Emily Rodriguez

so ive been messing with an RTL-SDR v3 dongle for about a year now and honestly its been great for what it is, airband, APRS decoding, tracking flights with dump1090, all that stuff. but i keep reading about the SDRplay RSP1A and wondering if its actually worth the jump in price or if im just GAS-ing out again. main thing i want to do more of is HF. the RTL with the direct sampling mod works but its... not great. lots of noise, dynamic range seems to fall apart when theres strong signals nearby. was on 40m last night and could barely pull anything out with a strong broadcast station like two MHz away just absolutely stomping everything. so is the RSP1A actually meaningfully better on HF or is it one of those things where youre paying for specs on paper and the real world performance is kind of meh. also curious if SDRuno is actually decent or if most people just use it with SDR# or HDSDR anyway. i dont mind paying like $120 or whatever but id rather not if the dongle with a better antenna would get me most of the way there.

so i've been a licensed ham for about two years now, got my general last spring, and i finally joined our county ARES group back in the fall after kind of procrastinating on it forever. we had our first real activation a few weeks ago because of the flooding over on the east side of the county and honestly i wasnt sure what to expect going in. the net control stuff was pretty straightforward, i've done plenty of traffic nets so that part felt familiar. but what threw me off was just the pace of it all — like during training exercises everything moves kind of slow and organized, but when it was actually happening there were moments where three people were trying to check in at once and i could tell the net control op was having to really work to keep things sorted. we were mostly passing health and welfare traffic between the EOC and the shelter they set up at the middle school. what i didnt expect was how much of the job is just... waiting. like you get there, you set up, you check in, and then sometimes its an hour before anything actually needs to go. i was glad i brought a book lol. but when things did pick up it was genuinely satisfying to feel like the comms were actually useful and not just a drill. has anyone else had that experience with their first real activation? curious if the waiting around part is just normal or if our group is particularly slow

the FCC part 97 rules are the actual law, everything else is just a band plan which is basically a gentlemens agreement. so for your license privileges the FCC table is what matters legally. for generals on 40m phone you can operate from 7.175 up to 7.300 MHz, thats the actual rule the band edge thing is real though and worth paying attention to. your radio isnt perfect and when youre transmitting your signal has sidebands that extend a bit beyond where your dial says. so if youre on USB and your dial reads 7.299 your actual transmitted audio might be pushing past 7.300 into the extra portion. most people just stay a few kHz inside the edge to be safe, like dont park yourself right on 7.175 either because same issue going the other direction into the tech/extra portion the ARRL band plan pdf on their website is usually what I point new folks to, just make sure youre looking at the US one because band allocations are different in other ITU regions and some of those charts floating around online are for europe or wherever

yeah i think the arrl website has a hamfest finder tool thing, i used it once and it actually had some decent info. found one about 45 minutes from me i never knew existed. pretty small but i picked up a nice mic for basically nothing so cant complain

honestly i was in the same spot maybe a year ago. what finally made it click for me was just spending a couple passes just listening and not transmitting at all. like really listening and trying to follow individual signals through the doppler shift, you start to get a feel for how fast things are moving frequency wise especially near AOS and LOS vs mid pass when its more stable. also dont sleep on the AMSAT pass schedule stuff, some of those linear birds have scheduled periods where they switch modes and if you hit it when its in CW beacon only mode youll just be confused. i wasted like three passes on FO-29 before someone told me that lol

Been running W6QHS designs for years in contest setups. The hairpin is definitely the way to go, but consider the driver-to-director spacing adjustment for wider bandwidth if you're primarily working contests. You'll sacrifice maybe 0.5dB of peak gain but get much cleaner SWR across 14.000-14.350. For DXing, stick with the original spacing and hairpin match for maximum forward gain.

so i finally just did it, stopped overthinking and built a half wave dipole for 40m out of some 14 gauge stranded wire i had in the garage. used a so-239 chassis connector for the feedpoint and just soldered the two legs directly to it, center conductor on one side and the shield braid on the other. hung it in an inverted V config off a painters pole i strapped to the fence. swr came out around 1.4:1 at the frequency i wanted which i was pretty happy with for a first attempt, trimmed a bit off each leg to get there. but im wondering about the feedpoint connection itself because i didnt do any weatherproofing yet and also didnt use a balun. ive read a bunch of conflicting stuff about whether you really need a balun on a dipole fed with coax or if its one of those things people argue about forever. my rig is an IC-7300 and the antenna is about 25 feet up at the apex. also curious if anyone has opinions on using stranded vs solid wire for a permanent outdoor install, this one is kind of temporary but if it works well id like to make it more permanent.

