Michael Torres

so ive been running FT8 for about a year now and i love it for the DX hunting and all that but honestly after a while it starts to feel like youre just watching a slot machine, you know? you get the contact, log it, move on. theres no actual conversation happening.
a buddy at the club mentioned JS8Call and how its basically like a messaging layer built on top of the JS8 waveform which is derived from FT8 if i understand it right. supposedly you can have actual back and forth exchanges, send longer messages, even relay stuff through other stations. been reading about it but havent actually fired it up yet.
my question is for people who actively use both — do you find JS8Call worth running alongside WSJT-X or do you kind of have to pick one. and is the activity level on JS8Call decent enough that youre actually going to find someone to talk to on a given afternoon. i mostly operate 40m and 20m if that matters. running an IC-7300 into a trapped vertical so nothing fancy.
also been messing with PSK31 a little bit lately and honestly thats scratching the itch more for real conversations but the signals you need are way higher compared to FT8 obviously so weak signal wise its not even close

so ive been running FT8 for about a year now and i love it for the DX hunting and all that but honestly after a while it starts to feel like youre just watching a slot machine, you know? you get the contact, log it, move on. theres no actual conversation happening.
a buddy at the club mentioned JS8Call and how its basically like a messaging layer built on top of the JS8 waveform which is derived from FT8 if i understand it right. supposedly you can have actual back and forth exchanges, send longer messages, even relay stuff through other stations. been reading about it but havent actually fired it up yet.
my question is for people who actively use both — do you find JS8Call worth running alongside WSJT-X or do you kind of have to pick one. and is the activity level on JS8Call decent enough that youre actually going to find someone to talk to on a given afternoon. i mostly operate 40m and 20m if that matters. running an IC-7300 into a trapped vertical so nothing fancy.
also been messing with PSK31 a little bit lately and honestly thats scratching the itch more for real conversations but the signals you need are way higher compared to FT8 obviously so weak signal wise its not even close

yeah its a lot to take in at first, dont worry. so Q codes were originally from maritime and commercial radio back in the early 1900s, they were meant to be a shorthand that worked across language barriers which is why theyre still useful internationally. the ones you'll hear most on ham radio -- QTH is your location, QRM is interference from other stations, QSB is signal fading, QRN is static/noise, QRZ means whos calling me, QSY means change frequency. QSL is yes, confirmed, acknowledged, basically. theres a ton of them but honestly you only really need maybe a dozen for day to day operating and the rest you just look up when you see them.
the other stuff like 73 (best regards/best wishes), 88 (love and kisses, usually sent to a partner or close friend), DE means from in french/latin kinda thing so like W1ABC DE K5XYZ means K5XYZ calling W1ABC. ES just means and. its all morse code shorthand that carried over into voice and digital. ARRL has a decent reference page and honestly after a few months of being on the air it just clicks

honestly for me the extra portion of 40m phone alone made it worth it. during contests that lower segment is way less crowded, its almost noticeable how much easier it is to find a clear frequency. the theory stuff yeah some of it is stuff you'll never touch again after the exam, like i havent thought about the exact formula for a chebyshev filter since i passed but some of the other stuff like transmission line theory and antenna stuff actually did help me understand what im doing a bit better when im setting up. i used the hamstudy app and just ground through it over about 6 weeks, wasnt that bad. the extra cw sub-bands are kind of a non-issue if you dont do cw obviously but having the full phone priveleges on 75/80m is genuinely useful if you do any nets or ragchewing

so i've been puttering around with the idea of building a small QRP rig for probably two years now and i finally just did it. built a little 40m CW transceiver from a kit, one of the Pixie derivatives but i modded it a bit with a better filter cap and swapped the crystal for one i had sitting in my junk box that puts me at a slightly less crowded spot on the band. took the whole thing out to the park last saturday with a 9v battery and a wire antenna i just threw up in a tree.
honestly wasnt expecting much. five watts (well more like 3 honestly with that battery) and i figured id just hear a bunch of stuff and nobody would hear me. made 4 contacts in about an hour and a half, one of them was down in florida which i was pretty happy about considering im in ohio. the battery barely got warm which surprised me, i think people underestimate how long a small lipo or even a 9v will last when your TX duty cycle is low.
anyway the whole setup fits in a small canvas bag and the radio itself is about the size of a deck of cards. kind of addictive honestly. thinking about trying SOTA next summer with this thing or maybe building something for 20m too. anyone else been down this rabbit hole

