Robert Miller

so ive been using a cheap rtl-sdr v3 dongle for about a year now, mostly poking around on VHF/UHF stuff, some aircraft with dump1090, that kind of thing. works fine for that. but ive been wanting to get more into HF and honestly the direct sampling mode on the rtl is... not great. it works but its clearly not what that hardware was designed for. been looking at the SDRplay RSP1B and the price isnt crazy but its still like 5-6x what i paid for the rtl dongle. is the difference in actual receiver performance that noticeable? im running SDR# on windows and ive tried SDRuno a little bit but never seriously. a buddy of mine has a HackRF and says its awesome but from what i read the noise figure on that thing is pretty bad compared to a dedicated receiver so i dunno. mostly wanna listen to shortwave, maybe some utilities, eventually decode some digital modes. not really transmitting anything with it. does the SDRplay actually make HF feel like a different experience or am i going to be disappointed for any reason other than hardware

does it happen at the same power level every time or does it vary? asking because i had a 7300 that did something vaguely like this and it turned out to be a dodgy connection on the power supply side rather than the radio itself — voltage was sagging just enough under load after warmup that the radio was backing off. worth throwing a meter on the supply terminals while its running if you havent already, just to rule that out before you start pulling boards.

the WSJT-X to N1MM thing has always been a bit annoying honestly. i gave up on trying to get them to play nice and just let WSJT-X log to its own file then import periodically. probably not the cleanest way to do it but it works and i dont have to think about it

i did this like 8 months ago, went from Tech to General. took me about 2 weeks of going through the question pool on hamstudy every night before bed. the math questions look scary but theres really only like a handful of formulas you need and if you just practice them a few times they stick. i dont have any electronics background either so dont let that stop you. and yeah HF is totally worth it, first time i made a contact on 40m with a wire antenna I threw up in a tree it kind of blew my mind. talking to someone 800 miles away with a piece of wire is just different than repeaters, hard to explain

so i finally got around to actually checking into a net for the first time last week and honestly it was kind of overwhelming in a good way i guess. i've been licensed for almost two years now but just kind of sat on the sidelines listening to nets without ever actually transmitting into one. the wednesday night 2m net on the local repeater seemed like a low pressure way to start. anyway i checked in fine, gave my callsign and the net control acknowledged me but then there was a long pause and i wasn't sure if i was supposed to say more or just wait, ended up just waiting and it worked out fine. but im curious — is there some kind of standard format people follow when checking into a nets or does it vary a lot depending on who's running it? also saw something about a special event station coming up for a state fair or something, does anyone know how those work, like do you just tune around and call them or is there a specific frequency listed somewhere

the AF filter mod is hit or miss honestly. i did something similar on my 897d which shares a lot of the same guts and the difference was maybe noticeable on weak SSB signals in a crowded band but nothing that made me go wow. the bigger bang for the buck on those radios i found was just spending time with the IF shift and width controls together, theres a sweet spot that most people never find because they only adjust one at a time. good call on the caps by the way. ive got an 857 thats been sitting in a hot car mount for years and i keep meaning to check them. the puffing issue on the Yaesu PA boards from that era is pretty well documented, i think it was a bad batch of caps from the factory or maybe just the heat cycling from mobile use. either way your instinct to replace them preemptively was the right call. whats your current antenna situation for the emcomm work, are you running it into a tuner or do they have specific resonant antennas for the frequencies you need?

I went to one of these a few years back and honestly had no idea what half the stuff even was, I'm still pretty new. Are these usually okay for beginners to walk around or is it more of an experienced ham kind of thing? Don't want to feel totally lost.

so ive been a tech for about two years now and mostly just done VHF/UHF stuff, some APRS, handheld stuff. been wanting to get on HF for a while now and finally decided to just sit down and actually study for the general exam. got the ARRL general manual and been going through it slowly but honestly some of this stuff is pretty dense my main question is like, how hard is the actual test compared to technician? i remember technician being not too bad, took me maybe 3 weeks of casual studying. is general a big jump? i keep seeing people say the electrical theory part is rough but im not sure if thats just people exaggerating or what also what bands am i actually going to have access to once i upgrade? i know i get some HF privileges but i cant remember exactly which ones and what portions. like do i get full 40m or just parts of it? been wanting to try 40m for some reason, seems like the band everyone talks about

yeah cycle 25 has been something else, the predictions from the solar guys were pretty conservative and it just blew past all of them. SFI in the 180-190 range is genuinely good territory for 10m, you start seeing F2 propagation light up and it can stay open for hours if conditions hold. the europe opening you mentioned is probably real, ive been working into EA and G land pretty regularly on 10 lately in the mornings, roughly 1400-1600z seems to be the sweet spot from here in the midwest at least. to your question about solar max, yeah in theory itshould keep getting better or at least stay active for another year or two before it starts tapering off. that said solar flux isnt linear, you get these periods where it spikes and then backs off for a week, so dont assume every day is going to be like this. just keep checking the indices and when you see SFI above 180 and the K index is low, like 1 or 2, just get on and call CQ. youll be surprised.

been studying for months and passed my tech exam last tuesday. got my callsign yesterday and made my first contact this morning on 2m repeater. guy was super patient with me even though i was nervous and probably said my call sign wrong a few times lol. feels pretty amazing to actually be on the air after all that studying

honestly same boat as you a while back. what helped me was just asking a local ham to do a side by side with me on a simplex frequency so I could actually hear what I sounded like in real time while adjusting stuff. way more useful than asking for reports from random dx stations who just say "59" to everyone anyway lol. the 7300 has a monitor function too so you can hear yourself through the headphones which is kinda weird at first but helps you hear what you're transmitting

so ive been licensed for about 6 years now and done a fair bit of HF work, some VHF contesting, but EME has always been this thing in the back of my mind that seemed completely out of reach. lately ive been reading more about it and with JT65 and the weak signal stuff it seems like maybe its not as impossible as i thought when people were doing it with massive yagi arrays in the 80s. my main question is really about the antenna side of things. i keep reading wildly different things about what the minimum viable setup looks like for 2m EME. some guys say you can do it with a single long yagi and 400 watts if youre patient enough, others are talking about 4x4 yagi arrays and kilowatt amps like its the bare minimum. i have a decent sized backyard but im not trying to build a moonbounce station that my neighbors will form a committee about, you know. also curious what the actual contact experience is like, like do you just call CQ and wait for ages or is there some coordination that happens. ive seen references to the EME chat pages and stuff but havent really dug in. anyone actually done this from a modest setup, not a superstation