Michael Johnson

oh man i just got my general like two months ago and i havent tried 10m yet, mostly been hanging out on 40m because thats where my elmers told me to start. maybe i should give it a shot this weekend. whats a good freq to just listen around on first? i dont want to accidentally jump into a net or something embarrassing like that.

i went through this exact thing last spring. ended up running a temporary flat dipole using two painters poles and some paracord off the end insulators just to compare back to back. the difference on 40 to europe from the midwest was real but not dramatic, maybe stations that were 57 on the inverted V were more consistently 58-59 on the flat one. on 75m i barely noticed anything. wasnt worth the permanent hassle for my situation so im still on the inverted V. your mileage may vary and all that but thats what i found

yeah i was in the exact same boat like six months ago lol. the baofeng menu for tones is buried and the manual is basically useless. i ended up just watching a youtube video for my specific model and that cleared it up way faster than anything else. once i got the PL tone sorted out everything just clicked. also some repeaters around here are linked into like regional or even nationwide systems so you might end up talking to someone three states away which is kinda wild when you first experience it

honestly for a one day thing id just go battery and not even bother with the generator drama. lithium if you have it, AGM if you dont. the 7300 pulls maybe 2A on receive and like 20A at 100w output but youre not keyed up 100% of the time so real world is way less than worst case math. end fed slopers work fine dont overthink it. ive made plenty of DX off a wire hanging from a tree at a weird angle. sometimes the improvised setups just work and spending an hour laying out radials in a field is time you could be on the air

340 miles on 4 watts is solid, dont undersell that. i had a similar experience with my first QCX build last year, there is something about making a contact with a rig you built yourself that just feels different. i couldnt really explain it to my wife but i tried lol. one thing i do now for portable and home operation is keep a little log of what worked and what didnt, like what time of day, which part of the band, stuff like that. after a few months you start to see patterns specific to your location and setup which helps a lot more than generic propagation advice. also have you tried the QRP watering holes like 7.030 for CW? theres usually activity there and people calling there generally expect QRP stations so theyre a bit more patient about asking for repeats.

im still pretty new to chasing dx seriously but one thing that helped me a lot was actually using the dx cluster smarter, not just spotting where the frequency is but reading the comments people leave about the split. sometimes someone will say "up 5 working NA" or whatever and that saves you a ton of time just hunting around. also i got burned once calling simplex on a split operation because i didnt read carefully enough, felt like an idiot when someone came back and told me lol. still learning the etiquette side of it tbh

so ive been licensed about 8 months now (general) and ive been listening to a lot of the big contest weekends but never actually participated. did kind of stumble through field day this past june with my club which was fun but chaotic and i dont think i really understood what was happening half the time honestly. anyway im looking at the calendar and theres a lot coming up — CQ WW is in october right? and then ARRL sweepstakes after that. not sure which one to try first or if i should just pick one and dive in. i also see people talking about SOTA activations a lot and wondering if thats considered a contest or more of its own thing. my setup is pretty modest, running about 100w into a dipole in the attic which i know isnt ideal but its what i have in a HOA situation. will that even be enough to make contacts during something like CQ WW or will i just be calling CQ into the void the whole time

GAS is real and it never goes away lol. i went 590 to 7610 which is maybe overkill but the dual watch on the 7610 is genuinely usefull for running a pileup and monitoring another band at the same time. the 7300 is probably the sweet spot for most people though, great radio for the price. your attic dipole situation is the real limiting factor like the other guy said, no rig upgrade fixes that.

yeah the wire storage thing is like a rite of passage honestly. i used to use those plastic winder reels and they're just terrible in the field, always kinking and catching on brush. what i do now is just wind the wire in a figure-8 around my hand and thumb, toss it in a small mesh bag. takes like 2 minutes to coil up and comes out clean almost every time. also way lighter than any reel. the EFHW itself is a great choice for summits though, hard to beat for quick deployments.

