Radio Geek

so the short answer is the fcc rules are the law and the band plan is more like a gentlemans agreement. for general on 40m your phone privileges start at 7.175 MHz and go up to 7.300. below 7.175 is CW and other digital modes for generals, and technicians only get a tiny sliver for CW around 7.025 to 7.125 i think. the all-important thing is dont operate below your license class allows, thats an actual violation. as for band edges, the rule of thumb most people use is keep your carrier or your suppressed carrier plus the bandwidth of your signal inside the band. so on SSB since you're using upper sideband on 40m, your dial frequency needs to be far enough up that the actual audio content doesnt spill below 7.175. most people say stay 3 kHz above the lower edge of your phone segment just to be safe so like 7.178 or higher. some guys cut it closer but its not worth the hassle. the CW segment at the very bottom 7.000 to 7.025 is where you get the DX stations and serious contesters, worth knowing so you dont wander in there confused wondering why everyone is ignoring you on SSB lol

Can confirm it's an inverting transponder - transmit LSB on the uplink around 145.875 MHz and listen USB on 435.675 MHz for your own signal. The beacon drift seems related to thermal cycling as the satellite enters/exits eclipse.

Koch method exposes you to full-speed Morse from day one, starting with just two characters played at full speed. Set practice to 25-30 WPM to train your ear to recognize sound patterns, not individual dits and dahs. Your 30 minutes daily is perfect - consistency beats marathon sessions every time.

Morse Mania is by far the best app I've tried. Whether learning to hear or send, it provides excellent practice opportunities at your own pace, and well worth upgrading to the paid version. The newer apps with voice dictation and real-time feedback are game-changers - no manual note-taking required.

Fellow contesters, I'm struggling with N1MM Logger+ and WSJT-X integration for the upcoming RTTY Roundup. The recommended default port number is 2237, and in SO2R, the port number for Radio 2 should be changed to 2239 in both programs. However, I keep getting UDP timeout errors when launching WSJT-X from within N1MM+. I've verified the IP address is set to 127.0.0.1 in both programs, but something isn't connecting properly. Under the Radio tab in WSJT-X, I changed the rig control method to "DX Lab Suite Commander" as instructed, but my IC-7300 frequency control isn't working reliably. Has anyone else experienced similar issues with the latest N1MM+ build? The digital integration was working flawlessly last season, but after updating both programs, I'm having connectivity problems.

so i finally drove out to a summit that was listed as an easy activation, W4C/CM-093 if anyone knows it, and yeah the hike wasnt bad but i completely forgot to account for the wind up there. had my ft-818 and a linked dipole and the whole setup just kept flopping around every time i tried to tune it. spent like 45 minutes fighting with it before i got 4 contacts and qualified. honestly kinda embarrassing how unprepared i was for just the physical setup part. been doing portable ops from parks for a while but a summit is a different animal. anyone else have tips for keeping wire antennas from turning into a kite up there

That spreadsheet gets the ballpark right but real-world capacitance between coil turns changes everything. I ended up with 19 turns at 1.25" spacing on my working 2M Super-J - way off the calculated 32 turns. The key is having an antenna analyzer and tweaking inductance while watching the pattern on a distant repeater.

yeah i was in the same boat when i started. paper cards are fun but i only send them when someone sends me one first or if its a really notable contact, otherwise the postage adds up fast especially for dx. i think i spent like 12 bucks just sending cards to a handful of european stations and only got two back lol. LoTW is free after you get your certificate set up and once you get that part figured out its pretty painless. the certificate setup tripped me up at first too so if you havent done that part yet thats probably why confirmations seem low

the WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 path is fine for mobile, thats what most people run. your problem is almost certainly igates. a digipeater will happily re-transmit your packet all day long but if there isnt an igate within earshot that has an internet connection, none of it makes it to aprs-is and you wont see squat on aprs.fi. easiest way to check is pull up aprs.fi and look at the map for your area, there should be igate stations marked differently from digis. if the nearest one is 50 miles away you've found your problem. you can also try dropping your beacon rate down and just listening for a while — if you hear lots of packet traffic but your position still drops off, its likely the igate situation and not your radio config. the D710G's TNC is solid, i'd be surprised if thats the culprit.

Learning the most commonly used codes will help you become relaxed and confident about using them in your transmission. Listening to other radio operators and hearing how they use Q-Codes will also help increase your level of familiarity and proficiency. Don't stress about memorizing them all - they'll become natural with practice.

I'll tackle power supply issues, connector replacements, and simple component swaps, but anything involving the RF sections or microprocessor gets shipped out. Professional component-level repair replaces defective parts rather than entire boards - transistors and ICs cost only about 3% of a replacement board. Worth the peace of mind for complex problems.

