Nordic Ham

so we have a county-level ARES exercise coming up and im trying to figure out the power situation before i commit to anything. the plan is to run two stations — one HF (probably my IC-7300) and a VHF/UHF station for local coordination, likely just a 2m FM rig, nothing fancy. setup will be in a park, no shore power obviously. my buddy wants to bring his honda EU2200i and just run everything off that but i feel like for a 4-5 hour exercise thats overkill and kind of annoying to haul, plus fuel. ive been leaning toward running the 7300 off a 100ah lifepo4 and the 2m radio off a separate smaller battery just to keep things clean. the IC-7300 at 100w draws what, around 20-21 amps on transmit? so depending on duty cycle i think the 100ah should be more than fine for a day but wanted to sanity check that with people who actually do this stuff regularly. antenna side im thinking a buddipole for the HF work since we might need 40m and maybe 20m depending on skip conditions that day, and just a mag mount or a jpole for the VHF side. open ground, no trees to speak of unfortunately so a wire antenna is probably out unless i bring a mast which is getting complicated fast. anyone done similar setups, any gotchas i should know about before i show up and look like an idiot in front of the whole group

yeah i was in the exact same spot like a year ago. what helped me was just doing it even when i felt unsure — worst that happens is net control corrects you and honestly they're usually pretty nice about it. i fumbled the format a couple times and nobody made me feel bad. one thing i'll add is some nets have slightly different procedures so if you can find a copy of the net's script or ask the net control guy directly after the net he might walk you through it. the guy running ours actually encouraged people to ask him questions off the air afterward and that helped me a lot more than trying to figure it out from just listening

so ive been a tech for about two years now and mostly just been doing 2m/70cm stuff, some APRS, helped out with a few local nets. but ive been reading about HF and honestly it sounds way more interesting than i expected. i keep hearing people talk about making contacts across the country or even overseas and im starting to feel like im missing out. anyway i started looking at the general class question pool and honestly it kind of intimidated me at first. theres a lot of stuff about propagation and feed lines and electrical theory that i dont really remember from the tech exam. like some of the math questions look rough. how long did it take you guys to feel ready for it? i dont want to fail in front of everyone at a session lol. also is there one study resource that people actually use or does it not really matter which one you pick

so ive been a General for about two years now and honestly i operate pretty regularly, mostly HF, some 40m and 20m stuff and a little bit of 15m when the band is cooperating. my buddy keeps telling me to just go for the Amateur Extra already but every time i look at the question pool i get kind of intimidated by all the theory stuff. like the filter design and transmission line theory and all the math behind it. i barely remember any of that from school. i guess my actual question is whether its worth it just for the extra band segments or if people actually use all that knowledge in practice. i know the Extra opens up some more of the HF spectrum and theres certain frequencies near the bottom of the CW portions that get less crowded. but is the exam itself as brutal as people say or am i overthinking it. ive heard some guys say the question pool is actually pretty memorizable if you just grind the practice tests long enough

I made almost the same jump except I was coming off a Yaesu FT-857D which is obviously a different beast since its more of a mobile rig. The 7300 felt like stepping into an actual shack radio if that makes sense. More weight, more solid, the knobs have that right kind of resistance to them. One thing I'll add — spend some time in the menu setting up the twin PBT and the roofing filter options before you write off a crowded band. Out of the box its not quite optimized and I wasted like two weeks not realizing I hadnt set the filter bandwidth right for SSB. Made a noticeable differnce once i sorted it out.

i tried js8call for maybe two weeks last winter and just couldnt get into it honestly. felt like i was waiting forever for replies and half the time the other station would just disappear mid-conversation. maybe i had the wrong expectations going in. FT4 might be worth a look if you want something faster than FT8 — its like 7.5 second slots so contest-style but still weak signal capable. not really a chat mode either but at least you rack up contacts quicker. PSK31 is still around if you want actual keyboard to keyboard stuff with more of an old school feel, theres still some activity on 20m around 14.070 most evenings

i had a similar setup in my explorer and honestly i just ended up drilling a small hole through the firewall and using a grommet. felt a little scary to do but it came out really clean and no more coax weirdness. just make sure you know whats on the other side before you drill lol

had the 991A for about 18 months before i moved to a 7610 and honestly the vhf/uhf on it is fine, nothing special, but it did mean i could shut off the VX-8 that was sitting on my desk cluttering things up. the HF side is solid too, people talk down the receiver but for general use on 40 and 20 its not gonna let you down. where i felt it more was on 80m when things got crowded, the 7300 just handles that better from what i could tell comparing at a club station. the waterfall on the 7300 though — i thought it would be a novelty and it really isnt. i find myself actually using it to spot activity and to tune around without just scanning blind. its become kind of how i operate now so going back would feel weird. depends how you work i guess but for FT8 especially having that panadapter built in is genuinely useful not just pretty.

