Kimberly Brooks

Check out the YCCC SO2R Box Plus for switching - handles the audio routing and PTT logic cleanly. Configure N1MM for split audio (left/right channels) rather than the latch mode, and definitely enable the Auto-Resume CQ feature with the %X command in your CQ message.

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.

yeah the duty cycle thing is the real gotcha with battery only setups. people always calculate worst case transmit draw but in practice on a nets and traffic exercise youre probably sitting at receive current most of the time which on the 7300 is what, like 2 amps? so the actual average might be way lower than you think depending on how the exercise is structured. one thing worth doing before you go is just run your actual gear for a couple hours at home and log how fast the battery drops. way better than doing math that turns out to be wrong at the worst time. also if you havent looked at it, the 7300 has a power limit setting buried in the menu somewhere, dropping to 50 watts makes a noticeable difference in draw and for most emcomm work youre not trying to work dx anyway so who cares

so i've been studying for like two months and finally passed my technician exam last thursday, got my callsign in the system a few days later and today i actually made my first QSO on the local 2m repeater. guy named Earl came back to me and we chatted for maybe 10 minutes about nothing really, just the weather and what radio i was using. i was so nervous i forgot to say my callsign half the time lol. been using a baofeng uv-5r that my brother in law let me borrow just to get started. anyway just wanted to post somewhere because nobody in my house cares even a little bit about this stuff and i feel like i need to tell someone who gets it

yeah 10m has been pretty fantastic when the conditions line up, the current solar cycle is really delivering and we're apparently getting close to or maybe past the cycle 25 peak depending on who you ask. flux in the 170-200 range is when 10 starts getting really fun, below like 120 or so it's kind of a crapshoot unless there's some sporadic-E mixed in which is a whole other thing the A and K index stuff is more about geomagnetic disturbances, so a high K index (like 4 or above) can really mess up propagation even if the flux looks great. i usually check dxmaps.com and pskreporter to see where signals are actually going before i bother calling CQ because sometimes the flux looks good on paper but a coronal mass ejection or something has churned up the ionosphere and nothing's getting through. 14 countries in a couple hours on a dipole with 100w is a solid afternoon, that's the magic of 10m when it's open

yeah i run both and honestly it's not that bad once you get used to the rhythm. N1MM stays off unless i'm actually contesting, Log4OM handles everything else. after a contest i just export the ADIF from N1MM, then in Log4OM i do the import with duplicate checking turned on — it's under tools or options somewhere, been a while — and it catches most of the dupes based on callsign plus band plus mode. not perfect but close enough that i only ever have to fix a handful manually. the WSJT-X thing is a bit of a rabbit hole. technically you can have WSJT-X log to N1MM during a contest but the way the two programs handle QSO data isn't always clean, especially for something like ARRL digital where the exchange fields are a bit weird. i've seen guys do it but i just keep them separate and merge the ADIF at the end. less headache.

so i've been in ARES for about 8 months now and mostly just showing up to the monthly nets and doing the occasional tabletop exercise. last weekend was my first actual activation though, county emergency management called us in because of the flooding along the creek that runs through the south end of town and they needed comms support while some of the repeaters were acting up and cell service was getting spotty in the affected neighborhoods. honestly i wasnt sure what to expect going in. i was deployed to the EOC and another guy from our group was out at the shelter. mostly i was just passing traffic between the shelter and the EOC and relaying status updates to the net control. nothing dramatic but it felt real in a way that the exercises never quite do, like people were actually counting on the information getting through correctly. the thing that surprised me most was how much the training actually mattered. i kept thinking about all those times i almost skipped the monthly net because nothing exciting was happening but the muscle memory of the procedures really does kick in when you're stressed. also brought way too much gear lol, had like three radios and a backup power setup that i definitely did not need for an EOC deployment with shore power available. anyway if you're on the fence about joining your local ARES group i'd say just do it. the training feels repetitive sometimes but last weekend made me glad i stuck with it.

so ive been trying to get back into CW after a long break, maybe 15 years off the key, and i picked up a used Bencher BY-1 a few months ago and im running it into my old K2 with the internal keyer. the problem is every now and then — not all the time which makes it worse — ill get a double letter in the middle of a word, like im sending 599 and it comes out 5999 or something close to that. at first i thought my paddle tension was off but ive messed with that a lot and it doesnt seem to help consistently. speed is around 18 wpm which shouldnt be taxing anything. i wonder if its my squeeze technique from years ago getting mixed up with the iambic mode B setting, like my muscle memory is fighting the keyer logic. anyone dealt with this kind of thing coming back to CW after a long layoff? or is there a way to tell if its actually the keyer settings vs just me being sloppy with the squeeze.

yeah 40 has been weird for me too, though i think some of it is the solar stuff going on right now. i checked propnet the other night and the path i usually work into the midwest was just not there. tried again an hour later and it opened right up. so maybe just timing. also yeah ft8 ate a lot of the casual operators i think, which is kind of a bummer but whatever gets people on the air i guess

so ive been running an IC-7300 for about three years now and honestly its been a great radio, no real complaints. but ive been eyeing the 7610 for a while and trying to figure out if theres enough of a real-world difference to justify spending another thousand-something dollars on it. like on paper the dual watch and the two independent receivers sounds really useful but im not sure how often id actually use that in practice from a home station doing mostly general HF work, some contesting here and there, maybe a bit of digi modes. the 7300 spectrum scope is already really good in my opinion, i was skeptical of it before i got the radio but now i use it constantly. is the 7610 scope noticeably better or is it more of the same thing just wider. ive read conflicting things online and half those reviews seem like they were written by people who spent 20 minutes with the radio at a hamfest. anyone running a 7610 who came from a 7300, was there a moment where you thought yeah this was worth it or did it feel like more of a sidegrade with extra features you dont really need

