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.

honestly for most things LoTW is the one that matters if you're chasing DXCC or WAS. the ARRL accepts LoTW credits for both of those so if thats your goal you can pretty much live in LoTW and be fine. i barely touch eQSL personally, its kind of its own ecosystem and a lot of serious DXers dont bother with it but some do. paper cards are still a thing and some people genuinely love them, i have a whole wall covered in them from my early years. theyre basically required if you want certain older or specialty awards that dont accept electronic confirmation, and some DX entities have very limited activity so if you ever work a rare one the paper card is kind of a trophy. but for day to day contacts? upload to LoTW and dont stress about the rest. you can always get into paper cards later if you catch the bug for it, and you will probably catch the bug eventually.

oh man yeah absolutely. for me it was last winter, i basically ignored the shack for like 8 months and then a buddy texted me saying conditions on 10m were insane and i was back at it that same night. been pretty consistent ever since. solar cycle timing out pretty good for us right now i think which helps

yeah the arduino ADC is honestly pretty mediocre, it gets worse when theres any RF around at all. what i did on a similar project was use the AREF pin with an external 3.3v reference instead of the internal one, made a noticeable difference. also worth looking at the ADC prescaler — the default is way too fast for accurate conversions, slowing it down to like 128 prescale and throwing away the first read after switching channels cleaned things up a lot for me. the metal box thing is worth doing regardless tbh, even if it doesnt fully solve the noise issue. i run all my arduino stuff in old altoids tins or hammond boxes and it helps. your coupler placement relative to the arduino matters too, keep those leads as short as you can. if you do end up going the external ADC route the ADS1115 is only a couple bucks and its 16 bit over I2C, way better than anything the mega's built in ADC can do. wouldnt call it overkill, its like $2 from aliexpress

i just passed mine like two months ago so pretty fresh in my memory. the hamstudy app is legit, thats basically all i used. i think i spent maybe 8 or 9 days on it, doing like 20-30 minutes before bed. the actual test felt way easier than the practice tests somehow, maybe nerves made the practice feel harder idk. one thing i wasnt ready for was finding a testing session near me, took a little digging to find a VE session that wasnt like an hour away. arrl.org has a tool to find them but also just google your area and ham radio club, a lot of clubs run sessions pretty regularly. oh and bring a valid ID and like 15 bucks cash just in case

so ive been licensed for about 8 months now (general class) and everyone in my local club keeps talking about CQ WW coming up and how its the biggest contest of the year and i should try it. i sat in on Field Day this past summer with the club and that was fun but i was mostly just watching and logging for one of the more experienced guys so i didnt really get to operate much on my own. my setup is pretty modest — an IC-7300 and a wire dipole up about 25 feet. i can get out on 40 and 20 fairly well but 10 and 15 have been hit or miss depending on conditions. is it even worth trying to participate in CQ WW SSB or should i wait until im more comfortable? and if i do jump in what do i actually need to know about exchange formats and logging. ive heard N1MM is the way to go but havent set it up yet and im a little intimidated by it honestly. also someone mentioned SOTA activations as a way to get operating experience without the pressure of a big contest — anyone done both and have thoughts on which builds skills faster? i feel like im drinking from a firehose a little bit right now

honestly the extra pool is bigger and some of the questions are genuinely harder to brute force because if you dont understand the concept at all the wrong answers can look really plausible. like the questions about filter cutoff frequencies or the ones about transmission line stuff — you can memorize them but if you see a slightly different version of the wording you might second guess yourself. that said plenty of people with no engineering background pass it just fine on hamstudy. i think i spent maybe six weeks going through the pool every night for like 30-40 minutes and passed first try. the oscillator and amplifier stability questions tripped me up a few times in practice but it clicks eventually. the extra segments are worth it imo especially on 40 and 75 meters where things get really crowded. also cw privileges open up if thats your thing

i had the exact same issue when i first set mine up, took me a while to realize smart beaconing doesnt just magically know youre sitting still right away, theres a speed threshold it has to drop below first and mine was set too high so it kept thinking i was crawling along. once i actually read the manual properly (lol) i got it sorted. now mine does like 2 minutes when im driving around and drops to every 20 minutes when parked. aprs.fi is super useful for checking yourself like you did, i still pull it up occasionally just to make sure things look sane.

so i passed my technician exam last thursday and my callsign showed up in the ULS database like two days later which i wasnt expecting to be honest. spent most of the weekend just listening on the local repeater trying to get a feel for how people talk before i jumped in. finally keyed up saturday afternoon and managed to work a couple guys from my county, nothing fancy just signal reports and names and stuff but it felt pretty cool. one of them gave me a really long winded explanation of his antenna setup which i mostly didnt understand yet but i nodded along lol. anyway just wanted to say hi to the forum, been lurking here for about a month reading threads while i was studying

During your actual exam, don't skip math questions - take a guess! You have a 25% chance of getting it right when you guess. For frequency/wavelength, remember 300 divided by frequency in MHz gives wavelength in meters. Practice that one until it's automatic.

so ive been messing with APRS for about three weeks now and i cannot for the life of me get my beacon to show up on aprs.fi consistently. sometimes it appears, sometimes it just doesnt. im running a TM-D710G through a Mobilinkd TNC3 connected to my phone with APRSdroid, path is set to WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 which i thought was pretty standard. the thing is i can hear other stations just fine on 144.390, i see packets decoding in the app, so the receive side seems okay. its just my own transmissions that are flaky. i drove around for like 45 minutes yesterday and the track on aprs.fi was just... partial. maybe 30% of my positions actually showed up. digipeaters in the area seem active because i can see them relaying other traffic. my RF power is set to high on the radio so that shouldnt be an issue. anybody run into this before or have ideas what to check? starting to wonder if its something with how APRSdroid is configured or maybe the TNC connection is dropping packets before they even get transmitted