Robert Chen

okay so dont let the FCC website freak you out, its terrible for actually figuring out how to get started. the short version is yes there are three license classes, Technician, General, and Amateur Extra. most people start with Technician which is 35 questions from a pool of like 400-something and you need a 74% to pass. its honestly not that bad if you study for even a week or two. best place to start is hamstudy.org, just go there and start doing practice exams. the whole question pool is public so what you study is literally whats on the test, no surprises. some people use the ARRL Technician study guide book too but i personally just used hamstudy and passed first try. for finding an actual test session near you look up ARRL exam sessions or W5YI, you just show up with your ID and like 15 bucks. no class required, you can just self study and walk in. your IT background will help with the electronics stuff for sure, the hardest part for most people is the regulations section but even that isnt too bad once you just memorize it.

oh man don't feel bad about that, honestly everyone does something like this at least once when they're new. the net control guy handled it right — polite correction and move on, that's how it should go. you clearly learned from it which is all anyone can ask. for resources i'd say honestly the best thing is just to listen for a few weeks before you check in. like actually sit there and pay attention to how net control runs things, what the cadence is, when people speak and when they don't. that taught me more than any written guide. but if you want something to read, the ARRL has a net directory and some basic net operating guides that aren't TOO painful, and there are some youtube videos from various clubs walking through a simulated net check-in that are actually pretty decent for getting the sequence down. and yes absolutely you can ask net control questions — most of them have been doing this for years and love helping newer folks, just maybe ask after the net closes like yours suggested. that's actually the perfect time.

im thinking about going but honestly not sure what im even looking for yet, just started getting into HF so maybe ill find something useful? dont really know what a fair price looks like for used gear tbh

yeah hamstudy is what i used, passed on my first try with like 10 days of studying mostly on my phone during lunch. the electrical theory questions tripped me up at first but theres not that many of them and if you just memorize the answers for the ones you dont understand the concepts its fine for passing. honestly the hardest part for me was finding a test session nearby, check the ARRL exam search or sometimes local clubs post them on facebook. some places do online testing now through groups like GLAARG or Laurel which is convenient if you're not near a club

so I've been interested in ham radio for a while now, my neighbor has a big antenna setup and it got me curious. I looked it up and apparently you need a license? there's a technician exam and then higher ones after that I guess. I dont really know what any of it means yet. is there like a good book or website people use to study or do most folks just wing it. also how hard is the test actually, I heard its multiple choice but I have no idea how many questions or what the pass rate is or anything. any help would be great I'm kind of just starting from zero here

ok so ive been licensed for about 3 years and mostly just do HF but my buddy kept telling me to try working satellites so i finally set up to give it a shot last weekend. got a couple of yagis crossed for circular polarization, hooked up to my FT-847 which supposedly does the doppler correction... or at least i thought it did automatically but i guess it doesnt really? anyway i was trying to work AO-73 on its linear transponder and i could hear people just fine on the downlink around 145.960 but whenever i transmitted i couldnt hear my own signal come back down. i know the transponder is inverting so i was trying to account for that but honestly i kept getting confused about which direction to tune. like if someone sounds high on the downlink do i go up or down on the uplink. i feel like i spent the whole 12 minute pass just chasing my tail and never actually made a contact. also i was using gpredict for tracking and the antenna rotators were following along pretty well but i noticed gpredict was showing a slightly different AOS time than what heavens-above predicted. only like 30 seconds off but still, is that normal? does it matter which TLE source you use?

Log4OM handles the WSJT-X UDP integration pretty well once you get the ports sorted out. you set WSJT-X to send logged QSOs via UDP, point it at the port Log4OM is listening on, and it just shows up. took me maybe 20 minutes to get working the first time and most of that was me misreading which field was the port number. the interface in Log4OM v2 is way nicer than N1MM for day to day stuff, N1MM always felt like it was designed by someone who only cares about running SO2R in a contest and never thinks about just casually working DX on a Tuesday afternoon. that said if you ever want to do serious contest operating N1MM is kind of the standard and the integration with things like SO2R boxes and networked stations is hard to beat. i personally run both — Log4OM for everything normal and fire up N1MM when a contest weekend comes around, then merge the logs after. bit of a hassle but it works.

