Michelle Taylor

yeah the mic distance thing got me too when i first started. i was basically eating the mic and wondering why everyone said i sounded boomy. pulled back to about 2 inches and angled it slightly off axis and that helped a ton with the low end buildup. its one of those things you kind of have to experiment with for your specific mic and voice. not sure i agree about the built in processing being useless though — i run the IC-7610 and honestly the TX monitor function was the single most useful thing i found for dialing in audio. being able to actually hear what youre putting out (with a slight delay, takes some getting used to) changed how i adjusted everything. if your rig has that feature and you havent used it, worth trying. way better than relying on second hand reports.

so ive been spending a lot of evenings just tuning around 40m and honestly its been pretty enjoyable lately, found a few regulars on a roundtable around 7.235 or so and just been checking in when i feel like it. nothing serious no dx chasing just good old ragchewing. feels like the band conditions have been decent enough, not spectacular but workable. anybody else doing the same or am i the only one who still just... sits on a frequency and talks to people lol

i went through this exact thing maybe 3 years ago. had an extra radio, thought SO2R would be the answer, spent like 3 contest weekends just debugging RF interference and fighting with the software before i actually operated competitively with it. the learning curve is real and it kind of takes your focus away from actual operating for a while. that said once it clicked it was totally worth it for me. sweepstakes especially — being able to tune around on radio 2 while youre waiting for a pileup to thin out on radio 1 means you almost never have dead time. i went from like 850 QSOs in SS to over 1000 the first year i had it dialed in. but i also have a better antenna situation than you describe so take that with a grain of salt. might be worth just trying it in a smaller contest first, like a state qso party where the pressure is low, and see how it feels before you commit to doing it in sweepstakes.

kept the 7300 after a similar back and forth about a year ago. for casual operating and digital the icom just makes more sense to me, wsjt-x integration is dead simple, the touchscreen grows on you fast. the FTDX10 is a nicer receiver no question but youre not chasing DX in a pile-up on a contest weekend so i honestly dont think youll feel the difference on a random tuesday evening on 40m working the usual crowd. the other thing nobody talks about enough is the menu system on the yaesu, its not bad but its not as intuitive and when youre just hopping on for an hour after work you dont want to be digging around. just my take, both are solid rigs and you cant really go wrong either way.

welcome welcome. that 20 minute ragchew on your first day is honestly better than what i got lol, i keyed up and someone just said 73 and dropped off. took me another week before i had a real conversation. stick with it

4 contacts is all you need so you did it, thats a valid activation. dont stress the rest of it

congrats on the first one, it really is addictive isnt it. I've done probably 30 or so activations now across a mix of state parks, national forests and a couple wildlife refuges and every single one has been a good time even when the conditions werent cooperating. for the logging side of things — what I do is just use HAMRS in the field on my tablet, its free and has WWFF built in so you can tag the reference right there in the log. then when you get home you export the ADIF and upload it directly to wwff.world under your account. you set up a free account on the site and there should be an upload portal, its pretty straightforward once you find it but yeah the documentation is a bit all over the place you're right about that. make sure you put the reference number in the correct field in your ADIF or the system might not credit it properly, learned that the hard way on my third activation and had to email the admin to get it fixed. also if you want to alert chasers ahead of time before your next one, post on the WWFF Facebook group or use the POTA spotting network — a lot of WWFF hunters watch both. you'll get a much bigger pileup if people know you're coming.

oh man i remember my first one, it was a marathon race support thing not even a real emergency but i was so anxious about it i showed up like an hour early and just sat in my car going over my notes. once the net actually opened up and net control started calling stations it was honestly way less stressful than the training nets because everyone is focused and the pacing is slower and more deliberate. the muscle memory from the training really does kick in. the one thing i'd say is dont be afraid to ask net control to say again if you miss something. everyone expects some hiccups on the first real go and a good net control would rather you ask than guess. also make sure your batteries are charged the night before, i forgot to do that once and had a rough first hour running off a car adapter while my main battery caught up. you'll be fine though, showing up is honestly 80 percent of it.

so ive been chasing 3Y0 and a few other rare ones for what feels like forever and i kept getting completely buried in pileups, like i'd call and call and just nothing, not even a partial. my signal is decent, running about 500w into a 3-element yagi on 20m, so i dont think its a power issue per se. what finally started working for me was listening way more carefully to where the DX station was actually pulling from. i used to just throw my call in whenever i heard a gap but i noticed these operators are almost never working split randomly — theres usually a pattern, like theyre sweeping up in frequency or they'll work one end for a while then jump. once i started anticipating where they'd go next instead of chasing where they just were, my hit rate went way up. also timing. i was always jumping in too early on the tail of the previous QSO and apparently thats a disaster because everyone does it and you just get a wall of noise. waiting just a beat longer than feels natural and sending once, clearly, seemed to help a lot more than machine-gunning my callsign. curious what others have figured out, especially on 15 and 10 when theyre open and the pileups get absolutely insane

