Karen Lewis

mixed DXCC is definitely the right place to start, you apply once you have 100 confirmed entities and you can keep adding credits to your total anytime after that — it's not a one shot thing at all. LoTW makes this really painless compared to the old card days, when you have enough confirmations just log into the ARRL website and apply online, it'll pull your LoTW credits automatically and you pay a one time fee for the certificate. WAS and WAZ are completely separate awards with separate applications and fees, WAS is ARRL and WAZ is CQ magazine which is a whole different organization. there's no shared paperwork but a lot of the same QSOs can count toward all of them depending on whether your contact confirmed on LoTW or sent a card. i'd say get your DXCC mixed going first since you're already so close, then worry about the others. and honestly once you start chasing seriously you're gonna get a little obsessed, just warning you now lol

honestly just do the droopy dipole and dont overthink it. antennas dont have to be textbook perfect to work. i had one end of my 40m dipole tied to a fence post for like 6 months and still made contacts into japan a couple times. real world is messy

Welcome to the hobby! For power, start simple - get a couple extra battery packs for your UV-5R and consider a small solar panel later. The stock antenna will work fine for local repeaters, but a Diamond SRH771 makes a noticeable difference and only costs about $20. Most important thing is to test everything together before you need it!

yeah i run basically that exact setup, N1MM for contests and Log4OM for everything else. the sync between them isnt perfect honestly, what i do is just export an ADIF from Log4OM at the end of each month and import it into N1MM so at least the dupe checking stays somewhat current. its a little manual but takes like two minutes and i stopped worrying about it. the WSJT-X thing you mentioned is a real annoyance. the UDP logging works fine when youre doing a pure FT8 session but yeah if you jump back and forth between modes in the same band it can get confused. what fixed it for me mostly was making sure WSJT-X is only pointed at one logging target at a time. i had it trying to send to both N1MM and Log4OM simultaneously for a while and that was a disaster, dupes everywhere and a couple of contacts just vanished. pick one and stick with it during a session, then import after.

honestly in your situation id probably just do the sloper. 30 feet at the apex on 40m isnt amazing but its not bad either, and a sloper actually tends to have a slight low-angle lobe in the direction it slopes down which can be useful for dx. i ran one for two years before i had room for anything better and it worked fine, worked plenty of europe from the midwest on it. the vertical thing — yeah the radial system is really where people underestimate the work. you can get away with fewer radials if you bury them but ideally you want at least 16 or so and even then if the ground conductivity around you isnt great it can be a real efficiency killer. with a dipole you dont have to think about any of that, the antenna is basically self-contained. just feed it with some decent coax and a 1:1 choke balun at the feedpoint and youre good. if your yard is sloped anyway the sloper is kind of the natural fit. just try it and see how the signal reports are, worst case you move things around later.

so ive been at this for about 3 months now and im really trying to get my CW up to a usable speed but something just feels off with my sending. im using an old Bencher BY-1 paddle that i picked up at a hamfest and a Winkeyer USB and honestly i thought that combo would be good but every time i listen back to recordings of myself i sound like im sending mush. the dits and dahs dont have that crisp clean sound i hear from the good operators on 40m. ive been messing with the weight and ratio settings in the Winkeyer software and i think maybe i made it worse actually. not sure if its the paddle tension or my technique or what. my elmer told me to just slow down and really nail each character before i try to go faster but at 10 wpm i feel like im dragging and it tempts me to speed up before im ready anyone been through this? is there a good starting point for the keyer settings or is this just a practice problem i need to grind through

oh man yes the plateau is absolutely real, i hit the exact same wall around 12-13wpm and it lasted probably 3 months before something clicked. what finally worked for me was just forcing myself to listen at speeds way above what i could copy — like i set fldigi or just pulled up W1AW broadcasts at 18-20wpm and just let it wash over me without trying to copy everything. after a few weeks of that my brain started recognizing the rhythms even if i couldnt write it all down. also the thing about sounding out letters in your head is the killer right there. you gotta get to where dit-dah just IS the letter A, not dit-dah = morse for A = the letter A. that extra step is what slows everyone down. some people swear by listening while doing something else like washing dishes so your conscious brain stays out of the way. sounds weird but it helped me honestly

