John Martinez

Working on building CW speed from about 12WPM solid copy to 20WPM for contesting. I can manage about 20-30 minutes daily practice but want to make sure I'm using that time effectively. Currently splitting time between: Koch method character building (G4FON)W1AW code practice recordingsOn-air QSOs on 40MAnyone have a proven daily routine that got them over the 20WPM hump? What's the right balance between structured practice and real QSOs?

so ive been licensed about 6 years now and EME has always been this thing on my bucket list that felt completely out of reach. started looking into it more seriously the last couple months and honestly its a bit overwhelming. like i understand the basic concept, signal goes up hits the moon comes back, path loss is insane, you need serious antenna gain and low noise receive setup. but thats about where my understanding gets fuzzy. right now i have a 4-element yagi on 2m that i use for regular weak signal work, can make contacts out to maybe 800-900 miles on a good tropo night. obviously that is nowhere near EME territory. been reading about folks running big yagi arrays, like 4x8el or even 4x17el setups, and some guys doing it with dish antennas. seen a few references to 100w being usable with JT65 if your antenna system is good enough but i dont really know if thats realistic or just optimistic talk. is there a practical minimum setup people actually use successfully these days? and whats the noise figure situation like, i know preamp at the feedpoint is basically mandatory but how low are we talking, like 0.3dB NF or can you get away with something a bit noisier. just trying to figure out if this is something i can realistically do without building a moonbounce station that takes over my entire backyard

so ive been running an RTL-SDR v3 for a couple years now, mostly just poking around on HF in direct sampling mode and doing some airband stuff, and honestly it works well enough that i keep talking myself out of upgrading. but the RSP1B keeps showing up in my browsing and the price point isnt insane. main thing i do is just wideband monitoring, some WSPR decoding with WSJT-X piped through SDR#, occasionally ill run it through SDR-Console when i want the waterfall to not look like garbage. not really doing anything serious, just like to see whats happening across the bands. the direct sampling mode on the RTL-SDR always felt like a compromise to me, like yeah i can hear stuff on 40m but the dynamic range is obviously not great when theres strong local stations around. wondering if the RSP1B actually makes a meaningful real-world difference or if its one of those things that looks good on paper and in practice youre like oh its slightly better i guess. anyone whos actually used both and not just read the spec sheet?

I use all three! eQSL integrates with logging software and automatically sends cards which is convenient for casual contacts. You can design your own eQSL card which is fun. Just remember it won't count for ARRL awards, but eQSL has its own awards system.

congrats man. my first contact was also on a 2m repeater and i was shaking the whole time for no reason whatsoever. the guy i talked to ended up becoming someone i chat with almost every week on the local net now so you never know. stick with it

so i just got my tech license a few months ago and ive been listening a lot before actually transmitting much and i notice some guys use phonetics like every single time they say their callsign and other guys just say it normally like letters. is there a rule about this or is it just preference? i tried using NATO phonetics when i checked into a local net the other night and kind of blanked on what F was for a second which was embarrassing. foxtrot right? anyway i guess my question is when are you actually supposed to use them versus just reading out the letters, and does it matter if you dont use the official NATO ones

Can someone break down the practical differences between Technician and General class band privileges? I understand Techs get VHF/UHF and limited HF, while Generals get more HF access. Specifically looking for: Power limits by license class and bandMode restrictions (CW vs phone vs digital)Which HF bands open up with General upgradeAny gotchas or special cases I should know aboutTrying to decide if upgrading is worth it for my operating interests.

ok so ive been licensed about 4 months now and i mostly do 2m FM through the local repeater and occasionally some HF when conditions are decent. my question is about phonetics — like i know the NATO ones, Alpha Bravo Charlie etc, but i feel like nobody on the repeater actually uses them consistently. sometimes people spell out their callsign just saying the letters normally and its fine, other times someone goes full phonetic the whole way through. is there a rule about when you have to use them vs when you can just say the letter? i looked through part 97 and didnt really see anything specific. my elmer told me to always use phonetics when giving my call but then i hear plenty of guys on the repeater just rattling off their letters and everyone seems to understand fine. just wondering if im overthinking this or if theres actually a standard people are supposed to follow

I've been experimenting with FT8 during marginal band conditions and I'm amazed at what this mode can accomplish. FT8 can decode signals 10 to 15 dB below the noise floor, which means making contacts over vast distances even when band conditions are poor and signals that were previously unworkable can now be decoded. Last weekend during some unsettled geomagnetic activity, I was still pulling in JA and VK stations on 20m when the traditional voice guys were struggling. The timed 15-second transmission and reception cycles make communication efficient even in challenging propagation conditions. For those getting started: Make sure your computer time is accurate - FT8 requires sync within 0.4 seconds or you'll have contact issues. Watch your DT column in WSJT-X - it should show between 0.0 and 0.1 for most contacts. What's been your experience with FT8 during poor band conditions? Any specific propagation scenarios where it really shines?

