Patricia Garcia

yeah what he said about the chart is true, i wasted probably two weeks doing that and had to basically start over. i use justa app called hammorese or something like that, cant remember the exact name but you can find it easy enough. one thing nobody told me was to practice copying by hand writing it out, not typing, something about writing it slows you down enough that your brain processes it better i guess. im still only at like 8wpm after 6 months but i only practice like 3 times a week so thats on me honestly

oh man i went through exactly this about two years ago. the tension thing is real — if the paddle is too light you end up making contacts you didnt mean to and it throws everything off. i actually tightened mine up quite a bit more than what felt "right" at first and it made a huge difference because it forced me to be more deliberate with each squeeze rather than just kind of resting my fingers on the contacts. on the mode A vs mode B thing, honestly for most people starting out it doesnt matter that much. mode B just completes the element that was in progress when you release, mode A cuts it off. some guys swear by one or the other but i spent way too long worrying about it. just pick one and leave it. i wouldnt go back to a straight key personally. i mean nothing wrong with straight keys and some ops love them but if your goal is paddle sending then just stick with the paddle and put in the reps. the muscle memory takes time but it does click eventually. also try slowing the keyer speed down a little more than feels comfortable, like to the point where you think its too slow, and focus on clean characters. speed comes on its own after the accuracy is there.

so ive had the 7300 for about three weeks now and figured id share some impressions since i spent way too long reading threads like this before buying it. coming from an old FT-450D which honestly served me well for years but the display was always kind of an afterthought on that thing. first thing — the waterfall is genuinely useful and not just a gimmick like i half expected. i actually find myself catching signals i would have tuned past before just because something catches my eye on the scope. took maybe a day or two to figure out the ref level and range settings to get it looking right for my noise floor but after that its been great. audio is noticeably better both on receive and apparently on transmit too, had a few people comment without me asking which is usually a good sign. the built in tuner handles my 40m dipole no problem though i do have a manual tuner in line for 80 and it obviously wont match everything. one thing thats mildly annoying — the touch screen is fine but i keep accidentally changing things when im writing in the log and my hand brushes the panel. probably a me problem but worth mentioning. also the fan kicks on more than i expected even at 50w but its not loud, just noticeable in a quiet shack. anyway for what theyre going for used these days i think its still a solid buy, mine came from a silent key estate and was basically mint. curious if anyone else has opinions on the twin PBT versus the older style analog IF shift — i kind of miss just having a single knob to grab honestly

so ive had the 7300 for about three weeks now and figured id share some impressions since i spent way too long reading threads like this before buying it. coming from an old FT-450D which was fine but the waterfall on that thing was basically useless compared to what icom did with the 7300's touchscreen panadapter. first thing i noticed is the receive is just noticeably cleaner on 40 and 80 meters, my local noise floor hasnt changed obviously but im pulling out signals i would have missed before. the real time spectrum scope is genuinely useful and not just a gimmick, i actually use it to find open spots before calling CQ instead of just spinning the dial forever like i used to do. one thing that bugged me out of the box was the TX audio — people were telling me i sounded a little thin on SSB. spent an evening messing with the TX equalizer settings in the menu and got it sounding much better, there's a lot of adjustability in there if you dig into it. also had to turn the mic gain down from the default, it was set way too hot for my shure SM58 that i repurposed for radio use. overall really happy with it. shack is just a desk in the spare bedroom, running it into a homebrew off-center fed dipole at about 25 feet which isnt ideal but it gets on the air. curious if anyone else went through the audio adjustment thing or if thats just me.

yeah the stock mic on the 7300 is fine honestly, its not gonna be the main culprit. the thing that gets most people is the TX bandwidth being set too wide — on SSB you generally want to keep it somewhere around 100hz on the low end and maybe 2800 or 2900 on the high side. if you go wider than that youre just adding low frequency rumble and high end hiss that makes you sound muddy and also wastes power outside the passband nobody can hear anyway. the ALC thing is real important too. you dont want the ALC working hard at all on SSB — if its constantly getting hammered your audio is gonna be compressed in a bad way and start sounding distorted. mic gain should be set so the ALC only just barely moves on peaks. like a slight nudge, not pinning it. the built in compressor on the 7300 is actually decent but i'd leave it off until you get the basics dialed in, then add maybe 3-5db of compression if you want a bit more punch for pileups. start without it.

