Mike74

the inverted-V geometry does shift the resonant point a bit compared to a flat dipole, usually pulls it down in frequency a little. 25 feet apex is workable but yeah the angle of the legs affects the feedpoint impedance too, you might not be seeing a true 50 ohm match even at resonance which would explain why the curve looks lopsided. i wouldnt go trimming yet until you know where actual resonance is sitting. if you can borrow a nanoVNA from someone in your club even for an afternoon it would tell you a lot more than the 7300 meter will. that said, 1.4 to 1 at your target frequency is honestly fine, most rigs and tuners handle that easy. the climb toward 7.250 is expected with a dipole that narrow, 40m is a pretty wide band for a simple dipole to cover flat. might just be the antenna doing what dipoles do.

i did something similar with a cheaper rotator and a pi zero W a couple years ago. worked great until i fried the zero by accidentally putting 12v on a gpio pin which was a bad day. anyway the deadband suggestion above is the move for sure one thing i'd throw out there — depending on how far you wanna take the automation side, home assistant can actually talk to hamlib through some community integrations and then you can build automations around it with a pretty nice UI. kind of overkill maybe but i ended up with a dashboard on an old tablet in the shack that shows beam heading, current band, and a few other things. my wife thinks its ridiculous but whatever it works

so ive been getting reports for a while now that my audio on 20m SSB is either too bassy, too low, or just kind of muffled and guys have to ask me to repeat stuff constantly. im running an IC-7300 into a stock hand mic and i know i know everyone says get a better mic but i want to understand the actual problem before i throw money at it. ive played with the mic gain and the compression settings and i feel like every time i touch something it gets worse in a different way. right now im sitting at mic gain around 50% and the ALC is just barely moving, like barely touching the ALC bar, which i thought was correct but apparently thats maybe too conservative? i also have the TX equalizer completely flat because i was afraid to mess with it. also side note — does the way you hold the mic actually matter that much or is that more of a HF mobile thing. i feel dumb even asking that but someone at the club brought it up and now im self conscious about it every time i transmit

yeah the digital modes changed everything for weak signal EME, no question. JT65 and now Q65 especially - guys are making contacts on 2m EME with setups that would have been laughed off the reflector 20 years ago. ive worked EME with a single 17el yagi and an IC-9700 with a good preamp at the feedpoint, so your radio is actually not the weak link here. the preamp placement is huge - you want it at the antenna, not in the shack, otherwise youre just amplifying coax noise. that said your 9 element is going to be a real limiting factor. most guys running single yagi EME are using something in the 17-21 element range to get enough gain to even hear the echoes on digital. maybe look at a long boom design, K1FO style or similar. your low noise location is genuinely valuable though, dont undersell that. some guys are fighting urban RFI and you already have something they'd kill for. id say get a good low noise preamp like an SSB Electronics or a Kuhne up at the feedpoint first and see what you can decode before committing to a bigger antenna investment

500mW into two states thats awesome. i just started looking at QRP stuff myself and the Rockmite was on my list. did you find the kit hard to build or pretty straightforward if you have some soldering experience? im decent at soldering just never done RF stuff before so the toroids make me a little nervous lol

this has been bugging me too and im even newer than you probably lol. i asked my elmer about it last month and he said something i thought was helpful which was basically dont look at just one number, its like checking the weather and only looking at temperature and ignoring wind and humidity. the flux tells you the ionosphere's potential but the K and A index tell you if the atmosphere is actually cooperating that day. he also told me that even on a bad day theres sometimes a short window around sunrise or sunset where 15 will open up for like 30 minutes and then slam shut again. i havent had the patience to catch one of those yet but apparently they can be really good for certain paths even when overall conditions are poor

so i just got my general about three months ago and ive been checking into a couple of local nets to get practice. been having a great time honestly but i keep getting slightly different answers when i ask about ID rules and i want to make sure im doing it right before i accidentally cause problems. the main thing confusing me is the every-10-minutes rule vs identifying when you sign off. like i know you have to ID at least every 10 minutes and at the end of your transmission but on a net where the NCS is running things and you might only talk for 30 seconds to give a traffic report, do you ID every single time you key up? because some guys on the net say yes, others say your callsign at the beginning of your comment counts, and one guy told me just saying your call at the start and end of your whole exchange is fine. and then theres the question of whether you need to say the other stations call too or just yours. i thought you only had to give your own call but i hear some operators giving both calls every single time and i dont want to seem rude by not doing it but it also seems like it clutters things up on a busy net. not trying to overthink this, just want to do right by the other folks on frequency.