so ive been using an RTL-SDR v3 for about a year now mostly just scanning aircraft and some 2m/70cm stuff, works fine for what it is. but ive been wanting to get into HF listening more seriously and the direct sampling mode on the v3 is... okay i guess, definitely usable but it feels a bit deaf compared to what people describe with proper SDR receivers. been looking at the SDRplay RSP1C, its sitting around $130 which isnt crazy money but its also not nothing. the spec sheet looks impressive, 1kHz to 2GHz coverage, 14-bit ADC vs the 8-bit on the rtl dongles, but i genuinely cant tell how much of that matters in practice for someone just doing casual HF monitoring and maybe some 40m/80m band listening in the evenings. anyone actually made this jump and noticed a real world difference? not looking for lab measurements just like... does it actually feel noticeably better when youre sitting there tuning around 7MHz at night. also curious whether SDRuno is as annoying to set up as people seem to think or if thats overblown

ok so i just upgraded to general last month and im trying to figure out the 40 meter band. i keep seeing different numbers thrown around and im not sure which ones actually matter legally vs just being like... guidelines or whatever. my buddy told me i can operate down to 7.125 but then i read somewhere else that phone starts at 7.175 for generals? and then theres the whole band edge thing which honestly confuses me even more. like how close to 7.300 can i actually get without causing problems. i dont want to step on anyone or worse transmit outside the allocation entirely. running a ts-590 if that matters

the JT65B mode really did open things up for smaller stations, thats not hype. back when i started doing EME in the late 90s you pretty much needed a big array or forget it, and even then CW was marginal for a lot of contacts. now you can realistically work a decent number of stations with a single long yagi if the other end has a big setup, but you're going to be QRV as a small station and you have to manage expectations accordingly. for 2m specifically, if youre going 2x2 yagi youre probably looking at around 14-15 dBd of gain depending on the yagis, which gets you in the game but youll mostly be working stations with large arrays or dishes on the other end. a 4x4 setup changes things considerably. the preamp situation is honestly just as important as the antenna though, you really want the lowest noise figure you can get right at the feedpoint, like 0.3-0.5dB NF ideally, and the coax run from there to the shack needs to be as short as possible or youre throwing away everything the preamp gives you. a lot of guys run the preamp at the antenna and use a sequencer to protect it during transmit, if you havent dealt with sequencers before thats something to learn early. moon tracking is the other thing people underestimate. you need a way to aim the antenna at the moon with some accuracy and keep it there as the moon moves, which depending on your antenna design means either a rotator setup with an Az-El controller or if youre doing a fixed array, youre just watching for moon windows where it naturally comes into your pattern. either way worth sorting out before you commit to a specific antenna design.

so i've been watching the Icom IC-7760 situation for a while now and it looks like some of the US dealers are actually starting to get stock in. been seeing a few posts on other forums from guys who've already got theirs on the bench. the remote head thing is pretty interesting — not totally new as a concept obviously but the way they've done the separation with that cable run is supposed to be pretty clean. also heard there was a decent 10 meter opening last week, like a real one not just a blip, guys were working into europe from the east coast in the afternoon which honestly i havent seen that kind of consistent propagation on 10 in a while. made me wish i had the new rig already lol. anyway if anyone's got hands on time with the 7760 or heard anything about pricing settling down id love to hear it. dealers i called are all over the place with ETAs still.

nice write up. one thing i'd add that took me forever to learn is tail-ending. like you wait for the DX to finish with someone and you get your call in right at the tail end of their QRZ or even slightly before they finish. feels rude but everyone does it and the good ops expect it. timing is everything, a few ms can be the difference between getting picked out of the noise or being buried under 50 other calls. also if your logging software has a bandmap watch where other people are reporting split freqs, sometimes there's a cluster of spots showing 5 up but the op has actually moved to 7 up and nobody's noticed yet and that window is clean.

not a dumb question at all, most people start exactly where you are. the biggest thing i'd tell you is forget the chart. seriously just put it away. the whole reason people struggle is they try to memorize dots and dashes visually and then your brain has to do this extra translation step every single time you hear something which is just slow and frustrating. what actually works is learning the sound of each character, not the pattern. theres a method called Koch that a lot of people swear by where you start with just two characters at full speed, like 20 wpm, and you drill those until you get them right like 90% of the time before adding a third. the app LCWO dot net does this online for free, theres also an app called Morse Toad and one called Ham Morse that are decent for mobile. the key is every day, even just 10 or 15 minutes. consistency beats long sessions. and dont rush adding new characters just because youre bored of the ones you have. once you have maybe 10 or 12 letters down go find a slow CW net and just listen. dont try to copy everything just pick out words here and there. W1AW sends code practice at various speeds and schedules are on the ARRL site. honestly just start with LCWO today, the first session will feel impossible and thats normal

yeah the UDP integration between WSJT-X and N1MM is pretty solid, been doing it that way for a couple years. just make sure youre not also accidentally logging to a file at the same time or you end up with duplicates when you go to merge things later, learned that the hard way during last years ARRL DX

yeah the wire touching branches will detune it a bit too, every contact point with wet wood especially adds some capacitive loading. not always a huge deal but if you can keep the last few feet of each leg clear of branches itll be more stable and predictable. i ran a 40m dipole through some pine branches for a while and the SWR would actually shift a little bit depending on whether it had rained recently which was annoying to track down.

