Daniel Taylor

bring the headset. seriously. EOCs can get loud and you dont want to be straining to hear while someones on a speakerphone three feet away from you. thats just my experience anyway. also the ICS stuff does actually matter once you're in there, like when someone asks you to route a message you'll understand the structure of who talks to who and it'll make sense. don't stress too much, drills are specifically designed so people can make mistakes and learn from them. thats the whole point of doing them before a real event.

i just passed mine like three weeks ago so this is fresh. the exam wasnt as bad as i expected but i also studied pretty hard for about six weeks. the filter and oscillator questions are weird because they look scary but once you get the patterns down theres a lot of repetition in how theyre asked. hamstudy.org was basically all i used plus i went back and read the actual explanations for any question i kept getting wrong instead of just memorizing the answer. whether its worth it kind of depends on what you want to do i guess. i wanted to eventually do some weak signal digital stuff and the extra segments on some bands matter for that. but if youre happy where you are theres no rule that says you have to upgrade

so ive been doing single op for a few years now, usually top 20 in my section for the bigger contests which im reasonably happy with but i keep reading about SO2R and watching guys like n2ic and others talk about how much it changes your rate and im wondering if its actually worth the investment and complexity for someone who maybe does 6-8 contests a year seriously my current setup is a k3s into a hexbeam and a separate 40m dipole so i technically have two antennas already, been thinking about picking up a used radio just to try running two bands at once but the filtering and switching stuff seems like it can get really deep really fast. like how much do you actually need to spend to not have the radios just totally trash each other? ive seen guys say you can do it on the cheap with a bandpass filter set and a relay box but ive also seen setups that look like they cost as much as a small car also just generally curious what rate improvement people actually see in practice, not the theoretical stuff. does it really bump you up that much or is it more of a marginal thing unless youre already running elite level rates?

the business communication thing trips up a lot of new hams honestly. the general way to think about it is whether the ham radio is doing work that would otherwise require you to pay for a communication service. so like if you're calling your buddy to say hey the mower broke down and that just happens to be useful for your lawn business, most folks interpret that as crossing into prohibited territory even if it feels casual. the classic example the old timers use is you cant use it to take customer orders or coordinate paid work. now if youre just chatting with your friend and the topic happens to drift into mundane daily life stuff that could tangentially relate to work, thats where people disagree. the ARRL has a pretty decent plain-english breakdown of 97.113 if you havent found that yet, way easier to read than the actual CFR text. on the encryption thing you're not reading it wrong. section 97.113(a)(4) prohibits messages in codes or ciphers intended to obscure meaning, but 97.215 and related rules carve out exceptions for things like spread spectrum and certain control links. it's not really that the prohibition goes away its more that those specific modes are separately authorized. either way for your actual day to day operating as a tech none of that is probably going to come up much.

so ive been a ham for about 3 years now mostly doing SSB and some digital but i keep getting pulled toward CW. theres just something about it that seems... i dont know, more satisfying? anyway i picked up a cheap single lever paddle off ebay and im using it with an old MFJ keyer i borrowed from a buddy at the club and honestly im struggling a bit to figure out if its me or the setup. the tension on the paddle feels really mushy and i keep accidentally sending extra dits when i just want a dah. is that a tension issue with the paddle itself or am i holding my technique wrong? ive watched a bunch of youtube videos and everyones wrist position looks different so i really cant tell what im supposed to be doing. also the keyer speed is set around 12 wpm which is where my elmer told me to start but even that feels fast when im actually trying to think about what im sending not just copying practice. any tips from people who went through this learning curve would be really appreciated. especially curious if there are paddle brands that are more forgiving for beginners or if i should just stick with what i have for now