50ms is actually not bad at all for remote ops, ive worked stations on the other side of the planet with worse. the choppy thing might be a buffering issue on the audio side more than raw latency. whats your jitter looking like? sometimes a connection looks fine on average but the jitter spikes and thats what breaks everything up. cant really help with the SDR part, i just run straight RemoteHams without all that extra stuff, works fine for contesting which is mostly what i care about. but curious how the linking idea develops if you go further with it.

yeah the inverted v thing makes a difference, my first dipole was the same setup and i spent like two hours confused why my numbers were off before someone on here told me the angle of the legs matters. also 35 feet center height for 40m is decent but not huge, ground reflections and all that stuff i barely understand but it does affect swr readings apparently. anyway it sounds like youre on the right track, 1.8:1 is way better than where i started lol

okay so ive been licensed about 8 months now and i keep seeing people talk about LoTW and eQSL and i honestly still dont fully understand which one i should be focusing on. i set up a LoTW account when i got my ticket because someone at the club told me to but i havent really done anything with it since. i think i uploaded a couple logs but im not sure if any of them actually matched with anyone. the eQSL thing i signed up for too but that one seems kind of different? like the cards look more like actual QSL cards which is nice but i dont know if serious DX chasers use it or if its more casual. and then theres just plain old paper cards through the bureau which my elmer says is still worth doing especially for rare DX. i guess my main question is do i need all three or is there one that most people treat as the real one for award purposes. im working toward DXCC eventually and i dont want to find out later that i was confirming contacts in the wrong place this whole time

so ive been going back and forth on this for a couple weeks now. got a 2019 F-150 and want to set up a decent dual band mobile situation, running a TM-V71A. right now i have one of those cheap magnetic mounts with a diamond NR770H on it and honestly the performance is fine but the magnet slides around on the cab and im worried about paint scratches after a few months of this. the real question is whether i should just drill for a proper NMO mount on the roof or deal with a lip mount or trunk lid mount instead. i know the roof center is theoretically the best ground plane you can get on a vehicle but im also not thrilled about putting a hole in a relatively new truck. lip mounts i hear can have issues with the ground connection being sketchy depending on the vehicle. anyone done both and have opinions? i do a lot of highway driving so wind loading at speed is also a thing i think about, the mag mount antenna wobbles pretty good above 65 or so. also open to collinear suggestions if anyone has thoughts on what works well for dual band mobile. currently the NR770H seems decent but i dont really have anything to compare it to.

the aluminum thing is almost certainly your problem. you're not getting a great RF ground through that body even with the star washer. a lot of guys with the newer F-series trucks have moved to a lip mount on the bed rail or even a hitch mount setup with a ground plane plate. it sounds janky but the RF doesn't care what it looks like, it just wants a solid counterpoise. what i'd do is grab a cheap SWR meter and actually check it on both bands, wouldnt be surprised if your 70cm SWR is running kinda high and robbing you of power before it even gets to the antenna. the Larsen is a good antenna but its only as good as its ground. also worth checking the coax connection at the mount itself, ive seen a surprising number of NMO installs where the center pin wasnt making great contact and it was fine on 2m but fell apart on 70cm

so ive been trying to get Winlink working for about two weeks now and im losing my mind a little. running Winlink Express on a windows 10 box, got a Signalink USB into my IC-7300, and im using VARA HF for the connection. i can see the RMS gateways in the list, pick one thats got decent signal, initiate the session, it handshakes fine and then somewhere in the middle of actually sending the message it just... drops. the little progress bar gets maybe 40-60% and then the session terminates and the message sits in my outbox. ive tried three different gateways at this point, two of which were under 200 miles away so path shouldnt be the issue. my VARA soundcard levels look okay to me - the TX is showing around 70% in the VARA setup screen which i thought was the recommended range. not sure if this is a timing issue, a power issue, something with the 7300 settings, or what. the IC-7300 is set to USB-D and data mode is on. ALC is barely moving. anybody dealt with this? feels like its almost working which is somehow more frustrating than it just flat out not connecting at all.

