Daniel Garcia

been thinking about doing the same thing, mostly cause i do some MARS work and it'd be handy. my only hesitation is i really dont want to void anything or mess up the receive performance. does the mod affect RX at all or is it purely on the TX side? i know its just a diode but im always a little paranoid about unintended consequences when i start messing with stuff i didnt design

so ive been doing single op contests for a few years now and im starting to hit a ceiling on my rates. i can get into the low 100s per hour during a good run but it feels like i plateau pretty fast once the initial pileup dies down. a buddy of mine keeps telling me SO2R is the answer but honestly every time i look into it i get kind of overwhelmed by the station complexity. right now im running a k3 into a 2el yagi on 20 and a dipole on 40, pretty modest setup. the idea of adding a second radio and dealing with RFI between the two rigs just sounds like a whole weekend of troubleshooting waiting to happen. is there a sane way to ease into SO2R without completely rebuilding everything? or is it really more about operating technique than the hardware at this point. also just curious — for guys who do it well, how much of your rate improvement came from SO2R vs just getting better at running a frequency and not wasting time between QSOs. because i sometimes wonder if my real problem is i let too much dead air happen between contacts and im blaming my setup instead of my technique

so i've been wanting to get into ham radio for a while now, my neighbor is really into it and he finally convinced me to just go ahead and get the license. i signed up for an exam session thats about 6 weeks away and now im kind of panicking because i dont really know how to study for this thing. i downloaded the question pool PDF from the ARRL website but its like 400+ questions and honestly it feels overwhelming. do people actually memorize all of them or is there a smarter way to do it? i've seen some apps mentioned on reddit but idk which ones are actually worth using vs just wasting time. also some of the electrical stuff like ohms law and the decibel questions are tripping me up, im not super technical. is that stuff going to be a big chunk of the actual exam or can i kind of get by without fully understanding it

nets can be a little confusing at first honestly. most of them the net control will specifically ask for check-ins and thats your window to give your call, usually just once clearly. if the net is busy they might do it by region or by first letter of your suffix. once youre checked in yeah you can generally just say youre clear and drop off unless its a traffic net where they actually pass messages, in which case they might have traffic for you or ask if youre handling any. for the special event station thing — some do certificates and some dont, really depends on the sponsoring club. usually theres a QSL card at minimum and a lot of them have a website listed on the QRZ page for that callsign where itll explain what you get. worth looking up the call on QRZ before you make the contact so you know what to expect. they operate just like any other station, nothing weird about the contact itself.

yeah same here, though i caught a pretty decent opening last thursday around 0200 utc and worked a few stations down in south america which was nice. think the solar flux has been kinda mediocre this week. 20m has been treating me better honestly, might be worth giving that a shot if you havent already

so ive been licensed about eight months now and this whole QSL confirmation thing is starting to feel like a part time job. like i log a contact, then i have to figure out if i want to send a physical card, upload to LoTW, submit to eQSL, or some combination of all three. my elmer keeps telling me just to use LoTW for everything but half the DX stations i work dont seem to confirm there, at least not quickly, and then i hear some awards require physical cards anyway? i guess my question is does anyone actually maintain all three or do you just pick one and accept that youll miss out on some confirmations. also whats the deal with the LoTW certificate setup — i did it when i first got licensed and it was kind of a pain, now i cant remember if i need to do anything to renew it or if it just keeps working. been uploading my adif logs every few weeks and the confirmations do trickle in so i think its working fine but not 100% sure. also do people still actually mail physical cards? feels old fashioned but i kind of love the idea of having a wall of cards someday

So ive been trying to figure out where to permanently mount my FTM-400DR in my 2019 Tacoma and honestly its a bigger headache than I expected. The head unit separation cable is nice but the display unit is pretty chunky and everywhere I try to put it either blocks my HVAC controls or sits too low to see without looking away from the road too long. Right now I have it kind of propped up near the cupholder area which is obviously not a real solution. Been looking at RAM mounts but not sure what I actually need to order, there are like a thousand options on their site. Anyone done this specific truck or something similar? Also running a Diamond NR770HBNMO on the roof and coax routing through the cab has been fine so at least thats sorted. Oh and if anyone has thoughts on running the control head up near the rearview mirror area id be curious — saw someone do that on a jeep forum but not sure if itd work here. Mostly doing local repeater stuff and some APRS so I dont need to be fiddling with it constantly but still want it visible.

