Brian Clark

so ive been a tech for about 2 years now and mostly just been doing 2m/70cm stuff, some local repeaters, a little APRS. but ive been getting more curious about HF and everyone keeps telling me to just go get my general already. i downloaded the question pool and honestly some of it looks pretty intimidating, like the electrical theory stuff and the propagation questions. i passed the tech exam without too much trouble but that feels like a long time ago now. my main question is how long did you guys actually study before taking it and is there like a particular section thats really hard that i should pay extra attention to. also wondering if its worth just going straight for extra but thats probably getting ahead of myself lol

yeah what he said about the raw packets is the first thing to look at. i had something similar happen when i first set mine up and it turned out i had the longitude sign wrong, was sending E instead of W and ended up somewhere in europe lol. easy fix once you see the raw data.

i just did this like six weeks ago so its pretty fresh. honestly the part i was most worried about was the filter and oscillator circuit stuff but after going through ham study and just drilling the questions it started making more sense. some of it you can brute force memorize and some of it you really do have to understand why or youll mix up similar questions. as for whether its worth it, i mean i immediately went and worked some dx on 80m in a part of the band i couldnt use before so thats something. probably the bigger thing for me was just feeling like i actually understood my radio better after studying for it, even if half that knowledge fades eventually lol

so I just passed my technician exam last week (finally) and now im trying to figure out what handheld to get. everyone keeps telling me different things. my brother in law says get a baofeng to start out, a guy at the club meeting said dont waste my time with cheap stuff and just get a yaesu or kenwood right away. I honestly dont even know enough to know what questions to ask. the main things I want to do are hit the local repeaters and maybe do some APRS stuff eventually. budget is probably around 150 bucks maybe a little more if it makes a real difference. does dual band matter that much for a beginner or should I not worry about it yet

I just got my General license and I'm hearing these Q codes everywhere but I'm confused about proper usage. When should I use QRL versus QSY? I understand QRL means "is this frequency busy" but I heard someone use it differently on 20m yesterday. And QSY is about changing frequency, right? But do I ask "QSY?" or just say "QSY to 14.205"? Any guidance for a new ham would be appreciated - I don't want to sound like a lid on my first contacts!

so ive been licensed for about 3 months now and i mostly just listen on the local repeater and occasionally key up but every time i try to follow along with a QSO or read posts on here people are throwing around all these abbreviations and i can only figure out like half of them from context. like i know QSL means confirmed or like an acknowledgement card and QTH is your location but then someone will say QRM or QSB and i have no clue. and its not just Q codes either, people say 73 and 88 and OM and YL and i kind of pieced together that 73 is like goodbye but is there a full list somewhere or do people just pick these up over time. also is there a difference between when you use them on CW vs voice because i feel like on the repeater people say them out loud which seems weird if they were originally morse code things

4 contacts is 4 contacts, activation complete. honestly the first one is always a bit of a mess, you learn more from that than from any amount of planning. i did my first POTA and forgot my coax to antenna adapter and just sat there for 45 minutes feeling like an idiot before a guy at the next picnic table let me borrow one. now i have like 4 spares in the bag always. the no-tree summit thing is real, worth carrying a short telescoping mast or even just a longer pole for exactly that situation. once you get the setup dialed in it goes really fast

yeah im kind of in the same boat as you, been licensed about a year and finally got LoTW working a few months ago. the certificate thing is weird but if you just follow the tqsl instructions step by step its not that bad. took me maybe an hour including waiting for the email from arrl to confirm my account. one thing nobody told me that i wish i knew earlier — a lot of the big DX stations upload to LoTW pretty regularly now so your confirmations just kind of show up on their own which is really satisfying. i woke up one morning and had like 30 new confirmed entities i didnt even know were pending

the BCD thing from the 7300 is the way to go, ive been doing something similar but honestly i ended up ditching the band data lines and just parsing the CAT commands directly on the pi instead. the arduino still handles the relay timing but it gets its band info from the pi over serial. felt more flexible to me since i can override it from software without crawling under the desk to rewire anything. one thing i would add — put flyback diodes across your relay coils if that board doesnt already have them. the cheap ones usually do but ive seen a few that dont and the voltage spikes will eventually fry your arduino outputs. learned that one the hard way on a different project, nothing to do with ham radio but same principle applies.

I've been running a local ham radio class and tracking which questions students struggle with most during practice sessions. The pattern is pretty consistent - certain topics in the question pool consistently trip people up. Looking at the data, I see issues with antenna concepts, basic electronics math, and some of the FCC regulation nuances. Has anyone else noticed specific 'gotcha' questions that seem to catch students off guard? RF safety calculations (especially power density)Antenna gain vs. ERP conceptsLicense privileges and band plan details

omg same experience here last week, i was just scanning around and 10m was absolutely packed. i'm pretty new too and had no idea it could sound like that. ended up working like 8 countries in an hour which is way more than i usually manage in a whole weekend lol i downloaded the HamSphere app or actually i think it's just called hamclock that someone on here recommended and it shows the sfi and kp index live which has been really useful for knowing when to even bother turning the radio on for dx. still figuring out what all the numbers mean but it's fun to watch