Daniel Rodriguez

yeah this is pretty much exactly what we found when our group did something similar a couple years back. the tabletops give you this false sense of security because everyone sounds confident when theres no actual radio traffic to manage. the moment real operators are on the air with real (simulated) pressure its a completely different animal. the thing about the message handoff is huge and i dont think enough groups practice it. we actually started doing what we call last mile drills where someone physically walks up to an operator and hands them a written message and they have to get it formatted and transmitted while someone else is trying to talk to them at the same time. its uncomfortable but thats kind of the point. the discomfort in training is way better than the discomfort during an actual event. also worth looking at your ICS integration if you havent already. a lot of the confusion around priority traffic comes from operators not fully understanding where they fit in the incident command structure, like who do you report to when the agency rep and net control are telling you different things. that was a mess for us until we sorted out the chain more clearly.

so ive been a general for about two years now and people keep telling me to just go ahead and get my extra. i mostly do HF, some digital modes, bit of SSB on 40 and 20m. the general exam wasnt too bad once i studied for a few weeks but ive heard the extra has a lot more theory, like actual math and electronics stuff that i havent thought about since maybe high school. my main question is just how deep does it really go? i dont have an engineering background or anything, just a hobbyist who figured out how to use the radio mostly by doing it. is the extra exam something a regular person can realistically pass or do you really need to understand all the theory behind it. also wondering if the extra privileges are even worth it for someone who mostly operates on bands that generals can already use anyway. not sure if this is even the right subforum for this

yeah what he said about the generator. we tried going all-battery at a simplex exercise last summer with a similar setup and we were babysitting the voltage by hour six. not a good look when you're supposed to be demonstrating reliable field comms to the county emergency manager. one thing i'll throw in — if you do bring the Honda, get a good 30ft extension cord so you can tuck the genny away from the operating position. nothing like trying to copy a weak station over a generator buzzing three feet from your head. also if anyone on your team has a small solar panel kicking around even a couple hundred watts thrown on the battery bank during the day can make a noticeable difference as a supplement, not a replacement obviously.

oh man i remember my first activation, i was so worried about everything going wrong and then the pile got pretty big and i forgot to be nervous haha. one thing i wish someone told me - have your grid square and summit reference written on a piece of paper in front of you because when youre juggling the radio and logging and trying to hear callsigns through qsb your brain just goes blank sometimes. super basic thing but it helped me a lot on my second one when i finally did it.

okay so the single yagi thing is real but you have to be honest with yourself about expectations. with a single long yagi on 2m, something like a 9 or 10 wavelength design, and a really good preamp right at the feedpoint, you can hear the moon in Q65 mode and you will work stations running big arrays. but those big stations have to want to work you, they have to know youre a small pistol and be willing to crank out the power on their end. the path loss is around 252 dB total on 2m which sounds impossible until you realize digital modes and modern DSP have basically changed the game entirely compared to what guys were doing in the 70s with SSB and huge dishes the real minimum for consistent EME activity on 2m is probably two long yagis stacked, a low noise preamp with maybe 0.3 to 0.5 dB noise figure right at the antenna, and knowing how to use WSJT-X properly. the scheduling question is easy, check the ON4KST chat, thats where basically everyone coordinates EME skeds in real time. dx.qsl.net has a moonbounce database too that a lot of people use

honestly just use hamstudy.org and drill the questions every day for like 20 minutes. the site shows you which ones youre getting wrong and focuses on those which helps a lot. the tech pool isnt that huge and if you do it consistently for two weeks you should be fine. the current pool runs through like mid 2026 i think so you should be good unless something changed recently, worth double checking on the ARRL site just to be sure the "understand vs memorize" debate is kind of overblown for tech in my opinion. some of the questions you will genuinely understand because theyre logical, like antenna stuff or basic safety rules, but some of the electrical formula questions are easier to just pattern match unless you actually want to learn the math. for passing the exam either approach works, for actually using the radio the understanding comes naturally once you start operating anyway

honest answer? for casual SSB on 40 and 20 with a trap vertical, probably not. the 7300 is genuinely a very good radio and most of where the 890 shines is in crowded contest conditions or if you're doing serious weak signal work where you need every dB of dynamic range you can get. if your antenna is the limiting factor — and a trap vertical is a trap vertical — you're not going to hear a dramatic difference in your day to day operating that said i did go from a 7300 to an 890S about 18 months ago and i do notice a difference on 40m late evenings when the band gets busy. the close-in dynamic range really does matter when there's a loud station 2kHz away and you're trying to pull something out. but i'm also running a 4-el yagi on a 50ft tower so take that for what it's worth. if i was stuck with a vertical i honestly dont know if i'd have bothered with the upgrade

yeah what he said about the filtering. i tried SO2R without bandpass filters once, never again. my second radio was basically useless any time i was transmitting on the other one even with the antennas on different bands. ended up just running single radio that whole contest lol. one thing nobody mentions enough is the logging software side of things. N1MM+ handles SO2R pretty well but you gotta get the radio switching set up right or youll be sending on the wrong rig at the worst possible moment. had that happen during a run in CQWW and lost probably 5 minutes sorting it out while people were calling me. anyway its doable on a budget station but go in with realistic expectations i think.