the noise thing with generators is real, been there. we had one exercise where somebody parked a honda eu2200 about 15 feet from the operating position and it was getting into everything, ended up being a ground loop issue more than actual RF but still a pain to sort out mid-event. one thing worth thinking about with the inverted V off the spiderbeam - if the terrain is at all uneven watch your guy lines, i lost a pole last spring because the ground was softer than it looked and i hadnt staked it properly. 31ft of fiberglass coming down on your feedline is not a great time. might be obvious but yeah. good luck with the exercise

so ive been listening on HF for a few weeks now and i keep seeing people write things like QSL and QRZ and QTH in logs and online and i honestly have no idea what half of them mean. i found a list somewhere but it was like 100+ codes and i cant tell which ones people actually use vs which ones are just historical or whatever. like do people still use all of them or just a handful. also whats the difference between using them on voice vs CW because i heard someone say you dont say the actual Q code out loud on SSB but then i heard someone do exactly that so im confused also seeing abbreviations that arent Q codes at all like 73 and 88 and stuff, are those part of the same system or totally separate thing

i was in the exact same spot about 8 months ago and went with the baofeng just to try it out. its fine for hitting repeaters, me and my buddy use ours for simplex when we go hiking and it works. honestly the biggest annoyance is just getting it programmed the way you want, chirp makes it easier but theres still a learning curve. if money is tight just get the baofeng and upgrade later when you know what you actually want in a radio

yeah start longer and trim, always. the formula gives you a starting point but real wire in real environments is never exactly what the math says. for 40m i usually start with the full half wavelength calculation using the 468 constant and then add maybe 3-4 inches per side before i make the first cut. then check SWR with an analyzer, trim a little at a time from each end equally. you cant put wire back on once its gone. for the center insulator honestly anything non-conductive that holds up outside works. ive used sections of cutting board, PVC end caps drilled out, even some thick nylon cutting board material. the commercial ones are nice but not necessary at all. the coax connector is probably your most important joint - seal it up real well with self-amalgamating tape after you solder everything, water getting in there will mess up your day eventually. on the choke - for 40m with RG-8X people usually do around 8-10 turns at maybe 6 inch diameter, so like a 6 inch coil form. some guys use a piece of PVC. its not super critical but do something, an unbalanced feedline against a dipole will cause all kinds of RF in the shack issues, trust me ive been there.

welcome to the hobby, getting ahead of yourself is basically a ham radio tradition so dont worry about that. the jump to HF is worth it when you're ready, just dont let anyone talk you into spending a fortune right away. plenty of decent used rigs out there. congrats on the first QSO, the nervousness never fully goes away honestly, i still get a little twitchy calling CQ sometimes and ive had my general for like six years

im in a similar boat actually, been lurking on the 2m EME reflector for like a year trying to figure out if my setup would even be worth it. one thing i keep seeing mentioned is system noise temperature being almost as important as antenna gain, like a mediocre preamp can kill you even if the antenna is decent. the low noise preamp right at the feedpoint seems to be where people say dont cheap out. there was a good thread on the moonbouncers groups.io about this a while back if you havent found that community yet, pretty active and people are pretty helpful to newcomers

yeah same thing happened to me when i first started. i actually printed out a little cheat sheet with the phonetic alphabet and kind of a rough script for checking in and kept it next to me the first few times. felt kind of silly but it helped a lot. most net controls are super patient with newer folks, its kind of part of the deal with those nets anyway.

ok so i passed my general back in March and ive been mostly just listening on HF since then trying to figure out where i actually have privileges. i pulled up the part 97 band plan thing and honestly its kind of a mess to read, like the footnotes reference other footnotes and i keep getting lost. my main question is about 40 meters. i see people talking below 7.175 all the time and im not sure if thats where i should be or if thats extra class territory. also someone at my club told me i cant do any digital modes on certain parts of the band but i dont remember which parts or why. is there like a plain english version of this somewhere or do i have to just memorize the whole chart

yeah the venue thing is real, they moved it out of the fairgrounds from what i heard. a guy in my local club said something about it being at a different location but honestly i dont remember where he said. might be worth just emailing the club directly, sometimes those old websites are dead but someone still checks the inbox

yeah JS8Call activity is definitely thinner than FT8 but its not dead, you just have to know when to look. i find 40m in the evenings (my local evening, so like 0100-0300z) has the most going on, and there's a pretty active group on 20m during the day too, around 14.078. the thing that helped me was joining the JS8Call groups.io list because people actually announce when they're going to be on and sometimes coordinate skeds. the other thing is JS8Call has these 'heartbeat' and relay features that make it more of a mesh-ish network thing than a point to point qso mode, so sometimes you're seeing traffic that's being relayed through other stations and it looks quieter than it is. its a totally different operating philosophy from FT8 and once that clicks it gets more interesting. i've had some genuinely good ragchews through it, like actual back and forth about antennas and stuff, which you're never gonna get from FT8's 15 second slots. and yeah PSK31 is pretty much on life support at this point, which is sad. i still call CQ on 14.070 occasionally and sometimes get an answer but it's nothing like 2008-2012 when that whole slice of spectrum was just wall to wall signals. FT8 absolutely wrecked it.

