Brian Taylor

so ive been messing around with a little arduino mega project for the past few weeks and i think im finally getting somewhere. the idea is pretty simple, i want to automatically switch between my hex beam and a 40m dipole based on which band i tune to on the radio. right now i'm using a CAT interface on my 7300 and reading the frequency data off the serial port, which actually works better than i expected once i sorted out the baud rate mismatch that was making everything garbage. the relay board i picked up off amazon is a 8 channel 5v unit and it seems okay so far but i havent pushed it hard yet. my concern is whether running coax through those relays is going to cause any issues at 100w, the specs on the board are kind of vague and i honestly dont trust the chinese datasheet on this one. thinking about maybe swapping to some proper RF relays at some point but wanted to get the logic working first. anyone done something similar? especially curious if anyone has done the CAT parsing on arduino because there's a lot of conflicting info out there about CI-V timing and i've had some weird lockup issues that i cant fully explain yet

Before you do anything, check the ALC and TX/RX switching circuits. Direct coupled power amplifiers are notorious for "chain failures" where one bad component causes the failure of parts both up and down stream. I've seen bad relay contacts cause exactly these symptoms - full voltage but no RF path to the antenna.

so this has been driving me nuts for about two weeks now. my 857 is running maybe 20-25 watts on 40 meters when it should be doing 100. every other band is totally normal, 80m fine, 20m fine, 10m fine, even 6m is putting out properly. just 40m is being weird. i already checked the obvious stuff — ALC is behaving, no overtemp, SWR is fine on a dummy load so its not the antenna. swapped coax just to rule that out. power output is consistently low no matter how long i transmit so its not a thermal thing. ive been poking around and somebody mentioned the driver transistors can fail partially on a single band but i honestly dont know enough about the RF stages in this rig to know if thats plausible or if im barking up the wrong tree. anyone dealt with something like this before? feels like it should be diagnosable without just throwing parts at it but im not sure where to start probing.

The CTCSS tone (some people call it PL tone, same thing) almost always goes on transmit only — that's how you tell the repeater to open up and let your signal through. The receive side tone is a different thing called DCS or just tone squelch, and most people don't bother with that for general use, you'd just leave receive tone off so you can hear everything coming out of the repeater. So yeah, set your radio to transmit 100.0 Hz and leave receive on carrier squelch and you should be good. As for etiquette, you're already doing the right thing by listening first, that's honestly more than a lot of new folks do. When there's a gap in conversation or the group wraps up, just key up, say your callsign, and say you're monitoring or listening, something like "W1ABC monitoring" or "W1ABC listening" and see if anyone comes back. Most repeater groups are pretty welcoming to new hams calling in. If theyre in the middle of a roundtable just wait for a pause between transmissions and throw your callsign out — that's totally normal and expected, it's how you let them know someone wants to join. One thing to double check — make sure your offset is set right too. 2m repeaters are usually minus 600 kHz offset and if that's off you might be transmitting on the wrong frequency entirely. Could explain why nobody's hearing you.

i went through this same thing last year! ended up doing both lotw and paper cards. lotw is great for the awards but i really like getting the actual cards in the mail - theres something satisfying about holding a physical card from that dx station you worked one tip - if you do decide on paper cards, get them printed in bulk. way cheaper per card. i got 500 cards printed for like 40 bucks and they look great. just make sure your info is right because youll be stuck with them for a while lol

honestly Field Day is probably the most forgiving place to start actually operating because theres almost always someone nearby who can help if you freeze up or lose your place in the exchange. the exchange is simple too, something like 2A Indiana or whatever your club is running. CQ WW is a blast but the pileups can be pretty brutal if youre not used to it yet — not that you cant do it, just might be frustrating early on. SOTA is a completely different thing and i'd say dont try to compare them because they scratch totally different itches. i do both and the summit activations are almost meditative compared to a 48 hour contest grind. if you want to try SOTA before the snow hits theres still decent weather in most of the country, just look up summits on the air dot org and find something in your state thats only like 2 or 3 points — easier hike, still counts. for your calendar: CQ WW SSB is usually last weekend of october and CQ WW CW is end of november. ARRL Sweepstakes is in there too, november i think, and thats actually a really good domestic contest for newer folks because the exchange is a bit more involved but everyone is patient. your 991A will do great, thats a solid rig.

so ive been chasing VP6 (Pitcairn) for about three years now and last weekend the VP6R operation was running and i finally got through on 17m SSB after about two hours of trying. wanted to share what actually worked for me because ive read a lot of advice online that i think is just wrong or at least doesnt match my experience. the big thing that changed it for me was actually listening to the DX operator for a long time before i ever keyed up. like 20-30 minutes just watching the pattern. this particular op was working maybe 5 up, but he kept drifting toward stations that came in on the high end of his listening window whenever the pile got thick. once i figured that out i just planted myself about 7-8 up and waited for a quiet moment and bam, he came back to me on the second call. also stopped giving my full callsign every time. when it was obviously a north america run i just gave the last two letters and it seemed like that helped cut through. i know some people say always give your full call but honestly in a massive pileup the op is just listening for fragments anyway, thats how it works. anyway curious if others have patterns they look for or techniques that have actually worked. not looking for the textbook answer, just what actually works in practice.

