Amanda Taylor

so i finally got my first real homebrew superhet working well enough to pull in some stations and im pretty stoked about it. been working on this thing for like 3 months off and on. its a basic AM broadcast band receiver, dual conversion, first IF at 10.7 and second at 455kHz which i know is kind of overkill for broadcast but i had the parts and wanted to learn the topology properly. anyway the thing works but im getting this weird birdies issue around 1050 kHz give or take. i traced it to what i think is leakage from the first oscillator getting into the second mixer somehow but honestly im not totally sure. the shielding on my first IF strip is pretty janky, just some copper tape i wrapped around a cardboard tube because i was out of proper enclosure material at the time. also the selectivity on the second IF is not great. im using some surplus 455 kHz ceramic filters i got in a bag of parts from a swap meet years ago. two of them in cascade which should in theory give me decent skirts but it doesnt feel tight enough, stations bleed through more than id expect. anyone dealt with this before or know if matching the filter impedances matters a lot here, because i just kinda threw them in without thinking about that.

the RTL-SDR honestly isn't terrible for a rough check if you know its limitations — you can at least confirm the second harmonic is way down relative to your fundamental. that said, if you know anyone local with a real SA, even a 20 year old HP or Rigol or whatever, it's worth an afternoon trip just to see what's actually going on. the 7-element chebyshev should be more than adequate on paper for 40m harmonics but component tolerances matter, especially if you wound your own toroids and they're a bit off. what core did you use for the inductors? also 40dB carrier suppression on a diode ring with 1N4148s is actually pretty solid, ive seen kits ship worse than that. you might get another few dB if you hand-match the diodes but honestly at that level it's probably fine for casual operating.

yeah i do the same thing on 80m, thats my go-to morning band. usually catch the tail end of some of the old timers nets wrapping up around 6am and just sip my coffee listening in. sometimes i check in sometimes i dont depends how awake i am. its a good way to start the day for sure.

the jump method actually works, at least it did for me. i was stuck around 8wpm for months doing the same thing you're doing — grinding slowly and always being able to "almost" copy everything. somebody on here told me to set LCWO to 20wpm character speed with a low effective speed (like Farnsworth method) so the individual letters come fast but there's space between them. your brain learns to recognize the sound of each letter as a unit instead of counting dits and dahs. that was the thing that finally broke me loose. the other thing honestly is just getting on the air before you feel ready. i started listening to W1AW code practice broadcasts and just trying to copy what i could without stressing about the rest. after a while your brain starts filling in gaps based on context, which is basically what real CW operating is anyway. you're never going to copy 100% and thats fine, working pile-ups at 20wpm nobody copies everything. dont wait until youre "ready" because that day never really comes lol

so ive been running a mag mount on the roof of my truck for about a year now, diamond SG7900A, and honestly its been fine but i keep reading that a proper NMO through-hole install is noticeably better and i'm starting to wonder if i should just bite the bullet and drill. the truck is a 2019 F150 so not exactly a beater i dont care about, which is part of why ive been putting it off. the other thing is i travel for work and sometimes the antenna comes inside with me when i park in sketchy lots, so the mag mount has that going for it. but i also notice the SWR seems to creep up a bit when the mount shifts even slightly and i have to mess with it. and the cable routing under the door seal is kind of janky. anybody gone from mag to NMO on a newer truck and actually measured a real difference, or is this one of those things that sounds good in theory and doesnt really matter in practice if the antenna itself is decent? also curious whether anyone has done it on an F150 specifically because i've heard the roof skin is a little thinner on these and i dont want to crack anything.

yeah the self spotting thing makes such a difference, i didnt do it on my first couple activations because i felt weird advertising myself i guess and i barely scraped 4 contacts both times. once i started using sotawatch regularly the chasers just find you, theres a whole community of people just sitting by their radios waiting for spots to pop up which still kind of amazes me. i cant really compare antennas much since ive only used a vertical with a few radials but just wanted to say congrats on getting it done, the first one is always a bit chaotic

honestly the memorize everything approach worked fine for me but i do think you retain it better if you at least skim the gordon west technician book first. its pretty thin and you can get through it in a weekend. then hammer the practice tests on hamstudy for a few days and you should be fine. the question pool doesnt change that often so what youre seeing now is current. the electrical stuff trips people up sometimes, like the ohms law questions and the basic antenna formulas, but theres only a handful of them and the math isnt bad at all. i passed with like a week of casual studying so dont stress too much about the timeline.

yeah 28 feet apex isnt super high for 40m so that will do it. i had almost the exact same setup a couple years ago and got similar numbers. honestly just loaded it up and worked a bunch of stations without a tuner so dont sweat it too much. if you really want to get it lower you could try fanning the ends out a bit more to open up the angle but at that height theres only so much you can do.