Check your audio buffer settings in RCForb - try reducing both transmit and receive buffer sizes to minimum values your connection can handle without dropouts. I had similar issues until I dropped mine to 256 samples.

oh man i was in the exact same spot like a year ago, just log everything and don't stress about the order too much. i ended up getting WAS confirmed before DXCC but honestly both were happening at the same time just from regular operating. the LoTW thing is huge, so glad you started early with that because paper QSLs for DXCC still work but its way more of a hassle. one thing i'll say is keep an eye on the DX bulletin and DX summit when you have time, that's how i found out about a few rare ones that came through and i was able to get them in the log. missed a zone 2 station once because i wasnt paying attention and regretted it for months lol

yeah the 10m opening thing is real, i noticed it too. been running just 50 watts into a wire dipole and working stuff i normally wouldnt touch without a big antenna setup. had a qso with a station in Italy that was just booming in, S9 plus, it was almost surreal compared to what that band sounded like two winters ago. as for the Icom rumor i wouldnt hold your breath too much. ive seen that "7300 replacement" rumor float around like three times in the past two years and nothing ever came of it. that said Yaesu did drop the FT-710 kind of quietly and people slept on it at first so who knows. might be worth waiting to see what actually shows at Dayton if anything. the hamvention announcements are usually where the real stuff drops anyway.

so i've had my FT-857D for probably 6 years now and just got around to doing the mars/cap mod and enabling the extended receive. took me maybe 20 minutes once i actually found the right pads to short and stopped second guessing myself. used the mod guide over on mods.dk which i think most people know about already. the extended rx is honestly pretty nice, picking up stuff down in the lower HF range and even poking around some of the utility freqs is fun when bands are dead. the TX mod i mostly did because our local ARES group sometimes operates on freqs just outside the ham bands during activations and it's a pain not being able to hit those. my question is more about whether anyone's done the fan mod on the 857 too. mine gets warm running digital modes for any extended period and i know there's a resistor swap you can do to make the fan kick in earlier or just run constantly. anyone done that and did it help? the fan noise doesnt bother me at all, i just dont want to cook the finals on a long FT8 session

oh man I had no idea 10m was open like that, I'm pretty new to HF — got my general a few months ago and have mostly just been sitting on 40m because thats where all the activity seemed to be when I was first getting started. gonna have to actually try 10 this weekend. do I need to do anything different antenna wise or will my dipole cut for 40 at least pick up something on 10? I know it wont be resonant but just curious if its worth even trying before I mess with anything.

The mode B thing you're describing is totally normal and actually correct behavior — mode B remembers the last paddle you squeezed and sends one more element after you let go. Some people love it, some find it annoying, you can switch to mode A if it bothers you. Mode A just stops when you release. Honestly i used mode B for years and then switched to A and never looked back, just preference. For the weight/ratio stuff, most keyers default to something reasonable and i'd leave it alone until you're more comfortable sending. Just get the speed and sidetone sounding good to your ear first. If your dits sound short try bumping the weight up just a touch, but don't overthink it early on. Numbers are hard for everyone at first. The trick that helped me was learning them as patterns, not as individual elements. Like 7 is two dits and three dahs, and once that pattern feels familiar it clicks. Keep grinding the G4FON trainer, maybe set it to numbers-only for a session or two and just beat them into your brain. It works, just takes time.

yeah what the other guy said, also just double check you have the offset right too. 2m repeaters usually use a 600 kHz offset and you need to make sure your radio is set to shift up or down the right direction depending on the repeater's output frequency. repeaterbook should have that info. i forgot to set my offset correctly my first week and was confused why the repeater wasnt responding even after i got the tone sorted lol

I've done Dayton more times than I can count at this point. Word of advice if you're newer to the flea market side of things — bring cash, small bills, and get there before 7am if you can manage it. The good stuff walks out fast. Also don't forget to check the tail end of the day too, people start practically giving things away when they dont want to haul it back. Got a mint condition dummy load and a bunch of coax connectors basically for free one year just hanging around til closing time.

so ive been running FT8 for about a year now and yeah its great for working new entities and the signal reports come in fine but honestly after a while it feels like im just clicking buttons and not really talking to anyone. like theres no actual exchange happening beyond grid squares and signal reports. started poking around JS8Call last month and the concept is interesting — basically takes the weak signal capability of FT8 but lets you actually type messages back and forth. latency is rough though and the protocol feels kind of clunky compared to WSJT-X. anybody here running JS8Call regularly and finding it worth the time investment? i keep hearing people use it for EMCOMM stuff which makes sense to me but for casual ragchewing on HF it feels like it hasnt really caught on the way FT8 did. also curious if anyone still runs PSK31 for the low-power ragchew thing. i remember that being the go-to before FT8 kind of ate everything. my old IC-7300 decodes it fine and fldigi works but the bands feel pretty quiet on PSK frequencies most of the time now.