Hey welcome to the hobby, dont stress — this trips up almost everyone at first with the Baofeng stuff especially. So the CTCSS thing: you only need encode set, not decode. Encode means your radio sends the tone when you transmit, which is what the repeater's input is listening for before it'll open up. If you set it to decode as well, your radio wont open its own squelch unless it hears that tone coming back at you, and most repeaters dont send a tone back out on the output — so you'd hear nothing even when the machine is working fine. Just tone encode, 100.0 Hz, and you should be good. For the input/output thing double check you have those right too. On a standard negative offset on 2m your radio transmits on the lower frequency (the input) and listens on the higher (the output). Some radios handle the offset automatically when you're in the 2m band and some dont depending on how you programmed it. Worth double checking the offset direction is set to minus. As for jumping into a conversation — you just wait for the brief pause between transmissions, then key up and say your callsign. Something like "W1XYZ monitoring" is fine. Most folks on a repeater are pretty welcoming to new hams. If the frequency sounds clear and you just want to call out, a quick "W1XYZ listening" works too.

went last year after skipping a few and yeah the flea market is still massive, maybe even bigger than i remember. got there early saturday morning and it was already packed. picked up a barely used tuner for like 40 bucks from some old timer who just wanted to clear out his shack, so deals are definitely still out there if you dig around only thing is parking is still a whole thing, give yourself way more time than you think you need especially if you're coming in from the highway. but honestly worth it, ran into a few guys from my local club i hadnt seen in years

curious what TX profile settings you ended up with, im having trouble getting mine to not sound kinda thin on SSB. ive messed with the bass and treble a bit but feel like im just guessing at this point. also did you turn on the speech processor or leave it off?

pretty much a feel thing honestly, at least on FM through a repeater where conditions are usually decent. if the band is clear and your audio is clean most people just say the call once and move on. where phonetics really earn their keep is on HF when you've got QRM or the signal is marginal, or during any kind of contest or net where you need to make sure the other op copies your call correctly the first time. also any time you're doing a formal net check-in the net control usually expects phonetics. i've heard some guys go full phonetics every single transmission on a clear local repeater and it honestly just slows things down, but thats just my opinion. you'll get a feel for it after a while.

The paperwork isn't that bad - mostly just a background check and some forms. Many local ARES groups are registered with Emergency Management agencies to permit operations under RACES rules if needed. Your EC probably has the forms ready to go. I'd say do it if your county is pushing for it - shows you're serious about the commitment.

same boat here, kind of. im at about 8wpm now and the jump to 10 feels impossible some days. one thing that helped me a little was finding actual on-air QSOs to listen to instead of practice software all the time. W1AW still does code practice broadcasts on HF and there's something about real signals with real fists that makes your brain work differently than computer generated tones. worth trying if you havent already

its cyclical man, propagation has a lot to do with it too. when the bands are dead people migrate to digital just to feel like theyre doing something. cycle 25 is heating up though so hopefully we get some life back on 10 and 15. i remember when 10m was just wall to wall signals on a saturday morning, that will come back. the ragchew crowd never fully went away they just moved around, try 7.255 on a weekend morning if you want to hear some old timers go at it for two hours about absolutely nothing in particular

Seems like every forum and club meeting I attend has someone griping about ARRL dues going up while membership benefits feel thinner. The organization has seen notable membership decline with many operators frustrated by rising dues and perceived value reductions. Not trying to start a flame war, but curious what others think – are we losing something important or is it time for new approaches to organized ham radio?

I was in almost the exact same spot about a year ago and ended up going with the FT-60R and i have zero regrets. its a little chunky but the battery life is genuinely impressive and the receive is really good, like i can hear things on it that my friend's UV-5R just gets static on. CHIRP was honestly fine once i watched one video, took me maybe 45 minutes to program in all my local repeaters and i havent touched it since. the one thing i'd say is dont stress too much about getting the perfect radio right away. you're going to learn a ton just by using whatever you get and you'll have a much better idea in six months what you actually want out of a radio. most people end up with like three or four HTs eventually anyway haha

