Contest Joe

honestly i had the same confusion when i started. what helped me was just listening to how net control handles it on a directed net, they always phonetic everything because they're copying down callsigns from a bunch of people and cant afford to mishear. i kind of adopted that habit and now i just default to phonetics whenever i'm giving my callsign to someone i havent worked before or if the signal isnt perfect. the fast guys on 40 are probably just calling CQ over and over and got used to running through it quick, doesnt mean its right lol

Just picked up my first paddle (Bencher BY-1) after using a straight key for two months. I'm having trouble with the spacing - sometimes my letters run together or I get extra dits/dahs. Is this normal for beginners, or am I missing something with the adjustment? My keyer is set to 15 WPM and I'm trying to practice basic letters first. Any suggestions welcome!

im in basically the same boat as you, got my tech call a while back and been thinking about going for a vanity too. one thing i heard is that certain 1x2 and 2x1 format calls are reserved for extra class licensees so if you're general you cant even apply for those. not sure if thats still accurate but worth checking before you get attached to a specific call

so ive been trying to get more into DX chasing and someone at the club told me to start using cluster spotting networks but honestly i wasnt sure where to even begin. i ended up signing up for QRZ and i see there's a logbook and lookup stuff there which is great, but then someone else mentioned DXwatch and now im using both and kind of confused about whether they're showing me the same spots or different ones. like right now i have DXwatch open in one tab filtering for 20m and QRZ in another and sometimes the spots are the same and sometimes not. is there a reason to prefer one over the other or should i just keep both open. also i downloaded DX Toolkit on my phone and that pulls from a cluster too i think, not sure which one. maybe i'm overthinking this but i dont want to miss a good dx opportunity because i was looking at the wrong source

went through this exact thing about a year ago. took me like three tries to land the one i wanted because someone else kept beating me to it lol. what helped me was setting up alerts on one of those callsign tracking sites so i knew the exact day something was going to come available. also make sure your FCC registration info is all up to date before you even start or your application can get held up, i had a minor issue with my address not matching and it delayed everything by like a week which was annoying.

so im just parked on 7.200 with a cup of coffee doing basically nothing, which honestly is like half the hobby for me at this point. heard some guys chatting about the weather down in texas and a couple of ragchews going on further up. nothing wild but the band sounded decent considering how the solar stuff has been lately. reminds me why i got into this in the first place, just listening and occasionally throwing out my call. anybody else do this or am i just weird for finding it relaxing

yeah the Q codes thing trips up a lot of newcomers because they were originally designed for CW where you needed to convey whole sentences in just 3 letters. so QRM technically means "are you suffering from interference" as a question or "i am suffering from interference" as a statement depending on context, which is a bit weird when you think about it in actual use on phone most people just treat them as nouns or adjectives. like someone will say "there's a lot of QRM on this frequency" or "the QSB is terrible today" meaning the signal fading is bad. QRZ is interesting because yeah it specifically means "who is calling me" but people do sort of use it loosely to mean something like "go ahead, who's there" especially at the start of a net or after a cq the 73 and 88 thing is totally separate, those are from the old telegraph codes, 73 means best regards and 88 is love and kisses which is why you only ever send 88 to a YL which means young lady. OM is old man and it just means any male operator regardless of actual age. none of that is Q code stuff but it all kind of blends together when youre new to it. honestly the best way to learn it is just to listen more, youll pick up the patterns pretty quick

oh man i went through the same confusion when i was getting into DX. there's also DX Summit which is another one and it all feels like too much at first. i basically just picked one and stuck with it for a while until it made sense, then started branching out. one thing nobody told me that wouldve saved a lot of frustration — the spots are only as good as the people posting them and sometimes theyre wrong or the station has already gone QRT by the time you see it, especially if a spot is like 10-15 minutes old. so if you tune and hear nothing dont assume your radio is broken lol

I'm running an IC-7300 at 100W into a G5RV at 30 feet. With the new RF exposure rules that took effect in 2021, I'm confused about whether I need to perform an evaluation. The new rules don't change existing RF exposure limits but require stations to be evaluated against existing limits, unless exempted, with existing stations having until May 3, 2023. Looking at the power thresholds in 97.13(c)(1), it seems like I might be above the limits for some HF bands. Can someone walk me through the process? What exactly do I need to calculate? Key questions: How do I determine if my station qualifies for an exemption?If I need an evaluation, what's the step-by-step process?Are there online calculators that can help with the calculations?