Lisa Patel

so i finally got around to building a simple 40m dipole out of some 14awg stranded wire i had laying around in the garage. cut each leg to about 33 feet which i calculated from the standard formula, got it up about 25 feet in an inverted V configuration with the apex tied to a tree. feedline is about 50 feet of RG-8X going into my shack. the SWR at 7.150 is sitting around 1.8:1 which i guess isnt terrible but i was kind of expecting it to be closer to flat, like 1.2 or something. also the resonant point seems to be closer to 7.4 MHz which doesnt make sense to me because i thought you cut long and trim down but at 7.4 its showing like 1.1:1 and at 7.150 it climbs up. im using a cheap nano VNA to check this so maybe thats part of the problem but i dunno. the wire runs through some tree branches in a couple spots and i wonder if that affects things. also i soldered the feedpoint connection but didnt use a balun or anything, should i have? ive read conflicting stuff about whether you really need one for a basic dipole.

oh man the ranger conversation, yes. i had one at a state forest reference last summer who ended up staying for like half an hour and wanted to hear actual contacts happening. ended up being kind of cool actually but yeah i barely made my 44 that day because of it lol also are you logging with an app or paper? i switched to logging on my phone with HAMRS and it made a huge difference for me, exporting the ADIF for upload to the WWFF portal is way less painful than manual entry after the fact

i wouldnt bother personally. the 7300 is already a really capable rig and unless you specifically need wideband RX i just dont see the point of risking it. if you want a good wideband receiver just grab an SDR dongle for 30 bucks and run it off a separate antenna, youll get better coverage with less headache and your 7300 stays stock.

Collinears are omnidirectional high-gain antennas that reduce power radiated skyward. Perfect for repeaters since you don't need to rotate. For weak signal work, the yagi wins hands down - you can point it precisely where you need maximum gain.

i was in the exact same spot like two years ago and honestly just chasing DXCC casually was what got me hooked on DX in general. the thing nobody told me early on was that the 47 countries you worked — you need to check if they're actually 47 separate DXCC entities because some islands and territories that feel like different countries are actually the same entity, and some things that seem like the same country count as separate entities. the DXCC entity list on the ARRL site is the thing to cross reference. caught me off guard the first time i checked

CWops CW Academy is perfect for your level - no cost and they specialize in getting through exactly these plateaus. I found that keying practice helped my brain learn CW better than just listening - try sending the same practice material you're copying.

so i finally did my first summit activation last weekend, W4T/SU-017 if anyone knows it, and wow i was not prepared for how long the hike actually was. i had looked at the map and thought yeah thats not so bad but the elevation gain just absolutely wrecked me. took forever to get up there and by the time i set up my KX2 and the 20m EFHW i was already tired and a little frazzled. made 5 contacts which i guess counts but i was hoping for more. the wire kept wanting to fall down because i stupidly didnt bring enough cordage to get it really up in a tree and the branches were not cooperating. also forgot sunscreen which, yeah. but honestly when i finally got the first contact and the guy on the other end knew exactly what i was doing and said congrats on the activation i kind of got it, like why people do this. already planning the next one

oh man i had the exact same confusion when i started. honestly just having both open at the same time is totally fine, lots of people do that. i use DXwatch on a second monitor just because i like the map view and it gives me a quick picture of where activity is happening without having to dig through the cluster feed in my logging software. one thing i found useful on QRZ is the band conditions widget they have, not just the spots. kind of tells you at a glance if its even worth trying certain bands before you go looking for specific DX

so i finally picked up a used IC-2300H and i'm trying to do a clean install in my F-150 and im losing my mind trying to figure out where to route the coax from the mag mount on the roof down into the cab. ive been under the dash before for other stuff and i know there are ways in but every thread i find is about a different vehicle and i cant figure out if the same spots apply. right now the coax is just coming in through the door seal which i know is terrible and probably killing my signal or at least gonna wear through eventually. the radio itself is mounted under the dash on the passenger side and works fine, hitting the local repeater no problem, but i want to do this right before winter. anyone done a clean route on a newer F-series or just trucks in general — does the firewall grommet trick actually work without making a mess

welcome to the hobby. Thursday night nets are usually pretty friendly if you want more practice, low pressure and people expect newer operators to be on there. also look into getting your general soon while the material is still fresh, opens up a lot more of the bands

yeah the RPM-following noise is almost always alternator. i chased that same thing for weeks in my old chevy. ended up being a bad ground on the antenna mount, took me forever to figure out because everything looked fine visually but when i actually cleaned the contact point under the mount and used a star washer to bite into the metal it went away almost completely. also on the RG-58 thing, i'd swap that out if you can, just not worth using on UHF especially. you lose more signal than you'd think on a longer run even at 440.

