Ham Fan 24

The General exam has 35 multiple-choice questions across ten categories. I recommend taking full practice exams under timed conditions rather than just studying by topic. The ARRL practice exams are solid, and don't forget you can take Extra the same day if you're feeling confident!

Traffic just means messages — like formal written messages being passed along through the network, leftover from the old radiogram days. Most local 2m nets dont do much actual traffic passing anymore but the NTS nets still do it seriously. Net control asks so anyone carrying a formal message knows when to pass it along in the right order. You'll probably never need to worry about it on a casual local net honestly. As for getting the hang of net procedure, you kind of nailed it — say your callsign when called for check ins, wait to be recognized before transmitting, and dont kerchunk the repeater mid-net just to see if youre making it in. That last one is what probably got that guy a talking-to. Some net controls run a tighter ship than others, nothing personal, they just want things to flow so everyone gets a turn. Stick with it, after a few weeks it'll feel totally natural.

i had almost the exact same thing happen on my second ever POTA activation, wasnt even on a summit just a windy field and my end fed was basically a windsock. ended up just holding the feedpoint with one hand and keying with the other which was stupid but it worked. you'll figure out your system after a few more times out, the first few are always kind of a mess honestly

so ive been licensed about three years now and been doing a lot of HF but mostly just ragchewing and some contests here and there. recently i started actually logging with the intent of going for DXCC and i guess i just assumed i understood how the credits worked but now that im sitting here with like 87 confirmed entities i'm realizing i dont fully get the process. like, do i need paper QSLs for all of them or can i just submit everything through LoTW and call it a day? i have maybe 40 or so confirmed on LoTW already but a lot of my older contacts especially some of the DX stations just never uploaded. and what about WAS — is that totally separate from DXCC or do some contacts count toward both at the same time if theyre stateside contacts? also someone at the club mentioned WAZ and i had to pretend i knew what they were talking about lol. is that one actually worth chasing or is it kind of a stepping stone thing people do before DXCC? genuinely not sure where to focus my energy. been working 20m mostly, some 17m when the band cooperates.

i just did mine like two months ago. honestly just used hamStudy and did practice tests every day for like two weeks. the math questions look scarier than they are, theres only a few formulas you really need. i was scoring around 60% at first too and ended up passing fine. good luck

check how APRSdroid is formatting the coordinates before they go out. there was a bug in older versions where it would send the position in decimal degrees but the packet encoder was expecting degrees and decimal minutes which is the NMEA standard format. so like if your lat is 41.5432 it might be sending that literally instead of converting it to 4132.59N or whatever the proper format is. the igates will still pass the packet but aprs.fi will decode the position wrong and put you in the middle of nowhere. update the app if you havent already and also look at the raw packets on aprs.fi, theres a link on your station page to see the raw data. if the position string looks weird like its missing the degree symbol format or the N/W designator is off that'll tell you right there. also double check your symbol and SSID settings while youre in there, sometimes a misconfigured SSID on a mobile station causes weird display behavior too though thats probably not your issue here.

dipole first, no question. you already have the space for a half wave on 40 which is about 66 feet, so your 75 foot run works fine even with a little sag in the middle. dont overthink the orientation when youre starting out, yeah it matters eventually but a dipole up in the air on 40m is going to work way better than anything you spend three weekends building on the ground. verticals can be great but the radial thing is real, people underestimate how much work a proper ground mounted vertical is. ive seen guys put up a vertical with 4 radials and wonder why it sounds deaf and noisy compared to their neighbors dipole thats only 25 feet up. the math on radials is kind of brutal, you really want 16 minimum to start seeing decent efficiency and that adds up fast. clay soil does help a bit but its not magic. get the dipole up, work some stations, then you can figure out if you actually want dx badly enough to go dig up your yard for a vertical later.

so i've only been licensed about four months and i finally worked up the nerve to check in to our local Tuesday night net. went okay i think but at one point i asked the net control if i could ask a general question and he said go ahead, and i asked something about... honestly it was kind of off topic for the net and you could just tell by the pause that it was the wrong time for it. nobody was rude or anything but i felt embarrassed after. i guess my question is how do you know what's appropriate to bring up on a net vs just waiting to ragchew with someone after? like is there some unwritten rulebook i'm missing or do you just pick it up over time. i've been listening to the net for a few weeks before i checked in and thought i had a feel for it but apparently not totally. also is it normal to feel this nervous about transmitting, even on a local repeater? im still kind of shaky every time i key up

yeah same thing happened to me when i was new, felt kinda silly saying "Whiskey" for my W call but honestly you get used to it fast. i'd say just practice it even when you dont really need to, like on a clear local contact just so it feels normal when you actually do need it in a pinch

so ive been on SSB for maybe 8 months now, mostly 40m and 20m, and i keep getting reports that my audio is either too bassy or sounds like im talking through a tin can. i upgraded from a Technician so the HF stuff is still kinda new to me and i dont really know where to start troubleshooting this. my rig is an IC-7300 and im using a Heil PR-40 which i thought was supposed to be like a gold standard mic for ham use but apparently im still doing something wrong. ive messed with the mic gain and the compression settings but every time i think i have it dialed in someone on a net tells me something different. one guy said my audio was peaking badly, next contact said it was too low and he had to crank his AF gain. i honestly dont know if its the mic, the settings, the way im talking into it, or what. anyone dealt with this? also not sure if my ALC is doing something weird, the meter swings around a lot when i talk.

I've tested both configurations with my nanoVNA. The stacked cores definitely show better bandwidth and slightly lower SWR across the amateur bands. Worth the extra weight for base station use but probably not for ultralight hiking.

Wow, what a morning on 10 meters! We've been seeing SFI levels much higher than anticipated for this solar cycle peak, with recent readings well over 300 and today was no exception at 182. Worked JA, VK, and even caught some South Americans on 28.400 before the band closed around 1400Z. The higher HF bands like 10 and 12 meters are the first to be impacted during solar activity, but also the first to recover and provide amazing long-distance contacts as the ionosphere reconfigures itself. Even had some brief 6m activity with a JA station - absolutely incredible! Anyone else catch this opening? The band was wall-to-wall signals for about 3 hours.

Sounds like the antenna is a little long for 467MHz and just about right for 448MHz - you might trim it a little at a time to balance the SWR between the frequencies. But first, double-check all your connections and make sure the mount has solid electrical contact.