so ive been sitting on this for a while but finally pulled the trigger on the mars/cap mod on my FT-857D last weekend. the whole thing took maybe 20 minutes once i figured out which diodes were actually the ones i needed to clip, the service manual is a bit misleading if you're looking at the older revision honestly. anyway the main reason i did it was i wanted to be able to run some wider bandwidth stuff on digital modes and also just generally have the TX unlock for some emcomm work where we sometimes need to go a bit outside the normal ham bands. the receive side is already pretty wide on this radio which is one of the reasons i bought it used a few years back. while i was in there i also replaced the internal fan because the original one was starting to make this intermittent grinding noise on high duty cycle stuff like JS8 or any kind of extended digital session. dropped in a slightly higher CFM unit and now the thing runs noticeably cooler on the back panel. probably should have done that mod ages ago honestly. anyone else done anything interesting to their 857 or 897? curious if the noise floor mods are actually worth the hassle because ive read some pretty mixed things about the IPO and ATT settings versus actually going in and doing component level changes

I ran a RTL-SDR for probably two years before I moved to an RSP2 and honestly the jump was bigger than I expected, especially on MW and the lower HF bands. The RSP1A is genuinely a solid step up. One thing people dont always mention is that the RSP series has a much better front end with the notch filters and stuff so strong local broadcasters dont trash everything around them the way they can with the dongle in direct sampling mode. The HackRF comparison is apples and oranges really. Different tool for different jobs. If you just want to listen and explore the bands the RSP1A is a much better fit at that price point. I do occasionally fire up GQRX with mine on Linux and it works fine, SDRuno is actually my preference now but took some getting used to I wont lie.

oh man i remember my first activation, i was so nervous i forgot to put my callsign in half the contacts lol. just double check your logging software or whatever youre using is set up right before you go. and honestly dont stress about the 10 QSOs, on a weekend morning on 20m you should have no problem getting way more than that once the hunters find you. good luck tomorrow

ok so i passed my general back in march and ive been mostly just listening on 40 meters but im nervous about actually transmitting because i honestly dont fully understand where im allowed to be. like i know there are portions of the bands that are tech only or extra only or whatever but when i look at the band charts online they all look slightly different from each other and some mention the ARRL band plan and some mention the actual FCC allocations and im not sure which one is the actual rule vs just a suggestion. also i keep hearing people say dont operate too close to the band edge and i get why in theory but how close is too close? like is 7.125 fine or is that considered cutting it too close on the lower end for phone. im just trying to figure out where i can actually call CQ without stepping on someone or getting yelled at

yeah the question pool thing tripped me up too when i was studying. its literally the same exact questions, they dont paraphrase or anything. i think the current technician pool has something like 400 questions and the exam pulls 35 from it so you just gotta know most of them. i used hamstudy and also watched the ham radio crash course videos on youtube which helped a lot for the concepts i didnt get just from reading took me about 3 weeks studying maybe 20-30 min a day and passed no problem. good luck

went through exacty this last year. put up a trap vertical thinking it would be this big upgrade and yeah the dx contacts went up a little bit but honestly not as much as i expected. the radial situation was a nightmare, my wife was not happy, and i ended up with mediocre ground because of the soil here which is basically clay over rock. took it down after about 6 months and went back to a fan dipole. the one thing i will say is the vertical was noticeably quieter on receive in certain directions which was kind of nice. but for what you're describing, working domestic with some occasional dx, your inverted-V is probably fine. put the energy into a decent tuner or maybe try getting that apex a bit higher if you can.

so ive been running FT8 for about a year now and yeah its great for working new countries and all that but honestly it feels like a slot machine after a while. you just sit there clicking and watching the waterfall and theres no real communication happening. started messing around with JS8Call last month and its a totally different vibe, like you can actually type something to the other person and have a back and forth which is what i thought ham radio was supposed to be about. thing is the JS8Call signals are obviously way stronger requirement than FT8 so youre not gonna be pulling in the same crazy DX. i ran a comparison one evening where i had WSJT-X on one screen and JS8Call on the other, same antenna, and the difference in how many stations i could hear was pretty obvious. FT8 was lighting up with stuff from europe and JS8 was mostly regional. not complaining just curious if other people have found a workflow where they use both or if anyone has gone back to PSK31 or something and found that actually hits a sweet spot in terms of signal performance vs actual communication. i used to run PSK31 back in the day and it felt more like a real QSO even if it needed better band conditions to work.

general is definitely a step up from tech but its not like crazy hard if you put in a couple weeks of study. the electrical theory gets a little more involved, like you actually need to understand what impedance is and some basic antenna theory, not just memorize that dipoles are a half wavelength. i used HamStudy dot org and just drilled the question pool every day for like two weeks and passed no problem. the propagation questions tripped me up at first but once it clicks it clicks. as for extra vs general, i'd say just do general first, get on HF, mess around for a while and see if you even like it before cramming for extra. the extra exam is noticeably harder and the additional band segments you get arent huge, most of what youll want to do is already available to general. plenty of people have been general class for years and are perfectly happy with it. get the ticket first then decide

totally normal what youre going through, dont get discouraged. i went through the exact same thing when i switched to iambic. honestly the best thing i ever did was drop the speed way down, like embarrassingly slow, maybe 10 or even 8 wpm, until the movements became automatic. your brain cant learn the timing if its also trying to keep up with the speed at the same time. on the mode A vs mode B thing — a lot of operators actually prefer mode A, myself included. mode B is theoretically more efficient but it punishes you hard for releasing at the wrong moment like you described. mode A is more forgiving because it doesnt insert that extra element. try mode A for a week and see if it clicks better. you can always go back. the paddles being good quality will definitely help once your technique settles in, Begali makes really nice stuff.