welcome to the addiction ha. okay so for HF nets the best resource ive found is the ARRL net directory, its on their website and you can filter by band and mode and whatnot. not perfect but pretty comprehensive. there's also a site called HFLink for some of the ALE nets if you get into that stuff later. for local repeater nets honestly the best thing is just to find your regional repeater directory, the arrl has one of those too, and then just listen on the repeaters that show up nearby. a lot of clubs announce their nets on their own repeaters so if you just hang out on the local machine for a few evenings youll hear it. my local 2m net has been running thursdays at 8pm for like 20 years and they announce it every single week even though everyone already knows lol. for special event stations, the ARRL website has a special event station listing that updates pretty regularly, and there's also a page on QRZ where people post them. i usually check it on friday afternoon to see if anything fun is happening that weekend. the hamcation ones and stuff around holidays are worth looking for specifically

so i finally got around to building a proper dipole instead of just using the random wire i had strung up for the past year. cut it for 40m, used some 14 gauge stranded wire i had leftover from a house project and a cheap SO-239 chassis connector for the feedpoint. legs are 33 feet 4 inches each give or take a few inches. got it up in an inverted V config, apex is maybe 28 feet off the ground hanging off a tree branch, ends are about 6 feet up on some wooden stakes. ran about 35 feet of RG-8X down to the shack and threw it on the analyzer. resonance came in around 7.050 which is actually pretty much where i wanted it but the SWR at resonance is sitting at like 1.8:1 and i was kind of expecting it to be closer to 1.5 or lower. feedpoint impedance is showing 62 ohms. is that about normal for an inverted V at that height or am i doing something wrong? i double checked my solder joints and everything looks solid. the connector is just bolted to a piece of scrap HDPE i had lying around as a center insulator. also not sure if the short feedline is affecting the reading or if it matters much. probably overthinking this.

ha yeah its a lot at first but you do just kind of absorb it after a while. 73 isnt actually a Q code, its what they call an operating abbreviation or just a procedural code — means best regards basically, comes from old telegraph days. Q codes are specifically the ones that start with Q and they were originally made for morse so you could send a whole phrase with just three characters. QTH is your location, QRM is interference from other stations, QRN is natural static like from storms, QSB means your signal is fading, QRP means low power operation (usually 5 watts or less), and QSL means acknowledgement or confirm received — thats also why QSL cards are a thing, its literally just confirming a contact. QRZ is asking whos calling, youll hear that at the start of a pileup a lot. honestly just google ARRL Q codes list and bookmark it, you dont need to memorize all of them but those common ones youll have down in like a week just from hearing them

200ms is honestly not that bad for SSB remote work, ive operated through worse. but yeah the spikes are what kill you. one thing i did at my remote site was just plug the remote computer directly into the router via ethernet instead of wifi, obvious maybe but it cut my jitter down a lot. also gave the remote PC a static IP on the LAN so the router wasnt doing any weird DHCP renewal stuff at inconvenient times. dont know enough about the RemoteHams internals to help with the sync issue but curious what upload speed hes got on that connection because ive found the upload side matters more than people think for keeping the control link stable

so I just passed my general exam last week and got my license in the ULS, super excited about that. but ive been reading about vanity callsigns and now im kind of confused about the whole thing. like i understand you can apply for a specific call instead of just getting assigned whatever sequential call the FCC gives you, but the timing is really throwing me off. my sequential call right now is kind of a mouthful and theres a call that belonged to a silent key who was a family friend, KD5 something, and the family mentioned I could try to get it as kind of a tribute thing. i dont even know if thats how it works exactly but it seemed meaningful. anyway does anyone know how long you have to wait after getting licensed before you can apply for vanity? or can you do it right away? and is there a fee still or did that go away a while back sorry if this is a basic question, just dont want to mess up the timing on this