so ive been on the air for about 8 months now using a buddipole i borrowed from a club member and i finally decided its time to build something permanent. going with a simple 40m dipole to start, probably hung inverted-v style from a tree in the backyard. got some 14awg stranded copper from the hardware store and a SO-239 center connector i pulled off an old rig i scrapped. my question is mostly about the feedpoint. ive seen people use all kinds of center insulators, some homebrew ones from PVC or whatever, some bought. does it really matter that much what i use there as long as it keeps the two sides from touching? also wondering about the choke - i know i need one, been reading about ugly baluns made from coiling the feedline, how many turns of RG-8X are we talking for 40m? ive seen numbers all over the place. the tree is maybe 35 feet at the apex so the legs will slope down at maybe 30 degrees or so from center, not ideal i know but its what i have. cut to resonance first then trim right? or should i start longer and tune from there. sorry if this is basic stuff

dont overthink the timing thing too much honestly, 500ms is probably fine for logging purposes and if your SWR is spiking so fast that half a second matters you've probably got bigger problems anyway lol. but yeah the split approach the other guy mentioned is smart, pi for the brains and a little microcontroller for anything where timing actually matters. i did something similar with a wemos D1 mini watching my tuner and it works great, just sends a udp packet to the pi when something goes wrong and the pi handles the logging and notifications. cheap and it actually works reliably which is more than i can say for some of my more ambitious projects

This is my first solar cycle as a licensed ham so I honestly have no frame of reference but 10 meters has been wild to me — I didn't even know what to expect when I first got on HF and now I'm making DX contacts with a pretty modest setup. Picked up an FT-891 about four months ago and it's been doing work. If that Yaesu rumor is true and it's priced aggressively I might regret buying when I did but honestly I'm happy with what I have so probably fine. Haven't been to Dayton yet but it's on the list for sure.

yeah the lost run frequency thing drove me absolutely crazy when i started SO2R. one thing nobody told me early on — logging software matters a lot here. if youre using N1MM it has the SO2R mode built in and it handles a lot of the radio focus switching automatically so your brain doesnt have to context switch as hard. not sure what youre running but if its not N1MM or at least something with proper SO2R support you might be making it harder on yourself than it needs to be also the 7300 and 991A combo is a little awkward because the 991A's CAT implementation is kind of slow compared to the icom stuff so if youre relying on software to manage radio switching you might get some lag. not a dealbreaker but worth knowing

I'm kind of in the same boat as you, just started tracking seriously maybe 6 months ago. One thing that helped me a lot was using Club Log — it'll show you which entities you still need and also has that log checking tool that shows where your QSOs stand. I didnt realize for a while that LoTW confirmation and Club Log matching were two separate things that both matter depending on what award youre going for. Also dont sleep on WAS while youre at it. I was so focused on DXCC I almost forgot I was really close to WAS confirmed and knocked that out pretty quick once I paid attention. Some states are weirdly harder to get than certain DX entities which I found kind of funny.

so ive been a tech for about a year and a half and i keep hearing people talk about CW and how great it is and i decided i want to actually learn it properly. problem is i have no idea where to start. like do i learn the alphabet first and then practice sending or do i just listen to a bunch of stuff until it clicks or what. i downloaded some app but it just throws letters at me randomly and i dont know if thats the right approach or if im wasting my time. also how fast should i be trying to go when im just starting out, someone told me 5 wpm but someone else said that actually makes it harder to learn because you hear the rhythm wrong or something. its kind of overwhelming honestly

The sequential system means call signs are assigned sequentially from the pool - so if you don't like your assignment, upgrading license class gets you a new roll of the dice essentially. I upgraded from Tech to General partly for this reason!

Congratulations on the upgrade! I recommend the Icom 2730A dual band mobile. I have two of them and have encountered no issues with them. They have a 50-watt output. They cover the 2-meter band and the 70-centimeter band. The center of a vehicle's roof is a very good place to mount a VHF/UHF antenna. However, creating an optimal ground in this position involves drilling a hole. If you choose this path, seek professional help from your dealer or a qualified installer. You could use a mag mount instead, but the only ground path is through capacitive coupling, which is lossy in comparison.

the coil is almost certainly your problem if you wound it yourself and werent super precise about it. a tank coil thats off by even 10-15% inductance will throw off your pi network matching and youll never get proper load on the final. what gauge wire did you use and how many turns, whats the coil form diameter? if you can measure inductance with even a rough LC meter you can sanity check it against what the design calls for. also 55ma at dip on a 6L6 with 280v on the plate does sound light. what does the grid current look like when youre driving it, if youre even measuring that. sometimes the driver stage isnt putting enough RF into the grid and the final just isnt being pushed hard enough regardless of everything else being right. the 6L6 needs a decent swing on the grid to really open up. id check your driver output before assuming the final itself is the issue.