yeah the FCC allocation and the ARRL band plan are two different things and that trips up a lot of new generals. the FCC part is the actual legal limit — for 40m phone as a general you can operate from 7.175 up to 7.300 MHz, that's the hard legal edge and you cannot go above 7.300, like at all. now within that range the ARRL band plan is more of a gentlemans agreement, so there are certain frequencies that are kind of traditionally used for certain things like 7.290 is often a maritime mobile net and some frequencies are used by specific regional nets. you dont have to follow those but its good practice and you'll catch less flak from old timers if you check the band plan before just plopping down somewhere. the main thing is just dont operate outside 7.175 to 7.300 on phone and you're legally fine, everything else is just courtesy stuff.

so this has been bugging me for a couple weeks now. got my 857 out for a portable op and noticed my signal reports on 40 were way down, checked with my wattmeter and yeah, barely 5 watts on a good day at full power setting. every other band seems totally normal, 20m is fine, 2m is fine, HF in general seems okay except 40. tried a different antenna, different feedline, same result so its not the antenna system. the radio was fine last time i used it a few months ago, nothing dramatic happened to it that i know of, wasnt dropped or anything. i pulled it apart and did a visual inspection and nothing looks obviously cooked or burnt. im thinking maybe one of the LPF switching relays or one of the finals is degraded? the 857 uses separate LPF boards for different band groups if i remember right and 40 shares a filter with some other bands i think but im not sure those are behaving weird. anyone been through this before with an 857 or similar yaesu? wondering if i should just send it to a shop or if this is something diagnosable at home with a scope and some patience.

JS8Call is definitely a thinner crowd than FT8 but its not dead either. you kinda have to know when to look — 40m in the evenings US time has the most activity in my experience, and theres a small but pretty dedicated group that uses it for actual emcomm type stuff. the weak signal performance is real but it is noticeably worse than FT8, which makes sense because JS8 is designed for text messaging not just signal reports so the protocol has to carry more information. FT8's whole thing is compressing the exchange down to almost nothing which is why it works at like -20 dB. on the soundcard thing, yeah you'll have conflicts if both are trying to grab the audio device at the same time. easiest fix is just run them on separate virtual audio cables if you want both open simultaneously, VAC or VB-Audio both work. or just close WSJT-X when you switch over. SignaLink should work fine with JS8Call, same config as FT8 basically just PTT via VOX on the SignaLink.

the self-amalgamating tape should be fine honestly, i've had connections like that hold up for years in the northeast weather. if you're really worried about it some guys pour liquid electrical tape over the whole thing or use a little plumber's putty around the joint before taping. main thing is keeping water from wicking down into the coax braid which is more of a problem at the connector end anyway. inverted V is totally fine for 40m, probably better than a flat top in some ways since you get a bit more omnidirectional pattern, the elevation angle changes some but for regular stateside contacts you're not gonna notice. the only thing id check is that your included angle between the two legs isn't too sharp — you want at least 90 degrees or so between them or the feedpoint impedance starts drifting away from 50 ohms and you'll fight your SWR. sounds like your setup with the apex up and ends at 10 feet should be alright, just measure it out before you finalize everything. what rig are you feeding it with, does it have a tuner built in?

the ALC thing is really important and that guy was giving you bad advice. you want the ALC just kissing the top on voice peaks, not pegged. if its pegged youre almost certainly flat-topping and thats where the distortion comes from, people on the other end will describe it as harsh or buzzy. with the 590 specifically i'd back off the mic gain until the ALC is barely moving on average speech then use the processor carefully if you want more average power, but even then less is more with that radio. the parametric EQ on that radio is worth learning. most mic/room combos benefit from cutting some of the low end, like below 200hz or so, and adding a little presence around 2-3khz for intelligibility. the PR-40 is a great mic but it has a lot of low end by default which can sound boomy on SSB especially on a crowded band. try a gentle high pass and see what your signal reports look like. have someone you trust listen and give you honest feedback, not just the polite 59 report everyone hands out

im in basically the same boat as you lol, started trying to learn a few weeks ago. i've been using an app called Morse Mania which seems decent, and also the Ham Morse app. what i found is doing even just like 10 minutes a day is way more effective than doing an hour on the weekend, at least for me. my brain just retains it better when its spread out. one thing that tripped me up is i kept trying to write down every letter while copying and i just couldnt keep up, someone told me to practice copying by typing instead and that helped a lot. still nowhere near ready for the air but i can copy most letters now without thinking too hard about them

yeah im going, been going every year for like a decade at this point. the breakfast thing is still happening last i heard, someone on the club email list mentioned it a few weeks back. honestly the best deals are always in the tailgate area not the indoor vendors, at least thats been my experience. get there early though like way earlier than you think you need to