Dave Thompson

so ive been using a cheap RTL-SDR v3 dongle for about a year now, mostly doing ADSB and poking around on HF with the direct sampling mod. works fine honestly for what it is, but ive been tempted by the SDRplay RSP1B for a while now. the price difference is pretty significant though, like 3-4x depending on where you get it, and im not sure the jump is actually worth it for what i do. mainly i listen on HF, scan some local stuff, occasionally decode some APRS and weather fax. nothing super serious. the RTL noise floor is kind of annoying sometimes especially down in the lower HF bands but i dont know if thats just a fundamental limitation or if better hardware would actually fix it. ive messed with SDRangel and SDR++ and the RTL-SDR just feels kind of rough at times. has anyone actually gone from an RTL dongle to an SDRplay and noticed a real difference in daily use? not talking about benchmarks, just actual use. and would a HackRF even make sense here or is that more for transmit stuff?

Passive radar with a single HackRF is gonna be tricky, you usually want two coherent receivers for that. There's some work been done with the KerberosSDR for that kind of thing, might be worth looking into before you commit to the HackRF path if that's a main goal.

went through this same thing like 8 months ago, passed my tech on the first try and honestly the test felt way easier than i expected after all the worrying i did. i used hamradioprep.com which costs a little bit but it has videos explaining everything which helped me more than just flashcards. also there are some good youtube channels if you search for technician license study, i forget which ones i watched but there were a few that broke down the antenna and propagation stuff in a way that actually made sense. the whole process from deciding to do it to having my callsign was maybe 3 weeks for me, the FCC issues your license pretty fast these days once you pass, usually within a day or two you can look yourself up in their database

yeah 40m is my go-to for exactly that reason, always somebody around no matter what time it is. i usually hit it after dinner and just see whats happening. had a great 45 minute qso with a guy in tennessee last week about restoring old boatanchors, neither of us wanted to wrap it up. thats what its all about for me honestly

i was in the same boat not long ago, its genuinely confusing because the document is written like legal code and not like something a normal person would read. what finally helped me was the gordon west study book because it explains the privilege stuff in plain english alongside what the actual rule says. also there are apps that show band plans with license class overlays which is kind of nice when youre actually at the radio and just want a quick check

so i passed my technician exam about three weeks ago and my callsign just showed up in the FCC database, which is exciting but honestly the callsign i got assigned is kind of a mouthful and id really like something shorter or with my initials if possible. a guy at my local club mentioned vanity calls but he kind of glossed over the details and i wasnt sure if i should ask him to explain more since he seemed busy. from what i can tell on the FCC website theres a whole application process through the ULS but i honestly cant figure out if there's a waiting period before i can apply or if i can just do it right now. also does it cost money? i saw something about fees changing recently. and is it true that certain call districts have way fewer available letters so some calls just arent possible depending on where you live? theres a lot of conflicting stuff when i google it and i figured id ask here since you all seem to know whats going on.

just to add on the 7.150 thing you were noticing -- a lot of that activity you're hearing is probably dx stations from other regions where the band plan is different. ITU region 1 (europe, africa) has different phone allocations on 40 so they can be running phone down there legally on their end even though a US general cant respond from that part of the band. so you can hear them but cant really work them unless you're an extra. kind of frustrating honestly when there's a good eu opening and youre stuck watching from 7.175 up

so ive been a licensed ham for about 8 months now (tech class) and ive been thinking about upgrading to general but honestly the main thing pulling me toward morse is just... i dont know, it seems cool and i keep reading about CW operators who swear by it. im not trying to pass any test or anything since thats not required anymore, i just want to actually learn it for real. the problem is every time i look this up i get like 50 different opinions. some people say start with the koch method, some say just memorize the dots and dashes on a chart, some say use an app. i tried one of those chart memorization things for about a week and it just didnt stick at all. felt like i was trying to memorize a phone book. does anyone actually remember learning this and can tell me what worked for them? im not in a huge rush but id like to at least be able to copy simple stuff someday