yeah the frequency offset thing is pretty common and its almost never perfectly matched to what the software says. gpredict uses the published transponder center freq but those can shift a bit over time and your rig's TCXO or whatever reference you have is probably slightly off too, even a few ppm adds up when you're dealing with doppler corrections at 145 MHz. i just use a known beacon on the downlink to calibrate before i start seriously working the pass, get your radio zeroed on that and then you have a reference point for the rest. the dual radio thing is the right approach but it takes some getting used to. honestly the hardest part for me early on was remembering to tune the uplink opposite to the downlink doppler direction when you're in inverting mode — which AO-73's linear transponder is. if you tune up on the downlink to find your signal you actually have to tune down on the uplink, catches a lot of people off guard the first few times

might be totally off base here but have you checked if the 7300s USB connection to whatever PC is at your home end is stable? i had something similar and it turned out the PC was suspending the USB port after a few minutes of what it thought was inactivity. drove me crazy for weeks before i figured it out. just a thought, probably not your issue but worth ruling out

i was in basically your exact spot about 8 months ago and ended up with the Kenwood TH-K20A on a recommendation from someone at my local club. its only 2 meters which felt limiting at first but honestly most of the active repeaters near me are 2m anyway and the audio quality is noticeably better than my friends UV-5R. just something to consider if you dont need 70cm right away. the club thing is worth mentioning too — if theres a club near you, go to a meeting before you buy, someone will probably let you try a few different radios and that hands-on time is worth more than any review online

yeah the skip thing is real and honestly even experienced guys run into this. one thing i'll add — on some of the more popular HF bands during good propagation you kind of have to accept that you might be causing interference somewhere even if you do everything right. the band's just busy. for nets specifically the procedure is pretty different anyway, net control assigns you a slot basically so there's less of the "is this frequency in use" problem. if you're nervous about jumping into freeform HF operating, starting with a structured net on 2m or even one of the regional HF nets is genuinely a good way to get comfortable with radio discipline without the chaos of just hunting for a clear freq. i did that for probably my first full year before i felt confident doing random HF QSOs.

so ive been sitting on this for a while but finally thinking about doing the mars/cap mod on my 7300 to open up the transmit range a bit. i know icom has the jumper on the board somewhere and ive seen a couple youtube videos but they all seem to be from like 2018 and im not sure if the procedure changed with the newer firmware revisions not looking to do anything sketchy with it, just want the flexibility to do some MARS nets and maybe experiment a little outside the traditional ham bands on my own property. the receiver side already covers pretty much everything which is great but the tx being locked is annoying anyone actually done this on a recent unit? the board revision on mine is like a late 2021 manufacture date i think. wondering if the jumper location is the same or if icom moved stuff around

so i've been meaning to do this for like two years and after the storms we had last month i finally got off my butt and started building a real go-kit. right now i've got my ft-857d in a pelican case with a powerwerx power panel, a 40ah lifepo4 battery, and im using a buddipole for the antenna situation. threw in some coax, a few adapters, my logging book and a couple pens. thing is i keep getting this nagging feeling i'm missing something obvious. like the kind of stuff that only comes up when you actually need it and then you're standing there feeling like an idiot. ive done a couple of ARES activations but never really had a complete kit, always borrowing stuff from other guys or running back to the car for things. anybody who's done actual deployments or even just serious field day stuff, what ended up being the thing you always forgot or wished you had? not looking for a master list off some website, more just personal experience stuff. what bit you in the rear when it mattered

i literally just did this like two months ago lol, went from tech to general and yeah 40m is where i started too. honestly the exam wasnt that bad i was overthinking it. HamStudy practice tests til you're consistently hitting like 85% or better and you'll be fine on test day. the actual exam felt easier than some of the practice ones weirdly. one thing nobody told me is that once you pass you still gotta wait for your license to show up in the FCC database before you can actually operate on the new privileges, took about 4 days for me which felt like forever

oh man the lighthouse event is great, i did that one last year. grabbed like 11 contacts with different lighthouse stations over a weekend which doesnt sound like a lot but i was pretty happy with it for my first time doing something like that. some of the pileups can get pretty wild if its a rare or popular site so just be patient and wait for a lull. also seconding what was said about NTS nets if you wanna get comfortable with net procedure — handling a radiogram feels a little awkward the first time but it clicks pretty fast and its genuinely useful skillwise for emcomm stuff too if you ever go that route.

honestly for what youre describing id probably just go with a decent collinear. something like a Diamond X200A or X300A at 35-40 feet is going to outperform that j-pole by a country mile and youll still be able to hit everything in range without thinking about which way the antenna is pointing. yagis are great but without a rotor they kind of become a fixed-shot deal and you already said you dont want that. the other thing people dont talk about enough is that a lot of those 35 mile repeater links are way more forgiving than you think once you get the antenna off the house and clear of the roof. ive seen guys go from barely making a repeater to full quieting just by moving a vertical from an attic to a 25 foot mast outside. the building loss on VHF is pretty nasty. get it outside first and see what you actually have, then decide if you need directional gain.

