Digital Mode

i did something similar on an older 746 like 3 years ago, not quite the same mod but i was poking around the front end and knocked a tiny SMD cap off a ground trace and spent two weeks wondering why my audio had a buzz on certain bands. turned out to be that one cap. SMD rework in those rigs is no joke, you basically need a stereo microscope or youre flying blind the 2-3dB on 6m sounds about right for what your describing btw, i wouldnt expect miracles from that kind of mod but its real improvement if you're chasing weak signal stuff

i just got my tech about 4 months ago so i was in the exact same spot as you not that long ago. i used the ARRL ham radio license manual which is the big book thing and also hamstudy like the other guy said. the book is good if you actually want to understand why the answers are what they are instead of just memorizing, which i think helped me remember stuff better. the exam itself is 35 questions and you need 26 right to pass. find a local club because they usually hold testing sessions pretty regularly and some of them do free exam prep sessions too which i wish i had known about before i just showed up cold to a session. good luck with it

so ive been running FT8 for about a year now and its great for what it is, racking up contacts and all that, but i keep reading about JS8Call and im curious if anyone here actually uses it for like real back and forth conversation type stuff. the 15 second exchange thing on FT8 is fine but you cant really say anything meaningful, its basically just signal report and grid square and youre done. i messed around with PSK31 for a while back when i first got my general and that felt more like actually talking to someone even if it was slow. wondering if JS8Call fills that gap or if its more of a niche thing that not many people actually run. my radio is an IC-7300 going into WSJT-X and i have no issues with the FT8 side of things, just wondering if js8 needs a completely different setup or if i can run both. also curious about weak signal wise — is JS8Call actually comparable to FT8 or does FT8 still win there? i know FT8 is supposed to be like 10-12 dB better than CW which is nuts but i dont know where JS8 falls in that spectrum.

so ive been licensed for about 8 months now and i got a sequential call when i passed my tech, then upgraded to general a couple months later and eventually got my extra last month. my current call is kind of a mouthful and i was looking into applying for a vanity call through the FCC ULS system. i read through some stuff online but honestly the explanations are all over the place. from what i can piece together, you submit an application, there's like a 18 day window where anyone can apply for the same call, and then at the end of the window if nobody else applied it just gets assigned to you? but if multiple people want the same call it goes to whoever has the highest license class or something like that? and if you're all the same class then it's just... random? that part really confuses me. also i saw something about calls being available for different reasons, like a SK call becoming available after a certain time, or someone letting their license lapse. do those all go into the same pool or is there a preference system i'm not understanding correctly. i'm not in a huge rush, i just dont want to apply for something and get it wrong or miss my window or whatever. any of you gone through this recently?

so ive been sitting on doing this for like two years because i kept reading conflicting stuff about whether it would mess with the warranty or cause any actual RF issues and honestly i just bit the bullet last weekend. the mod itself is super straightforward if you follow the service manual procedure, just a couple jumpers on the main board. took me maybe 40 minutes including the time i spent triple checking i had the right board revision. what i was NOT expecting is that the extended tx range on 60m is actually pretty useful for some of the emcomm stuff my club does, we occasionally need to work with some frequencies that the stock radio just wouldnt do cleanly. the ALC behavior outside the ham bands is a little different and you do have to watch your power levels more carefully, the radio kind of assumes youre not going out there so some of the protection logic is relaxed i think. anyway if anyones been on the fence about it its not scary. just dont rush and make sure you document where you are before you touch anything. i took photos of every connector before i pulled it.

so ive had my Technician for about 8 months now and mostly been doing local 2m stuff and a little APRS but honestly its getting a little boring and i keep hearing people talk about HF and making contacts way out of state and even overseas and im like ok i want in on that my question is the General exam, is it actually a lot harder than the Tech exam or is it more of the same kind of stuff? i remember the Tech pool had a bunch of questions about like band privileges and basic electronics and some rules stuff. is General way more technical or is it doable if you just grind the question pool for a few weeks also kind of a side question, once you pass do you get HF access right away or do you have to wait for it to show up in the FCC database thing first before you can operate? i dont want to jump on 40m and get yelled at lol

