Jennifer Davis

QRZ is one that tripped me up when i first started, it means whos calling me or sometimes people use it at the start of a CQ to say something like QRZ from W5whatever. and QRP means low power which youll see a lot, people are really proud of their QRP setups. oh and QRO is high power, opposite of QRP. took me forever to remember which was which. 73 de W5XYZ is basically how people sign off in CW and a lot of people carry it over to voice too. "de" just means from in morse/telegraph shorthand. once you hear it enough it just becomes second nature honestly

Classic cycle behavior - I've been through several of these! The bands that were quiet for years opened up beautifully during the peak, and now we're seeing the gradual decline. Don't worry though, 20m will remain your workhorse band even as we head toward solar minimum. Focus on efficient antennas and learn the low bands - they'll be your friends in the coming years.

honestly the exam looks scarier than it is. i had the same feeling when i first pulled up the question pool, thought there was no way i was gonna understand the reactance and impedance matching stuff without a degree. but hamstudy and a couple youtube videos on the theory bits and it clicked faster than i expected. took me maybe 6 weeks of studying maybe 20-30 minutes a night. as for whether you actually use the theory — i mean kind of? i build some of my own gear and understanding filter design even at a surface level has helped me troubleshoot things. but if you're mostly just operating and not homebrewing anything then yeah a lot of it is background knowledge you might never directly apply. that said i dont regret it at all. the extra HF segments are nice especially around 20m and 40m when things get crowded, having that extra slice of spectrum is actually noticeable during contests. just do it, the worst case is you dont pass first try and you go back and fill in the gaps

I second that advice! Mobile stations running low power on 10 meters can communicate world wide on a daily basis when the sunspot cycle is at its peak. With your wire dipole, you might be pleasantly surprised. Even if phone contacts are tough, FT8 will let you know if the band is open. Good luck and let us know what you work!

yeah the jump from tabletop to real activation is always a little jarring the first time, dont sweat it. the ICS integration piece specifically takes a few go-arounds to feel natural. what helped me was just being super explicit with whoever i was working for — like asking directly "do you want me to check in on schedule or wait for you to call me" before the event even starts. most ECs appreciate that because half the volunteers just assume and then you get people keying up at the wrong time. the after action thing is a real problem in a lot of groups honestly. the ones that do formal AARs even just a quick 20 minute debrief in the parking lot are so much better at improving over time. if your group isnt doing it might be worth just suggesting it, frame it as something you want for yourself as a newer operator and most ECs will go for it. nobody wants to say no to someone genuinely trying to learn. 2-3 activations a year with a marathon or public service event type thing is actually pretty normal for a lot of county groups. some areas just dont have that much call for it which is honestly fine, means nothing bad is happening. the monthly net practice matters more than people think even if it feels repetitive.

dont overlook just getting a spyverter or a good upconverter for the rtl before spending more money. threw one on mine and HF got way more usable without spending RSP money. though yeah the noise floor is still what it is

i remember my first QSO too, was so nervous i forgot my own call sign for a second haha. now im up to about 30 contacts and getting more comfortable. the hardest part really is just keying up that first time

The correct NATO spelling is "Alfa" (not Alpha) and "Juliett" (with two t's, not Juliet). Speaking too quickly makes phonetic words sound similar - take your time to enunciate clearly. Always use phonetics for your callsign, especially the suffix letters which are most important for identification.

The NATO phonetic numbers (e.g., "One," "Two," "Tree" for 1, 2, 3) ensure numbers are clear and unmistakable over radio. For example, "Tree" replaces "Three" to avoid confusion with "Free." Don't forget about phonetic numbers - "niner" instead of "nine" is crucial for clarity!

so i just got my technician license a couple months ago and ive been thinking about learning CW for a while now. i dont really know where to start though. like do i just memorize all the letters first and then try to listen? or is there some specific method people use? i tried just looking at a chart and tapping along but it doesnt really stick. feels like im missing something obvious. any advice would help, even just pointing me somewhere to start would be great

