Paul Wilson

so ive been going back and forth on this for a few weeks now and figured id just ask here because the reddit threads are all over the place. im trying to decide between putting up a simple wire dipole for 40m or just doing a quarter wave vertical with some radials. my lot is not huge, maybe 80ft across, and i've got two trees that could support a dipole but it'd have to be kind of low, probably 25-30ft at the apex. not ideal i know.
the vertical i was thinking about is just a homebrewed thing, maybe a 33ft piece of aluminum tubing or even just wire up a fishing pole. throw down like 16-20 radials and call it a day. the thing is i work mostly dx and a few local nets and i genuinely cant figure out which way to go. everyone says verticals are good for dx because of the lower takeoff angle but then everyone also says a low dipole works just as well because it starts acting like a cloud warmer. which is actually true or does it just depend and nobody wants to say that out loud

so ive been licensed for about 3 months now (Tech) and ive just been borrowing my club's old radio at meetings but i want to finally get my own handheld. the problem is every time i start researching i end up in a rabbit hole for like two hours and close the browser more confused than when i started
i mostly want to hit the local repeaters, maybe do some simplex stuff with a buddy of mine who just got his ticket too. nothing crazy. i looked at the baofeng uv-5r because everyone seems to have one but then people say the transmit audio is garbage and it'll interfere with everything and i should get something else. then someone else says its fine and just learn how to program it. honestly i dont know who to believe
budget is maybe $60-80 but i could stretch a little if something is clearly worth it. any help appreciated, been lurking here for a while and you guys seem to know your stuff

so im finally making the trip out to Xenia for Hamvention this may, first time going and honestly dont really know what to expect. heard the flea market is massive but also heard parking is a nightmare. anybody been recently that can tell me what to actually bring or what to watch out for? im mostly hoping to score some older HF gear and maybe find a decent antenna tuner that isnt overpriced. my local club is doing a carpool thing but id still love to hear from people who've done this more than once

yeah what he said about the encode/decode thing is right. one thing i'd add — when you first start using a repeater it's honestly good just to listen for a few days before you jump on. get a feel for who uses it, what kind of conversations happen, whether there's a regular morning net or whatever. some repeaters are super active and welcoming, others are kind of a quiet club machine that the locals guard pretty closely lol. not saying yours is like that but just... listen first. also if theres a net on dont just start calling CQ in the middle of it, wait for a break and then ask to join or check in. most people are super friendly once you figure out the rhythm of it

haha yeah the self-spotting thing gets everyone at least once. after my second activation i started texting my wife the summit reference and frequency before i even start hiking so she can spot me on SOTAwatch if i ask her to via text. works pretty well if you have any signal at the trailhead. also some guys use APRS to self spot which is pretty slick if your radio supports it.
4 contacts on your first one with no spot is honestly impressive, dont be too hard on yourself. some people do their first activation on a busy summit and still barely scrape 4. the W1 chasing you from Colorado on 20m, thats just SOTA magic right there, those guys are dedicated. whats the next summit youre eyeing?

that wall around 10-12 wpm is super real, pretty much everybody hits it. what happened for me is i was forming the characters in my head as sounds mapped to letters rather than just hearing the letter directly, and the only thing that actually fixed it was bumping up the character speed in farnsworth mode while keeping the overall pace slower. so like running characters at 18-20wpm but with longer gaps between them so you have time to process. it forces your brain to hear dit-dah as A instead of counting.
the 20-30 min a day thing should be enough honestly, consistency matters more than marathon sessions. i went from about 12 to solid 20 in maybe 4 or 5 months doing similar time. the jump from 15 to 20 was actually easier than the earlier plateaus for me once the characters locked in. also just getting on the air even when youre slow helps a lot, a CWT or something like that where contacts are short, people are patient with slower ops more than you'd think

could also just be the Flex itself going into some kind of idle state? i dont use RemoteHams but i remote my 6300 over SmartSDR and ive seen it do weird things when the DAX audio pipeline gets confused. probably different issue but worth checking the Flex event log on the remote machine if you have access to it. sometimes theres stuff in there that doesnt show up anywhere obvious

so ive been licensed for about 3 months now (Tech) and ive just been borrowing my club's old radio at meetings but i want to finally get my own handheld. the problem is every time i start researching i end up in a rabbit hole for like two hours and close the browser more confused than when i started
i mostly want to hit the local repeaters, maybe do some simplex stuff with a buddy of mine who just got his ticket too. nothing crazy. i looked at the baofeng uv-5r because everyone seems to have one but then people say the transmit audio is garbage and it'll interfere with everything and i should get something else. then someone else says its fine and just learn how to program it. honestly i dont know who to believe
budget is maybe $60-80 but i could stretch a little if something is clearly worth it. any help appreciated, been lurking here for a while and you guys seem to know your stuff

yeah what he said. i did my first CQ WW SSB last year and just treated it like a big DX day. worked like 40 countries in a few hours on 15m which was way more than id ever done in regular operating. the hardest part for me was the pileups, sometimes you call a station 10 times before they get you. just be patient and make sure your callsign is clear. good luck

ok so i just got my technician license about three weeks ago and ive been trying to get on the local 2m repeater but nobody seems to hear me or if they do they dont respond. i programmed in the frequency and offset correctly i think but im not sure about the tone. the repeater directory listed it as 100.0 hz CTCSS and i put that in as the transmit tone on my baofeng but still nothing. or well sometimes the repeater opens up when i key it which i guess means it hears me but then silence.
so my question is do i need to set the tone on receive too or just transmit? and also is there like an unwritten rule about how long you should wait before calling out on a repeater? i dont wanna step on anyone or come across as rude. i read somewhere you should just say your callsign and say listening or something but i wasnt sure if thats still a thing people actually do

so ive been licensed for about 6 years now and done a decent amount of HF work, some VHF contesting, but EME has always been this kind of mythical thing on the horizon that i figured was for people with huge yagi arrays in their backyards and unlimited budgets. lately ive been reading more about it and it seems like weak signal digital modes have kind of changed the equation a bit? like JT65 and stuff has made it more accessible than it used to be?
anyway im trying to figure out what a realistic minimal station looks like for 2m EME. i know youre going to say i need more antenna than i have but right now ive got a 9el yagi that i use for terrestrial stuff, an IC-9700, and a decent preamp. i dont even know if thats in the ballpark or way off. also is there software coordination stuff i need to know about before i actually try to call anyone, like i dont want to just point at the moon and start hollering and annoy everyone who actually knows what theyre doing