Sarah Mitchell

yeah this is kind of a classic thing that drives people nuts because there isnt a clean answer. the low angle radiation from a vertical is real but it only helps if the ground quality under and around it is decent and like you said radials matter a lot. 8 or 10 radials is honestly pretty lossy, youre probably giving up several db compared to what the antenna could do. i did a comparison years ago with an mfj antenna analyzer and just measuring feedpoint impedance told me a ton about how my radial system was actually performing. the other thing is a dipole at 35 feet on 40m is only about 0.25 wavelengths high so it actually has a fairly high takeoff angle too, probably similar to your vertical in some conditions. if you could get that dipole up to 60 or 70 feet you'd probably see a bigger difference. for JA from north america you want a pretty low angle depending on your path so that's not surprising the vertical did well there sometimes.

so ive been interested in ham radio for a while now, like maybe two years of just reading stuff online and watching youtube videos but never actually doing anything about it. my neighbor is a ham and he keeps telling me to just go get licensed already and honestly hes right i should just do it. the thing is i dont really know where to start. like i know theres a technician license which is supposed to be the first one but i dont know how hard the test is or how long i need to study or what materials are actually worth using. i looked at the FCC website and it was kind of confusing. is there like a standard thing most people do to study for this or does it vary a lot? and how do i actually find a test session near me, is that through the ARRL or what

so ive been doing single op contests for a few years now, mostly SSB sweepstakes and the occasional CW sprint, and my rates have kind of plateaued. like i can run pretty solid 80-100 qsos/hr on a good band but then when propagation shifts or the run frequency dries up i lose a ton of time just wandering around s&p waiting for something to happen. a buddy of mine keeps telling me SO2R is the answer but honestly the whole setup looks like a massive rabbit hole. right now i have an IC-7300 and an old TS-590SG that i dont really use anymore just sitting in the shack. the antenna situation is workable — a 2el yagi at 45ft for high bands and a 40m dipole. my question is is this actually a viable SO2R setup or do you really need dedicated antennas for each radio to avoid the RFI nightmare i keep reading about. ive seen people talk about bandpass filters like the 4O3A stuff but even one set is like 400-500 bucks and i cant figure out if that ROI makes sense for a guy who does maybe 8-10 contests a year. also curious what logging software people are using for SO2R — ive been on N1MM+ forever but i know some guys swear by other stuff for the interlocking / SO2R control. any thoughts appreciated, even if its just 'dont bother' which is a valid answer too

so ive been messing with APRS for a few weeks now and i finally got my TM-D710G beaconing but the position it shows on aprs.fi is like 3 miles from where i actually am. the radio has a GPS built in and it says it has a lock, showing like 8 satellites, so im not sure whats going on. i set the beacon rate to 1 minute just to test things out and i can see my callsign popping up on the map but consistently in the wrong spot. i checked the lat/lon in the radio settings and they look right to me but maybe im reading them wrong? also not sure if it matters but im going through a local digi that i can see is hitting the WIDE1-1 path. wondering if maybe the radio is somehow using the manually entered coordinates instead of the GPS feed? i havent touched the manual position settings in a while so i dont know if that would even be a thing. anyone run into this?

not a RemoteHams user specifically but ive done a lot of remote station work over the years and the SDR waterfall sync thing is basically a known tradeoff with any system that handles the display pipeline separately from the audio. the data is going through different processing chains and unless the software explicitly timestamps and syncs them theyre going to drift relative to each other. some of the commercial systems like WebSDR deal with this by just adding artificial delay to the audio side to match the display latency but that has its own problems. for CW work remotely ive honestly had the best luck with systems that dont try to do SDR display at all and just give me clean low latency audio, the waterfall is nice eye candy but when youre actually in a pileup or trying to copy weak DX you mostly stop looking at it anyway

i passed mine about 4 months ago and honestly just used hamstudy on my phone while waiting for stuff at work. took me maybe 2 weeks. the electrical stuff was the only part that tripped me up a little, ohms law and the antenna theory questions. if you see a question about frequency and wavelength just remember the formula and youre good. the rest is mostly rules and regulations which you kind of absorb just by reading through it a few times

yeah the digi and igate are two totally separate things and that trips up a lot of people. the digipeater just retransmits your RF packet so it goes farther over the air, but it doesn't touch the internet at all. you need an igate in range for your packets to actually get uploaded to aprs-is and show up on aprs.fi. some digis have igates built in but plenty dont. go to aprs.fi and look up the coverage area around you, or check aprsisce or even just look at what stations are showing up near you and see if any of them have the igate symbol (the blue diamond thing). if theres no igate within like 100-150 miles or so with decent coverage you might just be in an RF-only area which honestly does still happen. you could also set up your own igate with a raspberry pi and direwolf, its not that hard and would solve the problem immediately if thats whats going on.

