Jeff Parker

CQ WW SSB is a great first contest honestly, just jump in and do S&P for a few hours and see how you feel. nobody's going to yell at you for being a newcomer. the exchange is dead simple — your callsign, 59, and your CQ zone, thats it. for the US youre zone 3, 4, or 5 depending on where you are so just look that up before you start. with your setup you'll probably work a lot of stateside and maybe some Caribbean or South American stations without too much trouble, especially if conditions are decent. Field Day is a totally different vibe though, more of a club/social thing and genuinely great for new folks because you're usually operating with experienced people around to help. SOTA is its own world and doesnt really tie into the major contests, though some people do chase SOTA activators during Field Day and log the contacts. they're kind of parallel universes. just pick one contest this fall, set a modest goal like 50 contacts, and go have fun. thats really all there is to it starting out.

i just use N1MM for everything including the FT8 logging and it works fine tbh. yeah its overkill for casual operating but once you learn where everything is its not that complicated. the WSJT-X integration logs automatically and you can set it up to dupe check against your running log which is actually really handy even outside of contests. Log4OM looks nicer and has that club log integration built in which is nice if you care about that. but for sweepstakes specifically id really stick with N1MM, the multiplier tracking and the way it handles the exchange is just dialed in perfectly for that contest. trying to do SS in anything else always feels like fighting the software.

oh man i was EXACTLY here about two years ago, sat at 12-13wpm for like four or five months and thought i'd never get past it. what finally broke the plateau for me was forcing myself off the computer practice and just getting on the air even when i felt completely unprepared. i started calling CQ on 40m at like 10pm when it's quieter and just told myself if someone came back faster than i could copy, so be it. the real QSO pressure somehow rewired my brain faster than any program did. also yes do the farnsworth thing, seriously. set your character speed to 18 or even 20wpm but put the word spacing way out so you have time to think between characters. your brain starts recognizing the sounds as whole characters instead of individual elements. took me maybe three weeks of consistent work before i noticed a real difference. dont give up, 20wpm is absolutely reachable and once you crack through the plateau it goes faster than you expect.

im pretty much in the same boat as you, been at cw for maybe 6 months. what helped me was switching to a straight key for a while actually, feels weird at first but it made me slow down and think about each element more deliberately. then going back to the paddles felt more natural somehow. might not work for everyone but worth a try if you have access to one

oh man i remember that feeling exactly. the copy comes before the sending for most people, thats just how it works, so you're actually in a pretty normal spot. the thing that helped me most was slowing way down and really listening to what im sending while im sending it. like actively monitor yourself through the sidetone and if something sounds wrong stop and resend it, dont just barrel through. most guys on the air are patient especially if they can tell youre new. on the paddle question — it might actually be a factor. not saying you need to spend a ton but a really light or stiff action with bad spring tension can mess with your rhythm. the IC-7300 keyer is decent so thats not the problem. maybe see if you can adjust the tension and gap on the paddle you have, sometimes thats all it takes. and honestly just do drills, sending random QSO exchanges over and over until your hand stops thinking about it. took me probably two years before my fist felt comfortable and im still not great haha

not a dumb question at all, this trips up a lot of newcomers because honestly the QSL ecosystem is kind of a mess that grew organically over decades and nobody sat down and made it simple short answer is LoTW is the gold standard if you care about DXCC credit through the ARRL. eQSL is free at the basic level and a lot of people use it casually but it doesnt count for DXCC unless you do the paid membership and even then its only accepted for certain awards. paper cards are the tradition and some awards like the old CQ awards still lean on them pretty heavily, plus a lot of DX stations still prefer a physical card as a courtesy for your LoTW issue — the most common problem is the certificate isnt matching up with your log entries. make sure your callsign, the date, time in UTC, band, and mode all match exactly what the other station uploaded. even being off by one minute can cause a mismatch. also the other station has to have uploaded their log to LoTW too, so sometimes you just have to wait, some folks only upload once a year or after a contest i'd honestly just set up all three. log with whatever software you use, upload to LoTW regularly, set up a free eQSL account, and keep a shoebox for the paper ones that show up. you dont have to go crazy with it

yeah the inverted V thing is real, the angle of the legs affects the resonant frequency and you almost always end up needing to trim some off after you get it in the air. the closer those legs get to vertical the weirder it gets. at a 120 or 130 degree included angle youre usually pretty close to flat dipole territory but below that the velocity factor of the geometry or whatever starts pulling it down in frequency. just trim maybe half an inch to an inch at a time off each leg symmetrically and keep checking, youll find it. the 38 ohm feedpoint thing is also pretty normal for inverted V. flat half wave dipole in free space is that classic 73 ohms but inverted V with legs drooping like that brings it down, ive seen anywhere from 35 to 50 depending on the angle and height above ground. should be fine with 50 ohm coax honestly, the mismatch is small enough the radio wont care and a tuner can handle it easy if needed. sounds like you did everything right, just needs a little trim.

so our ARES group has a county-wide exercise coming up in about 5 weeks and im trying to nail down a solid portable setup. ive done a few of these before but this time they want us to run for 12 hours straight which is longer than anything ive done off grid before. my normal go-bag stuff works fine for 3-4 hours but im not confident about sustained ops. right now i have a 100ah LiFePO4 battery that i run my IC-7300 off of, and it does okay for casual use but 12 hours of mixed TX/RX is a different story. been thinking about either adding a second battery or just biting the bullet and bringing a generator. the thing is nobody in our group really wants to deal with the noise and fuel hassle of a genny during something that's supposed to simulate a real disaster scenario, plus some of the sites we might be at dont allow gas powered equipment indoors. on the antenna side ive been messing around with a 40m EFHW that i throw up with a 31 foot jackite pole and that works great but im wondering if i should bring a vertical as a backup. last exercise we had someone's dipole come down in the wind and they were off the air for like 45 minutes while they sorted it out. trying not to repeat that. anybody run something like this for extended emcomm ops? whats your power budget look like for a 12 hour shift?

