Rachel Adams

what your hearing is called CTCSS — continuous tone coded squelch system, though most people just call it PL tone or sometimes just "the tone." it's a subaudible tone (you usually can't actually hear it, it's below the normal audio range) that the radio transmits along with your voice. the repeater only opens up if it hears the right tone, which keeps it from triggering on noise or interference from other signals. some radios do a quick audible chirp or beep when they first key up which is what you might be noticing, but the actual CTCSS tone itself you wouldn't really hear. as for why the repeater didn't respond — yeah almost certainly it requires a PL tone to access and you either didn't have one programmed or had the wrong one. most repeater directories like repeaterbook dot com list the required tones. just look up your area, find the repeater's output frequency, and it'll tell you what tone to use. program that into the transmit side in chirp and you should be good. the baofeng can be a little quirky with how chirp handles tones so double check it actually saved right by going into the radio's menu after programming.

so i finally did my first WWFF activation last weekend, went out to a state forest near me that has a KFF reference and honestly it was a blast. set up my end fed with a 9:1 unun thrown over a branch, ran about 30 watts on 40m and made 44 contacts in about 2.5 hours which i think is enough to qualify the reference? im pretty sure you need 44 for a valid activation but i kept second guessing myself out there. anyway the whole thing was pretty relaxed, way less pressure than a SOTA peak where you're freezing and trying not to fall off a cliff lol. just sat in the woods on a camp chair and chatted with people. had a few hunters contacts from europe which surprised me, didnt think my little setup would reach that far on 40. my questions are — do i need to submit the log anywhere specific for WWFF or does it just go through ADIF upload on their site? and also is there a way to see if a reference has been activated recently before you go out? i dont mind being the only one to ever activate a spot but just curious. the wwff.net site is a little confusing to navigate for a first timer

so ive been running SSB for a few years now mostly on 40 and 20m and i keep seeing these threads where guys are spending hundreds on mic preamps and EQ plugins and whatnot and honestly i cant tell if any of it matters or if its just audiophile stuff bleeding into ham radio my current setup is pretty basic — ic-7300 with the stock mic and i get decent signal reports most of the time but every now and then someone tells me im a bit muffled or that my audio sounds like im in a cave or whatever. ive fiddled with the TX bandwidth settings a little and the bass cut on the radio itself but not sure if im doing it right so my actual question is, for normal SSB contacts and even some dx work, what settings or habits actually move the needle on audio quality? not looking to do any contesting or anything just want to be readable and not sound terrible. is the stock mic really the limiting factor or is it more about the radio settings?

omg yes i noticed this too last tuesday i think it was. im pretty new only got my general in march and i was just scanning around and heard this pile up and had no idea what was going on at first lol. ended up getting my first ever europe contact on 28.450 or somewhere around there, the signal was so strong i thought it was a local at first. definitely gonna be spending more time up there now

trunk lid is fine for vhf/uhf, dont overthink it. the ground plane is smaller but at those frequencies you dont need a ton of metal to make it work. ive had a hamstick style setup on my trunk for 2m and it was perfectly usable. the lip mount thing though, yeah those can be hit or miss depending on the clamp and how much contact you're actually getting with the body. i had one that developed a really noisy connection after a winter and my S meter on receive started jumping around. tightened everything down and it helped but not completely. NMO through the roof is cleaner just from a connection reliability standpoint, but if youre not contesting or doing weak signal work on VHF the difference in practice is probably not worth drilling into a new truck over. id just get a decent trunk lip mount, keep an eye on the connection and call it good.

i passed mine last spring after being a tech for like 3 years, kept putting it off. what finally clicked for me was just getting the ARRL general handbook and reading the sections i was confused about rather than just memorizing Q&A. the pool questions make a lot more sense when you understand why the answer is what it is. also just so you know, once you pass you can start on 40m and it is genuinely a different world. first week i had a random contact with someone in Germany just calling CQ late at night, nearly fell out of my chair. totally worth upgrading

