Thomas White

Just upgraded to General and planning my first HF station - 100W transceiver with a dipole at 30 feet. I keep reading about Part 97.13 and RF exposure evaluations, but I'm honestly confused about what's required. Do I need to do calculations, file paperwork, or measure RF fields? The rules say I need to take certain actions before transmitting if my station could cause exposure above FCC guidelines, but the FCC relies on amateurs to perform their own evaluations. Can someone break down the actual steps in plain English? What triggers the requirement and what are my options for compliance?

the math isnt that bad honestly, like there's some ohms law stuff and a bit about decibels but nothing you need a calculator for if you just memorize the common conversions. i was way more worried about it than i needed to be. the propagation stuff tripped me up a little, like understanding why 10m is great during solar max but goes dead otherwise, stuff like that. but if you already passed Tech you clearly know how to study for these tests so just do the same thing. HamStudy is fine but i also really liked the ARRL General study guide, read through it once just to get the concepts and then drilled questions for maybe 2 weeks. passed with like 5 wrong i think. the pool isnt that much bigger than Tech and a lot of it is honestly just common sense once you understand the basics. you'll be fine

the food thing got me on my second activation not my first so dont feel bad lol. first one was only 4 hours so no big deal but the second one ran long and i was starving by hour 7. now i just keep a little bag in my car with some granola bars and a water bottle specifically so i dont have to think about it. im still pretty new to ARES stuff, only been doing it about a year, but even i noticed how different the real thing feels. the net control during our last SET was really patient and there was no real pressure but when i monitored the actual event net it was just... more tense i guess? like people were focused in a different way. i want to get called up for the next one, still waiting for my chance.

so ive been noticing for the past few weeks that 20m has been really hit or miss, like some days ill work a dozen europeans in the morning no problem and then the next day i cant even hear the beacon on 14.100 which is usually rock solid for me. checked the solar flux and its been bouncing around between like 140 and 180 which i thought would be pretty decent but something feels off. also been trying to catch some DX on 17m and 15m which i heard should be opening up more now that were supposedly heading toward solar max but honestly 15m has felt pretty dead most afternoons. did get a brief opening to JA land yesterday around 0200z which was awesome, worked 4 stations in like 20 minutes and then it just slammed shut. that kind of thing normal this time of year or am i missing something about reading the indices better been licensed about 3 years, running 100w to a dipole up about 30 feet if that matters. just trying to figure out if its worth staying up late to chase openings or if the bands are just genuinely being weird

this is the kind of post i wish i had found when i first got into dx chasing. i only have like 130 entities confirmed and pileups still stress me out honestly. i always feel like im doing something wrong when i cant get through and its hard to know if its technique or just conditions or both. question for you, were you on ssb or cw for this one? i find ssb pileups feel way more chaotic to me, at least on cw you can kinda hear where people are in the passband if you have a decent receiver. on ssb it just sounds like a wall of noise and i have no idea where to even start.

oh man i was in the same spot last spring, did my first activation on a summit in W4 and i was so nervous i forgot to log two of my contacts properly lol. it all worked out but yeah just bring a paper log as backup even if youre using an app. the SOTA Spotter app is what most people seem to use now for self spotting, works fine as long as you have any cell signal at the summit, which isnt always guaranteed so worth checking beforehand on the sota mapping stuff.

latency on digital modes through RemoteHams drove me crazy too, ended up just running WSJT-X with a VAC virtual audio cable looped through the remote audio stream and it mostly works for FT8 but you really need the home-end machine to be doing all the heavy lifting, like the decoding and timing needs to happen at the station not on your remote client end or the timing just falls apart honestly for FT8 specifically i just leave WSJT-X running on the shack PC and remote desktop into the whole thing with TeamViewer instead of using RCForb at all, way less elegant but it solved basically every timing problem i was having, audio latency doesnt matter when the audio never leaves the local machine

yeah the waterfall thing is real, i had almost the same reaction when i moved from a radio without one. you dont realize how much you were basically flying blind until you can actually see the band. took me maybe two weeks before i stopped thinking of it as a gimmick and started using it instinctively. the menu thing is genuinely annoying and icom knows it. theres a few settings i had to look up on youtube because i couldnt find them any other way. once you get your commonly used stuff set up the way you want it you kinda stop going into the menus much though so it becomes less of an issue over time. the 590 has a nicer physical control layout imo but the 7300 makes up for it in other ways. whats your antenna situation look like? im curious how it does with a real antenna vs just a dipole at low height, mine is up about 35 feet and it does pretty well but ive heard guys say it really opens up when you feed it something decent.

87 contacts on your first activation is really solid, i only got like 14 on mine and spent half of it untangling wire from a pine branch. what length random wire were you running? i've been trying to figure out a good portable antenna setup and keep going back and forth between a linked dipole and just doing the random wire thing with a tuner.

yeah js8call is kind of a niche thing, i check in on it occasionally but its hard to justify the time when ft8 just works and racks up contacts. i get what youre saying about it feeling hollow though, worked like 180 countries on ft8 and i couldnt tell you a single thing about any of those operators lol. the latency thing in js8call is real and it kind of kills the flow of a conversation for me. by the time youve exchanged 4 or 5 messages youve spent like 20 minutes on one QSO. i dunno, maybe im just impatient. rtty still feels more alive to me for actual chatting even if its not as weak-signal capable, at least people type complete sentences at a reasonable pace

so anyway i finally got the shack cleaned up enough to actually sit in there again, been maybe 8 months since i really operated anything other than just checking into the tuesday night net. got on 40m last weekend and just kinda wandered around for a couple hours, worked a few stations in ohio and one guy way down in louisiana which was a nice surprise for the conditions. nothing special i guess but it just felt good to have the headphones on again and not be stressed about anything. anybody else ever take a long break and then feel like you forgot how to have a qso for like the first five minutes lol

hackrf really isnt designed for scanner use, thats why its called hack-rf and not scan-rf lol. its more of an analysis tool or for rf experimentation. the rtl dongles are actually pretty decent receivers especially in uhf range hackrf shines when you need the wide frequency coverage or want to do transmit experiments but for basic monitoring your rtl is probably better. try using it with gnu radio or something like that instead of sdr#, sometimes makes a difference

i just started chasing WWFF contacts this year and honestly the spotting thing makes such a huge difference from the chaser side. when i see someone pop up on the spotter i can tune in right away, otherwise unless im just scanning around ill completely miss an activation. so youre not penalized for not spotting but you definitely get way more contacts when you do. i use the wwff.eu spotter and also keep an eye on pota.app since like the previous person said theres a lot of overlap in who chases both programs. also i had no idea there were this many parks and natural areas with references until i started looking into WWFF, the KFF list is huge. kind of makes me want to start activating too instead of just chasing.

ok so i passed my technician exam like two months ago and ive been pretty cautious about actually getting on the air because honestly the rules are kind of confusing to me still. like i understand the basic band privileges but theres stuff in Part 97 that i keep reading and then rereading and i still dont fully get it. specifically im confused about third party communications — like can i just let my non-ham friend talk into my radio? i thought there was something about that being allowed in certain situations but then i also read something about third party agreements with other countries and now im more confused than when i started. also whats the deal with music, i saw someone mention you cant transmit music but what about like if theres background noise or a radio on nearby, does that count? probably overthinking this but i dont want to get a notice of apparent liability or whatever its called before i even really get started lol