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.

honest answer — for casual improvement SO2R is probably more headache than its worth unless you really enjoy the technical side of setting it up. the gains are real at the top end but those guys are also spending 48 hours in the chair and every QSO counts. if youre doing 10-15 contests a year and not chasing plaques, you'd probably get more rate improvement just working on your CW speed if thats your mode, or dialing in your run frequency strategy and learning when to actually abandon a pileup instead of sitting there forever that said the 7610 dual receiver thing you mentioned IS worth exploiting more aggressively. a lot of people have it and barely use it. getting comfortable monitoring a second frequency while running took me probably 5 or 6 contests to feel natural but it did noticeably help my multiplier count without any of the SO2R hardware pain

so ive been running a remote station for about 8 months now using a mix of stuff — RigCtl talking to my IC-7300 over a VPN tunnel, audio through mumble, and PTT via a GPIO line on a raspberry pi. it works but its janky and every few weeks something breaks and i have to either drive out there or bug my neighbor to reboot something. anyway i started looking at RemoteHams because a buddy mentioned it handles a lot of the reconnection and session management stuff automatically and also has that SDR remote component so you can run a panadapter alongside the main rig. curious if anyone here has actually used it for more than just occasional playing around. like does the SDR side actually sync up properly with the transceiver tuning or is it just kind of a separate window you have to manage yourself. also the internet linking piece — im assuming this means like you can tie in echolink or IRLP style nodes through the same interface? or is that something totally different. the documentation on their site is not exactly written for clarity. main thing i care about is reliability. i dont need bleeding edge features i just need the thing to stay up when im trying to work a DX pileup from 800 miles away from my antenna.

so ive been licensed about 14 months now, general class, and i keep seeing people talk about CQ WW and ARRL Field Day and honestly it sounds like a lot of fun but also kind of intimidating. i did Field Day last year with my club but i was basically just watching and handing people coffee so that doesnt really count lol this year i want to actually get on the air myself. i have an ic-7300 and a resonant dipole for 40m that i put up last spring. nothing fancy. i know CQ WW is coming up in october and there's also the ARRL sweepstakes in november i think? not sure which one to try first or if i should even bother without a better antenna situation. also been seeing some posts about SOTA activations which seems like a totally different thing but still gets logged for some contests? or does it? im honestly not sure how that works any advice from people who have actually done these would be great, im not trying to win anything just want to get a feel for it

this is making me think about whether i should finally join up with my local ARES group. ive been licensed for two years and keep meaning to do it but havent got around to it. is there like a specific level of experience or equipment you need before you go to the first meeting or do they take complete beginners

yeah i went down this rabbit hole last winter and spent way too much time on it lol. ended up getting an Heil PR-781 and while it does sound noticeably better for SSB than the stock mic, i think the bigger improvement came from actually learning the 7300's processing settings properly. there's a guy on youtube who did a really detailed video specifically on 7300 TX audio and it walked through all the hidden menu stuff, worth finding if you havent already. one thing nobody really tells you — mic distance matters a lot more than people think on SSB. too close and you get proximity effect buildup and plosives all over the place, too far and you lose level and start riding the compressor harder. somewhere around 2-3 inches seems to be the sweet spot for most desk mics.

thats pretty much how i got into this hobby lol, just listening for months before i even got my ticket. there's something relaxing about it

ok so ive been licensed for about 3 months now (general class) and i keep hearing people talk about nets and how great they are for getting on the air and actually talking to people. found a couple schedules on a local club website but honestly i dont really know what to do when the net control calls for check-ins. like do i just say my callsign? do i say my name and location too? is there some kind of format i should know about before i just jump in and embarrass myself lol also seen some stuff about special event stations like the 13 colonies thing in july and wonder if those count as nets or if thats totally different. anyway any help appreciated, dont want to sound like a complete idiot on my first time

so ive been going back and forth on this for a while now and figured id just ask here. i have a 40m dipole up about 30 feet, fed with RG8X, and its been working ok but i keep reading that a vertical would be better for dx and honestly my main interest is more like regional stuff, 200-500 miles, not really chasing dx that much. neighbor about two miles away runs a vertical with a pretty serious radial field and he always seems louder on the local nets than i am even though i think my dipole should theoretically be doing more low angle stuff at that height... or does it? im not totally sure actually. anyway wondering if anyone has done a real side by side or has opinions on this. i know the usual answer is "it depends" but im trying to nail down something more specific. my lot is maybe 60x120 so i have some room but not a ton. could probably get the dipole higher if thats the real issue.

so i was just kind of spinning the dial on 10m yesterday afternoon, not really expecting much because its been pretty dead up here in the pacific northwest for weeks, and all of a sudden i started hearing stations coming in from europe like they were next door. worked a couple italians and what sounded like a spanish station though i never quite got his callsign sorted out before the opening collapsed. checked the solar flux index after and it was sitting around 165 which honestly surprised me, i hadnt been paying attention to spaceweather.com the last few days. k-index was pretty quiet too. anyway it got me curious whether anyone else caught that opening or if it was just some kind of localized thing. im running a pretty modest setup, just a dipole at about 25 feet so if i was hearing europe that well the band must have really been cooking. do you guys follow the flux numbers daily or do you just kind of check when you feel like operating? ive been trying to figure out what a reliable threshold is for 10m to actually be worth monitoring. seems like anything above 150 its at least worth a listen?

honestly you are overthinking it. the tech exam really isnt that bad, most people i know passed it studying for like 2-3 weeks, some did it in a weekend if they already had some electronics background. the question pool is public which is kind of weird when you think about it but it means you can literally study the exact questions that will be on the test. that said i'd recommend actually understanding the stuff and not just memorizing because when you get on the air you'll want to know why certain things are the way they are, especially the rules and regs stuff which is just pure memorization anyway. hamstudy.org is where most people start now, its free and it tracks which questions you're getting wrong and drills you on those. the ARRL technician manual is good if you want a physical book to read through but honestly between hamstudy and maybe watching some of the hamradioprep videos on youtube you'll probably be fine. just take a bunch of practice exams until you're consistently scoring above 80 percent and then go book your test through a local club or online through one of the remote testing options.