honestly the General exam isnt as bad as people make it sound. theres definitely more to it than Tech but the math they test you on is pretty basic stuff, like you might need to know ohms law and maybe a little about how to calc resonant frequency but its not like youre solving differential equations or anything. i used the HamStudy website and just drilled the question pool for a few weeks, maybe 20-30 minutes a day and i passed no problem. as for what you get, General opens up most of HF which is where things get really interesting. youre talking 40m, 20m, 15m, 10m and parts of others. 20 meters especially is like the workhorse band, you can work stations all over the world on a decent day with a wire antenna in your backyard. 40m is great for domestic stuff in the evenings. so yeah its a pretty big jump in what you can do. and yeah i'd say study first, pass the exam, then start shopping for a radio. knowing youre licensed takes the pressure off and you can actually enjoy researching gear without feeling like youre jumping ahead of yourself. HF is a totally different world from 2m/70cm, way more variables but also way more rewarding once you start making contacts

nice work getting it up. i built basically the same thing last summer except i used speaker wire for the elements because i ran out of real antenna wire and didnt feel like driving to the store lol. worked fine for a while until one of the conductors broke at the feedpoint after a windstorm, so just something to watch out for with stranded wire and vibration over time. also florida from michigan on 40m at night is nothing to write home about propagation-wise but still feels good when your homebrew antenna actually does the thing its supposed to do

yeah done almost exactly this with a G-450 about two years ago. the GS-232 support on those older Yaesu controllers is kind of half-baked — it responds to some commands and just ignores others with no feedback at all which is super frustrating to debug. what baud rate are you running? mine was defaulting to 9600 but the controller wanted 4800, took me embarassingly long to figure that out. also the timing thing is real — you need a small delay between sending the command and expecting any movement, like at least 200ms or it just buffers weirdly. i ended up using a simple state machine in python with time.sleep() calls scattered around and that mostly solved it. not elegant but it works. if you want i can paste the relevant chunk of code, its not pretty but it does the job for basic azimuth tracking on FO-29 passes.

so i joined our local ARES group about four months ago after finally getting my General and i've been going to the monthly nets and training sessions pretty regularly. the EC has been great about welcoming new people in and i feel like i kind of know what im doing on a normal net... but we just got notified theres going to be an actual activation next weekend for a county-wide flood exercise and i'm honestly not sure what to expect. like i know the basics, i know to listen before transmitting, i know net discipline matters way more during an activation than on a casual ragchew. but what i dont know is stuff like how formal is it really, do i need to bring a specific go-kit setup, whats the actual flow of traffic like when things get busy. our EC sent out a briefing doc but its kind of dense and written assuming you already know some of this stuff i think. anyone been through their first activation or exercise and can tell me what actually surprised them or what they wish they'd known going in? even just general tips would help a lot right now

so i've been loosely following the icom IC-7760 situation since they teased it at hamvention last year and it looks like some dealers are actually starting to show stock or at least take real orders now, not just wishlists. been going back and forth on whether to pull the trigger or just stick with my 7300 which honestly still does everything i need it to do. also saw some chatter that 6m has been absolutely on fire the last couple weeks, few guys in the club worked some EU stations last tuesday which is pretty rare from our location in the midwest. feels like we might be getting into a good stretch with the solar flux holding up. anyone been taking advantage of it or did i miss the window again like usual curious if theres any other news floating around i might have missed, i kind of fell off keeping up with things during the winter

so ive been licensed for about 3 months now and i keep seeing all these weird abbreviations everywhere, like in other peoples logbooks, on cluster spots, people saying them on CW which i dont even do yet, and honestly i feel like im missing half the conversation all the time. like what even is QRM vs QRN, i thought they were the same thing but apparently not? and then theres QSB which i think has to do with signal fading but im not sure. also people say stuff like OM and YL and 73 and i kinda get those from context but not really. is there like a master list somewhere or does everyone just kind of pick this stuff up over time. my elmer hasnt really gone over any of this with me and i dont want to bug him again this week

so ive had this thing for about three weeks now and figured id share some impressions since i was on the fence for a long time before buying. came from an old TS-570 which honestly served me well for years but the display was dying and i figured it was time to move on rather than track down parts. the 7300 is just... a lot. the waterfall alone is worth it if youve never had a panadapter before. i keep finding signals i wouldve totally scrolled past on the old rig. the touchscreen took some getting used to and i still accidentally bump things when im not paying attention but overall the interface is pretty logical once you spend a few evenings with it. RF performance seems solid, noise floor is lower than i expected for a sub-$1000 radio. been working mostly 40 and 20m SSB and a little FT8 on 17m. audio out of the speaker is decent enough for casual listening but i did hook up a little external speaker and it makes a difference. TX audio reports have been good, ran it through the compressor settings a bit and found a spot i like. main thing thats been bugging me is the menu system for some of the deeper settings, just feels like you have to dig around a lot. and i wish the built-in ATU had a slightly wider matching range but thats a minor gripe. anybody else running one of these, curious if theres any settings people swear by that arent obvious from the manual.

