Sarah Mitchell94

the timing thing is real and it took me honestly like 3 or 4 full contest weekends before it stopped feeling like i was just thrashing between two radios randomly. what helped me the most was basically training myself to only flip attention to radio 2 right after i send the TU and log the contact — theres a natural dead moment there before the next caller IDs themselves fully. thats your window. its maybe 1.5 to 2 seconds but if radio 2 already has a call partially decoded youre not starting from zero.
the microham station master should handle the interlocking fine but make sure your tx inhibit lines are actually configured right because ive seen setups where people think theyre protected and theyre not, you can still get the radios stomping on each other if the timing offsets are wrong in the software.
on the phone SO2R question — yeah people do it, i do it in ssb sweepstakes, but its significantly harder. on CW your brain can kind of half-monitor radio 2 audio while youre sending on radio 1 because sending is automatic. on phone youre actually talking so you cant listen to anything else at the same time. some guys use headphone mixing tricks, left ear radio 1 right ear radio 2, but i find it exhausting for more than a couple hours. most serious phone SO2R ops i know are just doing search and pounce on radio 2 only during deliberate breaks in their run, not true simultaneous operation.

yeah the Farnsworth thing is exactly right, you've got the concept. the idea is your brain learns the sound of each character as a whole chunk instead of counting dits and dahs, which is what trips most people up when they try to go faster. if you learn R as dit-dah-dit you'll always be counting and you hit a wall around 8-10wpm. if you learn it as a sound, like the rhythm of it, then speed becomes more possible.
what really helped me was doing head copy on actual QSOs, not just practice software. i used to just tune around 40m in the evenings and try to copy callsigns even if i missed everything else. after a few weeks i got faster just from hearing real code at real speeds. also the Koch method if you havent tried it, start with 2 characters at like 15 or 20wpm until you can copy them perfectly, then add one character at a time. its slow going at first but it pays off. took me almost a year to get comfortable at 20 but i was only practicing maybe 15 mins a day so your mileage may vary

yeah 10m has been really something this fall, i worked about 14 countries last weekend during a contest just casually operating, nothing serious. the flux was up around 190 which is not insane but apparently enough to get some nice F2 propagation going in the afternoon hours. your best bet is just to have pskreporter or DX maps open on your phone during the day so you can see when things are perking up without having to be glued to the radio.
on the icom thing, from what i read it's more of a flagship replacement than just a refresh, supposed to have a dual receiver setup and some upgraded roofing filters. pricing is gonna be steep i'm sure. honestly i'm still happy with my 7300 for now, hard to justify the upgrade unless you're doing serious contesting or DX chasing. but new gear announcements are always fun to read about even if i'm not buying anything lol

so ive been doing SO2R for a few years now but i feel like my rates are still way below where they should be. running two IC-7300s and a bandmaster controller with a pair of hex beams stacked at different heights. the setup works fine electrically, no bleedthrough issues or anything like that anymore after i finally got the filtering sorted.
what im struggling with is the actual operating strategy — like when to commit to running a frequency vs when to S&P on radio 2. i feel like i spend too much time babysitting radio 2 and losing momentum on the run frequency. in the last CQWW SSB i had a solid run going on 20m at like 150/hr and i kept dropping down to 40m on radio 2 to grab mults and every time i came back to 20 i had to rebuild the pile. it took like 3-4 QSOs before things got moving again each time.
is there a sweet spot for how long to let the run frequency coast while you work radio 2? or is this just something you kind of develop feel for over time. ive read the K1TTT and N6TR writeups but they seem to assume a level of automation i dont have yet with my setup

the ARRL website has a band plan chart thats way easier to read than the actual part 97 text, worth bookmarking. for 40 meters as a general you basically have phone privileges from 7.175 to 7.300, below that down to 7.025 is CW and data, and the very bottom chunk 7.000 to 7.025 is extra class only for phone but generals can still do CW there i believe. your club guy was probably talking about the sub-bands where certain emission types are restricted, like you cant just fire up SSB anywhere on the band.
honestly the footnotes in part 97 are brutal, ive been licensed since 2009 and i still have to look stuff up sometimes. dont stress too much just get the ARRL chart printed out and keep it near the radio for a while until it sinks in