yeah it absolutely gets better, dont worry too much at this stage. the spacing thing is super common early on, your brain is still working overtime just trying to remember the characters so your hands dont get the attention they need. i was the same way for the first couple months. one thing that helped me a lot was slowing the keyer way down, like uncomfortably slow, and just focusing on clean rhythm rather than speed. you can always bump it up later but if you build sloppy habits at higher speeds theyre really hard to unlearn. also the single lever vs iambic thing is kind of personal preference but id say stick with what you have for now and get comfortable before switching. swapping paddle types mid-learning just resets everything. lots of good ops run single lever their whole lives, theres nothing wrong with it. keep at it and get on the air even if you feel like youre not ready, making actual QSOs is the best teacher by far.

so I finally worked up the nerve to check into the local 2m net last Tuesday and honestly it went okay but I definitely made some rookie mistakes. I jumped in right when someone else was starting to give their traffic report and the net control had to ask me to wait, which was embarrassing. I also forgot to give my callsign phonetically the first time and had to repeat myself because the band was a little noisy. I guess my main question is — is there like a general flow or script most nets follow? I know it varies but I didnt really know when to just say my call and when I was supposed to give my name and location and all that. the net control guy was super patient with me which I appreciated but I want to do better next time. also does it matter if you check in during the initial roll call vs like jumping in later after its already started?

14.285 and 7.285 are pretty common starting points but honestly just find a clear freq and announce it on the spotter app when you're on the air. the SOTAwatch self-spot thing is what gets the pile up going. I was so nervous on my first one too and ended up with like 22 contacts so dont overthink it. also bring more water than you think you need, nothing worse than being stuck on a summit with a dead battery AND dehydration lol

had almost this exact same thing happen to me last year. turned out my digi was transmitting the messages fine but there was a timing issue where direwolf was sending the ack packets too fast after receiving and they were colliding with the original retransmit. drove me nuts for like two weeks. probably not your issue but worth looking at the channel activity before you transmit, 144.390 can get pretty busy depending on where you are.

so ive been running a remote station setup for about 8 months now using RemoteHams with an SDR on the rx side and a separate TX chain controlled through their client software and the connection just absolutely refuses to stay stable once im actually in a QSO. like it'll sit there perfectly fine while im tuning around, waterfall looks great, audio is clean, and then the second someone comes back to my CQ it just tanks. latency spikes, audio breaks up, sometimes the whole client just drops me back to the login screen. my upload at the remote site is solid, running about 35 up through a cable connection, ping to the server is like 18ms which seems fine to me. ive tried messing with the audio buffer settings in the client and bumped it up from 200ms to 400ms which helped a tiny bit but didnt really fix anything. the TX control side actually stays connected fine its just the SDR audio path that goes sideways. im wondering if this is a RemoteHams server routing issue or if theres something specific about how they handle the SDR stream during periods of higher activity on their end. has anyone done any packet captures on the audio stream to see whats actually happening. i feel like im missing something obvious here but ive been staring at this for weeks and dont have a fresh set of eyes on it anymore.

the linked dipole is going to smoke the buddistick for NVIS, not even close honestly. the buddistick isnt bad for what it is but its compromised in ways that really show up at low angles and for close-in stuff on 40m you want something closer to a real horizontal antenna anyway. i built one out of 14 gauge stranded with anderson powerpoles at the links and it rolls up into a bag the size of a football pretty much. throw it up at like 25-30 feet on a telescoping fiberglass mast and your signal reports will be noticeably better on the power question i went through this exact same thing about two years ago. ended up going with a second 100ah battery and a small inverter charger so i can top off from a genny if i have access to one but dont need it most of the time. the honda eu2200i is actually really good and quieter than you'd expect but youre right that its kind of overkill just to run a charging loop. if you can borrow one for a drill first before buying that would be smart

yeah ive done something close to this. not with an RTL-SDR though, i was using an SDRplay RSP1A and that changes things a bit. the RemoteHams SDR server is kind of finicky about initialization order — you basically have to have the SDR server started and the device open before the main RRC client tries to connect or it just gives up. no real error, just hangs like you said. try launching the SDR server piece first and letting it sit for like 30 seconds before you do anything else. also make sure the sample rate is set conservatively, i had mine trying to push 2 MHz wide and that was just killing the stream. dropped it to 900k and things got way more stable. on 25 up you should be ok for the audio plus a narrow SDR slice but dont expect to run a wide panadapter remotely, it just doesnt work that well unless youre on fiber both ends.