honest answer is for what you're describing the RTL-SDR is probably fine, but the RSP1B is a genuinely better piece of hardware and you will notice it on crowded HF bands. the 12-bit ADC versus 8-bit makes a real difference when there's a strong broadcast station nearby killing your dynamic range. had an AM broadcast station about 15 miles out that was basically washing out everything within a few MHz of it on the RTL, RSP handled it much better with the selectable MW notch filter. that said if your main use is 1090 ADS-B and scanning VHF trunked stuff you probably wont notice much difference there. the RTL is already pretty good at those frequencies. id say if HF listening matters to you at all the SDRplay is worth it, the SDRuno software has gotten a lot better too even if it's a bit cluttered at first

so i've been keeping an eye on the solar flux index pretty closely for the past few months and wow, we are really in a sweet spot right now. been seeing SFI numbers in the 180s and 190s fairly regularly which honestly i wasnt expecting this early in the cycle. 17m and 15m have just been absolutely on fire. worked a bunch of stations in Japan and Australia last week on 17m with maybe 50 watts and a simple dipole, which for me is kind of a big deal because my antenna situation is not great living in a suburban lot. anyway i guess im just curious if other people have been taking advantage of this or if anyone's noticed specific times of day that have been working best. i've had the most luck in the late afternoon into early evening but i feel like i might be missing the morning openings because of work. also has anyone been watching the K index along with the flux? i know geomagnetic stuff can kill a good opening even when the flux is high and i feel like i dont pay enough attention to that side of things.

congrats on the ticket. honestly the UV-5R debate never ends and both sides have valid points but here's how i think about it — if you're the kind of person who likes to tinker and figure stuff out you'll probably have fun with it, the price is low enough that if you brick it programming the thing it's not a big deal. but if you want something that just works out of the box without fighting the menus, the FT-65 is genuinely a nice little radio, good audio, decent receive, and Yaesu's build quality on that one is solid. for your budget i'd probably lean toward the FT-65 or maybe look at the Wouxun KG-UV9D if you can find one on sale, that thing has great audio and the dual band coverage is nice. APRS on a budget gets more complicated — you'd either need a separate TNC setup or save up for something like a TH-D74 or even the Kenwood TH-D72 used which you can sometimes find for reasonable money. don't worry about APRS right away though, get comfortable with local repeaters first and see what pulls you in.

so i passed my general a few months back and got assigned one of those sequential calls that's like six characters long and honestly i dont hate it but ive been thinking about applying for a vanity call. problem is i cant quite figure out how the whole thing works from the FCC side of things. like i understand theres a window system where you apply and then wait but i keep reading conflicting stuff online about whether its first come first served or lottery or what. also does it matter what class of license you have in terms of which calls you can get? i remember reading something about 1x2 vs 2x1 vs 1x3 formats being tied to license class but i could be wrong about that. and one more thing — if a call becomes available because someone passed away or let their license lapse, how long does it actually sit before regular folks can apply for it? ive heard anything from 60 days to two years depending on who you ask. anyone been through this recently?

this is really interesting to read, im still pretty new to the hobby and just started attending our local ARES meetings. haven't done a full exercise yet but this kind of thing makes me want to prepare more before my first one. do you guys practice with Winlink at all or is it mostly voice? i've seen some groups use it for formal traffic and it seems like it might help with the message backlog problem you described but i honestly dont know enough about how it all fits together in an actual deployment scenario.

You're correct about the radiation pattern differences. 5/8λ antennas concentrate energy toward the horizon, while 1/4λ antennas have more high-angle radiation. In mountainous terrain, the 1/4λ will likely perform better for repeater access despite the 3dB gain penalty.