Been thinking about ARRL's Year of the Club initiative and how clubs are the first welcoming doorway into the hobby — a place to learn, to operate, to build, and to belong. Clubs create opportunities for mentoring, public service, technical exploration, and lifelong friendships. Our club started a weekly technical mentoring net on our repeater with special attention given to newcomers, hosted by a rotating crew of net controls. Works great for us - new hams feel comfortable asking basic questions without judgment. We've had everything from "how do I tune my antenna" to "what's the difference between LSB and USB." What mentoring approaches work well in your clubs? Any creative ideas to share?

yeah im kind of in the same boat, been at it for about two months now using that LCWO site the other guy mentioned. i get stuck around the letter R for some reason, my brain just refuses to hold onto it. anyway just wanted to say you're not alone because i also felt like quitting multiple times lol. someone on here told me just keep going past the frustrating part and it sort of clicks eventually, havent fully experienced that yet but im still trying

so ive been working on this direct conversion receiver for 40m for the past couple months, mostly following the EMRFD designs but ive been kind of winging it on the audio stage because i couldnt get the exact parts the book calls for. anyway got it on the bench last night and it actually receives something which honestly surprised me given how messy my Manhattan style construction got toward the end. the problem is theres this really annoying hum on everything, like a 60hz thing underneath whatever im trying to listen to. ive already tried lifting the ground on the audio amp section and that didnt do much. power supply is a regulated 12v bench supply so i dont think its coming from there but who knows. also the image rejection is pretty much nonexistent which i expected but its worse than i thought it would be, stations on the wrong side of zero beat are almost as loud as the ones i actually want. not really sure which problem to tackle first. the hum is more annoying but the image thing might point to something being wrong with the phasing in the detector. anyone dealt with this with a simple diode ring type detector

the pot is probably just worn out, those things dont last forever especially if the rotator sat outside for years. replacement pots arent too expensive, just make sure you match the resistance value and the shaft diameter. might be worth swapping it before you spend too much time fighting the software side. i went a slightly different direction and used a raspberry pi zero W as the main controller with a small motor hat, mostly because i wanted wifi and didnt want to deal with usb serial from a separate machine. runs flightaware style but for the antenna basically. not saying its the better way just what made sense for my setup.

so i finally did it, been putting off studying for like 8 months and just sat down last week and hammered through the question pool and passed yesterday with a 90%. still waiting on the callsign to show up in the ULS but im already obsessing over what radio to get first. my buddy who got me into this has a baofeng he let me borrow and i made my first ever transmission on a local repeater this morning, just said my name and that i was a new tech waiting on my callsign, and like four people came back to me which was honestly kind of surreal. one older guy stayed on for like 20 minutes just chatting and telling me about the club. anyway just wanted to introduce myself somewhere, been lurking here for a while reading threads

so we finally got enough people together to run a proper simulated emergency exercise, been trying to coordinate this for like six months with our county ARES group. the scenario was a pretty classic one — major flooding, EOC activated, hospitals and shelters need comms because cell towers are down. we had maybe 14 operators spread across four sites including the EOC itself. the good stuff first: net control handled traffic really well, the guy we had running it has done this for years and it showed. message flow was steady and people mostly stayed disciplined on the frequency. we also had two operators who had never done anything like this before and honestly they did great once they got settled in. now the bad stuff, and there was some bad stuff. one thing that kind of bit us was that two of our guys showed up with go-bags that hadnt been checked in probably a year, one of them had a dead battery in his HT that he didnt even know about until he tried to key up. we also had a situation where the designated alternate frequency wasnt written down anywhere that people had agreed on in advance, so when we had some QRM we lost about 8 minutes just trying to sort out where to go. thats the kind of thing that in a real event could matter a lot. the biggest lesson for me personally was how much cognitive load people are under when theyre also trying to physically set up equipment AND handle traffic. practicing each piece separately doesnt really prepare you for doing them all at once under a little bit of pressure. anyway curious if anyone else has done similar drills and what tripped you up

so i finally did my first parks on the air activation last weekend at a state park about 45 minutes from my house, K-4829 if anyone knows the area. i'd been meaning to do this for like 6 months and kept putting it off because i was nervous about the whole setup and not knowing if id get the 10 contacts to actually count as an activation. anyway i brought my FT-891 and a random wire antenna i threw up in a tree with a fishing rod, which worked okay but i had a heck of a time getting it high enough. the branch i wanted was maybe 30 feet up and i spent probably 20 minutes just trying to get the paracord over it before giving up and settling for something lower. lesson learned there. i got on 40m and spotted myself on the POTA website and within maybe 3 minutes i had a small pileup going which honestly kind of caught me off guard, i wasnt expecting that many people to call at once. ended up with 22 contacts in about an hour and a half which i was pretty happy with for a first time. did have one guy who kept calling way off frequency and i couldn't figure out how to tell him nicely to move a bit, that was a little awkward. overall though it was really fun and im already planning the next one. anyone have tips for antenna deployment, specifically getting wire up higher in trees? or any other things you wish you'd known on your first activation?