i went through the vanity process about two years ago and it really wasnt as bad as i expected honestly. the FCC's ULS system is a bit clunky but once you find the application section its pretty straightforward. just make sure the call you want actually shows as available before you go through the whole thing, theres a few sites that let you look up callsign status so you're not flying blind. one thing i'll add -- if multiple people apply for the same call in that window they do a kind of lottery among the eligible applicants so its not first come first served exactly. caught me off guard when i learned that. good luck with it though, getting a call that means something is pretty cool

so i finally did my first activation last weekend up on W4T/SU-001 and honestly it went way smoother than i expected. took my FT-818 and a linked dipole up there and made my 4 contacts no problem, even had a couple guys call me from pretty far out which was cool. the whole thing only took maybe 45 minutes once i got set up which surprised me. my question is about logging the activation on sotadata — i entered everything i thought was right but im not sure if i did the activation zone thing correctly. the summit page shows a specific grid and i just used that but one of the guys who chased me said something about being in the activation zone versus the actual summit and i got a little confused. also does it matter what mode you log it as if you switch between SSB and CW during the same activation? i did a few contacts on each and wasnt sure if i needed to split the log or anything. also for the chasers out there — do you guys actually prefer when activators post an alert ahead of time or is it fine to just self spot on the reflector and hope someone sees it? i used SOTAwatch and spotted myself but only after i was already set up, wasnt sure if that was the right move or not.

yeah the UDP thing for WSJT-X is actually not that bad once you find the right setting, its under reporting in the WSJT-X menu. just make sure Log4OM or whatever you're using is running first before you start a session or sometimes it misses the first few QSOs in my experience. i had a weird thing happen where dupes werent getting flagged correctly but i think that was a config issue on my end not the software itself

yeah the listening thing is huge and i think its the part that took me the longest to really internalize. when i was newer i thought more power was the answer to everything and i spent way too much money chasing that before i figured out that operating skill is probably 60% of the battle in a serious pileup. one thing i'd add for the LP/wire crowd -- and im in that camp, running 100w into an EFHW most of the time -- is that timing and brevity are everything. like if everyone else is sending their full callsign every time, try just sending the last two letters a couple times and see what happens. expedition operators who are working fast often respond to partial calls anyway and then you give the full thing when they come back with a partial. saves time in the pileup and honestly gets attention because your signal isnt buried under 30 other stations all sending at the same time. also 17m and 12m are criminally underused during a DXpedition when 20m is a zoo. ive had 5-minute pileups on 17m when 20m was completely impenetrable. dont sleep on the WARC bands during expeditions

oh man dont feel too bad about that, it happens to literally everyone especially on 40m where the skip can be really weird. the guy who snapped at you probably should have been a bit more understanding honestly — if you cant hear someone you cant hear them, thats just radio. the standard thing you did was correct, ask if the frequency is in use, wait a few seconds, then proceed. some people will also say their callsign when they ask so anyone monitoring knows who's asking. beyond that you just cant do much if propagation isnt cooperating. what i usually do now if i get no response but the band sounds a bit busy is move up or down 5 kHz just to give myself a little more breathing room, not a perfect solution but it helps. and yeah definitely get on that local net, nets are actually great for learning this stuff because there's a net control who basically guides everything so it takes a lot of the pressure off. much more forgiving than random HF operating for a new person.

path loss on EME at 144 mhz is something like 252 dB which sounds insane and it kind of is. the thing that gets people is they calculate link budgets on paper and then get frustrated when reality doesnt match, usually because they didnt account for antenna noise temp or their coax loss is eating them alive i went through three different preamp setups before i got something i was happy with. ended up with a MGF1302 based unit mounted right at the boom and dropped my system noise temp considerably. your 150w and 4el is probably borderline for terrestrial meteor scatter contacts let alone EME but dont let that stop you from getting on and listening, thats how you learn what the signals actually sound like and youll know when its worth upgrading