im kind of in the same boat as you actually, just hit 120 confirmed entities on LoTW last month and been putting off figuring out the submission stuff because it seemed complicated. good to know about the mixed QSL thing, i have probably 30 or 40 paper cards sitting in a shoebox that i never did anything with one thing i did figure out is that clublog is pretty handy for tracking which entities youve worked vs confirmed, it shows you the gaps and you can sort of plan what to chase next. not sure if you already use it but its free and syncs with LoTW

yeah im planning to go, my buddy and I are splitting a tailgate table to unload some stuff. got a bunch of coax and a few handhelds that have just been sitting in a box. if you see a white pickup with a bunch of antennas stacked against the tailgate thats probably us

okay so ive been messing with APRS for a few months now and i think i finally have a decent setup going but something is still off and i cant figure out if its my path settings or if the local digi is just garbage. running a TM-D710G with a mag mount on the car, 1200 baud, WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 path, beacon interval at 60 seconds. i can see myself on aprs.fi when im close to town but once i get out on the highway about 20-30 miles east it just drops off completely. checked the coverage map for the area and there should be a digi up on the ridge but maybe its not working right? or is 60 second intervals too slow and my packets just arent getting through when there's QRM? also tried switching to WIDE1-1,WIDE2-2 for a bit but that just felt like i was being that guy flooding the channel with redundant packets so i switched back. anyway if anyone has run APRS in semi-rural terrain and dealt with spotty digi coverage id love to hear what you actually do.

aprs.fi has had some caching weirdness off and on, but more likely you might have two objects or stations with your callsign-SSID floating around confusing it. check if maybe the TinyTrak was ever configured with the same SSID and sent out a position with a different symbol or path — sometimes the site latches onto the older one and just kinda ignores updates that look like duplicates or come from a different path signature. also worth checking your comment field. ive seen cases where a stray character in the status text caused the packet to parse weird on aprs.fi specifically even though findU handled it fine. the parsers are a bit different under the hood. try stripping your comment field down to nothing and send a few beacons and see if it unsticks.

not dumb questions at all, everyone goes through this exact same thing when they start out. so the CTCSS tone — you need to set it as your transmit tone, meaning your radio sends it out when you key up. the repeater hears that tone and knows to open its squelch and retransmit you. some repeaters also send a tone back to you on their output so you can set your radio to only open when it hears that tone too, which helps cut down on interference from other signals, but that part is optional and not all repeaters do it. for the baofeng specifically, you want to go into the channel settings and make sure the T-CTCS is set to 100.0 Hz. there should also be a separate R-CTCS setting for receive, you can leave that off for now or set it to the same tone if the repeater sends one back. and yeah the offset on 146.820 would be -600 kHz so your radio should be transmitting on 146.220. as for joining a conversation, wait for a break between transmissions, key up briefly and just say your callsign. something like "KD9XYZ monitoring" and then wait to see if they acknowledge you. most repeater regulars are pretty welcoming, especially if they know youre new. some repeaters also have a net or round table going at certain times so check if theres a schedule posted anywhere for your local club.

so ive been meaning to do this for like two years and i finally just sat down and started pulling stuff together for a proper go-kit. got a pelican case, my FT-857D, a few rolls of coax, some misc adapters, power cables, that kind of thing. threw in a cheap notebook and some pens because i kept reading that you really want paper logging capability when everything else goes sideways. my question is basically what do people always forget until they actually need it. like the obvious stuff i think i have covered but i know theres always something. i was doing a ARES activation last spring for a local marathon and somebody didnt have the right PL tone written down anywhere and spent 20 minutes trying different ones before they found it. so now i keep a laminated card with all the local repeater info in the case lid. what else falls into that category of stuff you dont think about until you really need it

im in basically the same boat lol, 4 months in and my CW is still pretty rough around the edges. one thing that actually helped me was slowing way down with the Koch method trainer and really focusing on clean release rather than clean press if that makes sense. like i was so worried about hitting the right paddle that i wasnt thinking about when i let go. anyway not sure if that helps but just throwing it out there

ft8 took everybody lol. im guilty of it too tbh. its just so easy to leave it running while you do other stuff. i do miss just tuning around and finding a random ragchew though, doesnt happen much anymore

so ive been messing around with an arduino mega for the past few weeks trying to build an automated antenna switcher for my shack. i've got like 5 antennas right now — a dipole for 40m, a vertical for 80/40, a 2m yagi, and a couple others — and im constantly reaching over to flip relays manually which is getting old real fast. my idea is basically to have the arduino read which band im on from the radio (using a BCD output from my IC-7300, it does output band data on the ACC port) and then key the right relay automatically. i already wired up a little relay board i got off amazon, 8 channel one, and i can toggle relays fine from the arduino. the problem im running into is the logic side — reading the BCD lines and mapping them correctly to antenna choices isnt going as smooth as i thought. i keep getting false triggers when i switch bands rapidly. has anybody done something similar? wondering if i need debouncing logic or if theres something smarter to do on the software side. also considered doing this with a raspberry pi instead but seems overkill for just switching relays. open to ideas though.

