Ham Fan

i went through basically the exact same thing last summer. ended up just leaving both up and using a relay box to switch between them which honestly is the right call if you have the space. running them against each other in real time on the same signal is way more revealing than trying to remember what happened tuesday. W8JI has a bunch of stuff written about this if you havent already gone down that rabbit hole, fair warning its a lot of reading.

im kind of in the same boat as you so take this with a grain of salt but i've been using the morse code ninja videos on youtube and theyre pretty good. the guy has a whole progression and he explains the farnsworth thing better than most stuff i found. i think im a few weeks in and letters are starting to feel more automatic which is what eveyrone says you want. one thing that helped me was just having it playing in the background sometimes, not like actively trying to copy, just ambient. not sure if thats actually doing anything scientifically but it feels like it helps me recognize the rhythm of certain letters faster now

yeah its mostly a feel thing honestly, theres no hard rule that says you MUST use phonetics in every situation. the whole point of the NATO alphabet is just clarity, so if conditions are good and your callsign letters are unambiguous you can just say em normally. on a local repeater with people you talk to every week nobody cares, everyone knows who you are anyway. HF is different because youve got noise, QRM, propagation weirdness, foreign accents, all kinds of stuff making letters hard to distinguish. B and D and E and G all sound alike when theres static. so on HF most people just default to phonetics all the time rather than think about it, its become kind of a habit for experienced operators. the non-standard ones are a grey area. officially the ITU phonetic alphabet is what everyone should use but in practice some old timers have their own favorites theyve used for decades and nobody really calls them out on it. as long as the other station copies you correctly its doing its job. i wouldnt stress about it too much.

the cave sound is almost always too much low end getting through. on the 7300 specifically go into the menu and look at the TX bass and treble settings — factory defaults are way too bassy for voice in my opinion. i cut the bass down a fair bit and boosted treble slightly and the difference was noticeable immediately. also the TX bandwidth, i run mine around 2.4k which keeps it tight enough to not splatter but still sounds decent. the stock mic on that radio is honestly not that bad, people dump on it but ive heard plenty of guys with expensive desk mics that sound worse because they havent set the radio up right. mic positioning matters too — youre not broadcasting FM, you dont need to eat the mic but being too far away and your radio cranks the gain up and then everything gets noisy. i usually sit maybe 4-6 inches away and talk across it rather than directly into it, cuts down the plosives a bit. speech processor is the other thing — most guys either dont use it at all or have it cranked way too high. a little compression helps with readability on a noisy band but if you can hear the pumping sound in your monitor it's too much.

yeah what the other guy said but also dont stress too much about memorizing them all at once. i been licensed 6 years and there are still some obscure ones i have to look up. QSB is one thats worth knowing, means your signal is fading, youll hear that a lot on 40m when conditions are sketchy. and QRO is the opposite of QRP so high power. honestly just keep a little cheat sheet next to your radio for the first few months, no shame in that at all thats what i did

so i've been meaning to do this for like two years and i finally sat down last weekend and actually built out a proper go-kit. nothing crazy, just an old pelican knockoff case i had sitting in the garage, my FT-857D, a small switching power supply, some coax, and a j-pole i wound up making myself last spring. got it all packed in and did a quick test in the driveway to make sure it actually works as a unit and not just as a pile of stuff. took me longer to get on the air than i expected, maybe 20 minutes which honestly felt embarrassing. i know during actual served agency stuff you sometimes need to be operational in like 5-10 minutes depending on the situation. anyway my main question is how are you guys handling antennas in your kits. the j-pole works fine but it's kind of awkward to deploy when you're by yourself and don't have a convenient tree or pole nearby. i've been eyeing some of the wolf river coil setups and the buddistick type stuff. also wondering if anyone keeps a backup HT in their kit or if that's overkill, i have an old UV-5R that just lives in a drawer doing nothing. would love to hear what other people have settled on after going through a few iterations of this because i feel like there's no perfect answer and you just kinda learn what you actually need vs what you thought you needed