ok so ive been checking into our local 2m net for a few months now and i keep second-guessing myself on when im supposed to give my full callsign vs just saying my call at check-in. like the net control asked me to relay a message to another station last week and i wasnt sure if i needed to ID again after that or if the check-in at the start covered it. i just said my call anyway but felt kinda awkward about it. also is there a rule about how often you have to ID during a longer exchange on the net? i know the 10 minute rule exists but on a busy net with lots of traffic does that still apply the same way? feel like ive heard different things from different people at the club. sorry if this is a dumb question, still pretty new to all this

so ive been on HF for about two years now mostly doing digital modes but recently started doing more SSB phone work and honestly my audio reports have been all over the place. some guys say i sound great, others say im muffled or hard to copy. im running an IC-7300 into a Heil PR-40 with the stock settings and i havent really touched the TX EQ or anything in the menu. been meaning to dig into it but theres so much in there i dont know where to start. also i notice when i listen to myself on a second receiver the low end is pretty heavy, like too much bass maybe? not sure if thats the mic or how im positioning it. i keep it maybe 3-4 inches from my mouth. someone at the club mentioned something about the ALC being an issue but i didnt fully understand what they meant. any pointers would be appreciated, been a bit embarassing getting bad reports on a supposedly decent radio.

the factory grommet trick is totally the way to go if you can fit everything through it. i did exactly this on my Silverado and just used a long screwdriver to carefully poke a small hole in the rubber away from the existing wires, then worked the coax through with some soapy water on the tip. takes patience but no new holes in the firewall and it stays weathertight. as for keeping coax and power separated, yeah i'd try to do that if you can, especially if you end up having any RFI issues later, but honestly on VHF/UHF it's rarely a huge problem in my experience. the bigger thing is making sure your power leads go straight to the battery with an inline fuse as close to the battery as possible, not to the fuse box. fuse box installs are fine for low draw stuff but a 2300H can pull like 8 amps on transmit and you want clean power. good luck with it, post pics when youre done

ran RCForb with a 7600 for about a year and a half before i switched to a fully manual VPN + rigctld setup. honest opinion — RCForb is fine and it works, the audio latency is acceptable most of the time, but you're kind of stuck in their ecosystem and when something goes sideways you're debugging someone elses abstraction layer which gets old fast. i had an issue where the PTT would occasionally stick in transmit for like 200ms after release and i never fully figured out if it was the client, the server software on the shack end, or something in my router. never happened with my DIY setup. the SDR remote stuff through RemoteHams is actually pretty neat though, i'll give them that. being able to pull up a panadapter from someone elses rx-only node while youre transmitting from your own remote rig is a legit use case especially for contest work where you want to see whats happening adjacent to your run frequency. i dont think the echolink/allstar stuff integrates at all, those are totally different protocols and different communities pretty much. allstar is all SIP-ish VOIP over node networks, completely seperate world.

honestly for casual hilltop stuff i gave up on yagis a while ago unless im going specifically for a tropo opening or doing something structured like a VHF contest. the gain is real but the pointing problem is real too — you spend more time fiddling than operating. i use a 5/8 wave on 2m and it does fine, if conditions are good theyre good regardless. that said if you do want to bring a yagi i'd look at the tape measure yagis, the classic ARRL design folds down to almost nothing and you can rebend it if it gets tweaked. 3 elements gets you maybe 7-8 dbd over a dipole reference and thats honestly enough to make a noticeable difference without the aiming nightmare of a longer boom. i made one for fox hunting and it pulls double duty on activations now.

ok so I just passed my technician exam last week and I'm super excited but I have kind of a dumb question. my grandfather was a ham back in the 70s and had a really cool 1x2 callsign in our area and I was wondering if I could apply for something similar or even the same call if its available. I've been reading the FCC ULS stuff and my head is spinning honestly. from what I understand there's the sequential process where they just assign you the next available call in your district, and then there's the vanity process where you can request a specific one? but I'm not sure if I have to wait until my license actually shows up in the system before I can apply for vanity. right now I can see my CSCE but the license isnt in ULS yet. someone at the club said to wait 10 days but another guy said it could be faster now. just want to make sure I dont jump the gun and mess something up