yeah i had the exact same problem with mine when i started out, took me like two weeks to figure out the menu was set to the wrong tone option. also worth checking — some repeaters around here are linked to other repeaters through systems like IRLP or Allstar and if someone is in the middle of a linked QSO across multiple sites it can seem like nobody is responding to you when really theyre just busy with a contact somewhere else in the state or whatever. might be worth listening longer before calling just to make sure the repeater is actually clear.

I went last year for the first time and didnt really know what to expect but it was pretty fun, talked to a bunch of people and picked up a cheap handheld that I still use. didnt see a ton of HF gear but there were a few tables with random coax and connectors and stuff which I needed anyway

Watch your VFO harmonic suppression when you integrate the Si5351. Round frequency choices make calibration easier, and keep harmonics away from ham bands as much as possible. The synthesizer approach gives excellent stability compared to LC oscillators.

I started with a Baofeng UV-5R for unbeatable value - owned several over the years with reliable performance. But honestly, if your budget allows for the FT5DR, go for it! The digital capability and waterproofing will serve you well for years. Don't forget to budget for a programming cable too.

FO-29 has been pretty unreliable for a while now, the transponder only gets turned on periodically by JARL so unless you're checking their announcements you might just be hitting it during a dead window. AO-73 (funcube-1) is more predictable but the linear transponder mode is also scheduled, it defaults to its beacon/telemetry mode a lot of the time. AMSAT-UK posts the schedule but it still feels like a guessing game sometimes. for the doppler workflow without automation — what works for me is to basically set the uplink and forget it mostly, and just chase the downlink. your own signal coming back will drift but as long as you keep tuning to hear yourself you're roughly in the right place. the trick is not trying to correct both VFOs simultaneously, pick one to chase and stick with it. took me an embarassingly long time to figure that out. also gpredict can drive a rig directly if you set up hamlib, even without motors on the antenna that half of the automation is huge.

yeah im planning on going, our club usually grabs a table inside to do license testing and hand out info. the tailgate thing i think they went to a small fee last year, maybe $10 or something, not sure if thats still the case. worth checking the clubs website. last time i scored a pretty decent antenna tuner for like $20 so i always make the trip even if i dont buy anything big

CQ WW is honestly pretty intense for a first contest just because of the sheer volume of activity and trying to figure out mults on the fly. what i usually tell newer folks is to try the ARRL Sweepstakes first — its just the 48 states plus Canadian provinces as your multipliers so its a bit more manageable mentally. or even just pick a slower contest like a state QSO party to get your feet wet with logging software before you're trying to copy calls at 30wpm in a pileup. for N1MM just watch a few youtube videos on the basic setup, its not as scary as it looks once you get the exchange fields configured right. the F-key macros are what save your sanity during a real run. and yeah SOTA is its own thing, more of an awards program than a contest really but it does get competitive especially on the leaderboards. the event youre probably thinking of is the International SOTA Day or maybe the SOTA Winter Activation period, both happen around that time of year. check the sotadata.org.uk site, all the activations log there and the calendar should have upcoming events listed.

i built almost the same thing last year except i only did 40 and 20, skipped 15 because i was lazy honestly. had the same swr issue on 20 and never fully resolved it, just accepted 1.8:1 and called it good since my rig handles that fine with the internal tuner yours sounds like it came out better than mine did. might try adding the 15m element now that you mention it worked out

hackrf clone from aliexpress actually works fine for most stuff fwiw, been running one for 8 months no issues. but yeah if you mainly want to listen and not transmit the RSP1A makes more sense, the hackrf receive side is not its strong suit compared to dedicated rx-only units.

so i passed my technician exam on tuesday and my callsign showed up in the FCC database like two days later which i wasnt expecting that fast honestly. anyway i figured id just try the local repeater and see what happened. keyed up, said my call and that i was a new ham looking for a contact and within maybe 30 seconds some guy came back to me. we talked for like 20 minutes about antennas and he gave me a ton of advice about getting on HF eventually. i was kind of nervous the whole time but it went fine. my signal report was 5 and 9 which i guess is good? still learning what all that means. the radio is just a baofeng uv-5r that i borrowed from a friend until i figure out if this is gonna stick for me but it worked fine for the repeater. pretty stoked about the whole thing. anyone else remember their first contact being kind of nerve wracking