Brian Taylor

yeah did mine about a year ago, late 2020 unit. the jumper is still in the same spot near the PA section, you have to pull the top cover and its pretty obvious once you know what youre looking for. there was a thread on eham with pictures that was way more helpful than the youtube stuff honestly
one thing i'll say is just be careful around that area of the board because theres some smd stuff nearby that you dont want to accidentally brush with a screwdriver. used some kapton tape to cover adjacent components before i went in. worked perfectly after, no issues with normal ham operation and the MARS stuff checked out fine too. firmware version shouldnt matter, its a hardware jumper not software controlled

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

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.

yeah deoxit on the pot for sure, thats the easy answer and probably right. but if that doesnt pan out id scope the mic amp output before assuming its the modulator. on the 857 the mic preamp is on a separate little board and those electrolytic caps on it can go leaky or just lose capacitance over time, especially on a rig thats been around for 15+ years. a leaky coupling cap before the modulator would give you exactly what your describing — carrier present, ALC reacting, but no actual audio getting through to be modulated. caps are cheap, if you find one thats drifted out of spec just replace the whole section while you're in there. not a hard job if you've got decent soldering skills and patience.

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.

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?

yeah that RPM-related whine is almost always alternator interference getting into the coax shield or the power leads, sometimes both. a few things worth checking — first, is your coax shield actually grounded at the antenna mount? lip mounts can be tricky because you're relying on that metal-to-metal contact with the lip of the tailgate and sometimes there's paint or coating in there breaking the ground path. try running a short jumper from the mount to bare metal and see if that changes anything. second thing is you can try a ferrite choke on the coax right at the radio end, just a couple turns through a type 31 mix toroid. ive also seen people have luck with a noise filter inline on the power leads but honestly fixing the antenna ground is usually the first thing to nail down.

ok so i passed my technician exam about 3 months ago and ive been mostly doing 2m and 70cm stuff which is fine but i keep hearing people say techs can do some HF too and i honestly cannot figure out from reading Part 97 exactly what that means in practice. like i know there's something about 10 meters and maybe some other bands but the way the FCC document is written it kind of makes my eyes glaze over after a few paragraphs.
so can someone just tell me in plain english what i can actually transmit on below 30 mhz? phone, digital, cw, what? i dont want to accidentally key up somewhere i'm not supposed to be and get in trouble. also is there anything in particular i should know about power limits that are different from the normal tech limits on vhf/uhf

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.

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?

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.

So I finally decided to stop just reading about WWFF and actually go do one. Got a nature reference picked out, its a state wildlife management area about 20 minutes from my house, KFF-XXXX number registered and everything. Planning to run QRP with my KX2 and a wire antenna thrown up in a tree.
My question is really about the logging. I know you need 44 QSOs minimum to get the full activation credit but im not 100% sure about what info I actually need to capture per contact. Obviously callsign, time, frequency, mode... but does the exchange have to be anything specific or do people just do a normal signal report exchange? I've seen some people mention giving out the reference number during the contact and others don't seem to bother on every QSO.
Also wondering about spotting myself on the WWFF spotting network vs pota spots. Can you use both? Feels like a dumb question but I genuinely dont know. Any advice from folks who've done a bunch of these appreciated, dont want to mess up the logging and have to redo it.