the hatch coax thing is super common with F-series trucks and SUVs. I ran mine the same way on an old Escape for probably 3 years and never had any issues but i did make sure there was enough slack in the loop so it wasn't pulling tight every time the hatch opened. the factory coax on those Tram antennas is usually decent enough but if you ever do have to replace it, just make sure whatever you swap in is flexible enough to handle the repeated bending. RG-58 gets stiff in the cold and will crack on you eventually. worth checking the loop every few months just to see if the jacket is showing any wear where it bends. also congrats on the FTM-400, that's a solid radio. the touch screen takes some getting used to but once you set up your memory channels the way you want it's really easy to use on the move.

yeah the buddipole thing — i feel that. they're fine for what they are but the tuning is fiddly and if the wind picks up at all you're back to square one. for the mast situation with no trees, we went to a 33ft spiderbeam fiberglass mast with a small ground anchor, takes maybe 10 minutes once you've done it a couple times. we run a linked EFHW off the top, the link lets you switch between 40 and 20 without retuning which is nice for a deployment where you dont know what bands will be open. the 9:1 unun with a random wire works but you really want a decent tuner in the loop and some radials on the ground, even just 4 or 5 short ones makes a difference on the noise floor. we skipped the radials once to save time and paid for it all afternoon.

yeah the IF filter thing youre probably thinking of is the roofing filter upgrade, some guys have been swapping in narrower roofing filters on the 7300 to help with close-in dynamic range. icom used a 3kHz roofing filter stock and there were some aftermarket options floating around although i think availability has been spotty. the actual improvement kind of depends on your operating conditions, if youre in a crowded contest environment it matters more than casual rag chewing. your preamp mod sounds like what a few guys on the icom reflector were discussing a while back. the 7300's front end is decent but not exceptional and those lower bands can get messy especially at night when the noise floor changes. glad it worked out, i might try the same thing on mine this winter when im not using it as much

yeah im planning on it, my buddy from the repeater club said they moved it to the fairgrounds which should help with the space issue. not sure about the special event station but the last two years they had someone doing fox hunting in the parking lot which was a blast. i'll probably get there early to hit the fleamarket tables before everything good gets snagged

Join a study group - your local ARRL group likely offers test preparation classes in your region, and you'll meet fellow hammies to get started in the ham radio community! Basic electronics knowledge is essential - take time to learn concepts like Ohm's law, circuits, and radio wave propagation.

Check your tracking software settings - the software must simultaneously decrease uplink while increasing downlink as the satellite approaches to maintain signal within the transponder's passband. That's critical for proper linear operation.

the cooling pad thing is actually a really good call, i wish i had done that when i had mine apart. those pads on older icom gear get almost crusty after a decade and the thermal transfer goes to hell. i noticed my 706 running warm and traced it back to exactly that — took it apart, replaced the pad with some decent 6W/mK stuff from a computer parts supplier and temps dropped noticeably. on the CI-V speed mod, depends on what you're using it for. if you're running it with logging software that polls the rig a lot it can make a real difference, response just feels snappier. but if you're mostly just doing manual tuning and occasional CAT commands to change bands its probably not worth the hassle. i did it on mine and i think it helped but im also not 100% sure i did it right to be honest, i was following a scan of a scan of someone's printout from like 2003 so the image quality was pretty rough.

Don't forget QRN (static/atmospheric noise) and QRM (man-made interference) - you'll hear those constantly during band conditions discussions. Q codes make it easier to send common messages, like how people recognize ETA as shorthand for "estimated time of arrival."

this is really cool to read, ive been thinking about getting into QRP too but wasnt sure if the QCX or something else would be better for a start. did you find the instructions pretty clear or did you have to look stuff up a lot? im decent at soldering but not super experienced reading schematics yet so kinda nervous about jumping into a kit build

Also verify your aprx.conf serial device path is correct and you have proper permissions. Try running 'dmesg' after plugging in the TNC-X to confirm the USB enumeration. USB voltage issues are uncommon but worth checking if nothing else works.

yeah i did this last year with my yaesu g-5500. used a pi 4 with a relay hat from adafruit and it works great. the tricky part was getting the position feedback working right but once you figure out the voltage divider setup its pretty straightforward i can send you my python code if you want, its not pretty but it gets the job done. also make sure you use opto isolators if your rotator has any high voltage stuff going on