ok so i just got my technician license like three weeks ago and ive been trying to use the 147.315 repeater in my area. i programmed my baofeng with the offset and everything and i can hear people talking just fine but when i key up nobody responds and i cant tell if im actually hitting the machine or not. my buddy told me i need a CTCSS tone but i dont really understand why — like isnt the repeater just... open? i looked it up and found a list that says the tone is 100.0 Hz but i dont know if i have it set right because the radio has like a transmit tone AND a receive tone and i dont know which one actually matters for accessing the repeater. also is there a way to know if im hitting it without waiting for someone to respond? feels like im just shouting into the void right now lol

oh man 180 flux i would have killed to be at my radio yesterday. i was stuck at work and saw the spots blowing up on the cluster on my phone, so frustrating. seems like every time conditions get good im not home lol. i've been using pskreporter a lot lately to get a rough sense of whether the band is open before i even key up, if i can see spots crossing the atlantic in either direction i know its worth trying. not perfect but helps a bit.

so we've got a county-wide ARES exercise coming up and i'm trying to nail down my portable setup. last time I ran everything off a 100ah LiFePO4 and it was fine for a few hours but we ended up running almost 8 hours straight and i was sweating bullets by hour five watching the voltage drop. this time i'm debating whether to just bring the little Honda eu2200i I have in the garage. thing is, it's overkill for just running an IC-7300 and a laptop and maybe a small fan, and lugging it out to a field site is kind of a pain. the battery is so much cleaner and quieter especially if we're near actual served agency folks who dont want to hear a generator running. antenna wise i'm thinking about putting up either my EFHW on a 31ft fiberglass mast or maybe just the buddipole since it breaks down faster. the EFHW gets out better in my experience but takes longer to tune and get up properly. site is a parking lot adjacent to a park so no trees to sling anything into unfortunately. anyone run extended field ops like this and figured out a good balance between battery and generator? thinking maybe i just bring both and use the honda to top off the battery if needed rather than running everything straight off it. or is that dumb and i should just get a bigger battery bank

honestly its mostly just a practical thing and not really a hard rule. on a local 2m repeater where signals are usually clean and everyones callsign is familiar, yeah most people just say it normally. but on HF conditions can be rough, theres QRM, sometimes the other station is in a pile and copy is just harder, so phonetics really do help. i always go phonetic when im making initial contact or if the band sounds at all sketchy. once youre in a QSO and youve already exchanged calls a couple times some people drop it, thats fine. the thing is dont half-do it though, ive heard people mix up NATO with random stuff they made up and it actually makes it worse. like saying "K for kitchen" or whatever, just stick to the actual phonetics if youre gonna use them

our club is doing a small swap meet in april i think, not sure of the exact date yet they havent posted it. its nothing huge but people bring decent stuff sometimes. im in the cincinnati area if thats anywhere near you

so ive had my technician license for about 8 months now and honestly ive been mostly just doing local stuff on 2m and some 70cm. but ive been listening to the HF bands on my buddys radio and it sounds amazing, like people talking all over the world and i want in on that. been reading about the General class exam and i guess my question is how different is it from the tech exam? i remember the tech exam being not too bad but i also remember some of the electrical theory questions being kinda rough and i barely passed. is the General exam a lot harder or is it about the same level? also what actually changes once you pass, like what bands do i get access to that i dont have now. sorry if this is a vague question im just not sure where to start

not sure about that specific rotator but i built something similar with an Arduino Mega driving an H-bridge for a homebrew antenna rotator — totally different situation i know but the serial timing headache sounds familiar. one thing that burned me was the pi zero's UART had hardware flow control acting weird, ended up just disabling it entirely in the config and things got way more stable. might be worth a shot if you havent tried it already.

so ive been trying to figure out if its worth the 2 hour drive up to the Tri-County hamfest in March. last time i went was like 3 years ago and honestly the swap tables were kinda sparse but i did pick up a pretty decent MFJ tuner for like 12 bucks so maybe its worth it. anybody been recently and know if the vendors have been decent or is it just a bunch of guys selling old CB radios and coax adapters

same boat as you like 6 months ago lol. what finally clicked for me was just starting to upload to LoTW and then checking my account after a few weeks and seeing the confirmed count go up on its own when the other guy uploads too. its weirdly motivating. WAZ was actually the one that got me hooked because working all 40 CQ zones felt like a puzzle and some zones are genuinely hard to find — zone 2 took me forever, kept missing the openings to northern Canada. your 7300 and a wire will get you surprisingly far, dont let anyone tell you otherwise.