Steve Johnson

so ive been a tech for about a year and a half now and i keep hearing people talk about cw on the air and honestly it sounds really cool but i have zero idea where to start. like do you just memorize all the letters first? do you listen to it slow? ive tried a couple apps but they just throw random letters at you and i get frustrated after like 10 minutes and give up. i guess my question is what actually worked for you when you were learning from scratch. im not trying to be contest grade or anything i just want to be able to have a basic qso someday. is there like a method that actually sticks or is it just grinding it out until it clicks

what park were you at? some locations just dont propagate as well even with good antennas. i've done probably 30 wwff activations now and my worst was only 4 qsos at a park that was down in a valley. but my best was 47 contacts in 2 hours at a hilltop location. elevation really matters more than people think. also try calling on different parts of the band, sometimes 14.230 is dead but 14.205 is hopping

Short answer is no, theres no FCC rule that says you must use NATO phonetics specifically. The ITU recommends them for international and aeronautical use but for ham radio on a local repeater youre pretty much free to say whatever gets the job done. That said the reason NATO phonetics became standard is exactly because they work — they were designed so each word sounds distinct even through noise and across different languages. So if youre doing a net or working DX or anything where clarity matters, just use the standard ones. Saves everyone the guesswork of figuring out if you said 'F for Frank' or 'F for Fox' or whatever random word you came up with on the spot. New guys sometimes get creative and it just slows everything down honestly.

WAZ is much harder than DXCC - I was past 200 entities before finishing WAZ, and the last 2 zones took years. DXCC falls fast at first since you can work lots of easy countries, but beyond 250 entities it becomes similar to WAZ as you need those rarer ones. Both are challenging in their own way!

Welcome to the hobby! Definitely bring cash - most vendors prefer it and you'll have better negotiating power. You'll find everything from the newest high-tech gear to used, refurbished, or even antique equipment, plus accessories no longer available from manufacturers. Don't be afraid to ask questions - most hams love sharing knowledge with newcomers!

The difference you're seeing is likely in the ground modeling implementation and segment density. EZNEC tends to be more conservative in its gain predictions. I'd trust the EZNEC numbers for construction - better to be pleasantly surprised than disappointed.

so i've been working on this install for like three weekends now and i think i finally have it where i want it but theres this annoying hum that shows up when i key up on 2m. doesnt seem to bother 70cm as much for some reason. the radio is a Yaesu FTM-500D and i ran the power leads directly to the battery which i thought was the right way to do it, both positive and negative, about 12 feet of 10 awg with an inline fuse near the battery. antenna is a Diamond NR770HB on a mag mount sitting on the roof. the hum kind of follows engine RPM actually, now that i think about it. so when i rev up it gets higher pitched. someone at the club meeting said it might be alternator whine getting into the audio somehow but i dont really understand how that would happen if im running straight to the battery. the control head is mounted on the dash and the body of the radio is under the seat if that matters. anyone dealt with this before? im sure its something dumb i did

Another vote for starting simple! You won't buy one radio and be done. It's an expensive hobby and you will buy a lot of radios. There isn't one radio that does it all, so choose carefully. Get something reliable that gets you on the air, then figure out what specific features you actually want in your next radio.

so ive been running FT8 for maybe two years now and i love it for DX and filling in band slots but lately ive been feeling like theres something missing. like yeah you make the contact and log it but theres no actual conversation happening right? someone mentioned JS8Call to me at a club meeting and i finally installed it last week and spent a few evenings poking around on 40m. its definitely a different vibe. slower, more like actual back and forth, and the weak signal performance is still really impressive even though its not quite FT8 level. i talked to a guy for like 45 minutes about his antenna setup and it felt more like what i got into ham radio for in the first place. the interface is a little rough around the edges still but nothing i cant deal with. curious if anyone else has kind of moved in this direction or if youre still mostly FT8/FT4 for everything. also does anyone still run PSK31 regularly because i feel like that basically died when FT8 came along and i kind of miss it too

Italy and Spain on 10m is great, i had a similar thing happen like two weeks ago, worked a handful of EU stations in about 20 minutes then it just kind of died. its wild how fast those openings can close up. im still pretty new to HF so i just watch the DX cluster obsessively and jump on things when i see them lol. havent figured out all the solar flux stuff yet but this thread is actually helpful

so i finally did my first SOTA activation last weekend, W4C/EM-005 up in the smokies. been planning it for like two months. hauled up my KX2 and a linked dipole and everything seemed fine until i got to the summit and realized i forgot my friggin counterpoise for the end fed. just completely blanked on it. ended up just stringing the dipole as best i could between some scrubby trees and got it maybe 15 feet off the ground on one end. made 6 contacts on 20m SSB which i guess counts but i was hoping for way more. the signal reports were all over the place too, one guy gave me a 57 and the next guy could barely hear me. wind was also something else up there, nearly knocked my mast over twice. anyway still got the activation points so thats something. anybody else have a disaster first activation story because im feeling a little dumb right now

