Daniel Rodriguez

the math on general isnt nearly as scary as people make it sound. theres some ohms law stuff and a little bit about calculating things like resonant frequency but honestly if you just grind the question pool on HamStudy or qrz.com for a couple weeks you'll recognize the answers without even having to do the math in your head. i spent maybe 3 weeks studying like 20 minutes a night and passed no problem. the operating procedures and band plan stuff is probably the bigger thing to actually understand rather than just memorize.
as for getting on HF after, that's a whole other rabbit hole. a used HF transceiver like an older Icom or Yaesu is totally doable if you watch the classifieds on QRZ or eham. antenna is really the more important part though, a simple wire dipole cut for 40 meters will get you making contacts pretty quick. dont overthink it at the start

during contests i basically never use full phonetics on every letter when im running stations fast, no time for that. but during a contact if the other op asks me to repeat my call i go full phonetic immediately. its kind of situational honestly. the one time it really matters is emcomm or anything where a message has to be copied exactly right, then you phonetic everything and you dont rush it.

yeah the message handling thing is really common, almost every group I've seen run their first real sim runs into exactly that. people practice the radio part at home but nobody practices sitting at a table filling out a 213 while someone's talking to them and there's noise everywhere. it's a completely different skill.
what helped our group a lot was doing a tabletop first — no radios at all, just people sitting around passing paper messages and filling out forms. sounds boring but it exposed so many gaps before we ever keyed up. once they've done the paperwork part in a low-stress environment they handle it much better when the radios are involved too.
as for templates, ARRL has some simplified versions but honestly I'd check with your section's ARES EC because a lot of regions have their own modified forms that local served agencies actually prefer. the national standard stuff is fine but some EOCs have their own workflows and its worth matching what they actually use day to day.
and yeah the backup person thing — we literally have a written roster now with primary and alternate for every single function. learned that the hard way during a real activation not even an exercise, lost our net control guy to a medical issue partway through and it was not a fun scramble.

so we have this county-level ARES exercise coming up in about 3 weeks and im trying to nail down our power situation before then. last time we did one of these i brought my honda eu2200i and it worked fine but we had a couple other operators running off it too and i ended up with some pretty bad RFI on 40m that i never fully tracked down. wasnt terrible but enough to be annoying on SSB.
this time im thinking about setting up a bit more carefully. my main rig will be the IC-7300 and we'll probably run a linked dipole or maybe just an EFHW with a 9:1 unun depending on where we end up setting up. the site they picked is kind of a sloped field behind the county EOC so i should have decent options for antenna orientation.
my question is mainly about the generator noise — do people usually run a separate filtered power strip or something between the eu2200i and the radio, or is the inverter output on those hondas clean enough that its not worth worrying about? i also have a 100ah LiFePO4 battery i could use and just keep the generator for charging duty only but im not sure if that adds a whole other layer of complexity with the charging current causing noise too. anyone run a similar setup?

so ive been doing single op for a few years now and my rates are decent, usually pulling 800-1000 QSOs in a 48 hour phone contest if condx cooperate but ive been reading about SO2R and honestly im not sure if the complexity is worth it for someone at my level. like yes i understand the basic concept, one radio running, one radio searching for mults or new guys to work, but the antenna isolation part is what keeps tripping me up in my head.
right now i run an IC-7300 and i have an old FT-950 sitting on the shelf that i could press into service. the problem is my antennas are all on the same feedline selector and i only have a tribander and a 40m dipole. trying to transmit on two bands simultaneously with that setup seems like it would just be RF chaos. do people actually run SO2R with modest antenna setups or do you basically need a dedicated antenna for every band you want to operate on at once? also curious how folks handle the audio, does it just become second nature to monitor two radios or does it mess with your head after a few hours?
not looking to win anything, just want to squeeze more rate out of the same operating time

so its been a weird few weeks for me on the radio. been parking on 40m most evenings after dinner just spinning the dial and honestly its either dead quiet or theres some massive pileup halfway across the band that i cant even get close to. nothing in between. had a nice qso with a guy in nebraska last tuesday i think, real relaxed ragchew, talked about antennas for like 45 minutes which was fun. but other than that its just been kind of blah. not complaining exactly just feels like the bands have been weird lately. maybe its just me or my location, im out in the suburbs so there's a fair amount of rfi to deal with depending on the time of night. anyway just curious if anyone else is noticing anything or if ive just been unlucky with timing

so we have this county-level ARES exercise coming up in about 3 weeks and im trying to nail down our power situation before then. last time we did one of these i brought my honda eu2200i and it worked fine but we had a couple other operators running off it too and i ended up with some pretty bad RFI on 40m that i never fully tracked down. wasnt terrible but enough to be annoying on SSB.
this time im thinking about setting up a bit more carefully. my main rig will be the IC-7300 and we'll probably run a linked dipole or maybe just an EFHW with a 9:1 unun depending on where we end up setting up. the site they picked is kind of a sloped field behind the county EOC so i should have decent options for antenna orientation.
my question is mainly about the generator noise — do people usually run a separate filtered power strip or something between the eu2200i and the radio, or is the inverter output on those hondas clean enough that its not worth worrying about? i also have a 100ah LiFePO4 battery i could use and just keep the generator for charging duty only but im not sure if that adds a whole other layer of complexity with the charging current causing noise too. anyone run a similar setup?

so we have this county-level ARES exercise coming up in about 3 weeks and im trying to nail down our power situation before then. last time we did one of these i brought my honda eu2200i and it worked fine but we had a couple other operators running off it too and i ended up with some pretty bad RFI on 40m that i never fully tracked down. wasnt terrible but enough to be annoying on SSB.
this time im thinking about setting up a bit more carefully. my main rig will be the IC-7300 and we'll probably run a linked dipole or maybe just an EFHW with a 9:1 unun depending on where we end up setting up. the site they picked is kind of a sloped field behind the county EOC so i should have decent options for antenna orientation.
my question is mainly about the generator noise — do people usually run a separate filtered power strip or something between the eu2200i and the radio, or is the inverter output on those hondas clean enough that its not worth worrying about? i also have a 100ah LiFePO4 battery i could use and just keep the generator for charging duty only but im not sure if that adds a whole other layer of complexity with the charging current causing noise too. anyone run a similar setup?

yeah i caught the tail end of that opening, was around 28.400 and heard a few Brazilian stations but my antenna situation is kind of a mess right now so i couldnt get anyone to come back to me. frustrating but at least it means the cycle is doing something. its been ages.
on the Icom thing, ive seen that same blurry photo going around and my take is its probably just a refresh of something existing. they tend to do that every few years and rebrand it. but i'll admit if it comes in under 1500 bucks with decent filtering i might actually pay attention. the 7300 is still a great radio but its getting a little long in the tooth for some of the newer digital mode stuff people are doing.