Patricia Garcia

i run a 7300 and love it but fair warning the direct sampling architecture does mean you want a decent bandpass filter if you're anywhere near AM broadcast. took me a while to figure out why i was getting weird artifacts on 160 and it turned out a local AM station was basically walking all over everything. slapped a filter in line and it cleared right up. might not be an issue for you depending on where you are but worth keeping in mind.

Had an eye-opening experience this weekend during our local ARES exercise. We're supposed to conduct regular drills to practice setting up our go-kits, but I realized I hadn't touched mine in about 6 months. Big mistake! Half my coax connectors had corrosion, one of my battery packs was completely dead, and I couldn't find my printed frequency list - had to fumble around trying to remember which repeater was which. Regular training and participation in emergency drills are essential for maintaining readiness and honing skills. The EC wasn't too impressed with my 15-minute setup time either. So my question: how often do you all practice with your kits? Monthly? Quarterly? And what's your checklist for maintenance?

i noticed this too but didnt wanna say anything lol. my buddy on the other side of town says hes hearing plenty so maybe its local interference or something on your end? idk im still pretty new to all this so take that with a grain of salt

ok so i just upgraded to general a few weeks ago and im trying to figure out where i can actually transmit on 40 meters. i know there are band edges and i keep hearing people say stuff like dont operate right on the band edge but i dont really understand why or where exactly the line is. like is 7.125 ok for SSB or is that too close to something? i looked at the arrl band plan chart but honestly it just confused me more because theres the actual FCC allocation and then theres like a "gentlemens agreement" thing that the arrl recommends and i dont know which one i actually have to follow legally vs just as courtesy. also heard something about 7.125 to 7.175 being a phone band for general but then someone on the air said general goes up to 7.300 now? im just trying not to step on anything or operate somewhere im not supposed to

Caught the tail end of it around 1300Z - worked 3 new DXCC entities! Elevated solar activity means more chances to make those elusive DX contacts, even with modest antennas and power levels. The key is to be active and monitor solar conditions. My simple dipole at 30 feet was working like a beam today.

yeah the hidden menu thing on the 7300 is pretty well documented at this point, i wouldnt worry too much about it, icom basically left those options in there and people have been using them for years. the TX bandwidth adjustments especially are just quality of life stuff the mic swap is the real game changer though in my experience. i went through like three different mics before settling on an Electro-Voice 664 through a cloudlifter because i had it lying around and it just works. the 7300 preamp isnt the strongest so giving it a hotter signal cleaned up a lot of noise i was fighting. one thing i'd also look at if you havent is the compressor settings, the built in one on that radio is actually decent if you dial it in carefully, a lot of people crank it too hard and it just sounds pumpy and bad but backed off to like 20-25% it can help intelligibility without wrecking the audio also just throwing this out there, have you checked what the audio looks like on a panadapter or spectrum from someone elses end? sometimes what sounds good to you on the mic doesnt translate the same way over RF and its worth having someone record a clip and send it back so you can actually hear what youre putting out

yeah the hackrf transmit sounds cool until you realize how much work it actually is to do anything useful with it lol. i went that route and spent more time fighting with gnu radio flowgraphs than actually doing anything fun. the receive side is honestly mediocre, my rtl dongle sometimes feels comparable on VHF which says a lot. for satellite work the RSP1A is solid, been using mine with gpredict and a simple eggbeater antenna for NOAA and some cubesats and it pulls in signals the dongle would miss. if linux is your main thing just go with the SoapySDR path like the other guy said, took me maybe an afternoon to sort it out the first time.

yeah the SDR remote thing in RemoteHams is kind of its own deal — its specifically for running an SDR receiver remotely through their network, like you can connect to other peoples SDR nodes that are registered on the platform. the main RemoteHams client/server stuff is more for controlling an actual transceiver at a remote site, which sounds like what you actually want for your shack setup. i ran RCForb for about a year with an IC-7300 before switching over and honestly both work but RCForb felt a little more straightforward to configure the audio routing, RemoteHams has more bells and whistles but i spent a weekend just getting the codec settings right. on a 5-6 Mbps uplink you should be totally fine with either one, audio is not that hungry, its more about jitter and ping consistency than raw bandwidth. if your rural connection has any packet loss though that will kill you regardless of which software you pick.

yeah the cold solder joints on those are pretty common, yaesu QC on that era of radio wasnt exactly stellar. i found two on mine when i did basically the same thing a few years back. the DSP tweaks are worth doing imo, theres a menu setting that lets you narrow the SSB filter down tighter than the default and it makes a noticeable difference on crowded 40m. not a hardware mod really just getting into the deeper menu levels. also i added an external speaker with a better driver and that honestly made more difference to my day-to-day operating than anything else i did hardware-wise, the internal speaker on those is genuinely terrible. for HF i wouldnt bother with the noise blanker mod, the stock one works fine for most stuff. where it falls apart is on strong pulse noise like power line interference and even the mod doesnt totally solve that, you're better off just using a bandpass filter or moving bands honestly.

