Kimberly Brooks

so i passed my technician exam on tuesday and immediately ordered a baofeng (yeah i know, i know) and spent like three days just listening to the local repeater before i finally keyed up yesterday. i was so nervous i completely forgot to give my callsign at the end of the transmission and some guy had to remind me. KC3 something, super nice about it though. we chatted for maybe 5 minutes about the weather and my antenna setup (just the stock rubber duck for now) and then he said 73 and i sat there for like 20 seconds not knowing if i should say anything back. anyway i did eventually say 73 and that was that. felt kinda anticlimactic but also really cool? hard to explain. anyone else remember their first time keying up being weirdly stressful

im in kind of the same boat as you actually so take this with a grain of salt but ive been using an app called Morse Mania on my phone just during lunch breaks and stuff and its been helping me at least get the alphabet down. its not gonna make you fast but for just recognizing letters its pretty decent. also theres a guy on youtube who does slow code videos which i found helpful early on when lcwo felt too intense havent made a cw contact yet myself but im getting closer i think, can copy my own callsign at least haha

that SWR spread is pretty normal for an inverted V, the angle of the legs affects the feed impedance and you're not going to get a perfectly flat curve across the whole band without a tuner or some matching network. 1.4 to 2.1 across 40m is honestly fine, most rigs will handle that without blinking. for weatherproofing i've tried pretty much everything over the years and the self-amalgamating tape is genuinely the best option if you do it right — start below the connector and work your way up overlapping by half the tape width, then come back down over it again. the stuff fuses to itself and you get a waterproof seal that also flexes a bit when the antenna moves in the wind. coax seal is messy and gets everywhere when you eventually need to undo it, and plain silicone has a tendency to peel away from smooth surfaces after a season or two. the self-amalg stuff is maybe $5 at the hardware store or online and a roll lasts forever. also — if that PVC chunk is sitting outside exposed to UV it will get brittle and crack eventually. not a huge deal but worth keeping an eye on or painting it with some krylon fusion if you want it to last more than a couple years.