Gregory Smith

haha yeah my first time on a repeater i forgot to say my callsign at the end of the transmission and the net control had to remind me. twice. dont sweat it everyone starts the same way, you get the rhythm after a few sessions. the phonetics click eventually, just takes some reps. welcome to the hobby

so im finally making the trip to xenia this may, havent been since like 2019 and im kind of excited to just walk the flea market tables again. last time i picked up a pretty clean ts-440 for almost nothing and a guy was basically giving away coax connectors. anyway wondering if anyone else from the club is planning to go or if theres any kind of meetup happening saturday morning before it gets too crowded. the outdoor tables get real picked over by like 9am in my experience

so ive been messing around with FO-29 and AO-73 for a few weeks now and i think i finally understand the basics but the doppler thing is still tripping me up. like i get the concept, the satellite is moving so frequencies shift, but in practice im not sure if im supposed to be correcting my uplink, my downlink, or both and in which direction. my current setup is an FT-818 for uplink on 2m and a separate SDR for the downlink on 70cm. im running gpredict on the laptop and it has that doppler correction thing but i cant figure out if it only adjusts the radio or if i need to manually tune as well. during a pass last week i heard what i think was my own signal come back but it kept drifting off and i had to chase it around the whole time, which felt wrong. is that normal or am i doing something backwards also does anyone actually use full duplex rigs for this or is the two radio approach pretty common? ive seen people mention the IC-9700 a lot but thats a lot of money just to chase satellites

ok so ive been licensed for about 3 months now (tech, studying for general) and when i get on HF with my buddy's station i keep hearing and seeing all these Q codes and abbreviations and honestly half the time i have no clue whats being said. like i know QSL means basically confirmed or understood, and QTH is your location, but then people start rattling off QRM QRN QSB QRZ and i just kind of nod along pretending i get it is there like a standard list somewhere or do people just kind of pick these up over time? also whats the difference between someone saying QRT and going QRT, seems like i see it used different ways. and people on digital modes especially just throw abbreviations everywhere, saw someone type "ur 599 bk" and had to look that up too. just wondering how long it takes before this all becomes second nature i guess

JS8Call activity is definitely thinner than FT8 but its not dead, you just gotta know where to look. 14.078 is the main watering hole but activity tends to cluster in certain windows — early morning and evenings in the US seem busiest at least from what ive seen. also try 7.078 if youre in North America, there's usually a decent regional crowd on 40m especially after dark. the heartbeat thing works fine, i leave mine running when im at work and come home to see who heard me and who i heard, its kinda satisfying actually. the relay/store-and-forward stuff is genuinely clever when it works. that said i get what you mean about it feeling quiet compared to FT8, the populations are just wildly different. FT8 has like a million people on it. JS8Call is more like a small town. if you want actual back and forth text conversation its still the best weak signal option ive found short of going back to PSK31 which honestly still has a little life left in it on 14.070 area if you want something more traditional

i mean the HackRF is another option if you want to eventually do transmitting experiments too, its way wider coverage but the noise figure isnt great so for pure receiving the RSPplay stuff and even a decent rtl beats it. just throwing that out there since you didnt mention it personally i run an RSP1A with SDR++ now instead of SDRuno and it runs a lot smoother on my old laptop, SDRuno always felt kinda bloated to me. anyway point being the software matters almost as much as the hardware once youre past the rtl-sdr level

oh man this brings back memories. my first activation wasnt even a drill it was an actual windstorm event and i had the same deer-in-headlights moment when net control asked me to relay a message and i had to ask them to repeat it twice because i was writing too slow. nobody made me feel bad about it but i definitely drove home that night thinking i needed to actually practice not just study. the thing that helped me most was volunteering to be net control on our local weekly 2m net. even though its just a check-in net and pretty low stakes, you still have to manage the flow, handle lids who talk over each other, log things in real time. after doing that for a few months the procedural stuff started to feel automatic. ICS wise honestly just pull up ICS 213 forms and practice filling them out while listening to a net, pretend you're relaying what you hear. sounds silly but it builds the muscle memory. the fact that you showed up at all puts you way ahead of half the roster on most ARES groups lol

so ive been on the air more than usual this past few weeks, mostly just scanning around 40m in the evenings and honestly just enjoying the band noise. not really chasing DX or anything, just kind of... listening. picked up a few ragchews with some guys in the midwest and one guy in ontario who had a really nice signal. its weird how sometimes just sitting there with a cup of coffee and the rig on is enough you know anybody else go through phases like this where youre not really trying to accomplish anything just kind of hanging around the bands

