Dave Williams

so i've been part of our local ARES group for about 8 months now and mostly it's just been the monthly nets and a couple tabletop exercises which were honestly kind of low-key. but theres a big county emergency management drill coming up in three weeks and our EC told me i'll actually be deployed to the EOC as a radio operator and i dont really know what to expect. like i've done the ICS-100 and 200 online courses which they required and i have my go-bag more or less put together (HT, spare batts, paper logs, the usual) but i've never actually sat in an EOC and done real traffic handling under pressure with non-ham people around watching. anyone been through something like that for the first time? did you feel completely lost or does it kind of click once you're actually doing it? also not sure if i should bring my own headset or if they usually have stuff set up there already. my EC is pretty approachable but he's been slammed with logistics and i dont want to bug him with every little question

ive got a 7300 also and did something similar a while back, rigctld works fine with it over the USB cable. one thing that tripped me up was making sure the baud rate in the radio menus matched what i had in the rigctld command, mine kept timing out and i couldnt figure out why for like two days the automation angle is cool but honestly once i had CAT control working i went down a whole other rabbit hole with fldigi and js8call integration and kind of forgot about the original project haha. its that kind of hobby i guess

RTTY guy here mostly but i tried JS8Call last winter when propagation was garbage and wanted something that could punch through. its decent. the store and forward relay thing is kind of interesting too if you dig into it, not just point to point. i never really got deep into FT8 because the automated nature of it bugs me a little, feels like the computer is doing all the work, but js8 at least you're typing real words so it scratches that itch a bit more.

curious what ldk tuner youre using with it, im in a similar spot trying to figure out a tuner situation for my shack. also does the g5rv give you much grief on 80m or is it pretty workable with the tuner helping out

yeah what he said about band edges. i actually asked almost the exact same question when i got my general lol. the ARRL band plan chart is the one you want, just google it and find the pdf version, the website version is kind of a mess to read. once you see it laid out with the colors it actually makes way more sense than trying to read it as text.

so I've been licensed for about 14 months now and I keep hearing everyone talk about CQ WW like it's the superbowl of ham radio. I did Field Day with our club last summer which was a blast but that felt more like a big camping party than actual contesting if that makes sense. CQ WW feels different, like people take it way more seriously and I'm a little intimidated honestly. I've got a Yaesu FT-991A and a dipole up about 30 feet which I know isn't going to win me any awards but I'm not trying to be competitive, I just want to participate and learn the exchange format and not embarrass myself too much on the air. Can someone walk me through what the exchange looks like and whether it's worth jumping in as a search and pounce guy or if I should just stay off and listen the whole weekend? Also heard something about SOTA activators sometimes trying to work the contest at the same time which seems chaotic

congrats on the activation! I just started hunting POTA contacts from home a few months ago and I can tell you that when I hear an activator struggling to get contacts I always try to slow down and make sure the exchange is clean. so from the hunter side we're rooting for you haha. good luck on the next one, the park reference is the main thing to double check before you go, I've seen a few activators upload logs to the wrong park and it's kind of a pain to fix apparently.

ok so i passed my general a few weeks ago and im trying to figure out where i can actually transmit on 40 meters. i know there are band edges and stuff and ive heard people say dont operate too close to the edge but i dont really understand why or where the line actually is. like is it 7.000 or 7.025 or what. and then theres the whole thing about phone vs cw portions and i keep seeing different charts online that dont quite match up. some say 7.125 for phone some say 7.175 i dont know which one is current. also does the band plan even matter legally or is it just like a gentlemens agreement kind of thing

CQ WW is actually not a bad place to dip your toes in precisely because there are so many stations calling. you're not gonna win anything your first time out obviously but just getting on and working some DX, logging a few multipliers, it starts to make sense pretty fast. the exchange is dead simple too — signal report and CQ zone, that's it. just fire up the radio on the last weekend of october for CQ WW Phone and start calling back at stations. you'll figure it out as you go. your 590 is a solid rig for this btw, that's not the limiting factor at all. the dipole at 30 feet is fine for getting started. dont stress the antenna too much on your first contest, just have fun with it and see how many contacts you can pull off. keep a log obviously, N1MM Logger+ is what most people use and its free.