oh man that feeling of making your first contact on a rig you built yourself is something else entirely, i remember mine and it still makes me smile thinking about it. on your question about watts — the short answer is antenna is almost always going to give you more bang for your buck than doubling power. the math works against you a little: to sound twice as loud to the other station you need roughly 10x the power, which is why going from 5 to 10 watts is only something like 3dB which the other guy might not even notice depending on conditions and noise floor on his end. a better dipole or getting it higher off the ground can easily get you 6dB or more just from geometry. that said 10 watts versus 5 watts does add up over long operating sessions where you might be trying to break a pileup or working weak signal stuff, so its not nothing. but if i had to pick one thing to spend time on i'd put the effort into antenna work every single time. whats your current antenna setup?

ok so ive been licensed about 8 months now and i keep seeing people talk about LoTW and eQSL and i honestly cant figure out which one i should be focusing on. i set up a LoTW account a while back and uploaded some logs but i have no idea if i did it right because i dont see any confirmations coming in. also someone at my club said eQSL is kind of a separate thing and some awards dont count it? im also old fashioned i guess because i really like the idea of getting actual paper cards in the mail, theres something cool about it. but i dont want to miss out on something important if most people are doing it digitally now. do you guys use all three or just pick one? and is there a reason to bother with paper if youre not chasing DXCC or something

oh man yeah that 10-15wpm range is brutal, its almost like a rite of passage that nobody warns you about. what youre describing with the cascade effect is totally normal — your brain is still processing character by character instead of just hearing the whole thing as a sound. the fix for that, and i know it sounds counterintuitive, is to just let the missed characters go. seriously just move on and catch the next one. the moment you stop trying to backfill the gap your copy actually improves. what really helped me years ago was listening to code way above my copying speed, like just putting on 25wpm and not even trying to write anything, just letting it wash over me for 15-20 minutes a day. your brain starts to absorb the rhythm of it even when you cant consciously decode it. took me probably 6 weeks of that before i noticed a difference but it worked. also the W1AW code practice sessions are good because its real on-air content with actual QSO stuff, not just random letters, and that context helps a lot more than people think.

honestly the general rule most people follow is if theres any chance of confusion, use phonetics. on a quiet repeater with good signal and a short callsign its pretty common to just say the letters normally, nobody's going to call the police on you. but on HF especially when theres QSB or noise or youre working someone whos not a native english speaker, phonetics really do save a ton of back and forth. ive had contacts where i said my suffix three times as plain letters and they still had it wrong, switched to phonetics and got it first try as for the non-standard stuff, technically ITU and most procedural guidance says you should use the standard NATO phonetics because theyre designed to be unambiguous across different languages and accents. "America" and "Boston" type phonetics are kind of an old habit some guys never dropped, its not a huge deal on a casual ragchew but in emergency communications or any kind of formal net they can cause real problems because not everyone has the same associations. some emcomm nets will actually correct you on it. so id just stick with the standard ones, takes a bit to get them automatic but then you dont have to think about it

pretty much comes down to conditions and whether theres any chance of confusion. if youre on a repeater with a strong full quieting signal and someone asks your call, saying the letters plainly is totally fine. but on HF especially when theres QSB or QRM creeping in, phonetics just make sense because B, C, D, E, G, P, T, V, Z all sound so similar when theres noise. youve probably noticed how fast a pile-up falls apart when people start clipping syllables. on the non-standard phonetics thing, yeah people do use them, and technically the NATO alphabet is just a convention not a law for amateur radio. but the whole point of a standard is that everybody knows it, so if you say something like Nebraska instead of November theres a chance the other op hesitates for a split second wondering what you said. in contest conditions or DX that half second matters. for a casual ragchew on 40m nobody really cares, do whatever feels natural and gets the message across