no hard rule that you have to use phonetics every single time, its more just a tool for clarity. on a good clean repeater where everyone can hear fine, most folks just say their call straight. where phonetics really matter is when the band is noisy, youre doing simplex and the signal is marginal, or youre in a net where the control operator is logging calls and needs to get it right first try. HF is where youll see people almost always use them because conditions vary so much. and yeah you'll definitely hear the old ICAO/civilian phonetics mixed in sometimes, Easy for Echo or Oboe for Oscar. a lot of the older guys learned those first and never fully switched over. it works fine as long as the other person understands you, but if youre doing any kind of formal traffic handling or emcomm stuff you really want to stick to NATO because thats what everyone is trained on and mixing them up in an emergency net is just asking for confusion. X is Xray by the way, that one trips everyone up at first

so ive been interested in ham radio for a while now, my uncle has been doing it for years and it always seemed cool but i never really looked into it seriously until recently. i know you need a license but i honestly dont even know what the different levels are or how the test works or anything. like do you just show up somewhere and take a test or is there a class you have to take first? and how hard is it really, im not great at math if that matters also i looked up some stuff online and saw something about technician and general and extra, are those all separate tests or is it like one big test with levels? sorry if this is a dumb question im just trying to figure out where to even begin

we went last year too and yeah the turnout was a little disappointing compared to like 2019. but i heard the club thats organizing it this time actually did some extra promotion so maybe itll be better. our club isnt doing a table but a few of us are going just to walk around. the flea market usually picks up around 9am in my experience, if you show up right at opening you can get first crack at the good stuff before the dealers cherry pick everything

so i finally did my first WWFF activation last weekend, been meaning to try one for ages but kept putting it off because honestly the whole process seemed complicated from the outside. its really not though once you just dive in. i picked a local nature reserve that was already registered in the WWFF database, took me a while to find one nearby that wasnt super remote since i dont have 4WD and some of these references are way off the beaten track. ended up at a state conservation park about 45 minutes from home, nice spot, had a picnic table which was a bonus. ran the KX2 into a linked dipole strung between two gum trees, maybe 6 meters up. worked mostly 40m and had a go at 20 as well. got my 44 contacts which i think is the minimum for a valid activation? and then kept going for another hour or so because the pile up was still going and the weather was nice. logged about 90 QSOs total which felt pretty good for a first go. uploading to WWFF.us was a bit confusing, i had to convert my log from ADIF and make sure the reference number was in there correctly. took me two attempts but it got accepted. anyone else find the upload process a bit fiddly or is it just me?

I was in the same boat like a year ago. upgraded to General last spring and yeah the test felt a little harder than Tech but not crazy. the parts that tripped me up were more like the propagation stuff and some of the operating procedures, not so much the math. there is some math but if you just work through the practice tests enough times the formulas kind of stick even if you dont fully understand them. one thing i'll say is get yourself at least a halfway decent HF rig before you pass the exam so youre not just sitting there with a new license and nothing to use it on, i made that mistake and waited like 2 months to actually get on the air and it felt like forever. i ended up going with a used icom 718 which was maybe not the most exciting choice but it works and i've made contacts all over with it

yeah the 10m thing is real, ive been having a blast up there. worked a guy in south africa last thursday on a mobile whip which i still cant quite believe. the solar flux has been sitting up pretty high and the K index has been cooperating so conditions have just been lining up nicely. re: Hamvention flea market — get there early. like, embarassingly early. the good stuff moves fast and i mean FAST. i've gone a few times and the years i slept in i ended up just walking past empty tables by noon. bring cash, bring a cart if you can, and dont expect prices to be as low as you hope. some vendors know exactly what they have and price accordingly lol. still worth it though, theres nothing quite like it.

oh man i went down the same rabbit hole last year, started with a rockmite and then ended up with a whole pile of QRP stuff. the lipo thing works but just be careful, i killed a cell once by running it too low because i got caught up in a pileup and forgot to check, now i just tape a little voltage alarm buzzer to the pack and it beeps at me when its getting low. like two dollars on amazon and it saved my battery more than once. also if you get into SOTA the sotawatch site lets you self spot from a text message in some regions i think, might be worth looking into depending where you activate. welcome to the rabbit hole by the way, its all downhill from here in the best possible way