Steven Brown

so ive been running an inverted V for 40m for probably three years now, apex at around 35 feet off a push up mast in the backyard. it works, cant really complain too much, but ive been reading a bunch of stuff lately about how a flat top dipole at the same height supposedly has better low angle radiation for dx and im starting to wonder if im leaving something on the table. the problem is my lot is pretty narrow so getting both ends up high enough for a true flat top is kind of a pain. i could probably manage 25 feet on one end tied off to the fence and maybe 28 on the other end going to the shed. so not exactly flat but closer than what i have now. my current feedpoint is at 35 so the ends of the inverted V are drooping down to maybe 10-12 feet above ground. is the difference actually noticeable in practice or is this one of those things thats like 2dB on paper and you'd never hear it in a real qso? genuinely curious if anyone has done a side by side or switched between the two setups.

the TCXO swap is worth it imo, especially if you do any weak signal stuff on vhf/uhf. i did the same mod on mine maybe 3 years ago and the difference on 2m SSB was noticeable, at least compared to what it was before which was drifting annoyingly after warmup. on HF yeah probably doesnt matter much, a few hz off on 40m nobody cares. but if you ever get into any digital modes on the higher bands that require tight frequency accuracy it starts to matter more than you'd think. good call on the caps btw. i did a recap on an older FT-817 and found two that were measuring way outside spec even though they didnt look bad visually. the puffy ones you caught were probably already causing some compression issues near the finals.

so i finally worked up the nerve to check into the local 2m net last tuesday and honestly it was kind of embarrassing. i had been listening for a few weeks just to get a feel for it but when the net control called for check-ins i just froze for a second and then keyed up and gave my callsign but i think i did it at the wrong time and someone was already mid-transmission so there was this weird doubling thing. net control was super nice about it and had me go again but i felt like everyone was judging me. anyway i got through it and they welcomed me which was really cool. but now i have questions. like when do you actually key up during check-ins, do you wait for a full pause or is there some other signal? and is it weird to just give your callsign and nothing else or should you say your name and location too? i've heard different things. also is it rude to check in and then just listen and not say anything else the whole net? i know this is probably basic stuff but nobody really explained the flow to me when i got my ticket

had similar issues last month and it turned out to be buffer settings on my end. try going into the audio config and bumping up the buffer size to like 512 or 1024 samples. yeah it adds a tiny bit more delay but it smooths out those weird spikes also check if you have any other streaming stuff running in the background, netflix or whatever can mess with the QoS even on good connections

you've got the right idea with transmit tone only, that's exactly how it works for most repeaters. the CTCSS tone (some people call it PL tone, same thing different name) gets sent along with your audio when you key up, and the repeater's receiver is set to only open up when it hears that specific tone. so without it programmed on transmit, the repeater just ignores you completely even though you can hear the output fine. receive tone on your radio is a different thing — thats for your radio to mute itself unless it hears the tone, kind of like a secondary squelch. most people leave that off unless they want to filter out noise. as for calling on repeater, yeah just kerchunk the repeater first (key up briefly to make sure you're getting in) and if you hear your call sign come back or the courtesy tone beep then you're in. then just say your callsign and say something like "any stations?" or "W1XYZ monitoring" and see what happens. if the repeater has a courtesy beep between transmissions, wait for that before you start talking again. you'll pick it up fast, honestly most people on repeaters are pretty welcoming to new hams.

i dunno maybe its just the time of year but ive been getting on the radio more just to... talk i guess. not chasing DX, not contesting, just spinning the dial and seeing whos around. caught a guy in wyoming last night on 40m and we just chatted about his chickens for like 20 minutes. thats the kind of stuff i got into this hobby for honestly. been licensed since 2009 and i feel like i spent so many years trying to optimize everything and now im just enjoying it. anyone else in that headspace or am i getting old lol

yeah i run AllStar on the same physical machine as my remote HF setup and it mostly works fine, the CPU load from AllStar node is pretty minimal as long as youre not running a busy repeater link. the thing to watch out for is making sure your port forwarding doesnt get messy — AllStar wants its UDP ports and RemoteHams has its own set and if your router firmware is doing anything weird with NAT timeouts you'll get dropouts on one or both. i had an issue for months that turned out to be my ISP modem going into some kind of low power state and killing UDP sessions after like 90 seconds of inactivity, drove me absolutely crazy before i figured it out

yeah what he said. i was nervous my first check-in too and just kind of blurted out my call and then panicked when net control asked if i had anything to pass lol. just say no traffic and youre good. most nets are really welcoming to new people, like if you mess up the format nobody's gonna come down on you. the civil war battlefield thing sounds cool btw, ive worked a few of those special event stations and they usually give out a certificate or a QSL card which is a nice thing to have especially early on when youre building up your log.

