Daniel Jackson

congrats on passing the exam, you'll have the callsign probably within a week or so. anyway for what you're describing honestly the Yaesu FT-65 is a solid pick in your price range, its simple enough to operate without software if you need to punch in a repeater manually but also plays nice with CHIRP when you're ready to do a big batch of programming. the Baofeng UV-5R will work and a lot of people start there because theyre like $25 but the receive audio isnt great and the stock antenna is pretty mediocre, and you'll spend time fighting the menu system. not saying avoid it forever but if you have $100+ to spend you can do better. to answer your other question - no you dont need it preprogrammed to use it, you can enter frequencies manually. most repeaters need you to set the correct offset (usually -600 kHz on 2m) and the CTCSS tone, which sounds complicated but once you do it once or twice it clicks. look up the repeaterbook.com for repeaters near you and it'll have all the info you need listed right there.

the switchover thing is a real pain, ive been there. what you want is basically an automatic transfer switch or at minimum a diode oring setup so both sources are kind of connected simultaneously and the higher voltage one just wins. some of the Bioenno or similar lifepo4 chargers have a pass-through mode that helps with this but it depends on the charger. i ended up using a West Mountain Radio RigRunner with a couple of Anderson powerpole inputs wired through some schottky diodes, not elegant but it works and there's no gap in power. the diode drop means you lose maybe half a volt but at 13.8v that's not really a problem. also yeah the EU2200i is just the answer for field HF work, full stop. the older non-inverter gennys are basically noise machines on anything below 30mhz. i tried filtering the heck out of one with ferrites and a line filter and still couldnt get it below S4 on 40m. some things you just cant fix after the fact.

so i finally did my first real POTA activation yesterday at a state park about 45 minutes from me. been planning this for like two months and of course everything that could go wrong kind of did. packed the KX2 and a 20m EFHW wire and my little folding table and drove out there, found a decent spot near a picnic area, got set up in maybe 20 minutes which im pretty proud of actually. anyway the problem was i forgot the counterpoise wire at home. just... left it on my desk. so i was running the EFHW with basically nothing on the other end and the SWR was all over the place, KX2 was tuning it but i could tell something was off. still managed to pull 12 contacts in about an hour and a half so it counts as an activation. most of the signals i was hearing were way stronger than what i was putting out i think. next time im making a checklist. also the folding table legs kept sinking into the soft ground which was annoying. anyone else have a disaster first activation that still worked out

so ive been running APRS for about 3 months now with a TM-D710G and Direwolf on a raspberry pi as a software TNC, and im seeing my beacon show up on RF locally but it never makes it to aprs.fi which is driving me nuts. the digipeater about 4 miles away is clearly hearing me because i can see it in the raw packets on my own receiver, it rebroadcasts my stuff with the WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 path like its supposed to, but nothing ever shows up on the APRS-IS side. ive been messing with the path settings and tried WIDE1-1 only, tried WIDE2-2, even tried just hitting the igate directly but i honestly dont know if there even is a local igate covering my area or if the digipeater is just a dumb repeater with no internet connection. is there a way to check which digis in my area are actually igates vs just RF digipeaters? i looked on aprs.fi but its hard to tell from the map view

so ive been checking into the local 2m net on tuesday nights for about three months now and honestly its become one of my favorite parts of the hobby. started doing it just to get comfortable with the radio and now i kind of look forward to it every week. the net control guys are super patient when i fumble my callsign at first i was so nervous i forgot to say my grid square anyway i was wondering if anyone here does the HF nets too. ive been eyeing the 40m traffic nets but im not sure which ones are actually active and worth checking into. also seen some stuff about special event stations on the ARRL site but never actually worked one. are those just for the log or is there usually some kind of certificate or QSL you can get? my elmers kind of old school and doesnt really do much nets so im flying blind here a little

i ran a lip mount on my jeep for a while and the RF got into everything, my radio would pick up noise whenever i ran the blower fan. might have been a grounding issue with my specific install but it was a pain to track down. eventually just went NMO through the roof and all that went away. cant say for sure the lip mount caused it but the timing was suspicious.

yeah im planning on it, my club is actually setting up a table there this year to recruit new members so ill be there pretty early. the swap meet last time was hit or miss but i did see some decent HF gear go for reasonable prices if you got there right when it opened. bring cash obviously and get there early if you want the good stuff, by noon its mostly picked over

yeah sweepstakes is a good shout. i did my first one two years ago and just sat on a frequency and called CQ for like 45 minutes before i figured out nobody was gonna answer a new callsign with no multiplier value lol. search and pounce is the way to go when you're starting out, you just tune around and call the stations who are already running. way less pressure and you still get the feel of doing exchanges under a little bit of time pressure. also just to add — if your club does a Field Day operation next june you should defintely actually get on the air this time. even logging for someone while they operate teaches you a ton about how the whole thing flows.

