Kenneth Lopez

so i've been on basically every evening this week and 40m has just been dead quiet around here. couple of digital signals way down the band but voice wise nothing. dont know if its the solar conditions or just nobody's on anymore. i remember a few years back you could always find a ragchew going somewhere around 7.200 but lately its like a ghost town. maybe i'm just on at the wrong times. anyway if anyones around wednesday evening give a shout, i'll be monitoring 7.250 probably around 8pm local

so i passed my technician exam on the 14th and my callsign showed up in the ULS like 4 days later which i wasnt expecting that fast honestly. anyway i borrowed a baofeng from a guy at work who used to be into this stuff and managed to get into a local repeater yesterday morning. the net control was super patient with me, i fumbled the phonetics pretty bad but he came back and confirmed my call so i guess it counted lol. i dont really know what im doing yet but it felt pretty cool. anyone else remember their first qso? did you feel like a complete idiot too

I was in the same boat not too long ago. What finally clicked for me was thinking of LoTW as the official record that actually matters for major awards, and eQSL as more of a friendly confirmation system that some people prefer. I use WSJT-X for FT8 mostly and it logs straight to my computer and then I upload to both LoTW and eQSL at the same time with TQSL and a little bit of manual work — theres probably a smoother workflow but it works for me Honestly the physical cards are kind of their own thing. Some people really love them and put a lot of effort into the design, some DX stations send out really beautiful ones. I got a card from a guy in Japan last month and it was genuinely nice to have. Whether you want to bother printing your own is up to you, plenty of places online will make a small run of custom cards for not much money if you decide you want to participate in that side of things

nice one getting through. chatham is a tough one from most of NA depending on the opening. the thing about shortening your call is so underrated, i feel like new guys especially just hammer their callsign over and over and it buries everything. heard an interview with a DXpedition op once who said in a massive pileup he basically listens for fragments and builds up a callsign over a couple transmissions sometimes. so if your call is distinctive or has a unique ending sequence you might actually benefit from just sending the last two or three characters and letting him ask for more. risky but ive had it work on rare ones. also dont sleep on band changes. ive busted into piles on 12m or 10m when the main pile was on 20 just because the opening was there for like 20 minutes and almost nobody was trying up there. requires watching the cluster and kinda knowing propogation patterns for the path which takes a while to learn but pays off.

so after about two years of just listening and doing local nets i finally decided to jump into CQ WW SSB this october. ive heard people talk about it forever and my elmer keeps saying its the best way to really learn how to work DX so i figured why not just do it. i dont have anything crazy, just a dipole up about 30 feet and a 100w radio, nothing special. my question is basically just... how overwhelming is it really for a first timer? like i know the bands are going to be absolutely packed and everyone always talks about how intense it gets but i dont know if thats relative to other contests or if its genuinely a different experience. also is there any reason NOT to just submit a log even if my score is tiny? i feel like i should at least document that i participated. also curious if anyone has done both CQ WW and ARRL Field Day and which one felt more beginner friendly as a first contesting experience anyway just looking for any general advice or things i wish i knew going in type stuff

so ive been licensed about 8 months now and i feel like im missing out on something. i hear people mention nets all the time at my local club but i honestly dont really know when they happen or how to find them. i know theres the ARRL net directory thing but every time i look at it im not sure which ones are actually active vs just listed there and never updated. i have HF now (finally got the general last month) so i can do more than just the 2m stuff. evenings after work i usually have like an hour or two and it seems like a waste to just sit there scanning. does anyone have nets they actually enjoy checking into regularly? bonus points if its not super intimidating for someone who still fumbles with the mic sometimes lol also i keep hearing about special event stations, like theres apparently one coming up for some lighthouse thing? not sure how that works either, do you just call them or do they call you

not a dumb question at all, most new techs run into this same wall. so yeah, on 40 meters as a tech you basically have CW privileges only in a small slice around 7.025-7.125 MHz, no phone at all on that band. if someone's inviting you to a voice net on 40m they're probably assuming general, or they don't realize your license class. happens more than you'd think. on the ID thing — the actual rule in Part 97.119 says you have to ID at the end of each transmission or series of transmissions and at least every 10 minutes during the communication, so both things are kind of true but its specifically worded as "at the end" and "no less than every 10 minutes" during. a lot of people shorthand it as just "every 10 minutes" which isnt wrong but misses the part about end of contact. worth reading 97.119 yourself, its one of the shorter and more readable sections honestly.

so ive been licensed about 8 months now and i still feel kinda awkward about when to use phonetics. like on a clear simplex contact with someone nearby i feel silly going through the whole Alpha Bravo Charlie thing but then on HF when its noisy i obviously need them. is there like an unwritten rule about this or do people just kind of feel it out as they go? also i noticed some older guys at my club use different words sometimes, not the NATO ones, like they'll say something like "Adam" instead of "Alpha" and i didnt want to say anything but is that just a regional thing or old habit or what

yeah the waterfall on the 7300 kind of ruined me for operating without one. i borrowed a buddy's older Kenwood for a field day a couple years back and kept reaching for a scope that wasnt there, felt blind honestly. the fan thing is real — i run JS8Call and FT8 pretty regularly and in the summer it runs warm enough that i leave a small desk fan pointed at the back of the rig. probably overkill but it makes me feel better. icom's thermal management on that chassis is fine for normal SSB ops but sustained digital at anything above like 50w does push it a bit. some guys throttle back to 30w for digital and just leave it there, honestly for FT8 you dont need more than that anyway. whats your antenna situation? im curious how much of what youre hearing is the rig vs just having a better feedline or whatever. not doubting you, just that noise floor improvement can come from a few places and i always want to know the full picture when someone reports a big difference.