okay so the chart thing almost never works, you end up just translating in your head and that slows you way down once speeds get higher. the Koch method is honestly the way to go and it sounds more complicated than it is -- basically you start with just two characters at full speed, like 20wpm, and you dont add a new one until you can copy the current set at like 90% accuracy. the reason for sending at full speed even as a beginner is so your brain learns the sound of the whole character instead of counting dots and dashes. LCWO.net is free and does Koch training right in the browser, thats what most people point newcomers to. Just Lean CW is another one, its an android app and its pretty good. the 5wpm thing yeah that requirement is gone but you still need some code to really work CW on the air, and honestly once you get past the initial frustration hump it starts to click. give it a few weeks of consistent practice, even 15 minutes a day beats an hour once a week.

ALC is definitely the thing to watch honestly. if its slamming hard every syllable your audio is gonna sound compressed and kind of rough on the receiving end. you want it just barely ticking on the peaks, not sitting pegged up. back off the mic gain until the ALC is only moving on loud consonants and you'll probably already notice an improvement. on the EQ side your friend was on the right track. SSB doesn't need bass, it actually hurts intelligibility and can cause splatter if you're overdoing it. the 7300 has a parametric TX EQ built in, I'd cut everything below maybe 200hz, leave the mids mostly alone, maybe a small bump around 2-2.5k for presence and then roll off above 3k or so. voice intelligibility on SSB basically lives in that 300hz to 2.5k range anyway, anything outside that is just noise on a crowded band. the stock mic is fine for casual use but the element is a bit boomy up close. if you keep it a fist away instead of right at your lips it helps a lot. people get too close to that thing and then wonder why they sound muddy.

yeah im pretty new too (got my ticket in january) and i had the exact same anxiety about nets for the first couple months. i just listened to maybe 4 or 5 nets before i actually checked in and that helped a lot because i could hear how people were doing it. the "over" thing confused me too — my elmer told me on VHF FM most people just drop the mic and the squelch tail tells everyone you stopped transmitting. different vibe than HF for sure.

the stock mic situation is real, the HM-219 is fine for basic use but its a pretty mid element and if youre in a reflective room its gonna pick up all that room sound and make everything sound weird and hollow. first thing id actually do before spending any money is just hang a blanket behind you or put something soft near your operating position, that alone can make a surprising difference. for the 7300 specifically i'd look into the TX equalizer settings, there's a parametric EQ in the menu that most people never touch. rolling off a bit below 200hz cleans up a lot of muddiness and boosting slightly around 2-3khz adds presence without sounding harsh. also make sure your TX bandwidth isnt set too wide or too narrow — a lot of guys accidentally leave it at some narrow filter setting they used for CW and wonder why SSB sounds terrible. honestly though mic technique is underrated. staying consistent distance from the mic matters a lot more than people think. if youre moving around while you talk the level swings all over the place. some guys swear by headset mics just for that reason, keeps you at a fixed distance all the time.

honestly I'm kind of in the same boat as you, started LCWO about two months ago and im at maybe 12 characters now. its slow going but i can actually hear letters now without thinking about it for some of them which is wild compared to when i started one thing someone told me that helped was to just tune around on 40 or 80 and listen even if you cant copy anything, just getting your ear used to the rhythm of it. theres also a bunch of youtube channels that do slow code practice transmissions which i found useful for getting off the pure drill stuff and hearing it in a more real context

oh man i had the same problem when i was first getting on HF, nets are such a good way to start. i ended up just scanning around 3.900 to 3.960 on weekend mornings until i found something and then wrote everything down in a notebook like its 1985 lol. worked though. the net control on the one i found was super patient with me when i fumbled my callsign the first time checking in.

so ive been licensed for about 8 months now and i keep hearing people use all these weird abbreviations on the air and in forums and i honestly have no idea what half of them mean. like i know QSL means like... confirming contact? and QTH is location i think. but then people say stuff like QRM and QSB and QRP and i just kind of nod along and pretend i understand what theyre talking about. is there like a master list somewhere or do you just kind of pick these up over time. also some guys on my local repeater use abbreviations that arent even Q codes i dont think, like they say 73 and 88 and stuff like that. are those Q codes too or something different entirely. sorry if this is a dumb question im still figuring all this out

im kind of in the same boat as you and just started a few weeks ago, so take this for what its worth. i use the morse code ninja stuff on youtube, he has videos that go through each character and also these word practice videos which are actually really helpful once you know a few letters. i also found just having it on in the background while im doing other stuff helps a little but probably not as much as sitting down and actually focusing on it lol one thing i heard is dont try to learn too many letters at once, like five or six max before you really drill them. anyway still a work in progress for me too