Michael Thompson

honestly the hamstudyorg website is what most people use now, you just go through the question pool and it tracks what you get wrong and keeps drilling you on those. a lot of people pass the exam without reading a single page of the ARRL book and theres nothing wrong with that, you learn way more actually being on the air anyway the math on the tech exam is pretty basic, like you really just need to remember E=IR and a couple power formulas and the questions are written in a way where you can almost figure it out from the answers if you see the pattern enough times. dont stress it. most people who put in a couple weeks on hamstudy pass first try, the pool isnt that big

yeah i did something similar with an older rotor, different brand but same basic idea. the pot feedback is fine for this, just make sure you're averaging a bunch of analog reads before you do anything with the value, the noise on those things can be annoying especially if the motor is running at the same time. i ended up using a running average of like 10 samples and that cleaned it up a lot. for the actual mapping i just did a two-point calibration at startup — point it north, hit a button, then point it to a known bearing, hit the button again, and from there it interpolates. works pretty well, ive been running it for about 8 months now and drift is minimal. i think the pot itself just has to be decent quality, the one in those yaesu units is usually fine. hamlib has rotctld which can talk over serial so thats actually not that hard to implement, theres some example sketches floating around on github if you search for rotator controller arduino, dont remember the exact repo names but they exist.

yeah the first qso hits different, good stuff. i had mine on a similar radio actually. whats your call?

okay so ive been trying to get Winlink working for probably two weeks now and i feel like i understand maybe 60% of it. got Winlink Express installed and i can connect to the CMS through the internet obviously but the whole point for me is to be able to do it over RF when the internet goes down, which is the emcomm scenario im prepping for. my understanding is that i need to hit an RMS gateway — which is basically somebody else's node that bridges to the Winlink CMS servers — and my question is do i need to do anything special to register with a specific gateway or does Winlink Express just find the nearest one automatically? i set up a Vara FM session and it connected to a local gateway once but then the next time i tried it connected to a completely different one further away and i got confused about whether my messages were sitting somewhere or if they just live on the CMS regardless of which gateway you use. also i saw something about setting up your OWN RMS gateway and im kind of interested in that for my county's ARES group but i have no idea what hardware that requires or if i need a separate license or anything. would be running on HF probably, maybe 40m. is that a whole separate rabbit hole

i literally just did this like two months ago so i can tell you what worked for me. i tried the hamstudy site and also the arrl book from the library, the book was kind of dry honestly but it helped me understand the why behind some of the questions which made them easier to remember. the practice tests are the main thing though. i think i did maybe 10 full practice tests over like 3 weeks and went from failing to passing pretty consistently. day of the exam i was kind of nervous but the questions felt really familiar and i passed with only a couple wrong. one thing i didnt know going in is that some VE sessions let you take the general exam the same day if you pass tech, which i wish i had studied for because i probably could have done both

not a dumb question at all, the vanity system is genuinely confusing at first. so the short version — when you apply for a vanity call, the FCC opens a 18-day application window for that specific callsign, and if multiple people apply for the same call during that window it isnt first come first served. they go by a priority system based on your license class, whether you had a previous relationship to the call (like you held it before or a close relative did), stuff like that. so a General applying for a call with no prior connection to it is lower priority than an Extra with a prior claim to that same call. as for sequential vs vanity pool — sequential calls are just what the FCC hands out automatically when you first get licensed, they go in order through available callsigns in your district. vanity calls come from a separate pool of calls that have been returned, or were held by silent keys, or expired and went unclaimed long enough. the format availability (1x2, 2x1, 1x3 etc) does depend on your license class — Extras get access to the shorter formats like 1x2 and 2x1, Generals are limited to 1x3 and 2x3 basically. so if you want a short call you might want to think about upgrading first, otherwise your options are a bit more limited. theres a site called AE7Q.com that lets you search available vanity calls and see whats in the pool, really useful for browsing before you commit to applying for anything.

