Dave Williams

this is really encouraging to read, im still pretty much stuck around 7wpm and getting frustrated. i didnt know about the farnsworth thing ill have to look that up. does it matter which software you use or is it mostly just about putting the time in every day

ok so ive been chasing DXCC for about a year now and im sitting at like 87 confirmed on lotw which honestly feels both exciting and frustrating at the same time. my question is about the credits themselves — like if i work a station in some entity and they confirm on lotw but i also have a paper QSL from a different contact with that same entity, does that count as two credits or just one? i know thats probably a dumb question but the arrl website is kind of confusing to read through and i dont want to submit my first application and screw something up.
also while im at it, is WAS worth chasing alongside DXCC or is it kind of a distraction? ive got maybe 35 states confirmed on lotw and some guys at the club say to just focus on one thing at a time but others say working states fills in dead time when theres no good dx around. im on HF with a 100w station and a wire dipole up about 30 feet so nothing fancy, just trying to figure out the best strategy going in.

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

honestly the technician exam is way more manageable than it looks at first. the question pool is public, thats the big thing most people dont realize right away — the actual questions they can ask you are all posted online ahead of time so theres no surprises. HamStudy.org is where I'd point you first, just make flashcards and keep drilling until you're consistently passing the practice tests. I used that plus the ARRL Technician manual and had my ticket in about three weeks of casual studying, maybe 20-30 minutes a day. for the actual test you find a VE session near you, those are volunteer examiners, most local clubs run them pretty regularly and some do walk-ins. the fee is usually around 15 bucks or so. dont stress too much about the electronics theory side, theres enough of it to understand but its not like you're designing circuits or anything

this sounds like a really well run exercise honestly, the fact that things went wrong is kind of the whole point right. we did something similar about two years ago and our biggest failure was nobody had tested the go kit batteries in like six months. showed up to the EOC with three operators and not a single radio that would hold a charge for more than an hour. embarrassing doesnt even cover it.
the certification thing is real too. our served agency liaison got pretty serious about ICS credentials after one of our guys showed up to an actual activation and couldnt get badged in because his paperwork wasnt current. now we track it on a shared spreadsheet and somebody sends reminders every january. not glamorous but it works.
for scenarios i'd say the most valuable ones we've done involved communications going partially down rather than completely down. total failure is easy in a way because everyone knows nothing works. partial failure where you have to figure out whats working and route around whats not, thats where the real skills show up.

14 gauge stranded is fine, honestly anything from 12 to 18 works for a wire dipole, the gauge matters way more for current handling on high power rigs than for any electrical length stuff. for the center insulator i've been using 3/4 inch PVC pipe for years - just drill a hole through it on each axis, run the wire through, put a knot in it so it can't pull back, solder your SO-239 right to it. ugliest thing you've ever seen but mine has been up for six years through some pretty nasty winters. the tape is definitely not gonna hold, especially when the element starts swinging around in the wind and flexing at the feedpoint. that's where most homebrew dipoles fail, the mechanical stress at the solder joint.
1.4:1 off the bat on 40m is actually pretty decent, you're probably close on length. might creep up a bit once you get the thing in the air at real height versus just testing on the ground or whatever you did.

ok so i just got my technician license last month and ive been trying to use the local 2m repeater but nobody ever seems to hear me. i looked up the repeater on repeaterbook and it shows a 100.0 Hz tone but im not totally sure if thats what i need to program into my radio as the transmit tone or the receive tone or both? my HT is a baofeng uv-5r and i think i got it set up right but honestly the menu system on that thing is a nightmare.
also i heard someone on the repeater talking about a linked system and i didnt really know what that meant — like is the repeater connected to other repeaters somehow? and is there any etiquette stuff i should know before i just start calling CQ or whatever on a repeater? dont want to step on anyone or do something embarrassing on my first real qso