not a dumb question at all, this trips up a lot of new generals. so for 40m as a general you can do phone from 7.175 up to 7.300, and CW/digital from 7.025 to 7.125. the 7.000 to 7.025 segment is extra class only for CW. the band edge thing is real and worth paying attention to. the issue is your signal isnt a perfect single frequency, your SSB signal has a bandwidth, usually around 2.4-3 khz or so depending on your rig and how its set up. so if you set your dial to 7.300 and your upper sideband is spreading above that youre technically out of band even if the dial says youre legal. most people say stay at least 3 khz inside the edge just to be safe. 7.295 or below on the high end is usually the rule of thumb i follow. as for the DX windows, yeah that's just convention, not FCC rule. like nobody is gonna fine you for operating on 7.175 but you might get some grumpy people complaining in your ear if you park there during a DX pileup. generally just listen first and youll figure out pretty quick where the activity is and what areas people kinda leave open.

yeah what he said about SOTA is right, its kind of its own whole world. i got into it last year and now i spend more time strapping a radio to my backpack than i do sitting at my desk honestly. very different vibe from contesting but both are great. there's a website called SOTAwatch where you can see whos activating and when, worth bookmarking even if youre just going to chase from home at first. the ARRL also has a bunch of contests throughout the year that are a bit more beginner friendly than CQ WW just because the pool is more domestic focused — things like the ARRL Sweepstakes or the 10 meter contest in December which can be really fun if the band cooperates. just saying theres a lot of options, you dont have to jump straight into the deep end with CQ WW if it feels like too much

yeah 26 out of 35 is passing, you got that right. the Gordon West study guide is what a lot of people around here recommend over the ARRL one for the tech exam, its written more conversationally and doesnt assume you know anything coming in. theres also a guy on youtube, i cant remember his name right now, who does videos going through the whole question pool section by section and explains the why behind the answers which helped me actually retain stuff instead of just memorizing the ohms law questions arent as bad as they look once you realize theres basically only a handful of different versions they ask and if you know the triangle trick you can get through all of them. someone at your club can probably show you that in about 5 minutes

We were on the top of the 11 year solarcycle with excellent propagation on the bands last year and wow, what a ride that was! 10 meters was open to everywhere, worked JA on 15m with 5 watts from my backyard. Now we're starting the slide down and I'm already getting nostalgic. Anyone else feeling like we should have made more of those amazing conditions while they lasted?

good write-up. one thing to add — the diagram situation on the 706 variants is genuinely confusing because theres at least three slightly different board revisions floating around and the jumper locations moved between them. i spent an embarassing amount of time staring at mine before i just started probing around with a multimeter to figure out what was actually what. old rigs, gotta love em.

so ive been messing around with remote station control for about 6 months now and i finally got something reasonably stable running. the main rig is an IC-7300 out at my uncle's place about 40 miles away, good antenna situation out there, he's got a 3 element yagi for 20m and a vertical for the lower bands. the internet out there is just regular cable, nothing fancy, maybe 25 down and 5 up which i thought would be a problem but honestly hasnt been. anyway i started with just RemoteHams basic client/server thing and it worked okay but the audio latency was driving me nuts especially on SSB, like you'd talk and then wait and it just felt weird. then someone on one of the other forums mentioned running an SDR alongside it, like having an rtl-sdr or an airspy just feeding a panadapter view over the same connection so you can actually see what's happening on the band without waiting for the main rig to sweep. that part actually works better than i expected. the part i cant figure out is the internet linking side. i want to be able to use echolink or maybe allstar when im not doing HF, just to have the node active out there when the HF bands are dead. has anyone tried running all of this on the same hardware? im currently using a raspberry pi 4 and im wondering if that's enough horsepower or if i need to throw a small NUC or something at this. the pi does get a little warm sometimes and i wonder if its just throttling under load and thats causing some of the audio weirdness.

4 contacts is fine dude, you only need 4 for the activation to count so you did exactly what you needed to. some people stress about big pileups but theres no rule saying you gotta work 50 stations. congrats on the first one

honestly the tech exam is not bad at all, dont stress too much about it. most people i know used HamStudy.org which is free and just drills you on the actual question pool, the real test questions come straight from that pool so there are no surprises. some folks like the ARRL Tech study guide book too if you prefer something physical to read through but i think just doing the practice tests over and over gets you there faster. i spent maybe two weeks doing like 20-30 minutes a night and passed with room to spare. the math questions look scarier than they are, theres really only a handful of formulas you need and if you understand ohms law youre most of the way there. find a local club too, a lot of them run their own exam sessions and the fee is usually pretty reasonable, some clubs even do free sessions once in a while

oh man yes, this is basically my whole hobby at this point. i got into ham thinking id be doing all this stuff but mostly i just listen. 40m at night is something else especially in winter when propagation gets weird and you start hearing stuff from places you wouldnt expect. sometimes i fall asleep in the chair with headphones on and wake up to some spanish language net i've never heard before