so ive been licensed for about 8 months now and been using a mag mount on the car and a little rubber duck on my handheld but i want to actually get on HF properly. i dont have a lot of money and honestly i kind of enjoy building stuff so i figured a wire dipole was the obvious starting point. i've been reading the ARRL antenna book (borrowed it from a guy at the club) and i get the basic math, 468 divided by frequency in MHz gives you total length in feet, cut each leg half that. seems simple enough. but here's where i get confused — every source i read says something slightly different about the feedpoint. some say i need a 1:1 balun, some say just feed it directly with coax and not worry about it, some say i need a current balun specifically not a voltage balun. for a basic 40m dipole in my backyard at maybe 25-30 feet up, does it actually matter in practice? like will i notice a real difference or is this one of those things that only matters in a contest station setup also the wire question — i have some leftover 14 gauge solid copper from some house wiring. is that going to be mechanically annoying to work with for an antenna? i've heard stranded is better for outdoor stuff because it flexes more but i have like 80 feet of this 14 gauge just sitting there

I went through this process last year for my similar station. The bulletin outlines several evaluation methods, and most hams will probably pass using one of the easier approaches rather than complicated measurements. Start with the simple power density equations in OET Bulletin 65 - they're conservative but straightforward to use.

yeah the self spotting thing is kind of essential honestly, once you start using SOTAwatch and just throw your spot up there the pile starts pretty quick usually. i use the goTenna or just cell service if i have any. congrats on the first one though, 4 contacts counts and thats what matters

so this has been bugging me for a few weeks now. picked up an 857d off a local guy, worked fine for the first month or so, then started doing this thing where it just drops output randomly. like ill be mid-qso and the power just falls off. ALC meter looks normal, SWR is fine on my dummy load, but the watt meter is showing maybe 4-6 watts instead of the 100 im expecting. turning it off and back on sometimes fixes it temporarily, sometimes doesnt. doesnt seem to be heat related because it can happen cold too. ive already reseated the finals connector and checked the PA board visually, nothing obvious jumping out at me. someone in another group mentioned the bias pots drifting on these but i cant find much info on that specifically for the 857. anyone dealt with this before or have a schematic section they can point me to?

honestly the right angle adapter is probably hurting you more than people think, ive seen those things measure pretty bad especially at UHF. coax upgrade will def help but id sort that out at the same time or youll just move the bottleneck around.

So ive been trying to get Winlink Express working for about three weeks now and im at the point where i just want to throw the laptop out the window. Running it through Vara HF on a IC-7300 and everything looks like it should work but every time i try to connect to a gateway it either times out or just sits there saying connecting forever. My setup is pretty straightforward i think — antenna is a end-fed halfwave up about 25 feet, which i know isnt ideal but its what i've got room for. Running Vara FM too on a separate 2m rig for local stuff and that actually works fine. connects to the local RMS node no problem. Its the HF side thats killing me. I went into the RMS list and sorted by distance, picked a few that should be within reasonable range on 40m, and tried connecting. The waterfall looks like im getting something but Vara just never completes the handshake. Is this a propagation issue or am i missing something in the software config? also not totally sure if i need to register the call with Winlink before the RMS will actually accept my connection or if that happens automatically the first time.

im still figuring out my antenna situation so i cant really transmit yet but ive been doing the same thing just listening. its actually a really good way to learn i think, you start to recognize voices and figure out the unwritten rules of how people talk. didnt expect to enjoy just listning as much as i do

yeah this is kind of a classic terrain problem and theres no magic antenna solution that gets around actual geography. what i would do before buying anything is use something like heywhatsthat or radio mobile and actually look at the path profile to those repeaters. sometimes what looks like a bad location isnt quite as bad as it seems if you can squeeze up another 10 feet, other times you really are just in a hole and no collinear is going to fix it. ive seen guys put up 5/8 wave stacks thinking more gain solves everything and it doesnt change a thing because the problem was never antenna gain to begin with. the dual antenna idea the other guy mentioned is solid though, ive done exactly that at a previous qth and it works fine with a cheap coax switch.

yeah part 97 reads like it was written by lawyers for lawyers, totally get the confusion. the short version for tech on VHF/UHF is basically you have full privileges on 2m and 70cm and most of the other VHF/UHF bands, so dont stress too much there. the tricky part is HF — as a tech you get CW only on 80, 40, and 15 meters (very limited segments), and then on 10m you get a chunk of phone between 28.300 and 28.500 MHz plus some data and CW below that. the ARRL has a band plan chart that lays it all out visually and honestly its way easier to read than the actual rules. just google ARRL technician privileges and you should find it. keep that chart handy for a while, most people do. the other thing i'd say is dont overthink the data vs phone vs CW distinction too much right now if youre sticking to 2m FM for starters. just make sure youre within your band and youre fine. the main things part 97 cares about are dont operate without identifying, dont encrypt, dont use the bands for commercial purposes, and stay within your power limits. thats 90% of what you actually need day to day.