so ive been a tech for about 3 years and just upgraded to general last month, and i always told myself id learn morse code eventually. well i finally bought a used Bencher paddle off a guy at the club and grabbed a MFJ keyer to go with it. the problem is im completely lost on the keyer settings — specifically the weight and ratio stuff. i set the speed to about 13 wpm which feels manageable but the dits and dahs sound kind of mushy to me? like they blur together. i dont know if its the paddle gap, the keyer settings, or just my ears not being trained yet. ive been using the G4FON trainer software for receiving practice and thats actually going pretty well, but sending is another story. any advice for a total CW beginner would be appreciated. also is 13 wpm a reasonable starting point or should i just go slower

Same boat here! Been stuck around 8-10wpm for months. I started doing head copy practice instead of writing everything down and that seems to be helping a bit. Also found this youtube channel that does word drills at different speeds. The plateau is so annoying though, feels like youll never get past it but everyone says it clicks eventually

so ive been licensed about 8 months now (general class) and everyone keeps telling me i need to try a contest to really get comfortable operating. i keep hearing about CQ WW and ARRL Field Day and honestly i dont even know what the difference is between them or which one would be better for a first timer. from what i can tell Field Day is more of a club thing? like you go set up somewhere and operate with other people? and CQ WW is more of a solo thing where you're trying to work as many DX stations as possible. is that roughly right or am i way off. also i saw something about SOTA activations counting toward some contests which i didnt even know was a thing. anyway im not trying to win anything obviously just want to get some experience and maybe grab a few new entities for my log. any advice on which to try first or how to not completely embarrass myself on the air would be appreciated

Hi everyone - Just got my Technician license last month (KD1ABC) and finally worked up the courage to check into my local repeater's weekly net. I think I made some mistakes and felt pretty awkward. I waited for net control to call for check-ins, gave my call and name, but then wasn't sure what else to say or when to stop talking. Should I mention I'm a new ham?Do I need to give my location every time?What's the proper way to sign off when checking in? Any guidance would be really appreciated - don't want to be "that guy" who ties up the net!

congrats and welcome, first QSO is always a little awkward but you never forget it. dont worry too much about upgrading gear right away, honestly the baofeng is fine for getting started on local repeaters and figuring out if you even like FM vs other modes. plenty of time to fall down the equipment rabbit hole later, trust me on that one

i failed my first attempt lol, not gonna lie. i thought i could wing it after watching a couple youtube videos. second time i actually used the hamstudy app and just grinded practice tests for like ten days straight and passed easy. the questions on the real test looked almost exactly like what i had been practicing so dont overthink it, just do a lot of practice tests and you'll be fine. the math questions scared me but theres really only a handful of them and they show up pretty predictably

the thing that finally clicked for me after years of halfhearted attempts was the Koch method, specifically just committing to it and not skipping ahead. the idea is you start with just two characters at full speed, like 20wpm, and you dont add a new one until you can copy those two at like 90% accuracy. sounds slow but it works because your brain learns the sound as a whole thing instead of counting dits and dahs which is the trap everyone falls into. LC Wouff Hong and the LCWO website are both good for this. LCWO is free and you can track your progress session by session. the other thing i'd say is dont stress about sending yet, just focus on receiving for the first few weeks. once you can copy in your head a little bit then messing around with a key starts to make more sense. i also listened to slow speed code nets on like 40 meters just to hear real traffic even when i couldnt decode most of it, just getting used to the rhythm helped a lot

i have the same radio actually, great little rig. i ended up doing the trunk lip on mine too for the same reason, didnt want holes in the car. honestly havent even checked my SWR come to think of it, maybe i should. how are you finding the receive sensitivity on 70cm compared to 2m? mine seems a lot quieter on the 440 side but im not sure if thats just because there's less activity here or if somethings off

yeah 7.250 is fine for general phone, you were good. i had the same confusion when i upgraded and honestly the easiest thing i found was just keeping a laminated copy of the band privileges chart in my shack for a while until it became second nature. you can download it off the FCC website or the ARRL one, either works. the FCC one is kind of dense but the actual allocations are in there in section 97.301 if you ever want to look at the official version.