yeah just say your callsign when net control asks for check-ins, thats really it. i was so nervous my first time i said it way too fast and had to repeat myself but nobody cared. just go for it next tuesday, worst case net control asks you to repeat and thats not a big deal at all

okay so i just got my tech license about three weeks ago and ive been trying to get on the local 2m repeater. i can hear people on it fine but when i key up nobody seems to hear me, or at least nobody responds. i looked up the repeater on repeaterbook and it shows a CTCSS tone of 100.0 hz. i programmed that into my baofeng as the transmit tone but im not sure if i also need to set it as the receive tone or if thats something different entirely. also i noticed on the repeaterbook listing it says the repeater requires the tone to access it but then i saw somewhere that some repeaters use DCS instead? i dont really understand the difference yet. i just want to make sure im not doing something embarrassing before i try calling out again. been sitting here hitting the PTT button and getting nothing back and i cant tell if its my radio, my programming, or just that nobody is monitoring at the time i try. any help appreciated, this stuff is way more confusing than the license exam made it seem

so ive been listening to the local 2m net for a few weeks now and i keep wanting to check in but honestly im not 100% sure of the procedure. like i know you wait for the net control to ask for check-ins but sometimes he says something like "any traffic or late check-ins" and im not sure if thats when i jump in or if i already missed my window. last tuesday i keyed up and i think i stepped on someone because net control said "you were doubling with another station" and i felt terrible about it. nobody was mean about it but i was pretty embarrassed. also is there a standard way to give your call when checking in? ive heard some people just say their call once, some people say it phonetically, some people say their call and their name and location. is there a right way or does it depend on the net? i dont want to be the guy who does it wrong every single time lol

oh man yeah i do this all the time. honestly sometimes its more relaxing than actually getting on and trying to work someone. 40m in the early morning is something else, you never know whats gonna pop up. i had a whole cup go cold last week because i was too into listening to some net i never even heard before. not lazy at all, thats just part of the hobby i think.

i built almost the exact same thing last spring, PVC center and everything. mine was reading high too and i ended up trimming like 4 inches off each side before it settled down near resonance. but the guy above is right about the balun thing, i added a coax choke after the fact and the SWR actually dropped a bit on its own which was kinda surprising. the feedline was definitely doing something it shouldnt have been. also 30 feet isnt a ton of height for 40m, the angle of the legs on an inverted V affects the impedance too so it might not hit 50 ohms perfectly even when its resonant. some people use a 4:1 balun for inverted V's for that reason but honestly at 1.8 i wouldnt stress too much, just key up and make some contacts and see how it performs. you can always tinker more later.

yeah what he said. i remember my first activation was a real weather event, not even a drill, and i was terrified i'd mess something up. turned out my job was basically just relaying resource requests between two nets and logging traffic and it was actually kind of boring for long stretches and then suddenly really busy for like 20 minutes then boring again. the waiting is the part nobody tells you about. bring snacks and something to do in the quiet periods but stay off your phone during active net time obviously. and make sure your batteries are topped off the night before, not the morning of.

i was in the same spot maybe six months ago lol. tech for two years just sitting there doing nothing on 2m basically. passed general on like my second try, first time i ran out of time which was embarasing but whatever. the math questions are the ones that got me, theres a couple where you actually have to punch numbers into a calculator so i'd practice those specifically. everything else is pretty much memorizable if you just do the practice tests over and over. took me maybe three weeks of studying on and off. once you get it the HF stuff is pretty wild compared to what we had as techs. first time i made a contact on 40m to someone like 800 miles away on a wire antenna in my backyard i kind of couldnt believe it worked

yeah the third party thing tripped me up too when i was studying. basically just dont hand the mic to someone unlicensed and walk away, you gotta be there supervising the whole time. i dont think most new hams ever really run into an issue with it unless theyre doing something like message handling for served agencies or whatever

Most experienced hams try to stay at least a few kHz inside the band edges, and it's always better to err on the side of caution. Radios can drift in frequency as they warm up, and calibration errors can push your signal outside the authorized range.

yeah i had the same question when i first got licensed. what helped me was just downloading Part 97 and ctrl+f-ing my specific questions, its actually more readable than people make it sound. the privileges section (97.301 i think?) lays out exactly where you can operate by license class. as a general you have a pretty decent chunk of HF but there are still some sub-bands that are extra class only so its worth double checking your radio's memory channels if you have any programmed in. the enforcement thing is kind of a gray area honestly. i think the bigger risk isnt even an FCC fine, its just getting called out on frequency by other hams who are watching for that stuff, especially on the lower HF bands. some of those guys are very... attentive

