Jennifer Davis

okay so ive been listening to a lot of ham radio conversations lately and everyone keeps throwing around these short codes and abbreviations and honestly i cant keep up. like what is QSL exactly, i see it used as a verb sometimes and a confirmation other times? and QTH i think is location? but then theres QRM QRN QSB and like a dozen others and i dont know where to look these up in a way that actually makes sense in context.
also people sometimes just say 73 at the end of a conversation which i gather is like goodbye but where did that even come from. and whats the deal with OM and YL, are those like ranks or something. sorry if this is a really dumb question im still pretty new to all of this and the lingo is a bit overwhelming when youre just starting out

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 just passed mine like 3 weeks ago so this is fresh lol. took me longer than i expected, probably closer to 3 months but i was only studying maybe 20-30 min at a time whenever i could. the thing that tripped me up was i kept confusing myself trying to deeply understand everything from scratch instead of just getting familiar enough with the concepts that the answers made sense. like you dont need to derive the resonant frequency formula from first principles, you just need to know what happens when you change the capacitance in an LC circuit you know
the exam itself felt totally manageable once i had the pool down. and yeah the HF privileges are nice, finally got on 160m which ive been wanting to do forever

So i've been licensed for about 14 months now and mostly just do casual rag chewing on 40m and some local nets. A friend from my club keeps telling me i should try CQ WW this October and honestly im kind of tempted but also a little intimidated by the whole thing. Like i dont even really understand the exchange fully — you send your signal report and your zone right? Is it the CQ zone or ITU zone because ive seen both mentioned and i keep confusing myself.
Also my setup is pretty modest, just a Yaesu FT-891 and a wire dipole up about 30 feet. Is that even worth bothering with or am i gonna just get frustrated calling CQ into the void all weekend. I did try to tail-end a few QSOs during Field Day this summer and that was actually kind of fun so maybe i have some taste for it. Anyway just wondering if anyone has advice for a first timer who doesnt want to totally embarrass themselves lol

so ive been at this morse thing for about a year now and honestly im kind of frustrated. started with the Koch method using LCWO and got up to around 13wpm copy pretty comfortably but now i just... cant seem to push past it. like i'll be copying along fine and then i miss one character and suddenly im lost and the whole thing falls apart.
i read somewhere that 13-15wpm is kind of a wall a lot of people hit and that you're supposed to just force yourself to listen at higher speeds even if you're only catching like half of it? tried bumping up to 18wpm and it was pretty rough, felt like i was just guessing most of the time. not sure if that approach actually works or if im doing something wrong.
for context im practicing maybe 20-30 minutes a day, sometimes skipping days. using LCWO for random letter groups and also the W1AW code practice files. anyone else gone through this and actually made it to 20wpm? what finally clicked for you

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 the LM386 thing is a good call but also — and i know this sounds dumb — are you sure your 78L08 has enough input headroom? if youre running it off like a 9v battery thats starting to sag a bit the regulator can drop out of regulation and do all kinds of weird stuff. had almost exactly this problem on a 80m regen i built last winter and it turned out the battery was just getting tired. the oscillation frequency i was seeing was similar to what you describe. stuck a 12v supply on it and the problem just disappeared. might be worth trying before going too deep into the circuit diagnostics

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