Emily Rodriguez

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.

i had the exact same problem when i started lol, spent like two days thinking my radio was broken. turned out i had the offset going the wrong direction on top of the tone issue. double check your offset is set to + or - correctly, the repeater directory should say which one. some areas are all minus and you just kind of assume but its worth verifying. once i fixed both things it just worked and i felt pretty dumb but whatever, we all start somewhere

okay so i've been checking into the local tuesday night net for about three months now and i'm still not totally sure when its appropriate to just talk versus waiting for the net control to call your callsign. last week i keyed up between two stations that were apparently in the middle of an exchange and i felt awful about it. net control was really nice about it but i could tell i'd stepped on something.
the thing is nobody ever really explained the flow to me when i started. i just kind of listened for a few weeks and tried to copy what other people were doing but i guess i missed something. is there like a standard way nets work or does every net do it differently? i dont want to keep being that guy who messes things up

the PR-40 is a dynamic mic so it definitely does not need phantom power, that part is fine. what you probably want to look at is the TX bandwidth setting in the 7300 menu — by default i think it's set somewhere around 2.4 kHz which isn't terrible but for a good sounding mic like the PR-40 you can open that up a bit, maybe 2.8 or even 3.0 kHz if the band isnt super crowded. also check your bass roll-off setting, there's a low cut filter in there that might be chopping your fundamentals.
honestly the biggest thing for me was getting a proper level set without relying on compression to make up for it. start with the ALC just barely moving on peaks, like just kissing the top of the range, then add maybe 2-3 dB of compression at most. people go way overboard with compression on SSB and it just makes everything sound harsh and unnatural. good audio on SSB is mostly about a flat clean signal going in, not squishing it to death afterward.
also if you have a buddy who can give you honest on-air reports in a range of band conditions that's worth way more than any S-meter reading

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

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.

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 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.

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.