so ive been running an IC-706MKIIG for probably 12 years now, its been a great rig honestly, no real complaints, but im starting to feel like im missing out on some of the newer stuff. the noise floor on mine feels like its gotten worse or maybe i just notice it more now that ive cleaned up my antenna situation a bit. running a pretty decent dipole at about 40ft and an LDG tuner so its not the antenna side thats bugging me. been looking at the IC-7300 mostly because everyone seems to love it and the price has come down to where its not insane. also glanced at the TS-890 but thats a whole different budget conversation. my main thing is i do a lot of casual HF work, some digital (mostly FT8 these days, dont judge me), and occasionally i'll try to work some DX when the bands cooperate. not really a contester. is the jump from a 706 to a 7300 actually as noticeable as people say or is this one of those things where im gonna spend the money and go eh its fine. genuinely curious what people who made a similar jump think.

honestly for your situation i'd stick with the dipole. the vertical low-angle advantage is real but its really only meaningful when you have a serious radial system under it, like 60+ quarter wave radials is where you start seeing the textbook performance. 16-20 short ones on a suburban lot... you'll get something but it aint gonna blow your dipole away, especially not for domestic contacts where higher angle radiation is actually working in your favor anyway. the inverted-V at 35 feet on 40m is a respectable antenna. if you want more dx capability without the radial headache, honestly look into what you could do with a sloper or even just reorienting the dipole broadside toward wherever you want to work. sometimes the answer is just tweak what you have rather than dig up your whole yard.

irlp and remote control are kinda different beasts so i wouldnt try to mash those together unless you really know what youre doing with the network side. irlp is more about VHF/UHF linking between repeaters and your audio chain has to be pretty clean for it to not sound awful to everyone on the reflector for the HF remote stuff my honest opinion is RemoteHams is worth the cost just to not deal with the headache. i spent probably 40 hours over a few months trying to get a clean remote setup on my own and RemoteHams just worked the first weekend i tried it. theres a reason people keep using it even though the DIY options are technically capable of doing the same thing

im pretty much in the same boat as you were when i started, been licensed almost two years now and i still find the whole QSL thing a bit overwhelming. what finally clicked for me was just thinking of LoTW as the serious one for awards and eQSL as the fun one where you actually see a card design. i upload to both after every session using WSJT-X and it exports to ADIF which both sites accept. one thing nobody told me early on is that for LoTW you have to get your certificate set up through the ARRL and it takes a few days to get approved, but once its done its pretty seamless. the tqsl software does all the signing and uploading. its a bit clunky but you get used to it

aw man the first QRP contact feeling is something else right. i remeber doing my first one and just staring at the rig like wait that actually worked?? i dont have a QCX but ive been eyeing the uSDX builds lately, people seem to have mixed results with those but the multiband capability is tempting for the price. might be my next project. anyway congrats on the contact and the build

Congrats on passing the test. Okay so the baofeng debate never really ends and honestly both sides have a point. The UV-5R works, it gets you on the air, and for $25 if you drop it in a parking lot you wont cry. The menus are kind of a nightmare and the receive isnt great compared to something like the FT-60 but for basic repeater use it does the job. I started with one and used it for about a year before upgrading. If you can stretch to the FT-60 I do think its worth it. Its built like a tank, the audio is noticeably better, the receiver is way more selective so you wont get as much desense near other transmitters. Its been around forever because Yaesu basically just kept making it because people kept buying it, which says something. For APRS though you'd need to look at something like the FT3D or the VX-8DR which are more expensive, or you could just use a phone app with an external TNC and run whatever HT you want. The BF-F8HP is just more power, 8 watts vs 5, and honestly on VHF/UHF with an HT the extra few watts usually doesnt change much in practice. Hit up a repeater a few times with whatever you end up getting and youll figure out if power is actually your problem or if its something else.

the pr-40 is a pretty hot mic so your mic gain being at 50 might actually be too high depending on how close you're talking. first thing id do is get someone to give you an honest report on a local simplex frequency while you slowly back the gain down. watch the ALC meter — you really dont want that thing pegging. a little movement is fine but if its slamming to the right every time you talk the audio is already getting squashed before the compressor even does anything. for the 7300 specifically there's a few guys who've posted their eq curves online, Chris from ham radio crash course did a video on it that wasnt terrible. the general idea for voice is to roll off some of the low bass below like 200hz because it just adds mud on SSB, slight boost around 2-3k for presence, and a gentle rolloff above 3k. SSB bandwidth is already limited so you're not trying to make it sound like a studio recording, you're trying to make it readable and not fatiguing to listen to. also check your TX bandwidth setting in the menu. some people have it set way narrow without realizing it and that kills the audio before anything else matters.