the run freq thing is just something you learn to manage over time honestly. what helped me was getting into the habit of transmitting a short "QRZ" every 30-45 seconds on radio 1 even if im mid-search on radio 2 — not working anyone, just marking the frequency. it sounds weird but it keeps squatters off and reminds you where youre parked. some guys use the radio's memory function to snap back to the run freq instantly but i never trusted that to be fast enough the bleedover on 40 is a real problem with that filter setup if both radios are actually transmitting anywhere close in frequency. DXE filters are decent but you really want at least 50-100kHz separation on 40 or youre going to have a bad time no matter what. the footswitch interlock should be fine for now as long as its actually cutting TX on whichever radio isnt active — people run worse setups and do fine in smaller contests honestly though the mental thing just takes reps. run a few sprints or the state QSO parties where the pace is a little slower and you can practice the workflow without the pressure of a big rate contest. after maybe 3 or 4 full contests it started feeling a lot more natural for me

so ive been messing with RemoteHams for the past few weeks trying to get my remote station dialed in and honestly its been a mixed bag. the actual SDR side of things is pretty solid once you get the RCForb client configured right, but the latency on transmit control is driving me nuts. im running about 180ms round trip to the shack which should be manageable but there's this weird additional delay that happens specifically when i key up through the internet link and i cant figure out if its the software adding buffer or if its something on my router at the remote end. the setup is a K3 at the remote end with a rigctld interface feeding into the RemoteHams server software, and i have a small SDR dongle running alongside for the audio path which i know is a bit redundant but i wanted flexibility. the audio latency is actually fine, its just the PTT that feels sluggish and its making phone operation feel really awkward. like im stepping on people without meaning to because i release the key and theres this tail that just hangs there. has anyone run a similar hybrid setup or know if there's a configuration knob somewhere i missed that controls the PTT release timing specifically? ive gone through the docs and either im blind or its not in there

so ive been going back and forth on this for a few weeks now and figured id just ask here because im going in circles reading reviews. i mostly do local 2m work, some APRS, the occasional linked repeater stuff when im bored on weekends. right now i have a mag mount on the truck and a cheap j-pole in the attic which honestly barely works through the roof of my house. the question is whether to go with a decent collinear up on the chimney bracket or just bite the bullet and put up a yagi pointed at the main repeater about 35 miles out. the repeater direction is pretty fixed for me, like 99% of what i care about is roughly NNW from here. but i also dont want to completely kill my omnidirectional capability in case someone is calling from a weird direction or i want to hit the APRS digipeater which is sort of southeast. height isnt really the issue, i can get to about 30 feet on the chimney bracket or maybe 40 if i do a push-up mast in the backyard. feedline run would be maybe 60 feet either way so coax loss isnt dramatically different. im just not sure the gain from a yagi is worth giving up the omni pattern, especially since i dont have a rotor and wasnt really planning on getting one.

im pretty new to hf so maybe a dumb question but how do you even know when 10m is open like that, do you just check it periodically or is there an app or something that alerts you? i have a technician license so i can use some of 10m i think but havent really tried yet cause everyone told me it was mostly dead. sounds like maybe i picked a bad time to start paying attention to it ha.

I set phone reminders for the first Saturday of each month. Takes maybe 30 minutes to power everything up, check SWR, and verify all my programmed frequencies still work. Found a dead HT battery last month that would've been embarrassing during an activation!

the noise floor thing after poking around the front end is pretty common — sometimes its just a solder bridge you cant see or a component that got a little too much heat. i did the bandpass filter approach on my 7600 and left the internals alone after reading about what you're describing, honestly the external filtering got me most of what i wanted without the risk. if you can borrow an SDR even a cheap rtlsdr dongle and set it up as a panadapter you can at least do a rough before/after comparison against someones published numbers online. not lab grade but enough to tell you if you're significantly off. the 7300 has pretty well documented baseline specs so you'd have something to compare to. also worth reflowing those joints if you havent already, cold solder on that kind of board is sneaky.

Just passed my Technician exam last month and already itching for those HF privileges! The biggest incentive for upgrading from Tech to General is the increased HF privileges - I'm tired of being limited to 2m and 70cm repeaters. To pass the Ham Radio General Class exam, you must answer 26 out of 35 questions correctly, which is a score of 74%. What's the most efficient study plan for someone already familiar with basic electronics from the Tech exam? Should I focus on the new material or review everything?Any particular question pools that trip up new Generals?How much time did you spend studying after already having your Tech?