Jennifer Kim

Can someone break down the specific Extra Class frequency privileges? I keep reading about "exclusive segments" but I'd like to understand exactly what additional spectrum you get access to. I'm particularly interested in HF since I do mostly CW and some digital modes. Which bands have Extra-only segments?How much additional spectrum are we talking about?Are these segments typically more active than the General portions?

so i finally got activated for a real event last weekend, our county ARES group was supporting the local marathon and it was my first time doing anything other than the monthly nets and tabletop exercises. overall it went pretty smooth but there were a few things that kind of threw me off and i wanted to get some perspective from people who've been doing this longer. the main thing was the ICS stuff — i knew the basics from taking IS-100 and IS-200 online but actually slotting into the incident command structure in the field is a completely different thing. the EC was acting as the liaison with the served agency and i was just a net control relay basically but even so i wasnt totally sure when i was supposed to check in versus wait to be called. we were using simplex on a local calling freq and it got pretty busy around mile 18 where they had a medical tent. also curious how often your groups actually do real activations vs just drills and nets. we've had maybe 2-3 real ones this year and i feel like that's not enough to really get comfortable with the procedures. does your group do any kind of after action review or debrief? ours kind of just dispersed after the event and i had to track down the EC later to ask questions.

so ive been putting together a go-kit for ARES activations and just general portable ops and im kind of going back and forth on the power situation. right now i have a 100ah lifepo4 battery that i picked up last year and it runs my IC-7300 just fine at home but im not sure how long it'll actually last in the field running like 50-100w for several hours. i did the math and i think it should be okay but i always feel like i underestimate something. the alternative is bringing my honda eu2200i which i know is rock solid and i can run it all day but then im hauling a generator plus fuel plus the battery anyway because i use the battery as a buffer so it doesnt seem like i actually save weight. and the noise is a factor too depending on where we're set up, some of the sites we use for emcomm activations are kind of near neighborhoods. on the antenna side im pretty happy with my buddipole setup but i keep hearing people talk about the end fed half wave for portable work. anybody running one of those off a 9:1 unun or whatever? im wondering if its actually simpler to deploy than the buddipole because that thing takes me like 20 minutes to get dialed in on a new band. anyway the main question is really about the generator vs battery thing. what are people actually doing in the field for a full day activation

yeah the two-logger problem is pretty much just a fact of life for a lot of people. what i do is keep N1MM completely separate and just let it do its thing during the contest, then when its over i export the ADIF out of N1MM and import into Log4OM. you do get duplicates sometimes but Log4OM has that duplicate checking on import, just make sure you have it set to update existing records rather than skip or create new ones or whatever the setting is called, i forget the exact wording. for the WSJT-X thing during contests — honestly i just change the UDP port in WSJT-X settings to point at N1MM's port (2237 i think, maybe double check that) and then when the contest is done i flip it back. takes like 30 seconds once you know where the setting is. bit annoying but it works and i havent had it break on me. the bigger issue is N1MM doesnt always score FT8 QSOs right depending on the contest rules so worth checking that after.

ok so ive been trying to get Winlink Express working for a couple weeks now and i think im close but not quite there. my setup is a ic-7300 running into a signalink usb and im using vara HF for the modem. i can see nearby RMS gateways in the channel picker and i can even watch the waterfall and see what looks like vara traffic going back and forth but when i try to connect i either get nothing or i get partway through the handshake and then it drops. the part im confused about is whether the RMS gateway i picked is actually online and accepting connections or if its just showing up in the list because it was active recently. i think the propagation map shows the path is ok but i honestly dont fully understand how to read that thing yet. do the gateways go offline sometimes mid-day? or is this more likely an audio level issue on my end. i had the signalink tuned for psk31 before so maybe i need to recalibrate everything for vara. also not sure if it matters but im trying to do this on 40m, the frequency im using is one ive seen listed in the winlink frequency list so i dont think thats the problem. any ideas what to check first?

so ive been trying to figure out if its worth the drive this year, last time i went i picked up a pretty clean TS-830 for like 80 bucks which was insane but that was years ago and from what i hear the swap tables have been getting thinner every year. still thinking about it though, my buddy KD8 something (forgot his suffix lol) said the club is doing a group carpool from here if enough people sign up. anyone else planning on going or know if the flea market part is still worth it

The "I spell" protocol is something I wish I'd learned earlier! When giving my call during contests, saying "I spell" first really helps the receiving station know what's coming. Makes such a difference in accuracy.