Relax, your first exercise is supposed to be a little overwhelming and thats kind of the point. I remember mine, showed up not knowing where to stand and ended up just shadowing an experienced op for most of the morning. Nobody expects you to know everything right away. For gear I usually throw in a notepad and a few pens because no matter what, having paper backup is never a bad idea. ICS forms too if your group uses them — specifically the 214 for activity logs, your EC should be able to say if they want those filled out. Some groups do digital logging with things like WinLink or just a spreadsheet but paper still works fine for exercises. Dress practically, most of the activations ive been on people just wear normal clothes with maybe an ARES ID badge, though some folks do go full vest mode which is totally fine too. Just dont stress about it. Pay attention, stay off the air unless youre told to transmit, and ask questions when things are slow. Youll do fine.

four contacts is four contacts man, summit qualified. i did a POTA activation at a state park last month and had a similar vibe where everything felt slightly wrong the whole time but still ended up with like 30 QSOs so i mean it works out. the paper logging thing though, i really should practice that more, i rely on my phone way too much for portable ops and one of these days its gonna die on me at the worst moment

so ive been putting off building my own antenna for about two years now because i kept telling myself id mess it up and just buy something. finally bit the bullet last weekend and built a simple half wave dipole for 40m. used 14 gauge stranded copper wire i had lying around from an old extension cord project, cut each leg to about 33.5 feet based on the 468/f formula, fed it with some RG-8X i had leftover, and threw it up in an inverted-V config between two trees maybe 25 feet at the apex. problem is my SWR at 7.200 is sitting around 2.8:1 which is higher than i expected. at 7.100 its closer to 2.1 which is more usable but still not where i want it. i trimmed the ends once already and it got a little better but not dramatically. im using a Yaesu FT-891 and its internal tuner can handle it but i dont really want to rely on the tuner if the antenna itself is the problem. anyone have thoughts on what could be throwing it off? i double-checked the center connection and it looks clean to me.

so i managed to drop my 7300 off the desk a few weeks ago, not a huge fall maybe 18 inches onto carpet but ever since then the tx audio sounds absolutely horrible on SSB. people keep telling me i sound like im underwater or something is buzzing in the background. rx is completely fine, everything looks normal on the display, power output is still hitting 100w, SWR is fine, its literally just the transmitted audio that went to garbage. i opened it up and had a look around and nothing is obviously broken or cracked that i can see. i checked the electret mic element in the hand mic and it tests okay with a multimeter. im wondering if maybe something on the audio board came loose or a cap took a hit but i honestly dont know where to start on this one. has anyone dug into one of these for tx audio issues specifically? i dont really want to send it to icom if i can help it because the repair turnaround seems insane right now

had almost the exact same thing on an 857D a few years back. ended up being a bad relay — the one that switches between TX and RX path. it was getting stuck in the transmit position so RF was going out fine but on receive the signal path was just broken. you can sometimes hear the relay click when you key up and unkey, so listen for that. if you dont hear it or it sounds weak/sticky that's probably your culprit. Yaesu used some relays in that era that dont age well especially if the radio sat unused for a long time. the part itself is cheap, maybe a couple bucks if you can find the exact spec, but getting to it is a bit of a pain in that chassis. i think mine was on the PA board area if i remember right, been a while. worth checking that before you go chasing anything in the IF strip which would be a much bigger rabbit hole.

hamstudy.org is honestly all you need for the technician exam, dont overthink it. the question pool is public so youre literally just memorizing the questions and answers, there are like 400 something questions and the test pulls 35 from that pool. just do practice tests on hamstudy every day for a couple weeks and youll be fine. the math is minimal and the site kind of explains the concepts as you go. i did zero studying outside of that site and passed first try, scored like a 32 out of 35 i think. find a testing session through the arrl website once you feel ready, a lot of VE teams do walk-ins and the fee is usually around 15 bucks. seriously dont stress it, ive seen 12 year olds pass this thing.