so ive been running APRS on my D710 for a few months now and mostly its been fine but lately aprs.fi is showing my position like 3-4 miles off from where i actually am. at first i thought maybe i was just looking at an old beacon that hadnt refreshed but ive watched it in real time and the position it plots is consistently wrong, always to the northeast of my actual location. my GPS is locking fine, i can see the coordinates on the radio display and theyre correct. the radio is set to smart beaconing so its not like its sending stale data. im wondering if maybe one of the digipeaters in my area is doing something weird to the packet? or could it be a TNC timing issue even though im using the internal TNC on the 710? has anyone seen this kind of consistent offset before? the weird part is its not random, its always the same direction which makes me think its not just noise or a bad decode somewhere.

i did the headliner route on my 2017 F150 about two years ago and honestly it wasnt as bad as i expected. maybe 6 or 7 clips came loose and i only broke one, which i replaced for like a dollar at the ford dealer. the A pillar trim just pops off if you work it slow from the bottom up, theres a clip near the top that can be stubborn. i ran RG-8X and left a little service loop behind the dash and havent had any issues since. the door jamb thing works for a while but ive seen it chafe through the jacket after a year or two of the door opening and closing, especially in winter when everything gets stiff. not worth the risk of a short or water getting in. as for alternator noise, i did need a ferrite choke on the power leads and also ended up putting one on the mic cable. the newer ecoboost engines seem worse about it than the old 5.4s in my experience. worth checking your ground too, i grounded mine directly to the chassis with 12 gauge and it cleaned up a lot.

so i finally did my first WWFF activation last weekend at a state forest near me, KFF-something i looked it up on the wwff.us site. been meaning to do one for ages and kept putting it off because honestly the whole logging and upload process looked confusing from the outside. ended up making 47 contacts in about 2.5 hours on 40m and 20m SSB, which i was pretty happy with for a first attempt. had a few hunters calling in from europe which i was NOT expecting, apparently the dx side of WWFF is a whole thing i didnt fully appreciate until now. one guy from germany called me three times because i wasnt copying him well through the qsb and he was very patient about it, really nice experience. my questions are -- do i need to upload to both the WWFF logbook AND eqsl/lotw separately or does the wwff upload cover everything for the hunters awards? and also i noticed some references have multiple designations like a state park that also has a KFF number, do you just log it once or does it count for both programs somehow? im using HAMRS for logging in the field which worked great by the way, exports adif just fine. also is there a minimum contact requirement to have the activation count, i remember reading 44 somewhere but wasnt sure if that was still current

so i just passed my technician exam last week and im starting to look at handheld radios and honestly i had no idea there were this many choices. ive been reading reviews for like three days and i feel like i know less now than when i started lol basically i want something for local repeaters and maybe APRS down the road, nothing crazy. my budget is probably around $50-80 but i could go a bit higher if it really makes a difference. i keep seeing the Baofeng UV-5R come up everywhere but then people say the audio is bad or the transmit is off frequency or whatever, and then other people say its totally fine. and then theres the Yaesu FT-65 which seems more solid but costs more. and someone at the club mentioned the Wouxun but i cant even find consistent info on how to pronounce that i just want something that works reliably on the local 2m and 70cm repeaters without me having to fight with it constantly. am i overthinking this or does it actually matter a lot which one i pick at this price point

im in kind of the same boat actually so watching this thread. i downloaded that morse trainer app on my phone a few months ago and i got through like the first 8 letters and then just stopped opening it lol. i think my problem is i dont have a reason to actually use it yet so it never sticks. someone told me to just get on the air even if youre terrible and that sort of forces you to keep going but that sounds terrifying honestly

so ive been interested in ham radio for a while now, mostly because a coworker keeps talking about it and it sounds cool but also kind of overwhelming. i looked up the FCC license thing and theres like three different levels? technician, general, extra? i dont even know what the difference is really or which one i need to just get started talking on a radio. also where do people actually study for this stuff. i found some websites but i dont know if theyre legit or if theres like a book i should get. the test questions look really technical in places and im worried ill just fail. is there a passing score i need to hit or is it just pass/fail kind of thing. sorry if these are dumb questions i really dont know anything yet

the microHAM station master is solid gear for that setup, good choice there. one thing that helped me a lot early on was just running the second radio receive-only for a while before actually transmitting on it. like literally just tuning around and keeping mental notes without keying anything up. gets your brain used to monitoring two things without the added pressure of actually working stations on both. then you start just grabbing easy mults when they pop up, nothing aggressive. honestly for casual contesters the rate gain from SO2R is probably modest anyway unless youre already consistently running above like 100-120 qsos per hour, at that point the time you spend tuning the second radio is time you couldve spent calling CQ

that sounds like it went pretty well for a first activation tbh. i was way more nervous on mine and definitely made some procedural fumbles on the air that i still cringe thinking about lol the served agency thing is real though, our group actually added a whole section to our training about it after a similar situation came up. we do at least one tabletop exercise a year now where we sit down with the actual emergency manager and just kind of talk through scenarios. its not glamorous but it helps a lot. worth asking your EC if thats on the radar for your group

honestly the technician exam is way more approachable than it looks at first. the question pool is public so you're basically studying from the actual test, which helps a lot. i used hamstudy.org when i was studying and just did practice questions every day for like two or three weeks and passed pretty comfortably. you dont need a deep electronics background at all for tech, the math questions are minimal and even those you can just memorize the formula and plug in numbers. the ohms law stuff is like maybe 3 or 4 questions total and theres a pattern to it once you see it a few times. for finding a test session just go to the arrl website and look up exam sessions in your area, or search for a local club because most clubs run VE sessions pretty regularly. some areas even have online testing now through certain VEC organizations. once you pass you get your callsign assigned usually within a week or so, sometimes faster. your neighbor with the antenna setup might actually be a good resource too, a lot of hams love helping new people get started.