4 yagis on 2m is actually a reasonable starting point for digital EME, not going to lie it wont be easy but guys have done it with less. the key is really the system noise figure more than anything else -- if your feedline loss is eating your noise figure before the signal even gets to the preamp youre cooked. you want the LNA as close to the antenna as physically possible, ideally right at the feedpoint. MGF1302 or equivalent, get it down below 0.5dB NF if you can. JT65B changed everything for small stations, before that you basically needed a massive array or a dish to even hear the moon. now with WSJT-X and a clean setup people are making contacts that would have been impossible 20 years ago. your 4 yagi setup would put you in the category where you can probably work other small stations if youre patient and pick your spots. big gun stations with dishes will hear you easier than you hear them obviously. moon windows -- depending on your latitude you get maybe a window every day or every other day where the moon is at a usable elevation for both you and whoever youre trying to work. practically speaking for most of the US and Europe there are windows several times a week. use something like Heavensat or the built in tracking in WSJT-X to plan ahead. the 144 MHz EME contest weekends are the best time to start because big stations are actively calling and patient with small pistols.

The economics matter too - typical costs are $1.25 per envelope plus additional postage, with minimums around $10-20 depending on your activity level. Worth supporting since these are all volunteers, many for over a decade!

The most critical thing is that learning should be auditory rather than visual - always hear the code, don't look at dots and dashes. I've seen too many people get stuck counting dits and dahs instead of learning the sound patterns. Pick any method that emphasizes audio learning and stick with it consistently.

Just upgraded to an IC-7300 from an older rig and I'm struggling with the audio processing settings. The mistake people make is trying to see 100W output on an average reading (as opposed to a peak reading) meter and they proceed to max the mic gain and processor drive levels to do it. The result of this is horrible sounding audio and a very dirty signal that will interfere with other users on adjacent frequencies. I suspect I'm doing exactly this - my voice sounds muddy and compressed according to local stations. What are the proper starting points for mic gain and processing levels?

so i just passed my technician exam last week and im trying to figure out what handheld to get. everyone seems to have an opinion and honestly its a lot. ive been looking at the Baofeng UV-5R because its cheap and everyone seems to have one, but then people on reddit are saying get a Yaesu or Kenwood and dont bother with the cheap stuff. i dont even know what i need it for yet, i just want something to listen around on and maybe hit the local repeater once i get my call sign sorted. the price difference is pretty wild too. like the baofeng is $25 but then some of these Yaesu HTs are $200+. is the quality difference really that big for someone just starting out? i dont want to spend a ton if im not sure ill stick with it but i also dont want to buy garbage. any advice appreciated, sorry if this has been asked a million times

the SDR idea is actually pretty solid for self-monitoring. pipe the audio into direwolf on your laptop and set it to just decode, youll see the raw packet string and can verify your callsign, path, symbol, everything. that's the fastest way to catch a formatting issue without depending on someone else to hear you. on the path thing — WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 is fine for most areas, your buddy might have been talking about something else. one thing to double check on the D710 is whether the TNC is actually in APRS mode vs just packet mode. there's a difference and its easy to have it in the wrong one. also check that your beacon comment or position format isnt somehow corrupted. ive seen radios where a firmware quirk sends a malformed lat/lon that digipeaters just silently drop.

