Karen Walker

nice work getting it on the air. i built a similar kit last year and the park operating thing is honestly addictive, theres something about making a contact on a rig you built yourself with a wire in a tree that just feels different. what antenna length are you running with that 9:1? i had some weird tuning issues with mine until i figured out the wire length was causing problems with my specific tuner situation

okay so ive been interested in ham radio for a while now, like maybe a year or two, mostly because my neighbor has a big antenna setup and he let me listen in once and i thought it was really cool. anyway i finally decided i want to actually do this and get licensed but honestly i dont even know where to start. like do i need to take a class or can i just study on my own? and how hard is the test actually, i'm not a super technical person but im not totally clueless either. i looked at some stuff online but theres so many different websites and i cant tell which ones are actually good. also does it cost money to take the test and how long does it usually take before you can actually get on the air after you pass

so ive been at this for about eight months now and im kind of stuck. started learning morse back in the spring, got to around 5wpm pretty quickly with just doing the alphabet over and over, felt great about it. but ever since then ive been spinning my wheels trying to break through and actually get faster and it just isnt clicking the way the early stuff did. im using the Koch method now, well sort of -- i started with it late so i already knew all the characters but i went back and started the Koch sequence anyway because everyone says thats the right way. im doing maybe 20-30 minutes a day with LCWO and some Just Learn Morse Code on my phone during lunch. copy is still pretty rough past like 8 or 9wpm, i start missing letters and then i fall behind trying to figure out what i missed and then i miss the next thing and it just snowballs. has anyone actually gone through this and come out the other side at 20wpm? feels like a long way off right now. curious what made the difference for you, whether it was a specific program or just more time on the air or what. im not in any rush but id like to get there eventually, hoping to do some actual qsos on cw before the end of the year.

SO2R is absolutely worth it but yeah the setup is not trivial, especially with antennas that close. the BPF situation is the first thing to solve — without good bandpass filters youre just going to have the second radio deafened by your TX on the first one and vice versa. 4O3A or Array Solutions filters are the go-to but theyre not cheap like you said. some guys build their own with decent results. on the rate question, honestly SO2R pays off most in the mid-contest doldrums for me. when the rate on your run frequency is dropping off youre not just sitting there waiting, youre working a mult or grabbing a new call on the other radio. the really skilled SO2R ops can maintain a run on one radio while doing full S&P on the other which is kind of insane to watch but takes a long time to get comfortable with. starting out youll probably just use the second radio to grab mults during QSB or band changes and thats already a big improvement. K3 plus 570 is actually a pretty workable combo since you can slave the 570 off the K3 for some of the control stuff depending on how you set it up.

honestly same boat here, been licensed about 8 months and nets still make me a little anxious. what helped me was just listening to a lot of different nets before jumping in, which sounds like you already did. also writing down what i was going to say before keying up. feels silly but it helps.

i made that exact switch maybe two years ago. for airband and weather sats honestly you probably wont notice much. but HF is a different story, direct sampling always felt like a compromise to me and the RSP1A just handles it properly. if HF is bugging you then yeah its worth it, if youre happy with what youre doing now maybe wait and put the money toward an upconverter for the RTL instead, that helps a lot too and costs less. just another option to consider before pulling the trigger on new hardware.

the channel selector is pulling propagation data and comparing it against reported frequencies from the gateways, so closer isnt always better especially on HF. the activity indicator is basically telling you when that gateway last had a successful session, not whether its on right now. if a gateway shows activity from the last hour or two its usually a decent sign but honestly the best way is just to try a few and see what your SNR looks like when vara starts the handshake. on the message sitting in outbox thing, yeah that can happen. winlink isnt really a push system, your messages actually get forwarded through the winlink network once you connect to any gateway and complete a session. so if you connected but the session dropped before it finished the transfer the message just stays queued. once you get a clean complete session it should clear out. you can see in the session log whether the transfer actually completed or if it errored out partway through. one thing worth checking is your VARA settings, if your bandwidth is set too wide for your license class or the band conditions that can definitely cause timeouts. i run 500hz bandwidth on 40m during the day and it connects way more reliably than when i had it wider.

so i heard the Tri-County ARC is putting on their annual hamfest again, i think its the second weekend in april but dont quote me on that. been a few years since i went and last time i scored a pretty decent MFJ tuner for like 20 bucks so im definitely thinking about making the trip. anyone else planning on going? also does anyone know if theyre doing the swap tables again or is it mostly vendors this year

so ive been chasing T32 for about two years now and last weekend the T32AZ operation was running and the pileup was absolutely insane, like 3-4 khz wide on 20m and i could barely hear the dx through the noise. tried the usual stuff for the first hour or so, calling on their exact freq, calling a bit up, nothing. just getting buried. what finally worked was listening way more carefully to where they were actually coming back to. took me probably 20 minutes of just listening before i noticed they were consistently pulling out stations ending in numbers, like they'd work a W3, then a W5, then come back to a W4. once i figured out roughly what part of the split they were fishing in i started placing my call just a touch above where the last guy they worked was transmitting. not exactly, just like 200-300 hz above. also dropped my power slightly which sounds backwards but i think i was overdriving into the pileup and just adding to the mush. running about 600w on the amp instead of pushing the full legal limit. picked them up on the third call after that. curious if anyone else has had luck with similar stuff or if i just got lucky with timing. also does anyone actually use the partial call technique where you only send the last two letters? ive heard mixed things about that one.

