Sarah Garcia

ok so ive been licensed about 4 months now and i notice some people on 2m repeaters just say their callsign normally like "W4XYZ" without spelling it out phonetically, but then other times people go full NATO the whole way through. Is there like a rule for when you're supposed to use it or is it just preference? I always try to use phonetics because thats what i learned in the books but sometimes it feels weird when nobody else is doing it on a busy net and i feel like im slowing things down. Also someone told me you dont HAVE to use NATO specifically you can use any phonetics you want? like you could say "whiskey four xylophone yellow zebra" or something?? that seems weird to me but idk

so ive been meaning to do this for like two years and after the storms we had last month I finally got off my butt and started pulling stuff together. right now i have my FT-891 and a little 40ah lifepo4 battery, a cheap solar panel, and my antenna stuff (mostly a end-fed halfwave i can throw up pretty quick). threw it all in a pelican knockoff case from amazon. the thing is im not really sure what else should be in there. like obviously the radio basics are covered but what about the non-radio stuff? i keep seeing people mention logbooks and frequency reference cards and stuff like that. and what do you do about power for your laptop if you need to run winlink or whatever. feels like every time i think im done i realize i missed something obvious also do most people keep their go-kit 100% ready to grab at all times or do you kind of assemble it when you need it? mine is sort of half and half right now which defeats the purpose i guess

same honestly. been meaning to finish setting up my end-fed but its just sitting in a box. life gets busy i guess

your 120 degree included angle is actually pretty good for an inverted V, you dont want it much less than 90 degrees or the feedpoint impedance starts dropping quite a bit below 50 ohms and matching gets annoying. at 120 you're probably looking at something in the 60-70 ohm range at resonance which isnt too bad at all for direct coax feed, your SWR will likely be under 2:1 at resonance even without a tuner. as for tuning, yeah shortening and lengthening the legs is the right move. if you're high in frequency you trim, if you're low you add. do it in small increments, like half an inch at a time near resonance because it moves faster than you think. the 468 formula gets you in the ballpark but wire type, height above ground and nearby objects all shift things around a bit. 33.5 feet is a reasonable starting point but dont be surprised if it wants to be a foot shorter or something. good first build though, inverted V on 40 is a solid workhorse antenna.

ok so i just got my technician license about three weeks ago and ive been listening to a local 2m repeater for a while now trying to figure out how it all works. i understand the basic concept of transmit and receive offset but the CTCSS thing is throwing me off a bit. like i programmed what i thought was the right tone into my baofeng (147.195 with a 100hz tone) but when i key up i dont hear myself come through the repeater. someone told me maybe the tone is wrong but i cant find a better source than the repeater directory i was already using. also just a general question — is there like a proper way to join a conversation thats already going? i dont want to be rude about it. i heard someone just say their callsign between transmissions the other day and i think that might be how you do it but wasnt totally sure. any help appreciated, been lurking here for a while

the koch method is definitely the way to go, forget the dit-dah chart stuff, it really does create bad habits and you end up counting instead of just hearing the characters. the whole idea is you learn at full speed from the start, like 15 or 20 wpm character speed even if the words come slow, so your brain learns the sound not the pattern. LCWO dot net is free and thats what most people use to actually do the Koch lessons, you just work through the letters one at a time and dont move on until you can copy at like 90% accuracy. as for the key question, honestly start with whatever you have. a straight key is fine for learning the rhythm and getting a feel for it, some people swear by it for building timing. paddles are nice later on but they require a keyer and theres a bit more to think about at first. dont overthink the gear side of it, the learning is all in your ears anyway. expect the first few weeks to feel totally useless, thats normal, somewhere around week 3 or 4 it usually starts clicking.

the hum responding to touch is almost always a ground loop or a floating ground somewhere, i'd start by checking every ground connection with an ohmmeter and make sure your audio commons are all tied to the same point. star grounding matters a lot on these DC receivers because you dont have IF transformers doing the isolation work for you. the squealing near the bottom of the band sounds like LO feedthrough or maybe the VFO is getting into the audio input — 3 inches on ugly construction with no shielding between the oscillator and a high gain audio stage is honestly asking for trouble. TL072s arent the worst choice but they can be a bit noisy, though i wouldnt blame them for what youre describing. try running a piece of copper clad or even just aluminum foil taped to cardboard as a divider between the VFO and audio boards and see if the squealing changes. also make sure your audio gain isnt cranked way up before you need it, those DC designs can have massive gain and even a little RF gets amplified into something horrible.

