Lisa Patel

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

ok so ive been licensed about 8 months now and im starting to get into chasing awards and i keep seeing people talk about uploading to LoTW and eQSL and also sending physical cards and im honestly not sure what the difference even matters for. like do i need to be on all three systems or is one good enough?
i set up my LoTW account a few months ago and i think i uploaded my logs but im not 100% sure the tqsl signing thing worked right because i never got any confirmations back. eQSL i havent even touched yet. and physical cards i got a batch made up but havent sent any out yet because i wasnt sure if i should wait for someone to send me one first or just send them out automatically.
any advice from people who actually do this regularly would be great, im trying to work toward my WAS eventually so i want to make sure im doing this right from the start

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 i finally did my first summits on the air activation saturday, been putting it off for like a year because i kept thinking id need a ton of gear or some crazy antenna setup. ended up just throwing my kx2 in a small pack with a 9:1 unun and about 35 feet of wire up in a tree and made 12 contacts in maybe 45 minutes. one of the chasers was in germany which i was not expecting at all on 20 meters with maybe 10 watts. the hike up was the hardest part honestly, the radio stuff was almost relaxing once i got set up. already looking at which summit to do next

so ive been a Tech for about 8 months now and honestly i mostly just use my HT for local stuff, 2m repeaters and the occasional APRS stuff. but ive been hearing people talk about HF and 40m and it sounds really interesting especially the idea of actually talking to people further away than just my county lol
anyway i started looking at the General exam pool and honestly it seems pretty overwhelming. like theres stuff about propagation and feed lines and operating procedures i dont really know and some of the electrical theory questions are kind of rough. i did fine on the tech exam but that felt more manageable somehow
is there a good way to study for this or do i just grind through the question pool? i downloaded hamstudycom and been doing the practice tests but im only getting like 65-70% right now which i know isnt passing. does the actual exam have the same questions from the pool or what? any tips from people who recently upgraded would be great

so ive been checking into a few local 2m nets lately and im honestly still not 100% clear on when youre supposed to give your full callsign vs just saying youre here. like on the weekly rag chew net the net control just has everyone say their call once when they check in and thats it but then on the traffic net it seems like every single transmission you gotta ID even if youre just saying "no traffic" or whatever
i know the FCC rule is every 10 minutes and at the end of a transmission but in a net context it gets confusing. like if net control says "any stations with traffic" and i say "none here" do i need to give my call? i usually do just to be safe but some of the older guys on the net seem to just say negative and move on and nobody says anything
also slightly related — is there a right way to handle it when net control misses you during roll call? do you just wait and hope they come back around or is it okay to just jump in? i waited like 20 minutes one time and they never called me so i just gave up lol

welcome to the rabbit hole haha. seriously though the paddle tension thing took me forever to figure out and i still tweak mine occasionally. what you want is light enough that your fingers arent working hard but not so loose that you get double letters from bouncing. just sneak up on it slowly — tighten the contact gap just a tiny bit at a time and send some letters until it feels clean. there's no magic number, its totally personal.
on the speed question i'd go with farnsworth. starting at 5wpm character speed is painful because the letters dont sound like letters anymore, they sound like you're counting dots and dashes which is exactly the habit you dont want. i started with LCWO at 20wpm characters and like 8-10wpm effective speed and it was hard at first but i think it rewired my brain faster. took me maybe 3 months to get comfortable enough to actually make contacts.
keyer brand at your stage really doesnt matter much. the cheap ones work fine for learning. once you know what you like you might want something nicer but dont spend money on that yet, spend it on a decent set of paddles if anything. the paddle feel makes more difference than the keyer electronics IMO.

yeah i went through this exact same thing like 8 months ago lol. ended up getting a cheap baofeng UV-5R just to have something while i figured things out and honestly it worked fine for basic stuff but the reciver is pretty noisy and i kept getting weird intermod hits near the city. eventually picked up a wouxun and its noticeably better. that said if money is tight the baofeng will still let you get on the air and thats what matters when youre starting out

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?

yeah that tracks, last tuesday i heard some 10m signals that sounded like they were next door and they turned out to be Australia. i'm relatively new to HF and this solar cycle stuff is still kind of confusing to me but it's cool to see it actually working in real life instead of just reading about it. congrats on the Japan contact that's awesome

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

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!