I've had a fan dipole up for about two years now, 40 and 20 only because my yard just doesn't have room for long enough supports to do the fan spread on more bands without the ends drooping down into the fence. The noise floor thing you mentioned — totally agree, it was the first thing I noticed compared to my old vertical. I'm in a pretty suburban location so any reduction in pickup of local noise makes a real difference. One thing I'd add is that the feedpoint connection is worth spending some time on. My first attempt I just twisted the element wires together at the center insulator and taped everything up and it worked fine until some moisture got in over a winter and I started getting weird intermittent swr readings. Redid it with proper solder connections and a bit of self-amalgamating tape and havent had a problem since. Probably obvious but worth mentioning since its one of those things thats easy to half-do when youre excited to get the antenna in the air and just want to test it.

the second rx is nice but dont sleep on the improved roofing filters in the 7610, thats what made the difference for me on crowded band conditions. 40m at night especially. your attic dipole is probably limiting you more than either radio tbh but thats a different thread lol

so ive been running the 7300 for about three years now and honestly its been a great radio, no real complaints. but ive been eyeing the 7610 for a while and the dual watch / dual receiver thing keeps calling to me especially during contests when i want to monitor a second band without swapping vfos constantly. the panadapter on the 7300 is already pretty solid so im not upgrading for that. my main operating is ssb and some digital, occasionally cw but im not a hardcore cw guy. i run a hex beam at 35 feet and a 40m dipole in the attic which yeah i know isnt ideal. anyway the question is basically does the second receiver actually change how you operate day to day or is it one of those things that sounds cool and then you dont really use it. i cant demo one anywhere near me so asking here instead

check if the previous owner ever ran it into a bad antenna situation or had an SWR event. i bought a 706 once that had the exact same thing going on and it turned out the guy had melted something in the drive section not the finals. the finals were fine but something before them was limiting drive and the whole chain just ran at reduced power. wasnt obvious at all looking at the board. also just curious did you try doing a full factory reset through the menu? not just reflashing the firmware but actually wiping the settings. sometimes the power output calibration table gets weird and a reset at least rules that out as a variable before you start poking around inside.

yeah i tried going SO2R a couple years back and honestly the antenna interaction alone nearly drove me crazy before i even got to the operating part. had an ICom and a Kenwood running and the IMD from the second radio was just trashing the first receiver even with bandpass filters, ended up spending way more time troubleshooting than actually contesting that whole season if you do decide to go for it look at the Dunestar or Array Solutions bandpass filters early, dont try to cheap out there like i did. also whatever logging software youre on, N1MM has the SO2R integration built in pretty well now but you gotta actually read the documentation which i obviously did not do the first time

not a dumb question at all, this trips up a lot of new generals. so the FCC allocation is the one that actually matters legally, the ARRL band plan is more of a guideline for what modes tend to be used where. for 40m as a general you can use SSB from 7.175 to 7.300 MHz, everything below 7.175 down to 7.025 is cw/digital and also open to you but that lower chunk is mostly cw in practice. the band edge thing is both a courtesy and kind of a practical concern. your signal has sidebands, so if youre running upper sideband and you tune to say 7.299 your actual transmitted signal is going to spill above 7.300 which is technically outside your allocation. most rigs have a little slop too so the general advice is stay at least 3khz inside the edge to be safe, some people say 2.5 but id rather give it a bit more room. you'll hear people yelling about lid operations near the edge sometimes on the air so just give yourself a comfortable buffer and youre fine.