not dumb at all, everyone starts somewhere with this stuff. okay so the alert vs spot thing — alerts are just you telling chasers in advance "hey i plan to be on this summit around this time" and they're super helpful because dedicated chasers will literally schedule their morning around your alert. you post those on sotawatch3 or through the app. but the spot is what actually gets people running to the radio, thats the real-time "im on the air right now" notification. you can self spot through the sotawatch site, the SOTA Goat app if you have it, or if you have cell service just text the SOTA SMS spotter. no cell? you can ask someone on the frequency to spot you, most chasers are happy to do it. as for time minimum, theres none. just the 4 QSOs and you qualify the summit. could be done in 5 minutes on a good day. i'd still hang around a bit though because sometimes the pile slows down and then picks back up 20 minutes later when a new batch of chasers sees the spot. good luck saturday, 40m EFHW is a solid choice for that kind of activation

congrats on your first real activation, that's a big deal and it sounds like you handled it well. the food/comfort thing catches almost everyone the first time, no joke. i now keep a small backpack basically pre-packed with snacks, a couple water bottles, ibuprofen, a phone charger, and a notepad that never leaves my go-kit. after one activation where i was running on vending machine coffee for 8 hours i learned my lesson pretty quick. on the ICS question -- yeah absolutely do ICS-700 and 800 if you havent already. they're free on the FEMA independent study site and they fill in a lot of the gaps that 100 and 200 leave for people operating in an actual EOC environment rather than just the field. 700 especially helped me understand how ARES fits into the bigger picture when you're working alongside fire, public health, red cross people, all of that. some groups also do IS-200.c which is more hands on with the forms and paperwork side of things. none of it is super exciting to get through online but you'll feel a lot more comfortable next time when the IC starts rattling off ICS terminology

honestly the General isnt that much harder than Tech if you use the same study method. the question pool is a bit bigger and yeah there are some formulas involved like ohms law stuff and a little bit about feedline impedance matching but nothing that'll make your head explode. i just used HamStudy same as Tech and passed with like 2 weeks of studying maybe 20-30 mins a day. the electrical stuff you kind of pick up as you go through the questions, you dont really need to sit down and learn full theory, just understand why the answer is what it is as for going straight to Extra, i wouldnt bother unless you really want those last few kHz on each band or you just want the challenge. Extra is noticeably harder and theres a lot more RF propagation and circuit theory. get your General first, get on HF, have some fun, then maybe revisit it after a year or so when you actually understand what they're asking about

this is really interesting to read, im fairly new to ARES and havent done a full drill yet just some tabletops. the part about the first 20 minutes being chaotic is kind of reassuring in a weird way because i always assumed experienced groups just had it together immediately. makes me less worried about messing up when i eventually do my first real exercise i guess. do most groups do a debrief after or does everyone just kind of go home

so ive been trying to figure out if its worth making the drive out to the Tri-County hamfest, its about 2.5 hours from me and last time i went a few years back it was pretty decent but honestly i cant remember if i actually bought anything useful or just walked around and talked to people the whole time lol. anybody been recently and know if the swap meet tables are still good? i feel like a lot of these smaller regional fests have kinda dried up in terms of actual gear, everything ends up on qrz classifieds or ebay before it even makes it to a table anymore

so ive been a General for about three years now and i keep telling myself ill upgrade but never actually sit down and do it. last weekend i finally started going through the question pool and honestly some of this stuff is way over my head. like i understand the basic electronics from when i got my General but the Extra pool has all this stuff about filter design and Smith charts and impedance matching that i kind of glazed over the first time around. im not really a math guy so the formulas are a bit rough. im using HamStudy and just brute forcing the flashcards but i feel like im just memorizing answers without actually understanding whats going on, especially the stuff about transmission line theory and the more advanced propagation questions. does anyone have a resource they actually liked for the theory side of it, not just the question pool? or is everyone basically just memorizing it anyway

ive tried switching a few times and always end up back on just N1MM for everything because learning two programs is annoying. probably not the answer you're looking for lol. the ADIF situation with WSJT-X has always been kind of a mess in my experience regardless of what logging software youre feeding it into, theres always some field that doesnt map right or the band gets imported as frequency instead of band name or something dumb like that