so ive been at this for about 3 months now and im stuck. like genuinely stuck. i can copy at 5wpm pretty comfortably if the characters are spaced way out but the moment i try to push it to even 7 or 8 it all falls apart and i start missing characters and then i panic and miss more and suddenly im just hearing noise. its frustrating because i really want to get on 40m CW and actually have a QSO but i feel like im nowhere near ready. i've been using the Koch method through LCWO.net and i finished all the characters but my copy speed just wont move. someone at the club mentioned i should be listening at 20wpm character speed even if the spacing is slow (Farnsworth method i think?) but i havent really tried that seriously yet. has anyone actually gone from where i am to like 20wpm and how long did it realistically take? also does the jump from 5 to 20 feel as impossible as it sounds or does something click at some point?

so ive been running a ground mounted vertical for 40m for about two years now and its been okay, works decent for DX surprisingly but local stuff kind of sucks which i guess is expected. anyway my neighbor is letting me use one of his big trees to put up a dipole and the tree is probably... 45 feet? maybe a bit more. ive read a million times that a dipole at a half wavelength is the gold standard or whatever but 45 feet on 40m isnt even close to that. so im wondering if its even worth the effort of putting up the dipole or if i should just leave the vertical alone. the vertical has 32 radials which took me forever to lay down so its not like its a bad antenna, im just curious if the dipole would actually give me something different or better. mostly do ragchews and occasionally try to work some DX when condx are good.

oh man don't sweat it, everyone has that moment. i remember my first net check-in i accidentally said my call sign wrong and then tried to correct it and made it worse somehow. net control just moved on like it didnt happen and afterwards a guy came back to me on the repeater and we talked for like 20 minutes, ended up being a really good contact. the general thing with most traffic nets or formal nets is they have a pretty specific agenda and the net control is trying to keep things moving, so off-topic stuff is better saved for after the net closes or just on the repeater during normal times. but a lot of the more casual club nets are pretty relaxed and people do go off on tangents all the time. you kind of just have to read the room, or i guess read the air. after a few more check-ins you'll get a feel for how formal that particular net is. some nets the NCS runs a tight ship, others it's basically just organized chatting. the nervousness does go away, mostly, i still get a little flutter when i call cq on HF which i've been doing for years so maybe not completely lol

morse toad is actually decent for getting started, i used it on my commute for a while. but what really worked for me was just tuning to a CW frequency and trying to copy even one or two letters out of whatever i heard. felt completely hopeless at first lol but after a while your brain just sort of starts grabbing things. also there are some youtube channels that do slow code practice sessions which helped me more than i expected

so ive been going to Dayton on and off for like 12 years now and last year i skipped it and honestly kind of regretted that. thinking about making the drive again this time. my buddy from the club says the flea market has been getting smaller every year but i dunno, i still always seem to find something worth the trip even if its just an old manual or some coax connectors for cheap. anyone else planning on going? would be cool to maybe meet up if theres a few of us from this forum heading out that way. also curious if the indoor vendor area is worth walking through anymore or if its mostly the same resellers hawking new gear at not-that-great prices

ok so i've been studying for about 6 weeks now using hamstudy.org and i think im pretty ready but honestly im still nervous about a few things. the electrical stuff makes sense to me now but some of the regulations questions still trip me up, like the ones about what frequencies you're actually allowed to use as a tech. i keep second-guessing myself on those. anyway the test is saturday at a local club session, i think there's a VE team there. do they give you scratch paper? is it multiple choice the whole way through? i know it comes from the question pool but i dont know how strict the room setup is or like if you can skip questions and come back. sorry if this is obvious stuff i just want to know what to expect walking in

so ive been going back and forth on this for like two months now and i think im just spinning my wheels at this point. currently running a half wave dipole for 40m fed with coax, its up about 25 feet in an inverted V configuration with the apex tied to a tree. works okay but i feel like im leaving something on the table especially for DX, most of my contacts are stateside which is fine but i keep hearing these guys working EU and JA with no trouble and im just not getting through. someone at the club meeting suggested a vertical with radials would give me better low angle radiation and help with DX. that makes sense to me in theory but then i also read that a dipole at low heights is more of a cloud warmer anyway so maybe i just need to get it higher. my lot isnt huge so getting it much above 30 feet is going to be tough without a real tower situation which im not ready for financially. does the vertical actually make that big a difference or is 25 feet just always going to be a compromise on 40m regardless of antenna type