congrats on the general first of all. okay so the vanity system — it's not quite pick whatever you want but it's pretty flexible. you apply through the FCC ULS and you can list multiple callsigns you want in order of preference. the FCC then runs a batch process and if your top choice is available and nobody with higher license class priority grabbed it first, you get it. the priority thing is important — certain calls can only be held by certain license classes, like a 1x2 or 2x1 format is general and above, and 1x1 is Extra only. so your Extra friends get first crack at the good short ones. if you're general you can still get a nice 2x2 or in some regions a 1x2 depending on whats available. and yes there is a $35 fee now for vanity applications, that started a couple years back when the FCC started charging for all amateur applications. worth it imo if you find a call you really like. as for your grandfather's old call — if it's been released back into the pool you absolutely can apply for it. ae7q.com has a great tool to check availability and see when a call might become available. highly recommend poking around there before you apply.

so ive been building a little 40m CW transmitter from scratch, nothing fancy just a crystal controlled thing based loosely on a design i found in an old ARRL handbook from like the 80s. got it oscillating fine and im getting maybe 2-3 watts out which is honestly more than i expected for a first attempt. the problem is when i hooked up my cheap SDR to poke around the spectrum a bit i could see what looks like harmonics showing up pretty prominently, one around 14mhz and another fainter one around 21. i figured some harmonics were inevitable but these seem kind of strong? the 14mhz one is maybe 30db down from fundamental which i guess is okayish but im not totally sure what's acceptable here or what i should be looking at to bring that down. i threw a lowpass filter together on a piece of ugly construction copper clad but im not sure i got the component values right, used what i had in the junk box which was close but not exact. should i just buckle down and wind the right inductors or is there something else i could be missing in the transmitter stage itself that would cause stronger harmonics than expected

so ive been on HF for about two years now mostly doing digital but lately trying to get into SSB phone more and honestly my audio reports have been all over the place. some guys say im punchy and clear, others say i sound like im underwater or in a barrel. im running an IC-7300 with the stock mic, nothing special, and i havent really touched the TX EQ settings at all because frankly the menu system kind of intimidates me on that radio even though ive had it for ages. my shack is just a spare bedroom, no acoustic treatment or anything, ceiling fan running most of the time. i sit maybe 4-5 inches from the mic which i think is probably fine but maybe not? had a guy last week on 20 meters tell me my lows were way too heavy and it was making it hard to copy me, and then an hour later someone else said i sounded great. so idk if its just subjective or if theres actually something i should be fixing on my end. anyone have like a go-to EQ setup for the 7300 for voice that actually works well, or general tips for getting decent SSB audio without spending a fortune on a fancy mic

so ive been licensed for about two years now and mostly just do casual ragchews and some local nets but my elmer keeps telling me i should try a big contest at least once. CQ WW SSB is coming up and i figured why not just jump in and see what happens. i dont really have a serious station setup, just a Yaesu FT-991A into a fan dipole up about 30 feet, nothing fancy. my main worry is that ill just be spinning the dial hearing wall to wall signals and not be able to work anybody because my signal is too weak or i dont know the exchange format well enough. i looked it up and its just signal report plus CQ zone right? zone 5 for me here in Ohio. seems simple enough but im sure ill mess something up in the heat of the moment. also wondering if its worth trying to do ARRL Sweepstakes instead since i heard thats more of a domestic thing and maybe less overwhelming. or should i just do both lol. and has anyone done SOTA activations specifically timed around major contests to combine the two? curious if thats even a thing people do or if it would be pointless.

so i've been watching the solar flux index pretty closely the last few weeks and it's been kind of all over the place, sitting in the low 150s for a while then jumping up near 180 yesterday and wow what a difference. fired up the rig around 2pm local and 10 meters was just absolutely alive, i mean i was hearing stations from brazil, argentina, a couple EU stations which i almost never get from here in the midwest, and even caught what sounded like a JA but lost him before i could confirm. i use the NOAA space weather site plus that prop prediction tool to kind of guess when things might open up but honestly it still feels like dark magic half the time. is there a better way to know when a band is actually going to be good versus just maybe good? i feel like i spend a lot of time calling CQ into what ends up being a dead band and then the one time i step away from the radio everything opens up lol also curious if anyone else caught that opening or if it was just a regional thing from my QTH

yeah I made that exact jump about two years ago and honestly the difference on HF was pretty significant for me. the dynamic range on the RSP1A is way better, like youre not going to get splatter from a strong AM broadcast station wiping out everything nearby the same way. the RTL dongles are fine for what they are but the ADC just isnt in the same class. that said if your noise floor issue is antenna related it wont fix that, SDR or not. also worth messing with the gain settings before you spend money, seriously. i had mine set way too hot for months and wondered why everything sounded crappy. in SDR# there's the RF gain slider and if you crank it too high on a noisy band youre just amplifying garbage. dial it back until the noise floor drops a couple dB and see if that helps first. might save you the upgrade entirely depending on what youre actually hearing.