so i finally did my first solo activation last weekend at a state park about 45 mins from my house, K-4881 if anyones curious. ive been hunting parks for a few months and kept telling myself id do an activation eventually and just kept putting it off because honestly i was nervous about the whole thing. brought my KX2 and a 40m end fed halfwave just thrown up between two trees with a telescoping pole in the middle, nothing fancy. got there around 10am and it took me maybe 20 minutes to get set up which felt like forever at the time. spotted myself on the POTA app and the pile up was... not what i expected. like actually had to slow down and work people one at a time for almost 45 minutes straight. ended up with 34 QSOs which is way more than the 10 you need to count it as a valid activation. the only thing that went wrong is i forgot to bring a pen that actually worked lol, had to use a piece of charcoal from an old fire pit to scribble callsigns in my log which was a disaster to decipher later. got most of them uploaded to POTA.app though. anyone else do their first activation recently? also curious if people think 40m is usually enough or should i be running 20m too, i felt like i was leaving contacts on the table

for 6 hours at that draw rate youre probably fine on the battery if you're disciplined about it. 100ah lifepo4 you can realistically pull 80ah before you start worrying so at 15-20A average thats like 4-5 hours worst case but in practice youre not transmitting the whole time so your average duty cycle probably cuts that actual draw way down. i usually figure 30-40% duty cycle on voice nets and my numbers work out way better than the worst case math. that said i always bring a small generator to drills anyway, not because i need it most of the time but because if something goes sideways you dont want to be the emcomm guy whose radio went dark at hour 4. the eu2200i is quiet enough that its not really a problem if you put it 20-30 feet away and run a good extension. just run it on eco mode and youll barely hear it. on the antenna — if you have trees work the EFHW, verticals on the ground with limited radials are always a compromise and the EFHW into decent trees will outperform almost anything else you can put up quick in my experience. just bring enough coax to get some separation from your operating position.

okay so the visual dots and dashes thing -- yeah drop that, seriously. your brain will try to count the dits and dahs and you'll hit a wall around 10-12 wpm that you basically cant get past. the whole point is to hear each letter as its own sound, like how you recognize a word without spelling it out in your head. the method most people swear by now is Koch method, which is what the LC (Learn CW Online) site uses, its free and its pretty well structured. you start with just two characters at full speed, like 20wpm character speed, and you add more as you get them right. sounds brutal but it actually works better than starting slow because you're training your ear to hear the rhythm not count beats. i learned as an adult, took me maybe 4 or 5 months of 15-20 minutes a day before i felt comfortable enough to try a QSO and even then it was rough but doable. just dont skip days is the main thing, consistency beats marathon sessions every time

at 70 feet on 70cm RG-8X is gonna cost you something like 3-4 dB compared to LMR-400, rough ballpark. that's not nothing, especially if you're trying to hit weak signals or work through a repeater that's already marginal. on 2m it's a lot more forgiving, maybe 1.5 dB or so over that run. honestly if you're doing a permanent roof install just bite the bullet on the LMR-400, you're not gonna want to redo the coax in two years because you went cheap the first time. the X510 vs X300 thing is real too -- the X510 has more gain on paper but it's also got a really narrow vertical pattern so if you're working local stuff and there's any terrain between you and the repeaters it can actually work against you. i've seen people go back to X300 after putting up the X510 for exactly that reason. for the tile roof, i've seen people use a split-loom tube with self-amalgamating tape where it enters, not perfect but it holds. the better solution if there's a ridge vent is to run it under the cap tiles but that really depends on your roof type.

fill-in digi is probably the right call but just make sure you configure it as WIDE1-1 only and not a full WIDE2 digi or you'll cause all kinds of duplicate packet problems downstream. seen that happen a few times where someone stands up a digi with too broad a path config and suddenly aprs.fi is showing 6 copies of every packet in a 50 mile radius. the guys running the regional APRS network in your area might also have coverage maps or be planning something already, worth reaching out to them before you go DIY on it.

so ive been messing with APRS for about 3 months now and i finally got my TM-D710G set up with a proper antenna on the roof and i can see my own packets getting digipeated locally when i watch aprs.fi but theyre not showing up on the IGate side at all. the local digi is maybe 8 miles away, clear shot, i can hear it hitting the digi because the led on the radio flashes when it retransmits im running WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 in my path which i thought was pretty standard. im in a semi-rural area outside of tulsa and there are maybe 2-3 igates i can see on the map within range. signal reports from other guys look fine on 144.390 so i dont think its an RF issue. been digging through the aprsis32 docs and my head is spinning a little honestly is there something dumb im doing wrong or is this just a coverage gap thing where the igates arent hearing me directly and the digi isnt connected to the internet? i kinda assumed all digis were also igates but maybe thats wrong