So after about three weeks of fiddling around i finally got my FT-7900R mounted in the car and mostly happy with how it sits. Running it off a proper fused line direct to the battery which made a huge difference over the cigarette lighter thing i was doing before, way less noise on receive. Anyway my main question is about the antenna. Right now i have a mag mount NMO dual band whip stuck on the roof toward the back and it works fine but ive been reading about doing a proper hole mount through the roof or maybe the trunk lip and im not sure if its worth the effort. Like is the performance difference actually noticeable day to day or is it more of a theoretical thing? I mostly use it for hitting the local repeaters and occasionally some simplex when im out hiking with buddies who have HTs. Also not sure if it matters but its a 2016 honda civic so not the biggest roof in the world. Anyone done a proper mount on a smaller car?

the 7300 and 891 pairing is going to be rough for SO2R just because of the IF architecture on the 7300 — it's not terrible but you'd want to be really careful about harmonic relationships between your two operating frequencies. had a buddy try something similar and spent half a contest chasing a birdie that turned out to be his own second radio. one thing that helped me a lot before i got serious about SO2R was just working on running vs searching discipline like the other guy said, and also logging speed honestly. if youre fumbling with the keyboard during an exchange that's eating into your rate more than you think. what logging software are you on? some of them have really good SO2R support built in now which lowers the bar a bit but you still need the hardware side sorted out.

the mars mod on that radio is pretty harmless yeah, i did mine years ago and nothing bad happened. though i'll be honest i barely even use the extended TX, mostly did it out of curiosity. caps in the audio chain — interesting, i never thought about doing that. mine is about the same age and the audio has always been a bit meh on VHF but i just assumed thats how it sounded. might actually pull mine apart and have a look now that you mention it. what value caps were the ones you replaced, same value as stock or did you go up at all on the voltage rating?

yeah the Gordon West book is fine but honestly its not necessary. the question pool is publicly available because the FCC requires it, so you literally will see those exact questions on the exam, no surprises. some people think thats cheating or whatever but thats just how it works for all the license classes. one thing i'd say is dont just memorize answers without understanding anything, especially the band privileges stuff and the safety questions, because once you actually get on the air you'll want to know why you're allowed to do certain things and not others. the rules questions make more sense when you think about them practically. anyway good luck, the tech exam really isnt as scary as it looks at first

okay so the Koch method thing — basically the idea is you dont start slow and speed up, you start at your target speed (say 15-20 wpm) right from the beginning but you only learn two characters at a time. so like K and M first, get those down solid before adding another letter. the reason people swear by it is your brain learns to recognize the sound as a whole character instead of counting individual dots and dashes which is a trap a lot of beginners fall into. for actually doing it, LCWO dot net is what most people use, its free and follows Koch pretty faithfully. just set your character speed up higher than your effective speed if that makes sense — theres a thing called Farnsworth timing where the letters themselves are sent fast but the gaps between them are longer, gives you time to think without teaching your brain slow code. just stick with it honestly, the first few weeks feel completely pointless and then one day it just starts clicking. dont try to cram it all in one sitting either, like 15 minutes a day beats an hour on weekends

yeah it definitely feels overwhelming at first but honestly you only need maybe a dozen or so for everyday use. QTH is your location, QSL means confirmed or acknowledged (also the cards people send), QRM is interference from other stations, QRN is natural noise like static, QSB is when the signal fades in and out, QRP means low power operation, QRZ is basically "who's calling" and QSO is just a contact or conversation. those are the ones you'll hear constantly. 73 is just the old telegraph shorthand for best regards, its not actually a Q code but its everywhere in ham radio. 88 means love and kisses which you hear sometimes. most of the other stuff you'll pick up just from listening honestly, nobody sits down and memorizes the whole list. after a few months of being on the air it just starts to click

