Morse Coder

the antenna building thing is at the VFW hall on the 14th i think, someone posted it on the repeater group chat. not sure if its open to non members tho

congrats on passing first of all. so the way it works is the FCC will assign you a sequential callsign automatically, usually within a few days of your license showing up in their system. you can check the ULS database directly to see when it posts. the call format you get depends on your license class and what callsign district youre in based on your mailing address — so a tech in the 4th district like Georgia or Florida would get something like KO4 followed by two or three letters. the 1x2, 2x1, 2x2, 2x3 stuff just refers to how many letters are on each side of the number. extra class gets access to the shorter formats like 1x2 or 2x1 which are more desireable for a lot of people. as a new tech youll get a 2x3 which is the most common format these days since all the shorter ones got taken a long time ago. as for vanity calls — you do have to wait until you actually have a callsign assigned before you can apply for a vanity. once your license is in ULS you can go through the vanity application process on the FCC site. theres also a 10 day waiting period after a call becomes available before you can snag it, and if multiple people apply for the same call during that window it goes to whoever has seniority basically. its a whole thing but plenty of people have gotten calls they wanted, just takes some patience.

so i dont know what it is but ive been having a blast on the radio lately, more than usual. got on 40m last night around 9pm local and just had a good hour long ragchew with a guy in Kentucky, total stranger, talked about everything from antennas to his garden. thats the stuff man. no contesting pressure, no DX pile ups, just two dudes talking on the radio like its 1987 or something. maybe im just in a good mood but the hobby feels really alive right now

yeah im kind of in the same boat as you actually, started seriously about three months ago. what helped me weirdly was just listening to actual QSOs on the bands even before i could copy anything. like tune to 7.050 or wherever and just let it wash over you. you start hearing the rhythm of it even if you dont know whats being said. the other thing i use is the Just Learn Morse Code software on my laptop, its free and you can set it up a bunch of different ways. takes a while to feel like youre making progress but then one day a letter just jumps out at you without thinking and thats a good feeling

so the actual FCC allocation for general class on 40m phone starts at 7.175 MHz, that changed back in 2007 i think when they restructured the HF privileges. anything below 7.175 down to 7.025 is cw and digital for generals. the reason people say stay away from band edges is partly because your rig might not be perfectly calibrated and you could accidentally drift outside your authorized segment, and also some older rigs can act a bit funny right at the edge. as for the band plan vs the actual allocation — the allocation is law, the band plan is more of a coordination thing the ARRL publishes. like 7.200 being kind of the unofficial gathering spot for certain nets, thats band plan not FCC rule. you cant get in trouble for ignoring the band plan as long as youre in your actual licensed segment, but people will definitely give you grief on the air if you park on a traditional frequency for something else.

yeah totally get the two tab thing, ive done the same. what i ended up doing was just sticking with DXwatch but using the filter settings more aggressively - you can filter by band and mode so you're not wading through spots you dont care about. takes a few minutes to set up but once its dialed in its pretty clean for android i use DX Toolbox which is decent, not perfect but it pulls cluster spots and you can tap through to QRZ from inside the app. there's also Ham Radio DX which some guys in my club swear by. honestly just try a couple free ones and see what sticks, they all do roughly the same thing DX4WIN is still around but yeah its more of a logging program with cluster built in, older school but some contesters still run it. might be overkill if youre just doing casual dx chasing

so our ARES group has a county exercise coming up in about 6 weeks and im trying to figure out the best way to power our station without running a genny all day. we're setting up at the fairgrounds which has zero shore power and the exercise is supposed to run about 14 hours give or take. current plan is to run a 100w HF rig plus a 2m/70cm mobile unit, laptop for logging, and maybe a small fan if it gets hot in the tent. figured i could get away with a 100ah lifepo4 battery for most of the day and then fire up the generator when things get low but im second-guessing that now because the genny we have is this ancient 2-stroke Coleman thing that makes an absolutely ridiculous amount of RF noise. tried it at the last exercise and the S-meter was pinned half the time. thinking about either borrowing someone's inverter generator (the quiet kind) or maybe just going with two batteries and skipping the generator entirely. also need to figure out antennas — we have a buddipole and a trapped vertical that works pretty well on 40 and 20 but i keep reading about guys using linked dipoles for this kind of thing. anyone done a long portable exercise and have thoughts on power management for a setup like this?