just to add to what the other guy said - when i was first getting this going i wasted probably three evenings because i had VARA set up as VARA FM instead of VARA HF, total facepalm moment. they show up as different session types in Express and the names are close enough to miss if youre clicking around fast. also 14 mhz during the day can be hit or miss depending on your location and where the gateway is, i usually have better luck on 40m for regional stuff. theres usually a few RMS gateways in most areas on 7.xxx that are pretty reliable.

so ive been on HF for about 4 years now mostly doing SSB on 20 and 40 and ive noticed theres this huge gap between what actually matters for good audio and what guys spend all their time tweaking. thought id throw this out there and see what other people think because i genuinely cant tell sometimes if im missing something or if half the stuff people do is placebo. the biggest thing i noticed is mic gain. like everyone talks about compression ratios and EQ curves and whatever but if your mic gain is way too hot youre just splattering all over the place and no amount of downstream processing fixes that. i spent like 6 months with my gain too high because i was told to drive it hard for more talk power and honestly it was making me sound like garbage. turned it down until the ALC was barely moving on peaks and suddenly people started commenting my audio was way cleaner. the other thing is the mic itself and positioning. ive tried the stock mic that came with my radio, a heil PR-781, and just a random dynamic i had laying around from a PA system. the heil is nice but honestly the positioning matters more than which mic it is. too close and you get all this bass buildup and plosives, too far and you lose presence and start cranking the gain to compensate which brings us back to the first problem. anyway curious what other people have found actually moves the needle vs stuff thats kind of theoretical. im specifically wondering about audio bandwith settings on the transmit side — my radio lets me adjust the TX filter and i have no idea what setting is actually optimal or if its even audible on the receiving end.

so ive been running ft8 for about a year now and yeah its great for working dx and all that but honestly it feels like im just watching a robot make contacts for me half the time. started looking into js8call because at least it seems like you can actually type words to another person which is kind of the whole point of ham radio for me personally my question is whether the weak signal capability is actually comparable to ft8 or if im giving up a lot by switching. i know the bandwidth and timing are different and ft8 is like -24dB or whatever but js8call supposedly gets down pretty low too. running an ic-7300 into a fan dipole so nothing exotic, mostly 40 and 20m. curious if anyone runs both or has strong feelings either way. also does js8call have a decent user base at this point or is it kind of a ghost town on the bands

yeah happens to me every summer honestly, something about the heat and the band conditions being kind of garbage just kills the motivation. i usually pick something specific to chase, like last year i decided i was gonna work all the county hunters on 10m and that gave me enough of a goal to stay interested for a couple months. sometimes you just need a thing to point at

had the 7900 in my silverado for about four years and honestly it just works, nothing fancy but thats kind of the point. the faceplate separation cable is long enough to tuck the body under the seat which keeps everything clean. only gripe is the display isnt the easiest to read in bright sunlight but you get used to it. never used D-STAR enough to say if its worth the price difference, the one repeater near me never has anyone on it so that kind of killed my interest. if your local D-STAR machine is actually active that changes things though, id probably ask around and see if anyone in your area actually uses it regularly before paying the premium. sometimes those repeaters are technically up but nobody's actually keying them up.

yeah the first few passes are pretty chaotic, thats just how it is. the thing that helped me most was honestly just listening only for the first 3 or 4 passes, dont even try to transmit. get gpredict doing the doppler correction automatically if your radio supports CAT, but if not just watch the predicted downlink frequency and manually nudge it every 20-30 seconds or so. on a 7 min pass youre looking at maybe 10 kHz total swing on the 2m downlink roughly, more shift right at AOS and LOS, flattens out near max elevation. also the arrow antenna is fine but if youre trying to hold it and tune the radio at the same time thats where it gets really rough. some people prop the antenna on a camera tripod for lower passes so they have a free hand. not perfect but helps. give yourself maybe 10 passes just to listen and get comfortable with where signals actually sit in the passband before you start calling CQ up there

yeah the listening thing is so underrated. i've watched guys on the SDR waterfall just hammering away transmitting constantly and they're all on top of each other. the DX cant pull anything out of that wall of noise. patience is genuinely the skill in pileups and most people including me for a long time just dont have it for SSB specifically one thing that helped me was dropping power slightly and cleaning up my audio. counterintuitive but a punchy well-processed signal actually cuts better than running the amp wide open and having everything splatter. my IC-7300 has that built in processing and once i got it dialed right my pileup rate improved noticeably. also on SSB i try to transmit a bit shorter than everyone else — half second ID, pause, listen. most people send their call like three times and by the time they're done the DX has already moved on

N1MM really isnt as bad as it looks once you just open it and start clicking around. the interface is ugly but it works great. for CQ WW the exchange is just signal report and CQ zone so theres not a lot to remember, zone 5 if youre in the US northeast i think, check the rules page it tells you exactly what zone you're in. also worth joining the CQ WW reflector or checking 3830scores.com after the contest, reading other peoples soapbox comments is actually really motivating especially the little pistol guys who made surprising contact totals with modest setups. you'll see plenty of people who did fine with wire antennas.