Getting back into CW after 20 years away, and looking to upgrade my old Bencher BY-1. I've been reading that dual-lever paddles can be harder to master and contest winners often stick to single-lever to avoid timing mistakes. But I also see that dual-lever with iambic mode can reduce paddle strokes by 11%. Those of you who've tried both, which do you recommend for someone getting back into regular CW operation? Any specific models that shine for learning proper technique?

so anyway i was the same way when i first started, stood by on our club net for like three weeks before i actually checked in because i was nervous about doing it wrong. turns out the net control on ours is super patient and if you mess up the format a little nobody cares. just give it a shot. worst case you have to say your call twice. one thing i'll add -- some nets are directed and some are casual and they run a bit differently. the directed ones are more formal where net control calls the shots and you wait to be called on. casual ones are more like a roundtable where people just take turns. worth knowing which kind yours is before you jump in.

so i finally bit the bullet and built one of those QCX mini kits from QRP Labs and honestly i was kind of bracing for disaster because my soldering hasnt been great lately but it actually came together pretty well. got it aligned and on 40m it's putting out just under 5 watts which i guess is right where it should be. took it out to the park last weekend with a random wire and a 9:1 unun i built a while back and made like 4 contacts in about an hour and a half which felt amazing considering im running the same power as a nightlight basically. one guy in ohio actually came back to me on the first call which i was not expecting at all. anyway my question is more about efficiency and battery stuff. right now im just using a 3s lipo i had from an old rc project, runs the rig fine but i feel like im not thinking about this the right way. like should i be more worried about the mah capacity or the discharge rate for something like this? and is there a point where the voltage dropping off as the battery drains starts to mess with the output power noticeably? i know some rigs are more picky about supply voltage than others but i dont really know where the QCX sits on that. also curious if anyone runs these things with solar, seems like the natural next step for portable ops but i dont know where to start with that

yeah the solar flux number alone doesnt tell you the whole story, thats the thing a lot of people dont realize at first. you also wanna keep an eye on the K-index and the A-index. if the K-index spikes up to like 4 or 5 youre gonna have a rough time on the higher bands even if the flux looks good. geomagnetic disturbances can absolutely kill what should be a great day for DX. i got burned by this so many times before i started checking both. also 20m is kind of tricky because the grey line opening can be really short — like 20-30 minutes sometimes — and if youre not tuned in right at that moment you miss the EU pile up entirely. i started setting an alarm based on the grey line calculator for my QTH and that helped a lot honestly. DXmaps is great but by the time something shows up on there the opening is sometimes already half over.

the N1MM learning curve is real, not gonna sugarcoat it. i went through the same thing when i first started doing serious contesting. but once you get your config dialed in and saved properly you really only do it once and then just load it up each contest. the key message setup is tedious yeah but N1MM's contest-specific stuff like the multiplier tracking and the rate display is just so much better than anything else when you're actually in a pileup trying to figure out if that VK3 is a new mult or not. for the WSJT-X dupe thing, ive seen that happen when the UDP port gets confused if you restart one of the programs without restarting the other. try making sure Log4OM is fully up and listening before you start WSJT-X. also check your ADIF import settings in Log4OM because sometimes it'll import from the WSJT-X log file AND take the UDP feed and you end up with the same QSO twice.

yeah theres no hard rule that says you HAVE to use phonetics every single time, its more of a best practice thing especially when conditions are rough or theres qrm. the reason it exists is pretty simple — letters like M and N, or B and D, or S and F can all sound identical when theres static or youre hitting the edge of someones range. NATO phonetics were designed so each word sounds totally distinct from the others even in bad audio. for a callsign like W1AB or something clean like that people often just rattle it off without phonetics on a local repeater where everyone knows each other and the audio is clear. but if youre doing any kind of HF, or making a contact with someone youve never talked to, or honestly anytime the other op says "say again" — just go phonetic. it saves everyone time in the long run even if it feels a little formal at first. also worth knowing there are some old timers who use non-standard phonetics, like they'll say "New York" instead of November or whatever. technically that works fine but if you stick to NATO youll never be wrong anywhere in the world

yeah what he said about the band edge is right, i learned that the hard way when someone on a net pointed out i was too close to the edge. embarasing. one thing i'll add is dont stress too much about people operating in weird spots, sometimes its DX stations from regions with different allocations, sometimes its just people who dont know better. the 40m digital segment around 7.040-7.060 area gets messy too because people wander in there with SSB which drives the FT8 crowd nuts. anyway just stay a few kHz inside wherever the band plan shows and you'll be fine