so i've been licensed about two years now and finally got around to actually participating in one of the county ARES exercises rather than just showing up to the meetings and nodding along. figured i'd share some stuff that caught me off guard because honestly nobody really warned me about any of this. the scenario was a simulated earthquake, shelters activating across three counties and we had to establish comms between the EOC and like four or five red cross sites. sounds simple enough right. except the very first thing that happened was the guy assigned to the main EOC radio had a family thing come up and just... wasn't there. so suddenly the net control job got handed to someone who hadnt really prepared for that role and you could kind of feel everyone waiting a little too long between transmissions, not totally sure of the message format we were supposed to use. also i had no idea how much paper would be involved. i know ICS forms exist, i've seen them, but actually routing a written message through proper channels while also trying to maintain a net felt like patting your head and rubbing your stomach at the same time. dropped a few things, had to ask for repeats more than i'd like to admit. the part that actually went well was packet — we had two guys running winlink check-ins from the shelter sites and that worked better than voice for the resource requests, less chance of mishearing numbers and names. anyway curious if other people have run into the same issues at their drills, especially the backup personnel thing, that seemed like a big gap to me

yeah 10m has been something else this week, solar flux index was sitting pretty high yesterday and the K index stayed low which is basically the dream combo. i worked 47 countries last weekend during the contest and probably a third of them were on 10 meters, band just kept going well into the evening too which surprised me. on the 905, my buddy at the club got one a few weeks ago and says the receiver is really impressive on the higher bands, way better front end than he expected. he's been doing some 10 gig stuff with it though so i dont know how the 5.7 compares specifically. he mentioned the menus take some getting used to but what Icom product doesnt at this point haha.

yeah so the fee thing changed a couple years back, it used to be free then they added a $35 fee per application through the FCC. so if you apply for a vanity and dont get it you still pay the $35, just something to keep in mind before you go submitting a bunch of applications. the window system works like this — when a callsign becomes available (usually because a ham passed away or let their license lapse) it goes into a 18 day window period where certain groups get priority. so like if you're applying for a call that belonged to a silent key who was a relative of yours, you'd have first shot during the first couple days. then it opens up to other applicants and if multiple people apply for the same call during the same window they do a random selection among those applicants, not first come first served exactly. after the window closes if nobody got it then yeah it goes into the general pool. for finding available calls the ae7q.com site is your best friend, way better than fumbling around the FCC ULS directly. you can search by district and call format and see whats available or coming up. just be patient with the process, took me about 3 weeks to get mine sorted.

welcome welcome, that first contact feeling is something else right. dont stress too much about procedure, most guys on the repeater are just happy to have someone new come on. you'll pick up the rhythm real quick just by listening for a while before you key up. whats your HT if you dont mind me asking

so i finally did my first POTA activation last weekend at a state park about 45 min from home. been putting it off forever because i kept thinking i needed more gear or a better antenna setup but i just threw the KX2 in a bag with my end fed and a 31ft wire and drove out there set up near a picnic table, tossed the wire up into a tree maybe 20ft or so, and just started calling CQ on 40m. got my 10 contacts in like 25 minutes which surprised me, people are actually hunting these things actively. switched to 20m and worked a few more including one guy in ontario which felt pretty cool running 10 watts into that thing only problem was the feedline kept flopping around and i had to retape it halfway through but whatever it worked. already looking at doing a SOTA peak next month if i can find one thats not a death hike

nice work on the s2s contacts, those are always a good feeling especially on a first activation. i usually bring a little linked dipole cut for 40 and 20, way less fussing around than a random wire in my experience. the atu does its job but you lose some efficiency and when youre running qrp every db matters. what summit was it if you dont mind me asking

