Contest King

honestly the tech exam is pretty manageable, dont let the FCC website freak you out. hamstudy.org is where most people start and its completely free, it has the entire question pool and tracks which ones youre getting wrong so you can focus on those. the whole pool is like 400 something questions and the actual test pulls 35 from it, so if you just grind through hamstudy for a couple weeks you start recognizing most of them pretty quick. some of the electrical theory stuff like ohms law trips people up at first but its not college level or anything, more like you just have to remember a few formulas and understand basically what they mean. i wouldnt bother buying a book personally unless you really like reading that way, but the ARRL technician manual exists if you want something more structured. once you feel like youre consistently passing the practice exams on hamstudy you're probably ready to find a session near you through the ARRL exam search

so i finally did my first activation last weekend, W4C/CM-005, not a super high pointer but figured it was a good starter summit to learn the ropes. drove up friday night, camped near the trailhead, and started the hike around 6am saturday. everything was going fine until i got maybe 200 yards from the actual summit and realized i had left my antenna wire in the car. not the whole kit, just the wire. so i had this whole setup and nothing to actually radiate with. ended up improvising with some spare wire i had coiled in my pack from a previous project, no idea what length it was, just random wire i'd been carrying around. threw it over a branch, tuned it with my little manual tuner, and honestly it worked well enough. ran 10w from the FT-818 on 20m SSB and scraped together 4 contacts before the summit started getting cloudy and windy. i know you need 4 for activation credit so i was sweating it a little at the end. the last contact was some guy who came back really weak and i wasnt sure he copied my callsign right but he did and i got it logged. checked SOTAwatch when i got home and the spot went through fine. anyway moral of the story i guess is carry a checklist because standing there realizing what you forgot when youre halfway up a mountain is a very specific kind of awful feeling. also maybe bring more wire than you think you need just in general.

I tried 40m a few times but keep running into a lot of interference on my end, neighbors have something that just wipes out chunks of the band. might be a plasma tv or something. 80m has been better for me lately for local stuff but yeah ragchewing is underrated, people forget thats kinda the whole point of this hobby

okay so ive been licensed about 8 months now and i still feel kind of awkward about nets. like i listen to the local 2m net pretty regularly, maybe 2-3 times a week, but i rarely actually check in. part of it is i dont always have anything to say and i dont want to just take up airtime going "nothing to pass" every single time. but then i feel like maybe im being antisocial or missing the point of the whole thing? also related question — if i check in late, like after they've already gone through the checkins once, is there a specific way to do that or do i just wait for a break and throw my call in? ive heard some nets have a late check-in period and some dont and im not sure if ours does. the net control doesnt always make it super obvious. i guess i just want to know what the unwritten rules are here. nobody really covered this in my technician class

oh also dont forget WAS while youre at it — if youre gonna be logging seriously anyway you might as well chase states at the same time, its not that much extra effort and a lot of people knock out WAS before DXCC just because US stations are easier to work consistently. WAZ too eventually but that one takes a little more patience depending on your location and antennas. i did my WAS mostly on 40m which worked out well. just keep logging everything even if it seems boring, past-me wishes he had better records from the early days

went last year and honestly it was a bit dissapointing, maybe 20 tables? the indoor stuff was ok but the fleamarket outside was pretty thin. that said i did pick up a nice MFJ antenna tuner for cheap so who knows, depends what youre looking for i guess. they usually have a pretty good license exam session if you know anyone who needs to test

yeah the weight thing is real, i made the same mistake when i first got my ticket and thought i needed to be ready for literally every scenario. my first go kit had a freaking soldering iron in it lol. honestly the best thing i did was just go through it and ask myself "when would i actually need this and can i borrow one if i do" — anything that passed that test came out. trimmed mine down to probably 18 lbs now and its a completely different experience. i use a medium sized pelican-style case and if it doesnt fit it doesnt come. the one thing i'd add that people overlook is documentation — like a laminated card with your frequencies, the local repeater info, your call sign phonetics if you're new, net control procedures. sounds silly but when its 2am and you've been awake for 18 hours your brain does not work the same way.