yeah what your seeing is pretty much exactly what the antenna modeling predicts. a dipole at 35 feet on 40m is maybe half a wavelength high which puts a decent amount of energy at higher angles, good for regional stuff, not so great for dx. your vertical with even a mediocre radial field is going to have a lower takeoff angle and thats why europe is popping out of nowhere in the morning. its not magic its just geometry basically. on the radials — honestly once theyre in the ground a few weeks they make electrical contact with the soil pretty well and the difference between 2 inches deep and 6 inches deep is pretty small. the ones laying on top of grass are slightly less ideal but in my experience the first season or two they work their way down anyway or the grass grows over them. what really matters more is the number and total length, 24 radials is decent but if you can get up to 32 or so you'll probably see a measurable improvement on receive noise and efficiency. not huge but measurable. i wouldnt tear everything up to rebury them, id just add more where you can. the noise difference you notice on rx is real by the way, verticals pickup more local noise in most suburban setups and theres not a lot you can do about that without getting into elevated radials or a separate rx antenna which is a whole other rabbit hole.

Installed a Diamond NR770HBNMO on my Jeep Wrangler yesterday and I'm seeing SWR of 2.5:1 on 146.520 with my Kenwood TM-V71A. Most antennas for handheld(HT) and mobile UHF/VHF ham radios do not require tuning so I'm puzzled why the reading is so high. I'm using about 15 feet of RG58 coax to reach from the spare tire mount to the radio. Ground plane should be decent with the metal body. Before I start cutting anything, what should I check first? The antenna was supposedly pre-tuned from Diamond for 2m/70cm. Using a Surecom SW-102 SWR meter.

Q65 weak-signal performance is the best among all WSJT-X modes on paths with Doppler spread, particularly effective for EME on VHF and higher bands. I'd suggest learning both JT65 and Q65 - Q65 offers wide variety of sequence lengths, and QSOs are possible at signal levels 10 to 15 dB below those required for CW.

wait 10m is open?? i just got my general like two months ago and haven't really tried HF much beyond some 40m stuff at night. is it like you just tune to 28.400 or wherever and call CQ or do i need to find a specific frequency people are gathering on? i have an FT-891 and a random wire so hopefully that works, i tuned through there once and it sounded dead but maybe i hit it at the wrong time

ok so ive been noticing 10m and 15m opening up at really odd times this past few weeks and honestly i dont fully understand what im supposed to be looking at when people talk about solar flux index. like i know higher numbers are generally better but beyond that im kind of lost. saw someone on a dx cluster saying something about the SFI being in the 180s and everyone got excited and i just kind of nodded along been licensed about 8 months now, mostly doing 40m because its been reliable but i feel like im missing out on some good DX openings on the higher bands just because i dont know when to even bother checking. is there like a rule of thumb for this or some site that actually explains it in plain english? i tried reading some of the NOAA stuff and my eyes glazed over pretty fast

ok so ive been listening to a lot of HF lately and people are throwing around all these abbreviations and i can only pick up like half of what's being said. i know QSL means like acknowledgment or something and QTH is your location but then someone said QRM to me and i had no idea what they wanted. also whats the difference between 73 and 88, i see both in logbooks at the club and nobody really explained it to me properly. is there like a master list somewhere or do you just kind of pick it up over time. also heard someone say QSY during a net and figured out from context they were changing frequency but wasnt sure if that was the right interpretation. just feels like theres a whole other language going on and im missing half the words

yeah that wasnt luck, 145 SFI with a quiet K index is actually pretty decent conditions and a 45 minute opening to Europe on 10m sounds about right for this time of year in the afternoon. the F2 propagation path to Europe usually peaks kind of mid-afternoon your local time depending on where you are. the cycle really is picking up — we're apparently ahead of the original predictions for Solar Cycle 25 which is pretty exciting. some days the flux jumps up over 180 or even higher and on those days 10m and even 6m can go absolutely nuts. the frustrating thing is it's still inconsistent because we're not at solar max yet, so you get these bursts of good conditions and then a few quiet days. best thing i can tell you is just keep an eye on the SFI daily and whenever you see it trending up and the A index stays low, get on 10m in the early to mid afternoon. also check DXMaps before you even turn the radio on, if you see spots lighting up across the Atlantic you know the band is open