so ive been on HF for about 12 years and VHF/UHF weak signal for maybe 4 of those, mostly 2m SSB tropo stuff and some meteor scatter. been watching the EME guys at my club do their thing and im starting to think i want to give it a real shot on 2m. i know its not exactly plug and play but i feel like i have a decent foundation at least. my current setup is a single 11el yagi on a az/el mount i built for satellite, running a TS-790 into a down east microwave preamp at the feedpoint. power is about 100w at the coax right now. i know thats not going to cut it for EME but im trying to understand what the realistic floor is these days with digital modes. like is a single long yagi and a kilowatt even worth pointing at the moon or do i need to go full 4-bay yagi array before anyone will hear me. also what software are people using, i see JT65B mentioned a lot but is that still the thing or has something changed. genuinely not sure where to start and the EME guys at my club all have these massive stations so they kind of assume you know more than i do when i ask questions

oh man i went through the exact same thing when i first got my uv-5r, that menu is a nightmare. one thing that also got me was i had the wrong offset direction programmed — some repeaters are plus offset and some are minus and if you get that backwards you're transmitting on the wrong frequency entirely and the repeater never hears you at all. worth double checking that too while you're in there fixing the tone situation.

yeah what he said about chirp is right. i made that exact mistake when i first got my baofeng, had the tone set to TSQL instead of Tone and couldnt figure out why the repeater wasnt responding to me for like two weeks lol. also worth mentioning — some repeaters have a courtesy tone, which is that little beep you hear after someone unkeys. thats basically your signal that its okay to transmit. if you try to talk right over it or before it plays you might get a bit of a tail on your audio or worse you step on someone. just a small thing but people notice it after a while.

so ive been running FT8 for about a year now and yeah its great for working new entities and all that but honestly it started feeling kind of hollow after a while, like youre just clicking buttons and logging callsigns. somebody on a local net mentioned JS8Call and i downloaded it last weekend to mess around with it. and now im kind of confused because on one hand JS8Call seems way more like actual communication, you can type stuff back and forth, there's relay functionality, store and forward, you can even do some basic APRS-like position stuff i think. but on the other hand the decode sensitivity doesnt seem anywhere close to FT8 and i feel like im comparing apples to oranges here. like they're solving different problems. my question is i guess — for weak signal work specifically, like trying to reach someone across a noisy path or through marginal conditions, which one actually performs better in practice? i understand FT8 was designed around sensitivity but JS8Call has different speed settings too so im not sure how the slower modes compare. running an ic-7300 into a dipole at about 35 feet if that matters.

so ive been licensed about 8 months now and just starting to get into chasing DX a little bit. a buddy told me to check out DXwatch and also the cluster stuff on QRZ and i've been poking around both but honestly im not totally sure im using them the right way. like on DXwatch i can see spots coming in and i get the general idea — someone hears a station and posts the freq and callsign. but theres so many spots and some of them seem really old or like obviously wrong bands for propagation right now. is there a way to filter it better or do people just kinda eyeball it and know which spots to trust? also on QRZ i found the logbook and the DX spots tab but it feels like a different feed than DXwatch? are these pulling from the same network or totally separate clusters. i dont really understand how the whole cluster network works behind the scenes, like is it one big thing or a bunch of separate ones that share data sometimes. anyway not urgent just trying to figure out the workflow that experienced DXers actually use day to day. right now i kind of just tune around randomly which works fine but feels like im missing stuff

80, 40, 20, and 15 meters have segments exclusively for Amateur Extra operators. 80, 20, and 15 meters have both phone and data segments reserved for Amateur Extra; 40 meters has only an additional data segment reserved for Amateur Extra. The frequency privileges haven't changed with the new question pool.