oh man i remember that exact feeling, i sat on my local net for like three months before i actually checked in the first time. honestly the best thing i can tell you is that net control is expecting you, thats literally what theyre there for. when they open it up for check-ins you just key up and say your callsign clearly, phonetics if the repeater is noisy or if its your first time so they get it right in the log. something like "W4XYZ, first check-in" works totally fine and most net controls will actually make a little thing of welcoming you which is nice. the one thing that trips new people up is waiting too long after keying the mic before talking -- the repeater needs a second to come up so give it a beat then say your call. other than that theres really not much to it. nobody is going to remember a stumble, and even if you step on someone by accident net control will just sort it out. you got this, just do it next tuesday

yeah the inverter generator thing is real, conventional gennys are basically RF noise machines. that said even with a EU2200i ive seen people pick up noise when the load changes, like when a charger kicks in or something cycles. ferrite chokes are cheap insurance, wouldnt skip them. EFHW for what youre describing sounds totally reasonable to me. 40 and 20 on the same wire if you trim it right and that 9:1 handles the impedance swing well enough for most tuners to clean up the rest. just make sure you have your counterpoise sorted before you get there, not when youre setting up in a field in the dark.

nice, the 7900 is a solid radio for mobile use. i had one for a couple years before i upgraded. one thing i'd double check is how you routed the coax — if it's got a sharp bend anywhere near the connector on the antenna side that can mess with SWR more than the placement will. also what length antenna did you go with on the Tram? just curious because i've been looking at those for a second vehicle

honestly the Extra isnt as scary as people make it out to be. yeah theres some deeper theory in there, stuff about LC circuits and phase angles and some of the filter stuff can get a little weird if youve never seen it before, but the question pool is public and a lot of people just grind through it with HamStudy or one of the practice test apps. i wont lie, some of the questions i passed without fully understanding what was being asked, but i made a point to go back after and actually read up on the ones that confused me. the extra privileges are nice if you ever want to operate in the CW portions of 40 or 80, or get on 60m with the full allocation, or just have access to those little slivers at the bottom of the phone bands that are always less crowded. whether thats worth it to you is a personal thing but i dont think the exam itself should stop you. give yourself maybe 6-8 weeks of studying a little bit each day and you'll probably be fine

hey everyone, so i finally did it after procrastinating for like two years lol. passed the technician exam yesterday at the library, scored 33/35 which i was pretty happy with. been lurking on this forum for a while and figured id actually make an account now that im officially licensed. still waiting on the FCC to post my callsign in the database so ive just been sitting here refreshing the ULS lookup every hour like a crazy person. my buddy got me into this hobby, he's been a ham for about 6 years and has been bugging me to get licensed forever. he already offered to let me use his old Baofeng to start on local repeaters once my call comes through. i know i know, everyone has opinions about Baofengs, but hey its free so im not complaining. anyway just wanted to say hi and see if anyone remembers what it felt like waiting for that first callsign to show up

so ive been trying to learn CW for about 3 months now and i finally got myself a cheap Bencher paddle off ebay, hooked it up to my radio's built in keyer. thing is even when i crank the speed way down to like 10-12 wpm it still feels like the dits are running together and i cant tell where one character ends and another begins when i listen back to recordings of my own sending. i dont know if its the paddle adjustment, my technique, or something with the keyer settings. the contact gap on the paddle feels pretty close together, not sure if thats the issue. been practicing on the air a little on 40m and guys are actually coming back to me so maybe its not as bad as i think but it still sounds kind of mushy to me. anyone else go through this phase or have tips for cleaning it up

ok so ive been wanting to get into ham radio for like two years now and i finally decided to just do it and take the technician exam. my neighbor is a ham and he said just go memorize the question pool but thats 400+ questions and i dont even know what half the stuff means. like whats the point of memorizing an answer if i dont understand why its the answer you know? anyway i looked at a few things online, theres that hamstudy.org site and also the ARRL tech manual but the manual is like 400 pages and the exam is in 3 weeks. i dont have time to read all that. does anyone have a realistic study plan or a resource that actually explains the concepts instead of just making you drill flashcards over and over. im not totally technical but i can understand stuff if its explained decently

koch method is honestly the way to go, thats what clicked for me after i tried a few other things. basically the idea is you start with just 2 characters at full speed, like 20wpm or whatever your target is, and you dont move on until you can copy them accurately. then you add one more character at a time. the whole point is your brain learns the sound of each letter as a pattern instead of counting dots and dashes, which is really important because if you learn it slow you end up having to relearn it later when you try to speed up. lcwo.net is free and its set up specifically for this, a lot of people use it. just set it to like 20wpm character speed with maybe 10-12wpm effective speed so there's space between characters at first. stick with it every day even if its just 10 minutes, consistency is way more important than doing a long session once a week