so ive been running a remote station for about two years now using a pretty cobbled together setup — basically a raspberry pi running some custom scripts, a tigertronics interface, and teamviewer to get into the shack PC. it works but its kind of a mess honestly and every time something breaks i have to drive 40 minutes to the site to figure out what happened been looking at RemoteHams as an alternative, specifically because of the SDR remote functionality they added. the idea of being able to tune around with a panadapter view from wherever i am is really appealing. my current setup i basically have to know exactly what frequency i want before i connect, which is kind of annoying when youre just trying to find some activity on 40m the internet linking piece is what im less clear on — does anyone know how well that integrates with like a hotspot situation or are we talking full broadband needed at the site? the site i use has a pretty decent cellular connection but not like fiber or anything. curious if anyone has done a side by side comparison or just has opinions on whether the RemoteHams platform is worth the subscription vs DIY

yeah i was in the same boat not too long ago honestly. what helped me was just thinking of LoTW as the official one for ARRL awards and eQSL as the fun one where you actually get to see a card design. i still request paper cards from stations in places like Africa or some Pacific islands because half the time they never upload to LoTW anyway and having the physical card feels more real to me. also dont sleep on sending your own paper QSLs out, i started doing that maybe 6 months in and ive gotten some really cool cards back in return through the bureau. takes forever but its kind of part of the hobby i think

yeah so they're not exactly the same, DXwatch aggregates from a bunch of different cluster nodes around the world and does its own filtering, QRZ pulls from some of those same sources but they have their own system layered on top. you'll get overlap on most spots but timing differences are totally normal, sometimes a few minutes apart. neither one is the definitive truth, just different windows into the same general mess of spot data haha for android i've been using DX Toolbox for a while and it's pretty solid, also HamAlert is really good if you want to set up alerts for specific entities or callsigns you're hunting, it'll ping your phone when something you care about gets spotted. that one changed how i chase DX honestly, instead of staring at a cluster all day it just notifies me when something relevant pops up

so i finally bit the bullet and built a center-fed dipole for 40m out of some 14 AWG stranded wire i had laying around in the garage. cut each leg to around 33.5 feet based on the 468/f formula and got it up in an inverted-v config with the apex at about 30 feet off my chimney. not bad for a first attempt i think. the part im confused about is the feedpoint. i used a piece of scrap abs plastic as my center insulator and just soldered the coax braid to one side and the center conductor to the other, wrapped everything in self-amalgamating tape. my swr is sitting around 1.8:1 at 7.150 which honestly seems decent but im wondering if i should be using a 1:1 balun there or if what i did is fine for now. ive seen people go back and forth on this and cant figure out if its actually mattering for my situation or if its just one of those things people argue about forever. also one of the solder joints at the feedpoint looked a little sketchy after i did it, like the wire didnt tin great, should i just redo it or is it probably fine. the antenna seems to be working, got a few contacts into EU last night on 40 SSB running about 75 watts.

yeah what he said about the LNA is spot on. i tried EME for the first time last year with a borrowed 4x4el array and an older SSB Electronics preamp and even then i was struggling on receive. the path loss on 2m EME is something like 252dB which sounds insane when you type it out, and it kind of is. JT65A is doing a lot of heavy lifting but you still need the fundamentals right. one thing nobody mentioned to me when i was starting out — polarzation is a real thing on EME and can bite you. Faraday rotation means your linear polarized signal is going to be rotated by the ionosphere in a way thats constantly changing so sometimes youre just crossed with the other station and the signals drop into the noise regardless of everything else. some people go full circular polarization to deal with it, others just accept there will be times when the path is degraded. worth knowing about before you get frustrated wondering why a supposedly strong DX station is suddenly unworkable.

so ive been sitting on doing the mars/cap mod on my 857D for like two years now and finally got around to it last weekend. not gonna go into the full procedure here since its all over eham and the yaesu groups but just wanted to share some observations after running it for a few days. first off the actual mod itself took maybe 20 minutes, just the one diode removal like everyone says. no drama there. but what i actually wanted to talk about is the difference it made running it into my external LPF bank when doing some 60m stuff. seemed like the finals were running a bit warmer than before on extended transmissions which i half expected, but nothing scary on the meter. the thing im actually more curious about is whether anyone has done the fan mod on these at the same time. ive seen a couple writeups where people swap out the stock fan for something with better airflow since these things run warm to begin with. my understanding is the stock fan is pretty mediocre and there are drop in replacements that move a lot more air. anyone done this and was it worth the hassle of pulling the whole top cover off again

congrats, and dont let anyone give you too much grief about the baofeng lol. its fine for getting started. once you catch the bug youll want a proper radio soon enough but theres nothing wrong with learning on it first. what repeater were you on if you dont mind me asking, im always curious if i mighta heard you