welcome to the hobby, and dont stress too much about this decision honestly. for what you're describing — repeaters and hiking simplex — you have a lot of good options and none of them are gonna let you down badly. the baofeng situation is one of those endless debates around here. they work, they really do, but the receiver isnt great so you can get interference and weird stuff happening on busy rf environments. for a first radio though a lot of people start with one and its totally fine. if you want to step up a notch without spending icom money, the yaesu ft-65 is worth a look, solid little dual band HT, pretty intuitive menu system, and the audio is noticeably better than the cheap stuff. kenwood makes good HTs too but theyre harder to find locally sometimes. if aprs is something you think you'll actually use and not just think sounds cool for a month and then forget about, the yaesu ft5dr has aprs built in and its a genuinely nice radio. little spendy for a first HT but some people just go straight to that and dont regret it. depends on your budget really. the one thing id actually say is whatever you get, spend time learning the menu before you're standing on top of a mountain trying to figure out how to change the squelch. they all have their quirks.

yeah the question pool is exactly where the exam questions come from, they pull them directly from it so if you know the pool you know the exam. thats honestly the whole trick with these tests. hamStudy is good but i found that just drilling it over and over for like 2-3 weeks got me from where you are to consistently hitting 85-90% on the practice tests and then i went and sat for it the electrical theory stuff, honestly dont stress too hard about fully understanding all of it. like some of the impedance and the reactance questions i just kinda memorized the answers without totally getting the why behind it and i still passed fine. if you actually want to understand it gordon west's book breaks it down pretty well but its not strictly necessary to pass once you get your General ticket and get on 40m at night you're gonna wonder why you waited this long. i worked a station in brazil on my first week with like 100 watts into a dipole strung up kinda janky in my backyard. the bands are decent right now too with the solar cycle where it is

so ive been licensed for about 3 months now and i keep hearing people on the air throwing around all these codes and shortened words and honestly half the time i have no idea whats being said. like i know CQ means calling anyone and 73 means goodbye basically, but then theres stuff like QRM, QSB, QTH, QSL and a bunch of others and i just get lost. and then on top of that theres other stuff that isnt a Q code at all like people saying OM or YL or saying things are 5 by 9 or whatever. is there like a master list somewhere or do people just sort of pick it up over time? i feel like i missed a class or something. my elmer helped me study for the technician exam but we didnt really go over a lot of the on-air lingo, just the technical stuff for the test

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 to actually transmit? i didnt realize there were different levels either like technician and general and whatever the top one is. anyway i have no idea where to start studying or how the test even works. do you just walk in somewhere or do you have to schedule it ahead of time. also is it hard, like how much do i actually need to know going in. i dont have any electronics background at all if that matters

the thing nobody tells you until you show up somewhere and feel like an idiot — adapters. bring every kind of PL-259, BNC, SMA adapter combo you can think of because I guarantee at some point youre going to need to connect two things that were never meant to talk to each other. I have a little ziplock just full of them and it has saved me more times than I can count. on the case question, I went with a Nanuk 935 and I dont regret it. yeah its heavier than a bag but everything has a spot and I can actually find stuff when its 2am and raining. cut foam inserts take forever but once its done its done. a good bag works too honestly, some guys on our ARES team use those 5.11 bags and they swear by them, just depends how much abuse your kit is gonna take. for HF — I'd say yes eventually, even just a simple end fed and a little QRP rig tucked in. there have been a couple situations where local repeaters went down and suddenly everyone wished they had HF. but get the VHF side solid first, thats the right call for now.

yeah it's not exactly luck but it's also not totally first come first served either, which is what trips most people up. the FCC runs it in waves basically — there's a filing window that opens and everyone who applies during that window is treated equally, then they do a random selection among all the applicants if more than one person wants the same call. so filing the very second the window opens doesnt give you an edge over someone who files a few hours later, as long as youre both in the same window. the priority system is real though. if youre going after a call that belonged to a silent key (recently deceased ham), the family gets first crack at it, then certain license classes before others. a general class going after a 1x3 in a nonresident district is totally doable but yeah youre probably competing with a lot of people for the popular ones. if the call you want has been sitting available for a while your odds are better. you can absolutely do it yourself through ULS, I did mine that way no problem. the filing services arent a scam or anything but honestly for a single application its not hard to do on your own, just takes a little patience navigating the FCC site. took about 2 weeks for mine to come back if I remember right.

so ive been licensed for about 6 years now and done a fair amount of HF DX and some weak signal VHF stuff on 2m and 70cm but EME has always been kind of this mythical thing in the background that i figured was way out of reach for a normal guy with a suburban lot. lately though ive been reading more about it and it seems like the JT65 and now Q65 modes have kind of changed what the minimum viable station looks like? at least thats the impression im getting. my question is basically what does a realistic entry level EME setup actually need to look like on 2m. ive got a IC-9700 already which i know is pretty capable on weak signal stuff. is the main limitation just antenna gain at that point or is the low noise preamp situation also critical. i keep seeing people say you need at least a pair of yagis minimum but then i also see guys claiming single yagi contacts with the big guns on the other end. how much of that is real and how much is people being generous with the definition of a contact also is there any particular time of year or moon position where it gets significantly easier. i know the path loss changes somewhat with perigee vs apogee but i dont have a great feel for how much that actually matters in practice. anyway just trying to figure out if this is something i can realistically attempt without tearing up my backyard