im going with a couple guys from our club, we usually make a whole trip out of it. if your club thing is just a regular meeting id skip it personally, hamfests dont come around that often and you can always catch the next meeting

the coax is almost certainly part of your problem. those stock cables that ship with mag mounts are usually RG-58 or something even worse with cheap connectors, and at 2m you can easily lose a dB or two in 12 feet depending on how bad it is. id start there honestly, grab some LMR-240 or even just decent RG-8X and put on proper connectors and see how much difference that makes before spending money on a new antenna. that said the NR770HB is a solid antenna and would be an upgrade over a basic 5/8. yagi on a mobile is kind of a pain unless you have a specific reason for it, most people doing mobile VHF work just want a good omni and better feedline. if you were doing like a specific trail or route where you knew the repeater was always behind you or something maybe a yagi bracket makes sense but for general driving around i wouldnt bother.

so ive been meaning to do this for like two years and finally sat down last weekend and started pulling stuff together for a real go-kit. im pretty active with our local ARES group but honestly my kit has been kind of embarrassing — just a HT and some spare batteries thrown in a backpack, nothing organized at all. what i have so far is my FT-857D, a SignaLink USB for digital modes, a 40Ah LiFePO4 battery from Bioenno, a few Anderson powerpole cables, my logging laptop which is old but works, and im planning to throw in a J-pole and some coax. also have a small inverter somewhere in the garage i should probably include. but i feel like im definitely forgetting something obvious. like i know there are guys in our group who show up to exercises with these beautiful Pelican case setups and everything is labeled and it just works, and mine is going to be a pile of stuff in a rubbermaid tote probably. is that actually fine or is the organization part more important than i think? also any must-have items that tend to get overlooked? i always forget like the small stuff.

so i finally got my general last spring and joined my county ARES group maybe two months ago. been going to the weekly nets and the monthly meetings but this weekend theres an actual activation for a local marathon event and my EC asked if i wanted to tag along and help out. i said yes obviously but now im kind of nervous about it. like i know the basics, i can check in on a net, i can pass traffic, but an actual deployment feels different. theyre putting me at one of the water stations along the route with a HT and im supposed to relay runner counts and any medical calls back to net control. seems straightforward but i keep second guessing myself. what if i fumble the phonetic alphabet when it actually matters or i miss something important. anyone done one of these marathon or race events before? any tips for a first timer? also not sure what to bring gear wise beyond the obvious radio stuff, like should i have a log book, do people even do paper logs at these things

haha yeah my first activation i forgot my coax adapter and just sat there for like 20 minutes going through my bag convinced id packed it. i hadnt. drove home. it gets easier once you figure out your kit and stop second guessing yourself though. now i can be up and running in maybe 15 min tops. the rope thing is real tho, i carry a slingshot now and it changed everything

so ive been running an RTL-SDR v3 for about a year now and its been great for getting into the hobby, been using SDR# mostly and messing around with dump1090 for aircraft stuff. but im starting to feel like the dongle is holding me back a bit, especially on HF where the direct sampling mode is kinda mediocre at best. noise floor is just not great and i keep reading that a proper SDR makes a huge difference there. been looking at either the SDRplay RSP1A or just jumping straight to a HackRF One. the price gap is real though — RSP1A is like $120ish and the HackRF is pushing $300-350 for a decent one (or like $120 for a clone but i dunno how much i trust those). main thing im trying to figure out is whether the HackRF transmit capability is actually useful for a ham or if its more of a SDR experimenter thing. i have my tech license and studying for general so TX below 30mhz isnt happening for me yet anyway but still thinking ahead. mostly interested in HF shortwave, maybe some satellite stuff down the road, and just general wideband monitoring. dont really have a specific project in mind, which is maybe the wrong reason to spend more money but here we are. anyone gone through this same upgrade path?

so i've been watching the solar flux index creep up over the past couple weeks and this morning it jumped to around 180 which i havent seen in a while. fired up the radio around 0900 local and 17m was absolutely alive, worked a JA station with no trouble at all which never happens from my QTH in the midwest. then caught a ZL on 15m which honestly surprised me because 15 has been pretty dead for most of the year. anyone else noticing this or is it just my setup behaving today. im running a dipole at about 30 feet so its not like i have some fancy antenna farm. just wondering if the better conditions are widespread or if i got lucky with a gray line opening or something. also curious if people think this holds through the weekend because i was planning to actually sit down and try to work some real DX saturday morning.