same boat as you were not too long ago, passed general back in march. the regulations stuff does suck to study, not gonna lie. what helped me was just doing practice exams over and over on hamstudy until i was consistently hitting like 85% or above, then i went and took the real thing. missed it by less than i thought i would. one thing nobody told me before i upgraded -- once you actually get on HF for the first time its kind of overwhelming in a good way? like i expected it to sound cleaner or something and instead its just chaos and noise and then suddenly you pull a contact out of it and its amazing. 40 meters in the evening is where i spend most of my time now

so ive been wanting to do this for probably two years now and i finally just sat down and built the Pennywhistle 40 from the GQRP club kit. took me three evenings spread across a couple weeks because i kept second guessing my soldering on the toroids. anyway got it done, threw a wire up in the backyard first just to check it was actually putting out something, and sure enough heard a few signals so figured it was working at least receiver-wise. yesterday i packed it up with my KX3 paddle, a 9v battery pack i cobbled together from some holders, and a random wire antenna with a little tuner i also built (that one was from a QRPme kit, super simple). drove about 20 minutes to a local park, found a tree to hang the wire from, and just started calling CQ on 40m around 7.030. made 5 contacts in about an hour and a half. two of them were over 800 miles away which honestly blew my mind a little because im only running like 3-4 watts. one guy gave me a 569 which i thought was pretty decent. the whole setup fits in a small backpack and costs almost nothing to run. i think im hooked on this. anyone else doing park activations with homebrew stuff? curious what antennas people are using for portable QRP

yeah was gonna say pretty much the same thing about the band edges, my elmer drilled that into me early on. your dial frequency isnt where your whole signal is, with USB the signal goes up from there so if youre sitting on 7.300 you're already partly out of band i mostly just stay on 7.200 area when i want to ragchew and havent had any real issues. the dx guys can get a little territorial around certain frequencies but honestly most of the time if youre just having a normal qso people leave you alone

so i got my technician about three months ago and ive been mostly just listening on the local 2m repeater. theres a weekly net on tuesday nights and i finally worked up the nerve to check in last week. the net control called for check-ins and i just said my callsign and it seemed fine but then partway through the net he asked if anyone had traffic and i had no idea what that meant so i just stayed quiet. i guess my question is, is there like an unwritten rulebook for how nets work? i dont want to say something dumb or step on someone. also what does it mean when someone says theyre "just monitoring" — do they check in and then say that or do they not check in at all? i feel like i missed something in my studying that covers this stuff in a more practical way.

did the cap swap on mine maybe two years ago, used a mix of Nichicon fine gold series where they fit and standard low-ESR electrolytics elsewhere. honestly the difference was real but subtle — less harshness in the high mids, slightly better low end presence. not a night and day thing but if you spend a lot of time with headphones on it adds up. worth doing if the caps are old anyway just from a reliability standpoint. i skipped the collins filter mod because like you i mostly do SSB and the stock murata ceramic filters are fine for that. the collins really shines for CW where you want that tight passband. for digital it probably doesnt matter either way since the DSP in fldigi or whatever youre using does most of the heavy lifting. if you do open it up check the PA board heatsink compound while youre in there, mine had basically dried out completely and the thing runs noticeably cooler now with fresh stuff on it.

yeah that plateau around 12-15wpm is super common, i went through the exact same thing and it lasted embarrassingly long before something clicked. the advice your club buddy gave you is actually solid, it's basically the Farnsworth method — you set the character speed high (20wpm is fine) but you increase the spacing between characters so you have more time to process each one before the next comes. G4FON lets you do this, theres a spacing setting in there somewhere. the whole point is to force your brain to hear the letters as sounds instead of counts, and if you're decoding at 13wpm you almost certainly still have some of that counting going on even if you think you don't. what also helped me was just listening to real QSOs on the bands even when i couldnt copy everything. throw on 40m in the evening and just let it wash over you. you start to recognize rhythm and common words and phrases without even trying. took me maybe 3 or 4 weeks of doing that alongside my trainer sessions before i noticed a real difference. dont give up on it, the jump from 13 to 20 honestly feels huge but once you get there 20 feels slow.