Rachel Adams

yeah 10m has been absolutely on fire, i worked something like 40 countries last month just on that band alone. cycle 25 is shaping up to be better than the predictions honestly, some folks thought it would be a modest peak but the solar flux has been staying up pretty consistently. if you havent already grab some propagation software or just check dxmaps.com regularly, helps a lot for catching openings before they fade. and yes there have been some really solid 6m sporadic E openings too, missed a few myself but caught one in late afternoon that got me a few new grid squares for my rover log.

honestly im kind of in the same boat as you so take this with a grain of salt but one thing i started doing that seems to help is just listening to actual QSOs on 40m in the evenings, like around the cw portions below 7100. even if i can only copy maybe every third word its starting to train my ear to real operators instead of the computer generated stuff. some of those elmers on 40m CW are incredibly patient and send really clean code too. also someone on here told me about a app called Morse Mania that i've been messing with on my phone during lunch breaks, its not perfect but its better than nothing when im away from the radio

our club just started doing a weekly breakfast thing on saturday mornings which has been way more fun than i expected honestly, just a few guys at a diner talking radio and whatever. way more casual than the formal meetings. if your club is kinda dead it might be worth just suggesting something low key like that, sometimes people just dont want to sit through a meeting agenda

this is really helpful im actually about to do a similar install in my jeep next month with a 7900R. the alternator noise thing is something i was already worried about, jeeps are kind of notorious for electrical gremlins. good to know the antenna ground is worth checking before assuming its something more complicated

so our ARES group has a county-wide exercise coming up and im trying to figure out the best way to power everything for a 12-hour deployment. we'll be running two HF stations (one for NTS traffic, one for liaison with the EOC) plus a VHF/UHF packet node and a couple handhelds on a charging hub. last exercise we had a Honda eu2200i running everything and it worked fine but man that thing is loud and we burned through about 3 gallons of gas which felt like a lot for what we were actually running. ive been looking at doing a hybrid setup this time — maybe run the generator for a couple hours to charge a big LiFePO4 bank and then go quiet on the generator for a while. the IC-7300s pull maybe 20-22 amps at full power but were mostly running 50-60 watts so probably averaging more like 8-10 amps? been trying to do the math and i keep second-guessing myself on how big the battery needs to be. also the antenna situation is always a mess at this site. the county EOC parking lot has zero good trees and they dont want us driving stakes into the pavement so last time we ended up with a couple of buddipoles on camera tripods which honestly performed worse than i expected, especially on 40m. thinking about bringing a spiderbeam pole this time for a simple inverted-V but not sure how to secure the base without stakes. anyone dealt with similar site restrictions?

ok so ive been licensed about 8 months now and i keep hearing people talk about DXCC and WAS and WAZ and honestly im starting to get a little lost on what the differences even are and which one makes more sense to work toward first as a general class with a modest station like i understand DXCC is working 100 countries confirmed, and WAS is all 50 states, but WAZ i had to actually look up and its working all 40 CQ zones which i didnt even know was a thing until last week lol my setup is nothing special, 100 watts into a dipole up about 30 feet, so im not exactly a powerhouse but ive been logging contacts and i think ive got maybe 18 states confirmed through LoTW so far and maybe 30-something DXCC entities but i havent been super careful about tracking it all someone at my local club said WAS is the easiest to start with because its more predictable when propagation cooperates but another guy said just work everything and let the awards sort themselves out which i guess makes sense but i also like having a goal to work toward you know anyway just curious what you all think, is there a logical order to these or does it really not matter

just got my ticket a few months before you and went through the same thing lol. ended up with a Radioddity GD-77 mostly because it does DMR which i wanted to try eventually. its a bit more to learn upfront but i dont regret it. though tbh if i just wanted simple vhf/uhf repeater stuff id probably have gone with the FT-65, felt really solid when i held one at a hamfest.