oh man the Pixie kit is how i got into QRP too, those things are ridiculous but in a fun way haha. i eventually moved up to a YouKits HB1B which is somewhere between a Pixie and a real radio and its been solid for what it is. havent made the jump to KX2 territory yet, maybe someday. the antenna question is the thing i keep going back and forth on honestly, i tried a linked dipole for a while which is nice because you dont need a tuner but swapping links when you change bands gets old real fast when its cold outside.

welcome to the hobby, first QSO is always a little nerve wracking but it gets easier fast. dont stress about the baofeng, everybody starts somewhere and for learning the repeater ropes its totally fine. when you do start thinking about HF just keep an eye out for used gear, theres always deals around. what part of the country are you in?

im kind of in the same boat as you, been using dxwatch for maybe 3 months and still figuring it out. one thing i found that helped was the band filter — if you set it to just show 20m or wherever youre operating it cuts down the noise a lot. still learning the whole spotting thing myself honestly

so i've been putting off building a QRP rig for like two years now, always telling myself i'd do it when i had more bench space or time or whatever excuse i was using that week. finally just sat down last month and built a little 40m CW transceiver based on the Sudden design, just 5 watts out and honestly it looks kind of rough but it works. what surprised me most is how efficient the whole thing is. running off a 3ah lipo i built contacts for about 4 hours before i needed to worry about the battery and that includes a fair bit of tuning around. compared to dragging the IC-7300 out to the park and running a big battery it's just... way more fun somehow. there's something about knowing you built the thing and it's actually making contacts that hits different. did have some issues with the TX audio being a bit chirpy at first, ended up being a decoupling cap i'd put in the wrong place on the oscillator section. took me an embarrassing amount of time to find that. anyway if anyone else is on the fence about building vs buying a kit vs just getting like a KX2 or whatever, i'm happy to talk through it. building from scratch isnt for everyone but its not as scary as i thought

im kind of in the same boat as you honestly, been at it for about six weeks now using that LCWO site the elmers always recommend and im on like character 12 or something. its slow going but i can already hear a few letters without thinking about it which is wild the thing that helped me was also getting the Morse Toad app just to fill in time when im waiting around, its a bit gamey but honestly thats fine for me. i think the 5 wpm thing is way more reachable than it sounds, like a few months of consistent practice and you can get there, the hard part for me is just being consistent and not skipping days because i feel like i forget stuff fast if i take a break

so i was just messing around on 10 meters yesterday afternoon, wasnt expecting much honestly, and all of a sudden i start hearing stations from south america coming in like they were next door. worked a couple guys in brazil and one in argentina before it faded out maybe 45 minutes later. its been so long since ive had a real 10m opening like that i almost forgot what it felt like, had to dig out my old log to remember the last time i actually worked anything down there on that band. also saw that Icom apparently announced something new, think its a updated version of one of their portables but i only skimmed the article so dont quote me on that. and there was something on the ARRL site about the upcoming field day rule tweaks but i havent read through it fully yet. figured id mention it in case others hadnt seen it. anyone got more details on either of those things or was anyone else on 10m yesterday catching that opening?

so ive been a general for about two years now and ive been going back and forth on whether to bother with the extra. mostly i want the HF privileges, the extra 25khz or whatever it is on 75/80m and the CW segments on 40. my buddy keeps telling me the theory section is brutal and i should just study the question pool and not try to understand it but that feels wrong to me. the thing is i actually do want to understand the theory, like the filter stuff and the impedance matching and all that, not just memorize answers. but i also have a full time job and two kids so im not exactly swimming in study time. anyone gone through it recently and have thoughts on how long it actually took them, and whether its worth trying to actually learn the material vs just grinding the pool

so i finally passed my technician exam after studying for like 3 weeks and i was so pumped i ran home and borrowed my dads old baofeng to try to hit the local repeater. took me forever to figure out the offset and the tone settings and by the time i got it working i just kind of froze when someone came back to me. i said my callsign wrong twice and then completely blanked on what to say next and just kind of said 73 and dropped off. the guy was super nice about it but i was so embarrassed. anyway im KD9 something something now, still havent memorized my own call which is probably a bad sign. anyone else have a rough first QSO? please tell me it gets easier