the thing about 5 wpm is actually real, you dont want to learn at that speed because your brain starts counting dits and dahs instead of hearing the whole character as a sound. look up the Koch method, thats what most people swear by these days. basically you start with just two characters at like 20 wpm character speed but with extra space between them so you have time to think, then you add more characters one at a time as you get them down. LCWO dot net is the site most people use for this, its free and you can set it up exactly that way. took me probably 3 months of like 15 minutes a day before i could actually copy a slow QSO but it does work. the key is consistent practice, even just a little bit every day beats doing an hour once a week by a lot.

so i just passed my tech exam last week and im trying to figure out what handheld to get. ive been reading way too many threads and reviews and now im more confused than when i started lol. basically everyone says something different and half the threads are from like 2017 so i dont know whats still relevant.
my main use case is probably just local repeaters to start, maybe some simplex stuff, and i want to eventually get into APRS but thats not a must right away. budget is somewhere around $50-150 depending on if theres actually a good reason to spend more. i looked at the baofeng UV-5R because its cheap but people either love it or really hate it and i cant tell if the hate is justified or just snobs. also seen the yaesu FT-60 mentioned a lot but thats at the top of my budget. is there like a middle ground thats actually worth it

thats kind of where im at right now too. just got my general a few months ago and i keep feeling like i should be doing something productive with it but honestly the random conversations are the best part so far. talked to a retired railroad engineer last week for like an hour, dude had so many stories

so ive been at this for a few months now and just cant seem to get the iambic mode to feel natural. im using a Bencher BY-1 into a Winkeyer USB and the dit/dah ratio feels off somehow. like when i squeeze for certain letters like C or K the keyer seems to spit out an extra dit at the end and words start looking like garbage on the other end.
i tried slowing way down to like 12 wpm and it helps a little but even then i'll mess up a C and it comes out as something weird. somebody at the club said maybe i should just switch to mode A from mode B (or was it the other way around) but i honestly dont fully understand the difference. do i just need more practice or is there actually a setting i should be tweaking on the Winkeyer software. ive read the manual twice and im still fuzzy on it

Great work! I've used similar coil loading techniques but found close-wound coils on smaller forms give better Q. Your bottles probably have more distributed capacitance than optimal. Try 4-inch PVC pipe with tight windings - you'll get better efficiency and bandwidth.

yeah theres no hard rule that you have to phonetic every single transmission, its more about clarity. if conditions are good and your call came through clean then theres no point spelling out every letter. but if theres qrm or the band is noisy or youre working someone new, definitely go phonetic. the whole point is just making sure the other station actually got your call right.
as for the non-nato stuff, technically the ITU recommends the standard NATO alphabet for international use but in practice a lot of older ops use what they grew up with. New York for N, Texas for T, that kind of thing. youll hear it especially on local repeaters where everyone knows each other anyway. its not wrong exactly, just not standardized. if youre doing anything formal like emcomm or working DX stations i would stick to the proper NATO words just to avoid confusion

Consider using separate INI files for contest operation vs daily WSJT-X use. N1MM+ creates "WSJT-X – ForEW1" instance that's completely separate from your everyday copy. This isolates your contest configuration and prevents conflicts with your regular digital mode setup.

so ive been a ham for about 12 years mostly HF stuff, some 2m weak signal when the band cooperates, but ive been reading about moonbounce for probably two years now and i think i actually want to try it. not just listen but actually make contacts. i know its not trivial and the equipment requirements are kind of intense depending on how you approach it.
my current setup is a ft-991a and a 5 element yagi for 2m which i know is basically nothing for EME. i was looking at the JT65 digital modes since i know thats how most of the activity happens these days, and wsjt-x handles that. but the antenna situation is where i get lost. ive seen people running 4x9 element arrays and ive seen people claiming they worked EME with a single long yagi on JT65B which honestly seems impossible to me but apparently its a thing?
also what kind of preamp situation do i need, i see a lot of people talking about mounting the LNA right at the feedpoint and i get why but is that mandatory or just really helpful. and what about the dish route vs yagi arrays, i have some space for a dish maybe 2-3 meters. tried searching the archives here but got kind of overwhelmed.