I've been using N1MM Logger+ for contests for years, but recently downloaded Log4OM after hearing good things about its modern interface. Log4OM has surged in popularity due to its modern design, extensive integrations, and ease of use. This free 64-bit Windows logger offers CAT control, DX cluster, VOACAP propagation, and strong award tracking. However, I'm concerned about contest performance. N1MM Logger is the world's most popular ham radio contest logging program. For CW, phone and digital modes, its combination of contest-optimized features is unmatched. Log4OM has basic contest support but I'm wondering if it can handle the QSO rates needed for serious contesting. Has anyone made the switch from N1MM+ to Log4OM for contests? I love Log4OM's interface for daily logging, but I'm hesitant to use it for major contests like CQ WW or ARRL DX. The support for FT8/FT4 data reading that works in conjunction with JTDX, MSHV and WSJT-X applications is impressive though. Most users combine tools (e.g., Log4OM daily + N1MM contests + PoLo portable). Start with free options—they cover 90% of needs in 2025. Should I stick with this hybrid approach?

This explains why I can't seem to break pileups despite running 100 watts. I've been running my FT-991A with mic gain at 75% thinking more was better. Time to back it down and use the dummy load setup you described.

For a standard repeater you just need the transmit tone set, that's your T-CTCS on the baofeng. The receive tone (R-CTCS) is optional and just filters out traffic you don't want to hear — most people leave that off unless the repeater is really busy and they want some peace and quiet. Set the transmit tone to whatever the directory lists and you should be good. And yeah hearing the repeater tail just means your signal got through and the repeater heard you, so you were hitting it. Totally possible you just caught a quiet moment. Try calling out something like your callsign and that youre monitoring, give it a few seconds and see what happens. Most repeaters around here are pretty quiet during the day unless something is going on. Welcome to the hobby by the way, the baofeng will get you started just fine until you figure out what you actually want to do with the license.

yeah that sounds like supply noise getting into the AF stage, the LM386 is pretty sensitive to that. the cap on pin 7 helps but id also try a RC filter right before the chip's supply pin, something like 10 ohm resistor and then 470uf to ground. makes a huge difference. also check if the hum changes when you touch different parts of the board, sometimes just moving a wire or adding a small ferrite bead on the supply lead to the 602 cleans things up a lot. the wall wart thing is real too. some of them are genuinely terrible, i had one that was supposedly regulated but was putting out like 80mv of ripple. grabbed an old linear supply i had on the bench and the hum just disappeared. worth ruling out before you chase your tail on the board layout.

so ive been going back and forth on this for a while now. my shack is at home but i travel a fair bit for work and been wanting to get on HF from hotels and stuff. been looking at RemoteHams and also the SDR remote stuff they have now but also considering just setting up my own thing with something like remoterig or even just VPN into a softrock or airspy at home. the RemoteHams SDR remote looks interesting but honestly im not totally clear on how it integrates with like actual TX capability vs just being an SDR receiver. like is it purely RX or can you actually transmit through it if you have a full radio connected on the remote end? their docs are kind of confusing on that part. also curious if anyone has experience using it for internet linking, i was thinking about whether i could tie this into my local 2m repeater somehow which might be a completely separate rabbit hole i guess. anyone done anything like that or am i mixing up two totally different things here

the Q codes came from maritime and commercial radio way before ham radio even existed, so yeah a lot of them are obscure and basically never used on the ham bands. i wouldnt worry about most of them. the one i see newer folks mess up sometimes is QRZ -- a lot of people say it to mean is anyone there or calling CQ but technically it means whos calling me, like you use it when you heard a partial callsign and lost them. not a huge deal but worth knowing the distinction. also OM means old man which sounds weird but it just means any male ham regardless of age, and YL is young lady for female operators. XYL is ex-young lady, basically means wife. these show up a lot in casual ragchewing and can definitely confuse people the first time they hear them lol

so ive been messing with RemoteHams for a few months now and overall its decent but the latency on SSB is just brutal sometimes. like 400-600ms on a good day and it makes actual two-way contacts feel really awkward. im running it into my IC-7300 at the remote site with a pretty solid fiber connection on that end, something like 150 down 20 up. the client side is just my laptop on regular cable internet, maybe 60-70 down. the weird part is that the SDR waterfall display actually seems fine and updates reasonably fast, its really the audio path that gets gummy. ive tried messing with the audio buffer settings in the client software but havent found a sweet spot. has anyone actually gotten this usable for like casual ragchewing or is it really more of a DX/digital mode thing at this point also curious if anyone has experimented with using something like EchoLink or AllStarLink alongside a remote setup like this for any kind of internet linking. half formed idea i had was setting up a node at the remote site so local club guys could at least get on HF through the link somehow. not sure if that even makes practical sense

I went from a 30-year-old Mosley TA-33 to an XR6 three years ago - night and day difference on 20m! My old TA-33M was still mechanically solid after 32 years, but the XR6 has about 2dB more gain and much better F/B ratio. Worth the upgrade for serious DXing.