Jennifer Rodriguez

not a dumb question at all, this trips up a lot of new generals. so the FCC allocation for general on 40m phone is 7.175 to 7.300 MHz, extras get a little more below that. the 7.225 thing your club guy mentioned is probably just where most of the activity tends to cluster, not an actual license limit. as for the band edge question -- yeah technically 7.300 is the top of your allocation but you really dont want to be parking your carrier right there. the issue is your signal has sidebands and if youre running SSB your actual audio could be spilling above 7.300 which puts you out of band. most people just stay a few kHz below the edge to be safe, like 7.295 or so as an upper limit in practice. some rigs have a band edge lockout feature but i wouldnt rely on that exclusively

the logging thing is so real -- first activation i ever did i was keeping mental notes thinking i'd write it down later and my EC pulled me aside after and was like where's your log and i had basically nothing. was pretty embarrassing. now i keep a paper log going even when we have digital logging set up because batteries die and laptops crash and paper doesnt. youll do fine. just listen more than you transmit until you get a feel for the rhythm of the net

so we've got a county-level ARES exercise coming up in about 5 weeks and im trying to nail down the power setup before we show up and look like idiots. last year we had two different guys show up with incompatible power setups and it was a mess, one guy's inverter was making so much noise it was garbage on 40m the whole afternoon. my current plan is to run the IC-7300 off a 100ah lifepo4 and skip the generator entirely for the radio side. figure with modest duty cycle on voice and some digi we can run maybe 6-8 hours before we need to worry. but the exercise is supposedly going to run all day and into the evening so im a little nervous about that. plus we need power for the laptop running Winlink and a small fan cause it'll be hot as hell in the tent. the antenna situation is simpler — i've got a Chameleon MPAS 2.0 that i'm pretty comfortable with and an EFHW on a 31ft fiberglass pole as backup. both have worked fine in past exercises but i've never tried to run them simultaneously for like 10+ hours and im curious if anyone has had issues with the Chameleon taking a beating in sustained heat. anyone running a similar setup for extended field ops? at what point do you just give in and bring the generator?

had the 991A for almost two years before i moved to the 7300 and honestly the difference in the receiver is real, not a meme. on a busy 40m evening the 7300 just handles adjacent signals better, the roofing filter situation on the 991A always bugged me a little especially on SSB. that said the 991A is not a bad radio at all and if the VHF/UHF integration matters to you it's actually pretty convenient for things like APRS or linked repeater stuff. for FT8 specifically either will work fine, the 7300 USB audio interface is stupid easy to set up which is nice for digital. but really if HF is your main thing just get the 7300 and grab a separate cheap dual bander if you still want VHF coverage, you'll probably end up happier long term

oh man yeah that nervousness never fully goes away honestly, at least not for me. i remember my first contact was on 2m simplex and i completely forgot my callsign for a second which was embarassing. you'll get comfortable real fast just keep getting on the air. the wichita guy probably loved it, elmers love talking to new folks. welcome to the hobby

the IRF510 running warm is pretty normal honestly, those things are workhorses but they aint exactly the most efficient FETs on the planet. some guys swap in a BS170 based design for lower power or go with a 2N7000 but if youre pushing anywhere near 5w you kind of need something beefier. have you checked your drive level? sometimes the efficiency suffers because the gate is being overdriven and you get weird crossover distortion that just turns into heat. a little less drive sometimes gives you cleaner output AND better efficiency, counterintuitive but true. for the EFHW transformer idea, absolutely do it. i wound one on an FT140-43 core, 49:1 ratio, and it works fantastic with about 30 feet of wire. super portable, just a transformer and a wire and youre on the air. takes 10 minutes to put up in a park. thats the whole point of this stuff really, just get out and play radio.

Congrats on taking the plunge, first activation is always a little nerve wracking but you'll be fine. RBNhole is actually pretty slick -- basically the Reverse Beacon Network picks up your CQ calls on CW and then automatically posts a spot to SOTAwatch for you. So if you're running CW at all up there it'll likely get you spotted without needing cell at all. For SSB though you're kind of dependent on either self-spotting or having someone else hear you and post for you. A lot of activators will post an alert on SOTAwatch ahead of time with their planned frequency and time, even just a rough estimate. Chasers actually watch those alerts pretty closely and will be tuned in waiting for you. Doesnt guarantee anything but it helps a lot, especially for your first one. I'd post the alert tonight or tomorrow if you can. And yeah 4 QSOs is the minimum for the points. Honestly on a popular summit like that one you'll probably get a pileup once you get spotted, dont stress about it. Just take your time and work em one at a time.

yeah same boat here not too long ago. one thing that helped me was just listening to the net a few times before actually checking in, like really paying attention to what each person says and when. you start to notice the patterns pretty quick. also dont be afraid to ask the net control after the net closes if you have questions, ive found most of them are happy to chat for a few minutes after the formal stuff wraps up. the informal roundtable at the end is usually way more relaxed anyway

yeah nets definitely vary a lot and honestly the best thing you can do is just listen to a few sessions before ever keying up. most formal nets — like ARES or NTS stuff — are pretty structured and net control will literally tell you when to check in, usually early in the session they'll say something like "all stations wishing to check in please give your call sign now" and you just give yours nice and short, just your call, nothing else. the looser ragchew nets are more like a conversation and those are trickier because yeah sometimes people pause to think or there's just propagation weirdness making it sound like dead air when someone's still there. what happened to you sounds pretty normal for a new station honestly. net controls deal with that all the time and a good one won't hold it against you. if you're not sure whether it's your turn a lot of guys will just wait a beat longer than feels comfortable and if net control wants you they'll ask. you'll get a feel for the rhythm after a few sessions, it really does just click at some point.

yeah JS8Call has kind of a chicken-and-egg problem honestly. the people who would love it most are the ones who gave up looking for activity and went back to FT8. there are a handful of nets though — the JS8Call net on 40m runs around 7.078 MHz and theres usually some activity there on weekend evenings at least in my experience. the @HB heartbeat groups can be pretty active too if you leave the software running, you start to see whos out there. the store-and-forward relay stuff is what keeps me coming back. i had a message relayed through three intermediate stations to reach a buddy in the pacific northwest when 40m wasnt cooperating for us directly. that kind of thing doesnt happen in FT8. totally different purpose i think, people just keep comparing them because they look similar on the surface but they really arent trying to do the same thing.

ok so i passed my general exam like two months ago and ive been reading through part 97 trying to figure out what im actually allowed to do and honestly its more confusing than the exam was. like i understand the basic band privileges but some of the other stuff is really unclear to me. specifically im trying to figure out the rules around third party traffic and also whether i can just key up and talk to someone in another country without any kind of arrangement or agreement or whatever. i heard something about third party agreements between countries but i dont fully understand when that matters and when it doesnt. also someone at my club told me i cant transmit music ever under any circumstances but then i heard somebody say you can do it under certain conditions? im just trying to get a clear picture before i start operating more and do something wrong without realizing it. any help appreciated, sorry if this is a dumb question