yeah this drove me crazy for a while too. couple things to check -- first, vara HF has that SNR display in the bottom of the window, what's it showing when you connect? if youre seeing anything below like 10-12db you're gonna have a rough time maintaining the session especially if propagation shifts even a little during the transfer. 400 miles on 40m in the evening can be weird depending on where you are, sometimes the skip is working against you more than for you. second thing id look at is whether youre using vara FM or vara HF because i've seen people mix those up and get flaky behavior. also worth trying a gateway thats physically closer if you can find one on the gateway list, sometimes closer isn't actually better SNR wise but it often is. the RMS does have a session timeout i believe its around 10 minutes of inactivity but if youre actively transferring you shouldnt be hitting that. i'd lean toward marginal path personally just based on what you're describing.

wait the arrl is changing the vanity callsign fees? i just applied for one like two months ago, do you know if that affects people who already have theirs or is it just new applications going forward? sorry if this is kind of off topic but now im worried i need to do something

end fed halfwave on a mast will serve you a lot better than the buddipole for 40/80 in my experience, especially if youre trying to cover regional nets. buddipole is great for travel but its a compromise and you'll feel it on 80. if you have room to run a wire out, even a sloper off a 31 foot mast gets you way more signal. just my two cents on the antenna side of things. on the power i cant really compare those two generators directly but i do know the eu2200 has a parallel kit if you ever need more capacity down the road, might be a factor depending on where your group wants to take things.

so ive been meaning to do this for like two years and after the last storm knocked out power for three days i finally got serious about it. got a pelican case (well a cheap knockoff from amazon but same idea) and started stuffing things in it. right now i have my ft-817nd, a roll of coax, some spare connectors, a small swr meter, a notebook and pencils, and im working on getting a decent portable antenna situation sorted out. thinking either a roll-up j-pole or maybe a small trapped vertical i can stake in the ground. battery situation is where i feel lost. i have a 20ah lifepo4 battery that came with a little bms and it seems fine but i have no idea if thats enough for a full day of operating or even what i should be calculating for. mostly SSB and maybe some winlink if i can get that working on battery. also do you guys keep a printed frequency list in your kits? seems low tech but i keep thinking what if i lose my programming or whatever. anyway if anyone has done this and has stuff they wish they had included or regret putting in there id love to hear it. been a tech for about 8 months, just got my general last month so still figuring all this out

yeah the doppler on linears is a bit of a head trip at first. the thing to remember is that for a typical LEO like FO-29 or AO-73, the downlink shift over a whole pass can be something like plus or minus 10 kHz on the 70cm downlink, and the uplink on 2m will shift maybe 3-4 kHz the other direction. so if youre tuning your downlink up to chase the signal as the bird approaches, your uplink needs to go down slightly at the same time. gpredict with hamlib should actually handle most of this automatically if you have it configured right. the key thing a lot of people miss is that you set your "nominal" frequency in gpredict, which is the transponder passband center basically, and then let it calculate the corrected TX and RX freqs. when it's working you mostly just tune your RX a tiny bit to keep your own downlink signal centered and gpredict handles the coarse correction. its not perfect but it gets you in the ballpark and for a 9 min pass thats usually enough to actually make a few contacts once you get used to it. also FO-29 has been sketchy lately with power issues, might have better luck targeting AO-73 for initial attempts, the transponder on that one seems more consistent in my experience

Check a repeater directory or the club's website for the correct CTCSS tone. Some repeaters even announce their required tone. Make sure you're transmitting the tone, not just receiving - you need TX tone enabled to access the repeater.

WSJT-X has a setting to log directly via UDP to whatever your main logger is, if Log4OM supports that port it should just work without the ADIF shuffle. i think Log4OM does support it but i havent actually tried it myself so dont quote me on that