i was in the exact same spot about a year ago and honestly lcwo was what worked for me too. but i also want to say dont feel bad about how long it takes because i spent like three months before i could copy anything on the air reliably and i still drop stuff when condx get rough or the op is sending a little sloppy. the thing that helped me a lot besides just the drilling was actually listening to stuff like W1AW code practice because the content is like real QSO text and news items so your brain starts to anticipate common words and phrases which helps a ton. just be patient with yourself its not a fast process for most people

ok so i just got my general ticket a few weeks ago and ive been trying to figure out where exactly i can operate on 40 meters. i know theres a difference between what the FCC allocates and what the band plan says but honestly the more i read about it the more confused i get. like is the band plan actually a rule or is it just a suggestion? and i keep seeing stuff about staying away from band edges but nobody really explains why. i tried to get on around 7.125 the other night for a SSB contact and some guy came on and said i was too close to the edge but 7.125 is still within the general portion so i dont really understand what the problem was

so my buddy has been into ham radio for a few years and finally talked me into getting my ticket. i picked up a copy of the ARRL technician manual from the library but honestly its kind of overwhelming and i dont even know if thats the right book to start with or if i should just be drilling the question pool directly. like is there a better way to approach this than just reading every chapter? i feel like theres a lot of electrical theory stuff in there that i probably dont need to know that deeply just to pass the test. also i saw something about HamStudy.org and some app called Ham Radio Prep, has anyone used those and do they actually work? just want to get this done in a reasonable amount of time without losing my mind over ohms law

not a dumb question at all, this trips up a lot of newly upgraded generals. so the short answer is the ARRL band plan is NOT law, its a gentlemans agreement basically. the actual rules are in part 97 and those define the subbands by license class. for general on 40m phone you get 7.175 to 7.300 MHz. now here's the thing about band edges that your buddy was getting at -- the rule is actually that your signal has to stay within the allocation, not just your carrier frequency. so if youre running SSB, the transmitted bandwidth can be like 3kHz wide, which means if you park your dial at 7.300 you might have sideband energy going above that. thats a real violation not just a courtesy issue. most people stay at least 3-5 kHz inside the edge to be safe, so 7.295 or lower for upper sideband. the ITU regions also complicate 40m because the band goes to 7.200 in some parts of the world, which is why you sometimes hear stuff that seems out of place

I made the switch to World Radio League for everything and love it. You can log 100% offline with their mobile app and contacts sync automatically. The contest scoring isn't as advanced as N1MM, but for casual contest participation it works fine. Plus having everything in one ecosystem is really convenient.

so ive been doing contests for a few years now mostly single op single radio and lately ive been reading a lot about SO2R and wondering if its actually worth setting up for someone who maybe does 4-5 contests a year seriously. like i get the concept, run on one radio while the other is searching and pouncing, but every time i start reading about it the station engineering side of it just seems like a rabbit hole that never ends. bandpass filters, antenna switching, keeping the second radio from blasting your ears out through the headphones... it feels like a full weekend project just to get the setup stable before you even key up. my current setup is a 7300 as the main rig and i have an old ft-857d sitting in the shack doing nothing. theoretically i could use that as the second radio. but the intermod situation between two transmitters in the same shack on different bands with my antenna situation (two yagis on a single tower, not stacked, just kind of aimed different directions) seems like it could be a real mess. anyone gone through this and actually come out the other side with something usable without spending a fortune on filters? also curious whether the rate improvement is actually noticeable for someone running 100w or if SO2R really only shines when youre running high power and already pulling good rates on the run radio

I took mine a few months ago and was super nervous too lol. Honestly the hardest part for me was just finding parking at the place haha. The test itself was way less stressful than I expected. Bring a photo ID and the fee, I think ours was like $15 cash only so double check that with whoever is running the session because apparently it varies. One thing nobody told me beforehand — when you finish they grade it right there on the spot and tell you if you passed before you even leave the room. I didn't know that so I was kind of caught off guard when they just handed me a CSCE like two minutes after I turned it in. Good luck saturday

Under ideal conditions, range increases with the square root of the increase in power. So going from 5 watts to 10 would give you about 40% more range, not twice as much. A better antenna will give you much more improvement than doubling your power. Plus the biggest real-world impact of running higher power on an HT is lower battery life.