I've been using the CW Morse 3D paddle for about a year now and it's been fantastic for POTA. The settings are a bit crude with no fine threaded screw adjustments and it can be noisy, but for the price point it's hard to beat. At your speed, the adjustment precision of the TP3 probably isn't necessary yet.

yeah the equalizer menus on kenwood radios are actually pretty useful once you dig into them, there's tx bass and tx treble adjustments and most people just leave them at flat which isnt always ideal depending on your voice. i bumped the high mids up a tiny bit on mine and got a couple unsolicited compliments on audio so something was working lol also are you monitoring yourself? like with the sidetone or a second receiver? cause its really hard to know what youre actually putting out without that. i use a cheap rtl-sdr on a dummy load sometimes just to get a rough idea, not scientific but you can hear obvious problems

JS8Call is definitely not as sensitive as FT8, thats just the nature of the encoding. FT8 gets away with those insane SNR numbers because every single transmission is a fixed-length structured message and the decoder knows exactly what to expect. JS8Call has to handle arbitrary text so the FEC cant be as aggressive. from what i remember reading it's something like 10-12dB worse than FT8 at the threshold, which in practice means it works great for regional stuff and even some DX under decent conditions but you wont be pulling -24dB signals out of the mud like you can with FT8. that said for what you're describing, actual conversations, the sensitivity is usually plenty. you're not trying to work a VP6 through aurora, you just want to chat with someone in the next state or across an ocean on a decent day. it handles that fine in my experience. i run both but on different bands and different instances of wsjt-x vs the js8call software, never had a problem with that as long as youre using separate audio devices or a virtual audio cable routed right.

oh man i just did my first WWFF a few weeks ago and honestly it was so much more relaxed than i expected. The nature reserve i went to was super quiet, had the whole picnic area to myself, strung up a random wire in a big oak tree and just called CQ for a couple hours. Ended up with like 60 contacts which felt amazing for a first time out. one thing nobody told me beforehand — bring bug spray lol. i was absolutely eaten alive and trying to log while slapping mosquitoes is not ideal. also the WWFF community on facebook has a really active group where people post their activation plans ahead of time and hunters will literally schedule time to listen for you which is pretty cool.

so i finally worked up the nerve to check in to the Tuesday night 2m net and i think i made a mess of it. the net control called for check-ins and i just started talking without waiting for him to acknowledge me first, and then i wasnt sure when to say over vs just stopping talking, and i think i doubled with someone else at one point. nobody said anything mean but i could tell i fumbled it pretty bad. ive been licensed about four months (general) and mostly just listened on the local repeater but i really want to get more active. is there like a standard way nets are supposed to go that i should know? and is there a difference between how you operate on a simplex frequency vs a repeater net, like different etiquette? i dont want to be that guy who doesnt know what hes doing every single time lol also when net control says QNI does that just mean check-ins are open or is there more to it

technician is definitely the starting point, there's nothing before it. and honestly it's not that bad. i studied for maybe two weeks using the HamStudy website, just doing practice questions every day for like 20-30 minutes on my lunch break and i passed no problem. the question pool is public so you're literally studying from the same questions that will be on the actual test, which makes a huge difference the thing that helped me most was not trying to understand every single concept right away and just getting familiar with the questions first, then going back to learn the why behind the stuff i kept getting wrong. some of the electrical theory stuff can feel a bit dry but there's not a ton of math on the tech exam so dont stress too much about that your neighbor can probably point you to a local club that does testing sessions too, a lot of them are pretty relaxed and some clubs even do walk-in testing on certain days. just check the ARRL website for exam sessions in your area if he doesnt know offhand

JS8call has replaced PSK31 as the keyboard to keyboard mode, but I'm curious about real-world experiences. Recent PSK31 QSOs seem mostly macro-based, comparable to FT8, but occasionally find genuine keyboard conversations. JS8Call offers FT8 robustness with messaging for emergency off-grid chat. For someone wanting actual conversations rather than quick exchanges, which mode offers better ragchewing opportunities? JS8Call allows free-form messaging vs FT8's rigid structurePSK31 only requires 31 Hz bandwidth - very efficient

Don't forget QRM (interference) and QRN (static noise) - you'll hear these constantly during band conditions discussions. Both are often misused as nouns, like "lots of QRM tonight". Focus on the ones you'll actually use in everyday QSOs rather than memorizing the whole list at once.