A simple external ALC mod solution which 100% resolves the problem entirely (simple pot circuit to provide voltage via a 9v battery to the IC-7300 ALC jack) is available from Acom. Contact them directly for the external ALC circuit schematic - it's a proven fix for the overshoot issue with SPE and other high-end amplifiers.

yeah the process tripped me up too when i first looked into it. basically you file through the FCC ULS system and there's a 31 day waiting period after you submit — during that window anyone else who wants that same call also throws their hat in. if only one person applies, you get it automatically. if multiple people apply for the same call, it goes to a tiebreaker system based on a few factors like whether you held that call before or if a close relative held it, stuff like that. its not exactly a lottery but it kinda feels like one when you're waiting. on the license class thing, yes that absolutely matters. general class can apply for certain formats but extras get access to the shorter 1x2 and 2x1 format calls which are the ones everyone really wants. a lot of people upgrade specifically to have more vanity options honestly. as for how long a call sits before its available — i believe its 2 years after a license expires or cancels before it goes into the general pool, but calls that were voluntarily returned or cancelled by the FCC might move faster. lotw and qrz usually track this stuff if you want to look up specific calls.

ok so i just passed my technician exam like two weeks ago and im still trying to figure out what frequencies i actually have access to on HF. i keep reading part 97 and it just feels like im going in circles. like i understand i have some HF privileges but its not totally clear to me which bands and what modes. somebody at my local club told me techs can operate on 10 meters with phone but then i read something that said only certain parts of 10 meters and now im more confused than when i started. also theres something in there about power limits and i honestly dont know if that applies differently depending on the band or if its just a blanket rule. i dont want to accidentally do something wrong, especially since ive only had my callsign for a couple weeks. any help appreciated, trying to get this straight before i actually key up for the first time.

yeah what he said about the balun, i built probably four or five dipoles before someone finally told me about common mode and suddenly everything started making a lot more sense. i wind mine on a piece of PVC with about 8-10 turns of the coax itself right at the feedpoint, works well enough for casual use even if its not a proper 1:1 choke balun. also your house wiring copper, is it solid or stranded? solid should be fine but just checking. one other thing — 14 gauge is kinda stiff and heavy, not a problem electrically but if your center insulator is just twisted wire through PVC holes it might be putting mechanical stress on the connection and that solder joint could be intermittent. had that happen to me once and it drove me crazy troubleshooting it

the fan writeups on eham and some of the older groups.io archives should still have part numbers. i bookmarked one a while back but cant find it now, typical. what i do rememeber is someone used a Noctua NF-A4 which is obviously overkill but dead silent and supposedly fits with some bracket modifications. seemed like a lot of work to me but if you care about noise floor during receive it might matter.

so ive been licensed for about 3 years now mostly just HF stuff and a little 2m local but i finally decided to give the satellite thing a shot. got a cheap arrow antenna and my FT-818 and figured how hard can it be right managed to track AO-73 last week using Gpredict on my laptop and i could actually hear the transponder which was exciting but i could never quite get my own signal through. i understand in theory that you need to adjust for doppler as the bird comes over but in practice im just fumbling around with the dial while trying to hold the antenna pointed at the right part of the sky and its a total mess is there a way to lock the downlink frequency and just let it drift or do people really manually tune both the uplink and downlink simultaneously? i feel like i need three hands. also does it matter much which part of the pass i try, like high elevation only or can you work the low stuff too

yeah this trips up a lot of new generals, dont feel bad. the short answer is the arrl band plan is basically a gentlemens agreement, it has no legal standing. what actually matters legally is part 97 which defines your privileges by license class. for general on 40m phone you can operate from 7.175 to 7.300 MHz in the US, not 7.025 — that lower chunk is CW/data territory for generals. the 7.125 area you heard about is more of a DX window thing, its kind of informally reserved so US stations dont step on DX stations working into other regions where their allocations are different. again not legally binding but if you start calling CQ down there youll probably get some grumpy responses. as for band edges, the thing is your transmitted signal has a certain bandwidth. SSB is roughly 3 kHz wide, so if you set your dial to 7.175 youre actually putting energy below that. FCC looks at the whole signal not just your carrier frequency so you want to stay a bit inside the edge to make sure your whole signal is within your authorized segment. most people just stay a few kHz inside and dont sweat it too much but its worth understanding why.