I was in basically the same spot last year. What worked for me was using HamStudy dot org and just doing practice tests over and over until I was consistently hitting like 85% or better, then I went and sat for it. Took me maybe three weeks studying maybe 20-30 mins a day. The electrical theory stuff was the part that slowed me down too but honestly the questions on the actual exam aren't as bad as studying the whole pool makes it seem. One thing I'll say -- once you pass, budget some time figuring out where you're actually allowed to transmit on each band before you key up. I kind of assumed I knew and almost made a bonehead mistake my first week on 40m. The ARRL band plan chart is worth printing out and keeping nearby.

JS8Call is fantastic but activity varies by band and time. It's essentially FT8 with messaging capability, great for off-grid emergency communications. Try 40m in evenings or 20m during daylight hours. The JS8Call Facebook group posts activity schedules and nets regularly.

so ive had my 857 for about 4 years now and its been rock solid but ive been reading about a few mods people do and im not sure which ones are actually worth the hassle vs which ones are just internet rabbit holes that dont really change anything in practice the ones im looking at are the collins filter swap for SSB, the TX mod to open up the extended coverage (already done that one actually, pretty straightforward), and i saw something on eham about a noise blanker mod but the thread was like 10 years old so who knows if its still relevant mostly concerned about the receive side since thats where the 857 kinda falls short compared to my old IC-706. the front end just feels a little deaf on 40m especially when theres QRM from the broadcast band. anybody been down this road with this radio?

so our club is trying to figure out if its worth renting a table at the Tri-County fest in March. last year we went and it was kind of a bust honestly, not a ton of traffic and we mostly just talked to each other the whole time lol. but a few guys are saying its gotten better since they moved it to the fairgrounds. anyone been recently or planning to go? also if anyone wants to carpool from the east side let me know, im driving the truck so i got room

the screwdriver thing is definitely HF, guy was probably just talking past you on that one. for 2m/70cm the NMO route is absolutely worth it if you can stomach drilling the hole or doing a lip mount. i ran a mag mount for years on my jeep and when i finally put in a proper NMO with a Larsen NMO2/70B the difference wasnt massive on receive but the install just feels solid and the coax runs clean through the door jam. no more wondering if the mount shifted overnight. the 5/8 over 5/8 config does give you a little more gain toward the horizon which is what you want for repeater work anyway, flatter pattern than a straight 5/8. if youre mostly hitting local repeaters within 30-40 miles the NR770 is honestly pretty capable already so dont expect miracles, but a permanent mount is just nicer to live with. i used a locking NMO from Amphenol and havent touched it in 3 years.

Start with the big five: QRL (is frequency busy?), QTH (location), QSL (confirm receipt), QRZ (who's calling?), and QRT (stop transmitting). These cover 80% of what you'll need for basic CW contacts. Once comfortable with these, add QRM/QRN for interference and QSY for changing frequency.

CQ WW is absolutely the big one, last weekend of October for SSB and late November for CW. Your 7300 and a wire antenna is honestly more than enough to make a bunch of contacts, especially on 20 and 15 meters when the bands are cooperating. I worked 47 countries in CQ WW SSB a couple years ago with a dipole in my attic so dont let the antenna situation hold you back. The main thing is just learning the exchange — for CQ WW its your signal report and your CQ zone, which for most of us in the US is zone 4 or 5 depending where you live. Look that up before you start. Field Day is its own thing and yeah it was back in June but mark your calendar for next year, its a great way to get into contesting in a low pressure environment because its more of a club event and people are generally patient with newer ops. SOTA is a totally separate world from contesting, more of an activation thing where you hike up a summit and make contacts from there — i havent done it myself but the guys who do it seem to love it. Start with CQ WW this fall, seriously just jump in and youll figure it out fast.

this is really interesting to read as someone who just got their ticket a few months ago. i joined ARES pretty much right away because thats part of why i wanted to get licensed in the first place but i honestly had no idea how complicated the coordination side of things gets when you remove the repeater from the equation. i kind of assumed the radio part was the hard part and everything else would just sort of happen. do most groups have like a written protocol document people are supposed to study or is it mostly learned through drills like this? asking because our local group hasn't done a SET in a while and i feel like im missing context that everyone else just kind of absorbed over time.

