Sarah Garcia

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?

yeah the simplex coverage thing catches everybody off guard the first time. people assume because the repeater hits everywhere that simplex will too and its just not how it works at all. we had the same rude awakening during a drill a few years back — one of our key sites was basically a dead zone and we'd never noticed because we always used the machine. what helped us a lot was doing a dedicated simplex coverage mapping exercise before the next drill. just drove around to all the potential shelter and EOC sites with a HT and a mobile and actually tested propagation. took a saturday morning but now we have a pretty solid picture of where we need relays and we even pre-designated two or three relay positions so next time its not improvised. the net control tracking issue is real too, some folks swear by a simple paper log with checkboxes for each station, low tech but it actually works under pressure way better than trying to keep it all in your head.

yeah i had same issue a while back, turned out the igate near me was rx only and never gating anything back to RF so messages from the IS side were just dying. found a site that lists igate capabilities, cant remember the name but you can check if your local igate is bidirectional or not. if it aint bidirectional then messages are basically one way and youll never get acks from stations that arent in your RF footprint directly.

the bioenno 100ah is solid but 18 hours with an IC-7300 doing any real transmitting is going to be tight. depends a lot on your duty cycle obviously -- if you're mostly monitoring and doing short check-ins you might squeak by, but if someone's going to be running traffic for hours at a time you'll want more capacity or a way to recharge. i usually bring two of the 50ah ones and run them in parallel just so i have flexibility. for the 80m antenna problem -- have you thought about just making your EFHW longer? if you're already carrying wire and a mast, cutting a 130ft wire for 80m isnt that much more effort. you'd need a different matching unit or at least a tuner on the radio end but the 7300's internal tuner might grab it depending on the feedpoint impedance. alternatively a simple inverted-L with your existing mast would get you on 80m without a massive antenna footprint. i've done that at parks activations and it works fine, not going to win any DX awards but for regional nets it's perfectly usable. the genny question really comes down to whether quiet matters more than convenience. eu2200i is about as quiet as they get but it's still a generator. if noise discipline is a real requirement and not just the IC being fussy, go battery and plan your power budget carefully before you leave the house.

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

dont stress too much about accidentally doing something terrible your first time on the air. the FCC isnt sitting there waiting to pounce on a brand new tech. just know your callsign, ID every 10 minutes during a contact and at the end, that's 97.119 i think. most beginners mess that up more than anything else, forgetting to ID or only doing it at the end.

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

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 ive been interested in ham radio for a while now, my neighbor has a big antenna setup and it looks really cool. i asked him about it and he said i need a license first but i dont really know where to start or what the difference is between all the license levels. do i have to memorize a ton of stuff? is there like a test i take at a dmv type place or what. also how long does it take most people to study, im not great at electronics but im not totally clueless either. just kind of lost on the whole process honestly

ok so ive been licensed about 8 months now and i finally started logging seriously and someone mentioned i should be uploading to LoTW but then someone else at the club said eQSL is just as good and now i dont really know what im doing. like i have a stack of paper QSL cards that came in the mail from contacts i made on 40m and 20m and they're really cool to look at honestly, but do those count for anything award-wise or is it all digital now? also the LoTW setup was kind of a pain, i had to get a certificate from the ARRL and there was a whole thing with tqsl and i kept getting errors. i think i got it working but im not totally sure my logs are actually uploading correctly. is there a way to check if a contact confirmed on there? basically i guess my question is do i need to be doing all three of these things or can i just pick one and stick with it. and are paper cards still worth sending out or is that kind of old fashioned at this point