Yeah I'm stuck around the same speed! Been using morse mania app and ham morse on my phone during lunch breaks. What helped me a bit was not writing everything down, just trying to copy in my head. Also started listening to actual cw qsos on 40m even though i only catch like 30% - at least its real conversations instead of just random letters Still feels impossible sometimes though

first one is always a little chaotic feeling but honestly thats fine, you learn more in one real activation than like six tabletops. when you get to the EOC just check in with your EC or the net control running things and they'll slot you in. most of the time for a severe weather event you end up doing message handling between served agencies or logging weather spotter reports, nothing too crazy. biggest thing i'd say is dont freelance, wait to be tasked. EOC staff get weird if hams start doing stuff nobody asked them to do, even with good intentions. also bring food and water for yourself, they almost never have anything and you might be there six hours you'll be fine. the fact that you prepped your go bag and know the ICS forms already puts you ahead of some folks who've been in ARES for years honestly

the whine changing with RPM is almost always alternator noise getting into the audio somehow. a few things to check — first make sure your radio chassis is grounded to the vehicle chassis with a short heavy wire, not just relying on the power cable ground back to the battery. sometimes that alone fixes it. second, try wrapping your mic cable a few times through a ferrite toroid right at the radio end, that can kill a lot of RFI pickup on the cable itself. also check if the noise is on receive or just transmit, or both. if its mostly on transmit its often the mic line picking something up. if its on receive too then youve got RF or noise getting into the front end somehow, maybe antenna cable routing too close to something noisy under the hood or in the cab. the mag mount being temporary might also mean the ground plane isnt great which can cause all kinds of weirdness on VHF/UHF. a proper NMO through the roof will almost certainly improve things a bunch once you get there.

so im a tech who just upgraded to general back in march and i keep hearing about all these big contests and honestly i dont even know what order to try them in or how they work. like i know CQ WW is supposed to be huge and ARRL Field Day is a thing but i wasnt really licensed yet when field day happened this year so i missed it. somebody at my local club mentioned SOTA and i thought that was a whole different thing? like hiking with radios? is that even a contest or more of an activity thing anyway i guess my main question is — for someone just getting their feet wet with hf contesting, which one would you actually recommend jumping into first. i have a pretty basic setup, IC-7300 and a wire dipole in the backyard, nothing fancy. i dont want to get completely steamrolled my first time and give up on the whole thing

Koch method exposes you to full-speed Morse from day one, starting with just two characters played at full speed. Farnsworth involves learning at faster speed with longer spaces between characters - it helps you get accustomed to the rhythm without feeling overwhelmed. I personally used Koch with LCWO.net and it worked great.

Yeah I noticed that too on the 1430z pass. Had to tune down quite a bit to find signals. Could be the satellite is having thermal issues or something with the reference oscillator. These cubesats dont have the most stable freq references to begin with

so i passed my general last year and decided i really wanted to get into CW properly, not just the bare minimum. started with the Koch method back in january using lcwo.net and got up to about 13wpm pretty quickly honestly, like within the first couple months i was feeling good about it. but now its been like 3 or 4 months and i just cannot seem to push past 13. i can copy most characters fine when im relaxed but the second i try to bump the speed up even a little bit things start falling apart and i panic and lose my place. ive been doing about 20-30 minutes a day which i know maybe isnt enough but its what i can fit in. i also started listening to W1AW code practice on 7.074 or wherever it is, the slow speed ones, and that helps a little but im not sure im doing this the right way anymore. did anyone else hit this kind of plateau around 13-15wpm? my actual goal is to get to 20 so i can have real ragchew QSOs on 40 meters without sounding like an idiot. any suggestions welcome, even if its just to tell me im being impatient

so ive been doing these hilltop activations with my HT and a slim jim rolled up in my pack and its been fine for local repeaters but i want to start trying some simplex contacts at distance, maybe some weak signal stuff eventually. been looking at building or buying a small yagi for 2m and wondering if anyone has actually done a comparison between just running a good collinear like an arrow or a teletilt vs a 5 or 6 element yagi pointed at the horizon. the thing is i dont always know where the other stations are going to be so a directional antenna feels like it could be a pain to manage on a summit, especially if its windy. but the gain difference is obviously real. im using a kenwood th-d74 which is a decent radio but its still just an HT at the end of the day. wondering if the yagi gain would compensate for the lower power or if i should just focus on getting a better base rig before worrying about antenna upgrades for portable ops