I had the exact same issue with my 80m dipole. To measure true antenna SWR, you need the analyzer right at the feedpoint or use very low-loss coax. My "good" 2:1 reading at the shack turned out to be 6:1 at the antenna due to corroded trap connections.

oh man I know exactly what you mean about giving too much info on that first check in, I basically read out my whole QSL card the first time I checked into a traffic net and the NCS was very polite about it but I could tell lol. you kind of learn by doing I guess. theres also a ton of nets that run on Echolink and some of the AllStar nodes if you ever want more options, some of them are pretty welcoming to newer hams. not the same as HF obviously but good practice for net procedure. also random thing but if you ever want to try something a little different, watch for special event station activations — a lot of them have their own on-air events and check-in nets tied to them, like around holidays or anniversaries of stuff. got my first contact with a /SE station through one of those and it was pretty cool.

so i heard the regional hamfest is coming up and im thinking about making the drive this year, been a few years since ive been to one and last time i picked up a pretty decent used HF rig for like half what it would've cost new. anyway just wondering if anyone else from around here is planning on going and maybe wants to carpool or meetup at the fleamarket tables in the morning when all the good stuff is still there. my buddy says if you dont get there early the best gear is already gone by like 9am

I've been tracking AO-109 with my IC-910H and having trouble locating the beacon within the linear transponder's passband. According to the frequency plan, the beacon should be at 435.650 MHz, but I'm only hearing noise at that frequency during passes with good elevation. Has anyone else successfully copied the AO-109 beacon recently? My setup includes a 17-element 70cm Yagi with good preamp, so signal strength shouldn't be the issue. Also wondering if the transponder is truly inverting - the documentation shows U/V mode but I want to confirm the sideband relationship before attempting any contacts.

Welcome to the hobby! For your first mobile, I'd definitely recommend a dual-band like the FT-7900R. Look for a dual band mobile - they'll give you the most bang for your buck and you'll have access to both VHF and UHF repeaters in your area.

im kind of in the same boat as you actually, been meaning to ask our EC the same question. i did put together a basic kit last fall after a bad storm came through and knocked out power for two days in our neighborhood and i realized my HT was the only radio i had that worked and the battery was half dead lol what i ended up doing was just getting a small rolling bag, threw in my IC-7300 power cable, a 20ah lifepo4 battery, a efhw antenna with some paracord to hang it, and a notebook. nothing fancy but it fits in my trunk and i can actually get on HF if i need to. probably not what an ARES deployment needs but its better than nothing for personal preparedness

So we ran a county-wide simulated emergency exercise this past Saturday and honestly it was a bit of a mess but in a good way I think? The whole scenario was a major flooding event cutting off the eastern part of the county and we had to establish comms between the EOC and three shelter locations using only our go-kits since we assumed no repeater infrastructure. First thing that fell apart was net control. Our designated NC got stuck in traffic and nobody had really been briefed on who the backup was supposed to be, so there was like 15 minutes of people just kind of calling on the frequency and nobody really taking charge. Eventually Dave W9DTK stepped up and did a great job but that gap was painful to watch. We talked about it in the debrief and decided every drill from now on needs at least two people who are briefed and ready to be NC. The other thing that surprised me was battery life. I thought my setup was solid — 20Ah LiFePO4 running a 50W mobile — but I had it cranked up for most of the morning passing traffic and by noon I was sweating it. In a real event that shelter location needs power for way longer than a few hours. anybody else run into this kind of thing in their exercises? Curious what solutions people have landed on.

OM: Old man - an abbreviation really meaning friend (used for any male ham regardless of age). However xYL is technically not the correct term. The original term of YL , which is a CW (morse code) abbreviation, is the one that is technically the correct term to use. FB = "fine business" (means OK), TNX = thanks, ES = "and". These cover most casual QSOs.

nope you're not weird, i do the exact same thing. 40 at night is like the AM radio of ham bands, you just never know what you're gonna hear. i picked up a net out of tennessee a few weeks ago that was just a bunch of older guys arguing about whether propane or charcoal was better and i listened for probably 45 minutes. never transmitted. sometimes thats just the hobby y'know.

Are you using the dedicated Ethernet port on the Flex for CAT/audio or sharing with your internet connection? The 6600 really benefits from having SmartSDR traffic isolated on its own network segment. I run mine on 192.168.1.x with a separate NIC just for the radio.

For emergency communications, we primarily use DX Summit with real-time and historical DX spots across HF, VHF, and UHF bands, supporting various access methods including web interfaces with filtering capabilities. The reliability factor is crucial when coordinating nets across multiple states during activations.

yeah ive been seeing the same thing on 15m too. propagation has been all over the place. checked the solar indices and theyre not showing anything unusual but something is definitely off. worked a JA station on 20 yesterday morning which shouldnt happen that time of day

With the recent FCC changes to 60 meters, I'm confused about the new operating procedures. As of February 2026, we can now operate anywhere between 5351.5 and 5366.5 kHz with 9.15 watts ERP maximum, plus we still have the original four channels at 100 watts. How do I calculate ERP vs transmitter power for my setup? My dipole isn't full-size on 60m, so does that affect my power limits? I've heard Channel 5 is used for DX - should I avoid domestic QSOs there? Also, what's the proper way to check if a frequency is clear before transmitting, given that we're secondary users?

Don't overlook the Airspy Mini which performed well in the recent SatNOGS lab comparison - might be worth considering as a middle ground option. For EME I'd actually recommend GNU Radio with a custom flowgraph optimized for your specific signal processing needs rather than general-purpose software.