so we finally did our county ARES simplex drill saturday and honestly it was a pretty eye opening experience. the scenario was a major flood event cutting off the EOC from several outlying shelters and we were supposed to relay traffic between them using only VHF simplex since the repeater infrastructure was assumed down. first thing that surprised me was how fast things got chaotic even in a fake scenario. people were transmitting over each other, some guys forgot net discipline entirely and were just chatting on frequency like it was a ragchew, and our net control guy (who is normally super sharp) completely lost track of which shelters had checked in and which hadnt. we had like 8 stations trying to pass formal traffic and nobody had really practiced written message handling in probably a year. the simplex coverage was also way worse than we expected. two of the shelter sites just couldnt hit net control at all, even with a decent antenna. we ended up having to designate a relay station kind of on the fly and that worked but nobody had really planned for it ahead of time. the good news is everyone was a great sport about it and we debriefed for about an hour afterward which was honestly more valuable than the drill itself. curious if others have done similar exercises and what surprised you or what you changed after the fact. we're thinking about doing these quarterly now instead of just once a year.

For Android, I recommend Morse Trainer from Wolphi or Koch Morse Trainer Pro from Bit Ninja - both offer variable character speed, word speed, and Farnsworth spacing. The best feature is you can set them to speak the letters after playing the code - helps you hear the sound of the letter and not individual dits and dahs. Start with 20 WPM characters but slower effective speed.

so ive been messing around with this thing for about three months on and off and last night i actually heard a qso on it which felt pretty surreal honestly. its based loosely on the norcal 40a design but i swapped out a few parts because i couldn't source the original ones without waiting six weeks for a shipment from overseas. the audio is a little hum-y and im pretty sure its a grounding issue somewhere on the board but its definitely receiving. picked up a station in ohio last night and im in western pennsylvania so thats not bad for a chunk of ugly perfboard and whatever junk i had in my parts bin. used an NE602 for the mixer which i know some people hate but i had like eight of them laying around so whatever. the main thing i keep running into is the audio amp stage just seems kinda weak. im running it into a set of old computer speakers and it works but i feel like the gain isnt where it should be. anyone done much with LM386 based stages after an NE602 and had luck tweaking the gain without introducing a ton of noise? ive tried bumping the cap between pins 1 and 8 and it helps a little but then the hum gets worse

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

yeah i was in the same boat a few months ago, the tqsl certificate process is genuinely annoying and i redid mine twice before it clicked. one thing i'll say is make sure your station callsign in tqsl matches exactly what you're logging under, i had an issue where i had my callsign set up wrong and contacts were uploading but not matching anything. i do all three personally, upload to LoTW after every session, throw things on eQSL too because it takes like two seconds once you have it set up, and i still send paper cards to anyone who sends me one or if i work somewhere really interesting. its a little extra effort but thats kind of part of the hobby for me

congrats on the first one, 22 QSOs is a solid start especially on a random wire. to answer your question about the park reference — yeah hunters mostly grab the park number from the spot on pota.app so you dont necessarily have to exchange it verbally every single contact. most of the time the exchange is just signal report, name, maybe state and thats enough. the park reference is kind of assumed because they can see your spot. some people do confirm it but its not required in the exchange itself. the guy calling over everybody is unfortunately pretty common in pileups, just part of life. some people havent learned pileup etiquette or honestly just dont care. you handled it right by ignoring it and working whoever you could actually copy. as you do more activations you get better at picking calls out of chaos, it becomes almost like a game. those unactivated parks are really satisfying to get. the first activation of a park feels different than just adding a number to an already popular one. good luck with it

so i finally did my first WWFF activation last weekend at a state forest near me, KFF-something i'll have to look up the exact number. been meaning to try this for months and kept putting it off because it seemed complicated to figure out but honestly once i just went and did it it was pretty straightforward. set up my KX3 with a random wire thrown up in a tree, maybe 30 feet up, ran about 40 meters and 20 meters for a couple hours. managed 47 QSOs which i think is way more than the 44 minimum you need for a full activation? or wait is it 44 total or something else, i cant remember now. anyway got a solid pile going on 20m for a while which surprised me for a state forest in the middle of nowhere. the part im still fuzzy on is the logging and uploading. i used paper in the field obviously and then transcribed into ADIF but when i went to upload to WWFF Logsearch it seemed like it wanted specific fields i wasnt sure about, the reference number format and whether i needed the park to park contacts tagged differently. anyone done this recently and remember the gotchas? also wondering if i should be self-spotting on the WWFF facebook group or is there a better place people actually watch

so ive been licensed for about 8 months now, mostly just doing FM stuff on my handheld and a little bit of SSB on HF but i keep hearing people talk about CW and how great it is and i got curious. looked up a few things online and got completely overwhelmed. like there's the Koch method and Farnsworth and apps and youtube videos and people saying you need to just listen to real QSOs from the start and other people saying no dont do that yet and im just... lost honestly. i dont have any military background or anything like that, never learned it as a kid, so im literally starting from absolute zero. does anyone have a suggestion for like a realistic path that actually worked for them? i dont need to be super fast i just want to eventually be able to have a slow QSO on 40 meters or something. is that realistic for a regular person with maybe 20-30 mins a day to practice