Congratulations on passing General! For your budget and needs, I'd strongly recommend the Anytone AT-D878UVII Plus. It's a versatile handheld that excels in FM, DMR, and APRS functionality with a large color screen and built-in GPS. Perfect radio to grow into as you explore different aspects of the hobby.

the single yagi thing on 2m is real but yeah youre basically limited to working the big EME stations, guys running 4x or 8x yagi arrays or dishes. with JT65B you can close a link that would have been completely impossible in the CW-only days so its not nothing, i worked 23 entities my first year with a single 9el yagi and 400w, took patience but it happens. the LNA question is important though and honestly its where a lot of people cheap out and regret it. you really want sub 0.5dB NF, the Kuhne stuff is popular, SSB Electronic makes good preamps too. mount it right at the feedpoint, any feedline loss before the LNA kills your receive sensitivity and thats actually more important than transmit power in a lot of cases. doppler on 2m isnt that dramatic, maybe plus or minus 300hz give or take depending on geometry, WSJT-X handles it fine. the polarization rotation is the bigger practical headache honestly. if you have a fixed polarization antenna you will sometimes hit the window where the moon geometry puts you in deep cross-pol and you lose like 20dB which is basically the whole link budget. H/V switchable or circular pol helps a lot. some guys just accept the outages and wait for geometry to improve.

test

I had the exact same problem! Spent months stuck at 8-10 WPM until I discovered LCWO.net. LCWO uses the Koch method starting with just a few characters and gradually adding more. The key is learning characters at full speed from the beginning so you don't develop bad habits.

nice work on the activation. 11 QSOs on your first time out with an 818 and a wire is honestly solid. i did my first one a few months ago and was so nervous i forgot to log half of my contacts correctly, had to piece it back together from memory later which was not fun. one thing that helped me with the reference confusion — the SOTA Goat app if you have an iphone shows you the summits around your GPS location and you can tap each one to see the reference. i basically just stand on the summit and confirm it matches what i planned before i ever key up. the android equivalent works similar i think, cant remember the name of it offhand.

i just passed my tech like two months ago so this is pretty fresh for me. i basically only used hamstudy and did maybe 20-30 minutes a day for about three weeks. the electrical theory stuff tripped me up at first but once it clicks it clicks. the test itself felt way less scary than the practice tests for some reason, maybe because i knew what to expect. just go do it honestly, worst case you fail and retake it, the fee is like 15 bucks now i think.

The 200Hz drift is typical for Si5351 without proper calibration. You definitely need to measure your actual crystal frequency and set the correction factor. I use a frequency counter on 10MHz output and calculate the error — usually need corrections around 15000-18000 range rather than default.

congrats man, that first QSO feeling is something you dont really forget. i remember being so nervous i forgot to say my callsign at the end and the other guy had to ask me to repeat it lol. you'll get the hang of the format pretty quick though. def start thinking about HF when you get comfortable, thats where it really opens up

so i've been checking into our local 2m net for a few months now and last week i missed the formal check-in window because i got home late from work. the net was still going on when i tuned in, people were still having roundtable conversations and stuff, and i wasnt sure if it was okay to just key up and say hey i missed check-in can i still join or if that would be like interrupting the whole flow and annoying the net control. i ended up just listening which was fine but i kinda wanted to participate. is there a standard way to handle this? i know different nets do things differently but just curious what you all do. i dont want to be that guy who doesnt know the unwritten rules lol

i was in literally the exact same spot about 8 months ago and ended up going with a Wouxun KG-UV9D after reading about it forever. no real complaints so far, hits all the repeaters around here fine and the receive seems pretty decent to me although i dont have much to compare it to honestly. the one thing i will say is get CHIRP set up before you do anything else, manually programming channels on any of these things is kind of miserable once you have more than like 5 repeaters to enter.