The audio dropout thing with RRC boxes is pretty well documented and its almost always a buffer underrun or a UDP packet storm on the local network side rather than bandwidth on the WAN. 15 up should be plenty for the 590SG codec settings. What i would check first is whether you have QoS configured on your router at the remote site — if something else on that network decides to do a big transfer right when youre in a QSO it'll stomp on the RRC audio packets since UDP just gets dropped. I had the exact same symptom and setting up a simple traffic shaping rule to prioritize port 5060 and the RRC audio ports fixed it like 90% of the time. The other 10% turned out to be a flaky ethernet cable between the router and the RRC box, of all things. On the EchoLink/HF hybrid question — yeah i run something similar. Separate machine handles the linking side, just a cheap mini PC running the EchoLink software and a little VHF radio. I kept it completely separate from the HF remote stack on purpose because when you start sharing audio devices and serial ports across multiple applications it becomes a nightmare to troubleshoot. If you have an old laptop sitting around just dedicate it to the VHF linking side and leave the RRC stuff alone on its own box.

classic alternator whine, happens all the time with mobile installs. the fix that works for me is adding a noise filter inline on the power lead, you can get one at pretty much any auto parts store or order one from ham suppliers. also worth trying a ferrite on the coax where it enters the cab. sometimes just moving the power cable away from ignition wires fixes it too — i had mine running parallel to the engine harness in my old truck and got the same exact thing until i rerouted it. definitely check your ground too, a bad ground will cause all kinds of noise issues. short ground wire directly to the chassis near where the radio is sitting, not daisy chained off some other ground point.

so ive been a general for about three years now and honestly i keep putting off the extra exam because every time i look at the question pool i just kind of close the browser and go do something else. the RF propagation stuff and the filter theory and all the math around impedance matching just looks intimidating. i did fine on the tech and general but those felt more like memorizing facts, the extra questions actually seem like they want you to understand why things work the way they do. anyway my actual question is i guess, for people who went through it, how much of the theory did you actually have to sit down and learn from scratch vs just memorizing the question pool? i know some people just brute force the pool and pass but i feel like that would leave me feeling like i cheated myself. also wondering if the extra privileges are worth it practically speaking, like i mostly do HF phone and some digital, does having the full extra subbands actually change what you can do day to day or is it mostly only matters for CW and contesting

honestly the part about listening to where they're actually pulling from is something i never thought about that carefully. i kind of just planted myself somewhere in the split range and hoped for the best lol. gonna try paying more attention to that pattern next time. question though — do you find it makes a big difference calling right at the start of a pileup vs waiting a bit for it to thin out? i feel like sometimes jumping in early just means you're buried under a thousand other stations and your chances are basically zero. but if you wait too long the op moves on or conditions change. i've had pretty good luck waiting like 20-30 minutes after a spot goes up and letting the initial frenzy die down a little before seriously trying.

so we have a county ARES exercise coming up in about three weeks and im trying to nail down the power situation before i commit to hauling everything out there. last time i ran a honda eu2200i and it was fine but honestly it felt like overkill for what i was actually running — ic-7300 at like 50-60 watts, a signallink, laptop, and a small fan. total draw was probably under 300 watts steady state. been thinking about just going lifepo4 this time. i have a 100ah battleborn that i barely ever use and if i pair it with my 30 amp bioenno charger i could keep it topped off overnight between operating shifts. the exercise is two days, roughly 6-8 hours of actual radio time each day. my gut says the battery is more than enough but i keep second-guessing myself especially if somebody else wants to plug something in or if we end up running longer than planned. antenna side is sorted i think — setting up a linked dipole for 40/80 on a 31ft jackite pole, maybe throw up a jpole for 2m vhf ops if they want that too. site is a county park with decent tree coverage which is good for shade but means i need to think about feedline length since i cant always get the pole exactly where i want it relative to the operating position. anyone run a similar setup without a genny? part of me likes the idea of quiet ops and not dealing with fuel but i also dont want to be the guy who runs out of juice mid-exercise