im pretty new to ARES, just joined a few months ago, and I havent been through a full drill yet but my EC mentioned we have one coming up in the spring. reading this is kind of making me nervous about showing up underprepared lol. whats the bare minimum someone in my position should have in a go-bag for something like this? i have my HT and a spare battery but thats about it honestly

so i was just sitting down with my coffee last tuesday morning kind of half paying attention to the rig and suddenly 28mhz just exploded with stations, i mean i havent heard 10m like that in probably two years at least. worked a couple guys in south america and even heard some european stations coming through around 28.4 before it faded out again. cycle 25 is really starting to deliver i think. anyway while im at it figured id mention a few things ive seen floating around lately for anyone who hasnt heard — icom apparently confirmed the IC-7760 is actually going to start shipping to dealers sometime this quarter, theres been so much back and forth on that one i honestly stopped believing it but looks like its real this time. also saw that the arrl letter mentioned some changes coming to the vanity callsign fee structure, didnt read the whole thing but worth looking into if thats something you care about. oh and for anyone into satellites, apparently one of the amateur payloads on a recent launch is working but theres some issues with the downlink, the amsat crowd is working on it. keep an eye on their site if youre into that sort of thing. just thought id throw all this out there since its been a slow week on here

i just use an autotuner on a 40m dipole and call it a day. works on everything from 80 to 10 even if the efficiency isnt perfect. fan dipoles are a bit of a rabbit hole in my experience, you spend a weekend trimming and then the humidity changes and youre back at it. might be a different story if you really dont want a tuner in the shack but for attic use id just keep it simple.

So I finally did my first WWFF activation last weekend at a state forest about 45 minutes from home, been wanting to try it for months and just kept putting it off. Set up my KX3 with a random wire thrown up between two trees, nothing fancy, and started calling on 40m around 10am. I honestly wasnt sure if anyone would even respond to a park-to-park or whatever but i had a decent pileup going within maybe 10 minutes which was kind of surreal for me since im used to just ragchewing on the local repeater. Managed 47 QSOs over about two hours before the rain came in and I had to pack it up. Got the reference logged on WWFF Watch which was cool to see. My question is about the 44 QSO minimum for an activation to count — do partial activations where you dont hit 44 still show up in the database or do they just not count at all? I had a previous attempt at a different reference where I only got like 31 before my battery died and I always wondered if that one did anything. Also does anyone bother with digital modes for these? wondering if FT8 would help rack up contacts faster or if that takes away from the fun a bit

ok so i just passed my technician exam last week (finally) and now im trying to figure out what HT to actually buy. ive been reading reviews for like three days straight and im more confused than when i started. everyone seems to have a different opinion and i cant tell if the cheap baofeng stuff is actually fine or if im going to regret it later. my plan is mostly just to get on local repeaters and maybe do some simplex with a buddy who lives about 6 miles away. nothing fancy. budget is probably around 50-80 bucks but i could stretch to maybe 150 if theres a really good reason to. i saw the yaesu ft-60 mentioned a bunch but also the wouxun kg-uv9g and honestly i dont even know what half the features people are talking about actually matter for what i want to do. like does APRS on an HT actually matter if youre just starting out? and whats the deal with the chirp software thing, do i need that no matter what radio i get? any advice appreciated, i dont even know what questions i should be asking at this point

good question and dont feel bad, this trips up a lot of newly upgraded generals. so the short version is: the FCC Part 97 rules are the actual law, the ARRL band plan is basically a gentlemans agreement on top of that. for 40m as a general you can do phone from 7.175 to 7.300 MHz, that is your legal phone allocation. below 7.175 down to 7.025 is CW and data for generals, and 7.000 to 7.025 is extra class only for CW. now the band edge thing is real and important. the rule is your signal has to stay within the allocation, not just your carrier. so if youre running SSB your carrier needs to be far enough from the edge that your sidebands dont spill over. most people say stay at least 3 kHz inside the edge to be safe, so for upper sideband on 40m phone you wouldnt want to go below about 7.178 to leave yourself room. some radios also have a little frequency error so that gives you some buffer too. the region 2 thing your club buddy mentioned is about ITU regions, north and south america are region 2 and the 40m allocation is a bit different than region 1 which is europe. thats why sometimes you hear european stations down around 7.100 on phone, that is legal for them but not for us.

yeah im pretty new too, only been licensed since january, and i had the exact same worries when i started checking into nets. what helped me was finding a net that specifically said it was newbie friendly and the net control on that one was super patient about explaining the format at the start of the session. might be worth hunting around for something like that in your area if you havent already. one thing i did wrong early on was not listening to the whole preamble at the start because i was nervous and kind of zoning out, and then i missed when they explained how they wanted people to check in that night. so now i make sure im tuned in like 5 minutes early and actually paying attention before the net starts.