30dB down on the second harmonic is actually not terrible for a raw oscillator stage but yeah you definitely want more attenuation before you put that on the air, FCC wants 43dB down on harmonics for anything under 5 watts i believe, could be slightly off on that number but its in that ballpark. the filter is almost certainly your issue if you cobbled it together with random junk box values. the cutoff frequency and impedance matching matters a lot more than people think with lowpass filters for TX, if the impedance is off the attenuation curve shifts and you can end up with less suppression than the math says you should get. id wind the inductors properly, doesnt take that long honestly and makes a big difference. toroids from the right mix for 40m, probably 2 or T50-2 cores depending on what you can get. also check that your PA stage isnt running into compression, a transistor being pushed too hard will generate way more harmonics than one operating in its linear region.

hey welcome to ARES, its a good group to be part of. every section does things a little differently which can be confusing at first but the basics are pretty much the same everywhere. for activations most groups use a combination of a phone tree or text alert and a designated simplex or repeater frequency you monitor when things get serious. your EC should have given you a list of local frequencies to program in, if not just ask him directly, he wont mind. as for gear, bring your own. thats kind of the whole point honestly, the served agencies are counting on you to be self sufficient especially in the first 24-48 hours of something bad. i always show up with my HT, my mobile, a spare battery pack, and my go-bag with ICS forms and some basic supplies. a lot of guys also run APRS so the EOC can see where everybody is. your truck setup sounds fine for most things, dont stress about needing fancy gear right away. just show up, be reliable, listen more than you talk and youll fit in fine.

I did something similar with an Arduino Mega and a G-1000 a couple years back, different hardware but same general idea. One thing that bit me was ground loops — had the Arduino and the rotator controller sharing a ground reference and it was causing all kinds of garbage. ended up galvanically isolating the ADC side with an ISO1541 I2C isolator chip and most of the noise went away. also if youre polling every 500ms you might want to add some averaging on the ADC readings, like take 8 samples and average them before you use the value. cheap way to filter without touching the hardware. the MCP3008 is decent but its not doing you any favors in a noisy environment without some software smoothing too.

yeah i was the same way my first few nets, felt like i was doing everything wrong. one thing that helped me was just listening to a couple nets before actually checking in so i could hear how people were doing it. the doubling up thing really does just take practice though there's no magic trick for it. some repeaters have more lag too which makes timing harder so that might've been part of it

so i passed my technician about 8 months ago and ive been poking around on 2m and 70cm mostly just doing local stuff with the club. but honestly i keep hearing people talk about HF and working DX and i feel like im missing out on a whole other world. been thinking about going for general but im not really sure what to expect study-wise. the tech exam wasnt too bad for me, took maybe 3 weeks of going through the question pool on hamstudy and i felt pretty comfortable going in. is general more of the same or is there actually harder stuff in there? i remember seeing something about propagation and the different bands being a bigger deal on general. also the regulations stuff looked more complicated when i glanced at it. anybody upgrade recently and have thoughts on what tripped them up or what to focus on

yeah the EQ thing is real, i run an FT-991A and spent a weekend just listening back to recordings of my own transmissions on a second receiver and it was kind of eye opening honestly. cut the low mids a bit and boosted slightly around 2kHz and people started coming back with way better reports. wasnt expecting such a noticeable difference from just that. one thing i'd add — monitor your RF drive too, ive seen people push their finals pretty hard thinking more power = more readable and it just creates splatter that makes everyone around you on the band annoyed and your actual audio worse. running clean at lower power beats a dirty high power signal pretty much every time for actual communication quality. anyway thats just my experience mileage may vary and all that

generator every time for a full day exercise, at least as backup. batteries are great and i love my lifepo4 setup but theres always something that draws more than you planned — someone plugs in a fan, you end up running the laptop charger the whole time, duty cycle ends up higher because the net control keeps asking for traffic, whatever. the eu2200i you mentioned is honestly one of the better choices for this, quiet enough that you wont drive everyone nuts and the inverter output is clean enough for the radios. if you can borrow it again i would. that said i usually run battery primary with the generator as a backup charger rather than running the genny all day. keeps the noise down and your fuel consumption way lower. just set the generator to kick in when battery hits like 50% SOC and let it top off while you keep operating. takes a little setup but its worth it for anything over 4-5 hours. also for the VHF vertical and radials issue — if youre in a parking lot just lay 4 radials flat on the asphalt. not ideal but works fine for a simplex net, ive done it plenty of times. you lose maybe a db or two over elevated radials, nobody will notice on local VHF.