welcome to the hobby, dont let the baofeng stuff bother you, plenty of people started on one and they work fine for local stuff. ok so the CTCSS tone thing — the short version is that most repeaters require you to transmit a subaudible tone along with your voice so the repeater knows to open up and let you through, otherwise it just ignores you. thats why nobody hears you, the repeater is literally not responding to your signal without that tone. on your radio the T-CTCSS is the transmit tone, thats the one you need to set to 100.0 Hz to match what the repeater expects. the R-CTCSS is for your receiver side, like if you wanted your radio to only unmute when it hears that tone coming back at you — useful if there's a lot of traffic on the frequency and you only want to hear the repeater. for now honestly just set the T-CTCSS to 100.0 and leave the R side alone or turn it off. that should get you keying up the repeater. give it a try and come back if it still doesnt work, theres a few other things to check like the offset direction.

so ive been a general for about 3 years now and lately ive been thinking about finally sitting down and studying for the extra. mostly because a buddy of mine keeps going on about the extra portions of 40 and 75 meters being less crowded, which honestly sounds pretty appealing when the bands are busy on weekends. but honestly the theory sections scare me a bit. i looked at the question pool and some of that stuff about filter design and the smith chart questions and whatever... i passed my general without too much trouble but this feels like a different animal. like how deep do you actually have to understand the theory vs just memorizing the answers to pass the exam. im not trying to become an engineer, i just want the privileges. anyone gone through this recently and have thoughts on whether the extra is actually worth it for someone whos not really into contesting or DX chasing, just likes to talk on the radio

Welcome to the hobby, dont stress too much you're asking exactly the right questions. That beep you're hearing is almost certainly the courtesy tone — most repeaters are set up to play a short tone after someone unkeys, it basically tells everyone on frequency that the channel is clear and you can go ahead and transmit without doubling up on someone. Some repeaters have different beeps for different things, like one tone if the repeater is just idle and a different one when it's linked to another system or in a low-power state. Once you start listening more you'll start to recognize what your local machine does. On the CTCSS thing — 67.0 is one of the more common tones so you're probably fine there, but double check that your radio is set to transmit the tone and not just receive with it. On a lot of the cheaper handhelds those are two separate settings and it trips people up constantly. The offset for 2m is usually +600 but make sure the direction is right too, some radios default to the wrong direction depending on where in the band you are. And yeah, the wait time thing — just let the courtesy tone finish and then give it maybe another half second. That's usually enough. No need to rush.

yeah single yagi EME is totally doable these days, JT65b changed everything for smaller stations. back in the analog CW moonbounce era you basically needed a dish or a big array just to close the link, but now guys are making contacts with a single long boom yagi, maybe 20+ elements, and a decent station. the key numbers on 2m EME are path loss is something like 252 dB which sounds insane but JT65 can dig down pretty deep so it works. your 9700 is a solid starting point. the thing i'd really focus on is the preamp — you want a low noise preamp right at the feedpoint, like as close to the antenna as physically possible, not down in the shack. 0.3 to 0.5 dB NF is the target range, SSB Electronic and Kuhne both make good stuff. coax quality matters more than people think at 144, LMR-400 for 60 feet is fine honestly, just dont cheap out with RG-8X or whatever. power is nice to have but even 100w will get you some contacts if the other station is running a big array. just get on the WSJT-X software and start listening during a contest weekend to get a feel for it before you transmit anything.

I made the switch 8 months ago and haven't looked back. QRA64 has better performance on the very weakest signals - you'll notice it most with the JA stations and guys running single yagis. The only downside is less activity than JT65, but that's changing rapidly.

so i've had my FT-857D for probably 6 years now and always ran it stock because i was nervous about voiding warranty and whatever but the warranty is long gone and i finally just did it. did the mars/cap mod to open up the TX range and honestly it was way less scary than i expected. just the one diode removal on the main board, took maybe 20 minutes if you count the time i spent staring at the service manual trying to convince myself i was looking at the right spot. anyway the main reason i wanted to do it was for some NVIS work on 60m outside the standard allocations we use for emcomm stuff, and also just wanted the flexibility. the mod itself works fine, no issues at all. but what i actually want to ask about is whether anyone has done the extended RX mod too — i've seen a few different versions floating around and some of them involve jumper changes and some seem to just be software. not sure which way to go or if it's even worth it for HF since i already have a dedicated SDR for wideband monitoring