more water than you think you need if its warm out, i got so focused on operating i totally forgot to drink anything and felt terrible by noon lol. good luck tomorrow hope you get way more than 10

so ive been putting this off for months but finally sat down last weekend and built a simple 40m dipole out of some 14 gauge stranded wire i had sitting around. cut each leg to about 33.5 feet based on the 468/f formula, soldered it up to a SO-239 chassis connector i had in the junk box, fed it with about 50 feet of RG-8X coax. suspended it in an inverted-V config with the apex at maybe 30 feet off the ground using a fiberglass push-up mast. heres the thing though — when i sweep it with my nanovna the resonant point is sitting around 6.9 mhz and the SWR at 7.150 is like 2.8:1 which isnt terrible but i feel like it should be better. i trimmed a couple inches off each leg and it barely moved. not sure if its the wire type, the inverted-V angle, or if my center insulator / feedpoint situation is sketchy. the legs are drooping at maybe 120 degree included angle, give or take. ran the coax straight down from the feedpoint without a choke or anything. anyone else gone through this tuning pain with a first build? i feel like im missing something obvious

end fed is what i use for all my portable stuff. built mine from some speaker wire and a little matchbox i wound myself, total cost was maybe 8 bucks. throws it up in a tree and its usually good enough. the qmx is a great kit btw, i have the older qcx mini and its basically the same idea, mine has survived being dropped twice and still works fine which says something about the build quality.

ok so ive been licensed for about 3 months now and i passed my general back in september and i thought i understood the band plan but honestly every time i sit down and actually try to operate i second guess myself. like on 40 meters i know there's a phone portion and a cw portion but the charts i find online all look slightly different from each other and one of them says something about 7.175 being some kind of informal boundary and another one doesnt mention that at all. also whats the deal with band edges, someone at my club told me to never operate right at the edge but didnt really explain why. is it a legal thing or just like a courtesy thing. i dont want to accidentally operate outside my privledges or cause problems for anyone

ok so ive been licensed for about 4 months now and i keep hearing people on the air say stuff like QSL and QRZ and i kind of figured those out from context but then someone told me to QSY and i had no idea what they meant and just kind of sat there like an idiot. i looked up a list online but there are like hundreds of these things and i cant tell which ones people actually use vs which ones are just historical or whatever. is there like a short list of the ones that actually matter for HF and maybe 2m? also people in the nets i join use a bunch of other abbreviations that arent Q codes i think, like 73 and 88 and OM and YL and stuff. are those in the same category or totally different