I went to my first hamfest last year and it was overwhelming but awesome! Bring a cart or wagon if you can - you'll be surprised how much stuff you end up carrying. Also, get there early for the best selection but late in the day for the best prices as vendors want to pack less stuff up.

not a dumb question at all, this stuff trips up a lot of people. so yeah the window system is real — when you apply for a vanity call there's a 30 day filing window and if nobody else applies for the same call during that window you just get it. if multiple people apply then it does go to a random selection, basically a lottery like you said. the good news is most calls dont get contested unless its something really desirable like a 1x2 or a former SK's call that has sentimental value to the community on the license class question — yes that matters. 1x2 and 2x1 format calls are restricted to Amateur Extra class only. as a General you can apply for 1x3 or 2x2 formats depending on your district. there's a chart on the ARRL website that breaks down which formats are available for which license classes, worth bookmarking. the callsign district thing is also worth knowing — you can hold a call from any district regardless of where you live, that hasnt been restricted for a long time now so dont worry about that part AE7XQ or whatever site you're using to search available calls, just make sure the call is actually in available status before you apply, saves headaches

I've done both actually. Ran a homebrew setup for probably three years — FlRig for CAT, mumble for audio, some sketchy bash scripts for PTT that I was never fully happy with. Switched to RemoteHams about 18 months ago and honestly the stability difference is real. The client handles reconnects automatically which alone was worth it for me because my remote site is at a family cabin and I can't just drive out there every time something drops. The SDR remote piece is interesting but I'll be honest, on a cable connection I found the bandwidth usage to be pretty significant if you crank the sample rate up. I run it at a lower rate and it's fine for monitoring band conditions but don't expect to do serious wideband monitoring at the same time as you're transmitting — at least not on a typical 10-15 Mbps upload connection. Latency on the regular voice/CW side is fine though, I've worked plenty of DX with no issues. On the echolink thing, I actually do have a node at the same site and it runs completely independently on its own little pi. RemoteHams doesn't really care what else is on your network as long as you're not choking the bandwidth. Just make sure you QoS the RemoteHams traffic or you'll get audio glitches when the echolink node gets busy.

the RPM-following whine is almost always alternator noise getting in through the power leads. first thing i'd try is putting a ferrite choke right at the radio end of the power cable, like within a few inches of where it connects to the rig. also check that your antenna coax braid has a solid ground path — on mag mounts sometimes the contact isn't great and a poor ground on the antenna can make noise way worse than it needs to be. bonding straps are great but honestly start with the ferrite and see how much that cleans things up before you go crazy bonding everything. and yeah modern vehicles with all the switching power supplies and LED stuff everywhere are a real headache compared to older rigs. my 2019 silverado was way worse than my old bronco ever was.

so i had been running an old TS-570 for years and it did its job but i finally got tired of fighting with the IF filtering and just ordered a 7300 last month. been about 6 weeks with it now and thought id share some thoughts since i was reading these forums obsessively before i bought it the waterfall is honestly better than i expected and worse than the youtube videos make it look, if that makes sense. in a quiet band it looks incredible but once things get noisy on 40m in the evening it turns into this kind of smear and you end up just using your ears anyway. still useful for spotting activity but its not magic the thing that actually surprised me was the audio. i had read some complaints about the stock speaker being tinny and i figured people were just being picky but yeah its not great. grabbed a little external speaker i had sitting around from the 570 days and it made a real difference. nothing special, just an old Kenwood desk speaker, but the rx audio opened up a lot one thing thats been bugging me and im not sure if its my setup or just how the radio works — on 20m i keep getting this faint repeating noise on certain frequencies, almost like a birdie or something internal. doesnt show up on my old rig so im wondering if its the SDR architecture doing something weird or if i have a grounding issue in the shack. the rig is bonded to my station ground but i havent checked the USB cable situation yet, i know that can cause issues overall though im happy with it. the learning curve on the menus is real but not as bad as people say

I was in the same spot last year, felt totally lost. I ended up using the Gordon West technician study book along with the HamStudy app and that combo worked really well for me. the book actually explains the why behind things which helped it stick better than just memorizing questions. took me about a month of casual studying. one thing nobody told me before my test session was that you can actually take the general exam the same day if you pass the tech, theres no extra fee usually, so i would maybe at least skim some general material just in case you feel confident after the first one. i didnt do that and kind of wish i had because then i had to go back a few months later. but yeah dont stress too much about it, the VEs are all volunteers and theyre pretty relaxed about the whole thing in my experience.