so ive been going back and forth on this for like three weeks now and i just need someone to tell me im overthinking it. i have a decent sized backyard, probably 80 feet usable in one direction, and im trying to decide between putting up a simple 40m dipole fed with ladder line or just doing a vertical with radials. my main interest is working dx and some casual ragchewing, not contesting or anything serious. the thing that keeps tripping me up is the takeoff angle stuff. i know verticals are supposed to be better for dx because of the lower angle radiation but ive also read a lot of posts where guys say a dipole at decent height works just as well or better. my supports are a 35 foot tree on one end and i could probably get a mast up to maybe 30 feet on the other end. so the dipole would be kind of a low inverted V situation which i know changes things. the vertical option would be a cheap GAP or maybe just build a quarter wave with a bunch of radials. i have plenty of wire laying around. does the radial situation really matter that much if im just doing this in a backyard? ive seen people say 16 radials is the magic number and others say go to 32 or more and i dont even know if i have room for that many without them being too short. anyway any thoughts appreciated, i feel like ive read so much contradicting info that im just going in circles at this point

okay so i just upgraded to general last month and im trying to figure out the 40 meter band. i understand technicians are limited but now that im general i can do more right? the thing is i keep seeing different numbers online and im not sure which ones are the actual legal limits vs just like... suggestions or whatever also someone at my club mentioned something about staying away from the band edges and i didnt really understand why. like if 7.300 is the top of my allocation whats wrong with just operating right there? is it a legal thing or just a courtesy thing sorry if this is a dumb question, ive only been on HF for like 3 weeks

not a dumb question at all, everyone starts somewhere. honestly the technician exam isnt that bad, the question pool is like 400 something questions and the actual test is only 35, so you just need to hit 26 right to pass. i used hamstudy.org almost exclusively and just drilled questions every night for maybe two weeks. the site tracks your weak spots which is nice. the electrical theory section tripped me up a little too but for tech you really only need a basic grasp of it, like ohms law and a few other things. for finding a test session look up your local ARRL affiliated club, most of them run VE sessions pretty regularly and yeah you do usually need to sign up ahead of time, they dont always take walk-ins. bring a valid ID and the fee which is usually like 15 bucks or so. you got this

I've been running a similar setup for two years now. Started with 16 radials, added 16 more and saw noticeable improvement on 40M and 80M. The elevated configuration gives you about 2-3 dB gain over ground radials. Remote tuner is worth it - less RFI in the shack too.

yeah i had the same dilemma on my camry. ended up going with a NMO mount through the roof anyway because i got tired of messing around with compromises, but i get it if thats not what you want to do. the trunk lip mounts work, just not quite as clean electrically. one thing nobody mentioned to me when i was figuring all this out — the coax you run matters more than people think in mobile installs. if youre using the cheap coax that came with the mag mount for a real install youre leaving performance on the table.

yeah the plastic panel thing is almost certainly your problem on 70cm. the ground plane on these modern trucks is just not what it used to be. a lot of guys go to a mag mount on the roof center just to test and if the SWR flattens out that tells you its definitely a ground plane situation not the antenna or coax. lip mounts can be finicky too, the connection between the mount and the vehicle body matters a lot more than people think. also worth checking if your coax is getting pinched anywhere in the door jamb run. even a small kink can do weird things especially at UHF frequencies where everything is more sensitive. what coax are you using? if its RG-58 id swap it out for LMR-240 or even RG-8X, makes a real difference on a run that length.

so i finally did my first activation last weekend, took the KX2 and a end fed up to a local summit here in the Appalachians, W4V/SH-001 if anyone knows it, nothing super high but enough to qualify. got my 4 contacts pretty quick actually which surprised me, had a couple chasers call in almost immediately after i spotted myself on SOTAwatch which was cool to see how that whole system works in practice. few things i wasnt sure about though. when im logging do i need to record the exact time in UTC for every contact or is approximate okay? i know for awards and stuff the logs get cross checked with the chasers but wasnt sure how strict it is. also i was running 10 watts and had no trouble but i saw some guys activating with like 1 watt QRP, is that just for the challenge or does it matter for any specific award? overall it was just a really fun day out, the combo of hiking and radio is kind of addictive honestly. already looking at a few more summits in the area for this spring.