I used the Gordon West book when I studied back in the day and it was fine but honestly the question pool has changed since then so I'd verify whatever book you get is for the current pool which I think runs through 2026 or somewhere around there. One thing I'll say is don't skip the band plan and operating procedure questions even if they seem boring, there are quite a few of them and people sometimes focus too much on the electronics bits and then get tripped up on the more procedural stuff. The rules and regs section is also worth paying attention to because a lot of it is just common sense once you read it carefully but if you just try to brute force memorize you might mix things up under pressure. Either way the test really isnt that hard, most people pass on the first try if they put in even a modest amount of study time.

so ive been going back and forth on this for about two months now and i keep changing my mind. currently running a cheap baofeng handheld in the truck just clipped to the dash which honestly works fine for local repeaters but i want something actually mounted properly. the two radios im looking at are the yaesu FT-7900R and the icom ID-5100A.
the 7900 is cheaper and i know a few guys at the club run them without any complaints, but the 5100 has the D-STAR stuff built in and there's actually a D-STAR repeater maybe 20 miles from here that gets decent use. my question is really whether D-STAR is worth the extra money for just doing local and maybe some travel. i dont do any serious digital modes or anything like that, mostly just ragchewing and checking into the tuesday night net.
also slightly worried about the install on the 5100 because the touchscreen head looks like it might be a pain to mount somewhere useful in my F-150. anybody dealt with that? the 7900 seems more straightforward.

the jitter buffer thing is almost always the culprit in my experience with RCForb. 32kbps OPUS should be totally fine for that upload speed, thats not your problem. what i'd look at is whether your router is doing any kind of traffic shaping or QoS that might be randomly throttling UDP packets — OPUS over RemoteHams uses UDP and some consumer routers get weird with it, especially if you have other stuff happening on the network at the same time.
also check if you have any kind of antivirus or firewall that might be doing deep packet inspection. had a situation a while back where my security software was basically adding random latency spikes to UDP streams and it drove me nuts for weeks before i figured it out. the drops werent consistent which made it really hard to diagnose.
as for the Allstar + RemoteHams question, technically you can do both but you probably want to be careful about audio routing so you dont end up with a feedback loop or double-keying situation. i havent personally run both simultaneously but i dont see why it wouldnt work if you get the PTT logic sorted out correctly.

so ive been noticing the last couple weeks that 17m and 20m have been really inconsistent for me. some mornings i wake up early, fire up the rig, and theres just... nothing. like complete deadband. then ill check the solar flux and its sitting around 140-150 which should be decent right? but then other days when the flux is like 120 i hear EU stations booming in at S9. i dont get it.
im not new to this hobby but propagation still feels like black magic to me sometimes. been trying to use pskreporter and DXmaps to figure out when the openings are happening but i feel like im always just missing the window by like an hour. anybody else having this kind of frustration or is there something im not looking at that would help me time things better?

Power is definitely key! I use a 100Ah LiFePO4 with solar panels for extended ops. But honestly, start simple and build experience. Join your local ARES nets, do some Field Day setups, and you'll quickly learn what works for your area's typical scenarios.

so i finally did it after putting it off for like two years lol. passed my technician exam at the club testing session yesterday and my callsign just showed up in the ULS this morning which was exciting to see. i picked up a baofeng uv-5r a few weeks ago to get familiar with the controls before i even had a license (just listened, didnt transmit) and honestly the local repeater has been really welcoming so far.
made my first real QSO this morning on the 147.xxx repeater in my area, just a quick check-in with the morning net. the net control guy was super patient when i fumbled through my callsign phonetics. anyway just wanted to introduce myself, been lurking here for months reading old threads and finally feel like i belong a little bit

Don't worry about it! Following the opening comments, the Net Controller may then describe how check-ins will be accomplished, e.g., by call sign prefix. The NC will then call for check-ins and, after a suitable period, he/she should then acknowledge those received and ask for any additions or corrections to call signs. For most nets, just your call is fine initially - they'll ask for details if needed.