so ive been on SSB for probably two years now mostly on 40m and 20m and i keep getting reports that my audio sounds kind of muddy or like im talking through a blanket. running an IC-7300 into a basic desk mic that came with some bundle i bought off a guy at the hamfest. the TX EQ in the 7300 is set pretty much flat because i was afraid to mess with it, compression is on but only like 2-3 on the ALC. ive tried adjusting my mic gain and that helped a little but not enough i think. somebody on the air told me to roll off the bass and boost the mids but i honestly wasnt sure what values they were talking about. is there a general starting point people use for voice EQ on SSB or does it vary that much by mic and by voice? feels like i should be getting cleaner audio out of a radio this capable

not a dumb question at all, this stuff is genuinely confusing at first. so yes those contacts absolutely count as long as the other station uploads their log to LoTW and the QSL matches up — date, band, mode, callsign all have to line up. the ARRL system will credit them automatically once you apply for the award, you just have to submit an application through their website and pay the fee. you dont have to do anything special during the actual contact. my honest advice is dont worry about WAS or WAZ yet, just go for basic DXCC first. get to 100 confirmed entities and apply for the certificate, then start worrying about band endorsements and all that. a G5RV at 30 feet is totally workable for this especially on FT8, ive seen guys with way less antenna get to 200+ entities. just be patient and work stuff when propagation cooperates. also check dx-world.net and dxsummit daily, that'll tell you whats on and where, way more useful than just randomly calling CQ

i did the mars mod on mine years ago thats about as far as i went lol. maybe im leaving performance on the table but the rig works good enough for what i do. the 7300 comparison is always gonna be rough because that ADC front end is just a totally different design philosophy, almost not fair to compare them. that said if youre getting real results on 40m in a pileup then hard to argue with that.

the General pool isnt really harder than Tech honestly, its just a lot more of the same kind of stuff plus some HF-specific things you probably havent thought about yet like band plans and emission types. the math questions people stress about are honestly not that bad if you just memorize the formulas, most of them are the same ohms law and power stuff recycled with different numbers. i upgraded last spring after about 3 weeks of just running through HamStudy every night before bed, maybe 20 minutes a day and i passed with room to spare. the section on electrical principles tripped me up at first too but once you realize theyre basically asking the same 4 or 5 concepts over and over it clicks. for HF once you pass, 40m is a great starting point like you said, pretty forgiving during the day and you can actually hear a lot even with a mediocre antenna setup. dont overthink it just go schedule the exam, worst case you retake it

so i've been chasing VP8 for probably four or five years now and last week i finally got through during the South Georgia activation. thought i'd write up what actually worked for me because ive tried a lot of things over the years that really didnt help at all. the biggest thing that changed for me was stopping the tail-ending and instead really listening to where the DX station was actually coming back. like not just listening for the split they announced but watching where their QSOs were actually landing in the passband. most of the time they drift from the announced split anyway and if youre still sitting on 5 up while they're working guys at 3 up youre just wasting your breath. also i used to call during the pileup which is just... not great. now i time my calls to drop in right after the previous QSO ends and i give my callsign once, maybe twice if conditions are rough. i think the one-call technique is underrated — a lot of guys are just keying up for 20 seconds straight and the DX op probably can't pull any single call out of that noise anyway. running about 400w into a 4 element yagi at 45 feet here, nothing crazy, so its not like i was just brute forcing it with a kw and a stack. anyway curious what techniques other people have found actually move the needle because i know theres a lot of mythology around this stuff

yeah the solar flux alone really doesnt tell the whole picture, you kinda have to look at everything together. K-index is huge because even with flux in the 160s a geomagnetic storm can just trash the higher bands completely. when K hits 4 or 5 you might as well forget about 10 and 12m and even 17 gets sketchy. A-index is kind of the 24 hour average of the K so that gives you a longer view of how settled the geomagnetic field has been. what i usually do is check spaceweather.com in the morning and also grab the WWV broadcast at 18 minutes past the hour — they give you the solar flux, A index, and K index and a brief propagation outlook. its old school but honestly thats what i still reach for first. VOACAP online is also worth learning if you want to actually model paths to specific regions, you put in your antenna and power and it'll give you probability of a useful signal at different hours. takes a bit of getting used to but once you get the hang of it its pretty handy for planning a DX session

