Susan Johnson

The new ARRL Repeater Directory 2026 Edition is out - 460 pages powered by RepeaterBook with over 22,000 listings covering analog FM, System Fusion, D-STAR, DMR, NXDN, M17, Tetra, and P25 systems. Also exciting to see HamSCI 2026 workshop registration is open for the March 14-15 event at Central Connecticut University. This year's theme is "Discovering Science Through Ham Radio" celebrating achievements like Personal Space Weather Stations and WSPR propagation studies.

oh man i remember my first net check-in, i was sweating like it was a final exam haha. honestly you did fine — the fact that you even keyed up puts you ahead of most new hams who just listen for months and never actually participate. so for the timing thing, most nets will have the net control say something like "all stations wishing to check in please call now" and thats your window. you want to wait just a tiny beat to make sure nobody else is already mid-transmission, then just give your callsign phonetically, your name, and location. short and clean. if two people key up at the same time net control will usually ask you both to try again. tail-ending is generally fine and pretty common, it just means keying up right after another station finishes to add a quick comment or answer a question. it's not rude at all as long as you id yourself. the main thing that IS considered bad form is just kerchunking the repeater or keying up over someone who's already talking. after a few more nets it'll feel totally natural, i promise.

not done the rotator thing specifically but i built a raspberry pi based rig controller for my ic-7300 and hamlib on the pi is pretty solid once you get the udev rules sorted out for the USB serial device, otherwise it renumbers on you every reboot and your scripts break. just something to watch for when you go down that road. also on the pot linearity issue — some of those old rotator pots are genuinely worn out and you'll never get clean readings no matter what you do. might be worth measuring the resistance across the full sweep with a meter before you spend too much time on the software side of it.