yeah i basically do exactly what youre describing, Log4OM for the regular stuff and N1MM when theres a contest worth entering. the sync thing is not that bad honestly, i just export ADIF out of N1MM after the contest and import it into Log4OM. takes maybe five minutes and ive never had a major issue with it. the duplicate checker in Log4OM catches most of the overlapping stuff if theres any. as for WSJT-X, Log4OM does have a UDP connection so it can log directly from WSJT-X without any manual importing. you set up the multicast or just point WSJT-X at Log4OM's port and it just receives the QSOs as they happen. way cleaner than the ADIF import route. took me a bit to figure out the port settings the first time but once its set up you kinda forget its even there. honestly the only thing i miss in Log4OM during a contest is how fast N1MM is with the keyboard shortcuts and the dupe checking in real time. Log4OM is fine for general use but it doesnt feel as snappy when youre trying to run a pile at 100 QSOs an hour or whatever

the tension and gap adjustment on a Bencher really does make a huge difference and a lot of people dont realize how sensitive it is. there are two adjustments — the spring tension screw and the contact gap. you want the gap as small as you can get it without the contacts touching at rest, like maybe a business card thickness if that. too much gap and you have to work way harder to close the contact which throws off your rhythm completely. for the tension, lighter is usually better once you get used to it. most beginners crank it up tight because it feels more controlled, but that leads to muscle fatigue and slop in your timing after a few minutes. try loosening it a bit more than feels comfortable and just spend a week with it. also honestly the iambic keyer in the 7300 is fine but make sure you're in mode A not mode B to start — mode B does some extra things with the last element that can confuse people when they're learning. look it up in the manual its worth understanding the difference before you go too much further. dont worry about the 8wpm thing, go as slow as you need. the whole idea that slow speed builds bad habits is kind of a myth as long as your element timing ratios are correct. a dit is a dit whether its at 5wpm or 25wpm.

that sounds like it could be a corrupt packet getting through without triggering a checksum failure, or possibly a different station's packet getting attributed to your callsign somehow. does aprs.fi show the path info on those bad position reports? if you click on the packet detail it'll show you which digipeaters touched it and that might give you a clue. also worth checking if your SSID is unique, ive seen cases where someone nearby is running the same callsign-SSID combo which causes all kinds of weirdness on the network. the 12 miles off thing is suspicious though, that's too consistent to be pure noise. could be a NMEA sentence getting parsed wrong, like if the GPS occasionally spits out a position from before it had a solid fix and the radio is just blindly forwarding it. some of those cheaper pucks will output a technically valid NMEA sentence with old coordinates right after powerup before they reacquire. might be worth looking at what time of day the bad beacons happen and see if it correlates with when you start the car.

Saw another article claiming amateur radio is a "dying hobby" because of aging demographics. But then I look at FT8 activity, POTA activations, and YouTube channels like Ham Radio 2.0 bringing in younger folks. While ham radio has historically attracted older demographics, that's changing rapidly. The hobby appeals to tech-savvy millennials and Gen Z who appreciate its DIY ethos and emergency communication value. Online communities, YouTube channels, and podcast hosts are bringing more young people into the hobby every day. Maybe we're not dying, just evolving?

yeah you're not imagining it, a lot of the mobile apps do poll less frequently to save battery and data. some of them you can dig into settings and crank up the refresh rate but honestly for serious DX chasing nothing beats just having a browser tab open to a good cluster node directly. the trick i use for figuring out if a spot is still alive — look at the spot time and if its more than like 8-10 minutes old on a popular band during good conditions, its probably moved on or buried in a pile you wont crack easily. also pay attention to who is doing the spotting, if you see the same station getting spotted over and over from different sources in a short window thats usually a sign the signal is solid and its worth jumping on. if its just one spot and nothing else, maybe worth a quick tune but dont camp there forever QRZ for callsign lookup is fine but i actually prefer using DX heat map or just googling the prefix real quick to see what entity it is before i even bother. saves a little time. what mode are you mostly working, SSB or digital?

so anyway i went through the exact same thing when i first got on repeaters, the baofeng menu for tones is kind of buried. if its a UV-5R you gotta go into the menu and set T-CTCS for the transmit tone, that 100.0 hz is what you want. theres a separate R-CTCS for receive but leave that alone for now unless the squelch noise is driving you crazy. also worth mentioning — some repeaters around here are linked into bigger systems like IRLP or AllStar and the etiquette on those can be a little different, like you want to leave longer pauses between transmissions so linked stations can break in. just something to keep in mind as you explore more machines.

so ive been licensed for about 3 months now and i keep hearing people say things like QSL and QTH and QRM and honestly i have no idea what half of them mean. i got a general class and my elmer told me i'd pick it up as i go but its been a few weeks and i still feel lost when people rattle them off fast on the repeater. is there like a standard list somewhere or do people just kind of know them from memory after a while? also are there ones that are more important to know than others, like the ones i'll hear the most? some of the guys at my club use abbreviations i've never even seen in any Q code list so im not sure if those are official or just slang people made up over the years

Gpredict user here with IC-9700. Multi-platform implementation works great, and being free software under GPL is a huge plus. The Hamlib integration has improved significantly in recent versions. Haven't had any issues with Doppler accuracy on AO-7 or FO-29.

this is really interesting to read as someone who just got their general and has been thinking about getting involved with ARES. i didnt realize how much of it was the paperwork and logistics side vs just like, operating the radio. kind of makes me want to go sit in on one of these drills before i actually try to help at one so i know what im getting into