so ive been trying to work some DX on 20m and 17m the past few days and its been all over the place. monday evening i had europe coming in like gangbusters, was working stations in spain and germany no problem running like 100w into my dipole, and then tuesday nothing. literally nothing. called CQ for like 45 minutes and got one reply from a station in ohio which like, great, but thats not exactly dx lol i checked the solar flux index and it was sitting around 145 or so which i thought was decent, but the K index had been elevated, like 4 or 5 at some points, so maybe thats the issue? im still pretty new to understanding all the propagation stuff and i feel like i get the basic idea — solar activity good, geomagnetic storms bad — but i dont really have a feel for when things are gonna be good vs when to just not even bother anybody have a good way to kind of predict when a dx opening is gonna happen, or is it really just a matter of checking the indices and hoping for the best? also curious if anyone has a favorite tool or website they use to track this stuff because im currently just using the DX cluster and refreshing pskreporter every 20 minutes like a crazy person

yeah the dots and dashes chart thing is basically the worst way to do it, almost everyone who goes that route ends up having to unlearn it later because you start counting instead of just hearing the character as a sound. the whole idea with koch is you pick a speed that sounds fast enough that you literally cannot count — like 20wpm character speed — and you just learn two characters at a time until you can copy them at like 90% accuracy before adding the next one. it sounds counterintuitive but it works because your brain starts associating the sound with the letter directly instead of translating through dots and dashes first. for actually doing it, LCWO dot net is free and has the koch trainer built in, a lot of people swear by it. just set it to 20/10 or so (character speed / effective speed) and dont rush through adding new characters, seriously that part trips everyone up. some people also like the app Morse Toad or just listening to slow QSO recordings on youtube to get a feel for real-world rhythm. the main thing is doing a little bit every single day rather than one long session on the weekend, like even 10-15 minutes daily will get you further than an hour on saturdays

im kind of in the same boat so no great advice here but just wanted to say the Farnsworth thing — i think once you're past like 10-12 wpm you probably want to drop it and just run the characters at full speed with shorter spacing. thats what i read anyway. havent fully broken through myself but ive been doing the LCWO website which lets you tweak all that stuff pretty granularly, might be worth trying if youre not already on it. different interface sometimes helps just for keeping things fresh i think

ok so ive been licensed for about 4 months now and i still feel weird about when to use phonetics and when to not bother. like if im calling CQ on 40m do i phonetic my whole callsign every single time or just sometimes? and does it matter if conditions are good? i feel like some guys do it every time no matter what and others never bother and i cant figure out what the actual practice is supposed to be also i heard someone use "lima" and someone else said "london" for L and i thought there was only one correct version? is there like an official set you have to use or is it just whatever the other person understands

Over 3,700 nodes have upgraded to ASL 3 with improved stability and uptime, running on everything from Raspberry Pi's to PCs and commercial boxes. We've been running AllStarLink for three years - much more flexible than IRLP for multiple connections and easier for members to use.

not a dumb question at all, this confused me for a while too. basically the short answer is you use phonetics when theres any chance the other station might mishear you, so on HF where conditions are always changing that's pretty much always a good idea especially for callsigns and any important info. on a clear FM repeater with full quieting you can kind of read the room — if someone asks you to say your call again then yeah go phonetic, otherwise saying "W4ABC" normally is totally fine the one thing id say is for your callsign at least go through it phonetically once when you first make contact, then you can just say the letters after that once they know who you are. thats just kind of the standard practice ive noticed over the years. some of the older guys on our local net still phonetic everything every single time which is a bit much but hey its their habit

yeah the simplex fallback thing is such a common gap it's almost a cliche at this point but it keeps biting groups anyway. we had basically the same issue during a real activation a couple years back, not a drill, actual flooding in our county. repeater stayed up thankfully but we had two operators show up with HTs that were only programmed for like five channels and none of them matched what we needed for the tactical net. after that our EC basically mandated a standard template everyone had to load before any activation and we test it at least twice a year now by literally keying up on the simplex frequency and confirming coverage from key locations. sounds tedious but it shaved so much confusion out of the next drill. the message format thing is harder to fix honestly. ICS-213 handling is one of those things where muscle memory only comes from repetition and most people just dont get enough reps. some groups do monthly traffic nets specifically so people stay sharp on that piece. might be worth suggesting to your EC if you're not already doing something like that.