went through exactly this last year, got my extra and then spent forever trying to actually get useful on CW. what got me moving again was honestly just getting on the air even though i felt way not ready. like actual QSOs, slow ones on 40m. people are generally pretty patient if you explain youre new to cw, and there's a whole bunch of ops who specifically hang around the novice/tech ends of the bands for this reason. hearing real signals with real fists instead of perfect computer audio made a big difference for me, even though it was harder at first because of the noise and different keying styles and all that also just my personal experience but Farnsworth timing helped a lot at the speed wall. keeping character speed high like 20wpm but stretching the gaps between characters so you have more time to process. LCWO does this if you dig into the settings.

General class gets you access to over 83% of amateur HF bands, but some segments often used for long distance contacts aren't included. The Extra privileges really shine during contests when the General portions get packed. Plus you can become a VE for all three license levels, not just Tech like Generals can do.

so i've been messing around on 10 meters the last few days and i honestly cant believe what ive been hearing. worked a couple stations in south america yesterday afternoon just running about 50 watts into my dipole, no amp, nothing fancy. the band just opened up out of nowhere around 2pm local and i was pulling in signals that sounded like they were next door. ive been checking the solar flux on solarham and its been sitting up around 190 or so which i guess explains it but honestly i've never seen 10m this good since i got licensed a few years ago. is this just going to keep getting better as we head toward solar maximum or is this kind of a temporary spike thing? i know cycle 25 has been overperforming or whatever but i wasnt expecting it to feel this dramatic. anyway if you havent checked 28 mhz lately you really should, there was some kind of opening toward europe this morning too based on what i was seeing on the DX cluster

congrats on the first one, 44 QSOs is a solid debut especially mixing modes like that. to answer your HAMRS question — you dont actually need the reference in every individual log entry, when you upload to the WWFF logging system (wwff.cc or the regional coordinator site depending where you are) you associate the whole log with the reference at upload time. just make sure your ADIF has the right date, your callsign, and all the QSO details and youre good. for the hunter confirmations, yeah its pretty automatic once your log is uploaded and processed. hunters who logged the contact on their end and have it uploaded will get credit matched up. some hunters upload right away, others wait weeks, so dont be surprised if the confirmation numbers trickle in over time. the overlapping reference thing is a good question and the honest answer is it depends on how the references are structured. sometimes a forest sits inside a national park boundary for example and in that case yes you can claim both but you really should check with the WWFF regional coordinator for your country to be sure. there are some nuances there that vary by reference type.

so ive been a tech for about 3 years and just upgraded to general last month and decided this is the year i actually learn CW. not required anymore obviously but something about it just appeals to me, maybe its the old school factor or whatever. anyway i picked up a used Bencher BY-1 paddle and a MFJ keyer off ebay and ive been practicing but something feels off. like the dots and dashes dont sound even to me, the dots feel too short compared to the dashes. i messed with the ratio settings on the keyer a bit but i honestly dont really know what im doing. is this a settings issue or am i just not squeezing the paddle right? i find myself hesitating before each letter and then rushing through it which probably sounds terrible on the air. also should i even be going on the air yet or just keep practicing with a practice oscillator type thing. i can copy maybe 6-7 wpm on a good day with simple words but sending feels completely different than receiving

so i finally did my first parks on the air activation at a state park about 45 minutes from my house. been lurking on the pota.app site for months watching other peoples activations and reading the spotting page and i figured it might as well just go do it. brought my FT-891 and a random wire antenna i strung up between two trees, maybe 30 feet of wire running at a weird angle but it worked. got on 40m around 1pm local and honestly the pile up started within like 3 minutes of spotting myself which i wasnt ready for at all. ended up with 22 QSOs in about an hour which i know is way more than the 10 you need but i got kind of addicted and just kept going. the weird part was a couple guys who called me and when i sent my signal report and the park reference they just said 73 and disappeared, like they didnt even confirm the park number or anything. is that normal? does the park reference need to be in the actual exchange or do hunters just log it from the spot? i was confused about that. also had one guy who kept calling over everyone during the pileup which was annoying but whatever i guess thats just how it goes sometimes. anyway really glad i did it. already looking at the map for parks near me that have never been activated, there are a few that show zero activations which seems like a good challenge