this is really helpful to read, im still working on getting my general and have been thinking about joining ARES once im a bit more comfortable on air. question — do they actually expect you to know a lot before joining or is it more of a learn as you go thing? i looked at the requirements and the online courses seem manageable but i wasnt sure how much actual radio experience you need before showing up to something like an activation

not a dumb question at all, everyone starts somewhere. so the short version is there are three license classes — technician, general, and extra — and you take them as separate tests, though you can actually take multiple on the same day if you feel ready. most people just start with technician which gets you on VHF and UHF and some limited HF privileges. for studying the hamstudystudy.com site is what most people recommend these days, and hamstudy.org has a free practice exam thing where you can drill questions until they feel familiar. the question pools are public so theres no surprises on the actual test. as for math, the technician exam has very little and what there is is pretty straightforward, dont let that worry you too much. to find an actual test session just go to the arrl website and search for a VE session near you, thats the volunteer examiners who administer the tests. fee is usually like 15 bucks.

simplex only drills are so valuable and a lot of groups skip em because it's more work to set up. good that yours took it seriously. what radio were you running if you dont mind me asking, just curious what people are showing up with these days for go-bag stuff

yeah the low end height is almost certainly your problem. when the ends are that close to the ground, the ground loading effectively makes the antenna look electrically longer than it actually is. 8 feet is pretty much in the dirt as far as RF is concerned. ive seen dipoles shift 200-300 kHz just from raising the ends from 8 feet to 15. if you can get them even up to 12-15 feet you'd probably see the resonance climb up toward where you want it without touching the wire length at all. also worth checking if there's anything running parallel to the antenna close to it, like a fence or a gutter. those can do weird things. the fact that trimming barely moved it is a bit odd but low end height is still my first guess.

yeah this trips up a lot of new generals, dont feel bad. the FCC allocations are the legal limits, so for you on 40m phone it really is 7.175 to 7.300 MHz. but the ARRL band plan is more like a community agreement on top of that, trying to keep things organized so dx stations and domestic ragchewers arent constantly walking on each other. the band edge thing is legit advice though. when you're on LSB, your carrier is at say 7.175 but the actual audio sidebands extend downward from there, so if your voice peaks are going out to maybe 3khz of bandwidth you're technically putting signal below your lower limit. most rigs have some drift too depending on temperature and how old the radio is. so the old timers saying stay a few khz inside the edge arent wrong, its just practical. 7.178 or so gives you some breathing room without worrying about it. as for the dx window thing around the top of the general segment, thats just courtesy really. you wont get arrested for using 7.290 but you might get a earful from someone

i built almost the same thing last year, NE602 into a 386, and had the hum problem too. for me it turned out to be my audio leads acting like an antenna and picking up 60hz from my monitor sitting nearby. moved the thing to the other side of the desk and it dropped way down. probably not your issue but worth ruling out. post the schematic if you can, easier to spot something specific that way

yeah the self amalgamating tape is what everyone recommends and it works good. one thing i'd check too is whether your choke balun is actually doing its job — sometimes common mode current on the feedline can make SWR readings look weird and inconsistent especially when conditions change. did you do any measurement on the balun when you wound it or just go by the turn count? im not saying thats the issue just something to rule out.

the dynamic range difference is real, not just spec sheet stuff. when i switched from rtl-sdr direct sampling to an RSP1 a few years back the first thing i noticed was that AM broadcast problem basically went away. the RTL chip just doesnt have enough dynamic range to handle a strong signal a few hundred kHz away without it messing up everything around it, the RSP handles that way better because of the better ADC and the frontend filtering they put in there. that said honestly if your antenna situation isnt great the improvement is going to be less dramatic than you expect. i upgraded my antenna around the same time so its hard to fully separate the two but i suspect the antenna made as much difference as the SDR on the noisier bands. if you can swing both do both, if its one or the other i'd probably do antenna first unless you're in a real RF-dense environment where the overload is your main problem, in which case yeah the RSP1B will help a lot. SDR++ on a medium laptop should be totally fine, its pretty light.

so i finally worked up the nerve to check into the local 2m net last tuesday and honestly it was kind of embarrassing. i knew to wait for the net control to ask for check-ins but then when i gave my callsign i said it way too fast and the net control asked me to repeat and then i panicked and fumbled over my own call. not my finest moment. anyway it got me thinking about net etiquette because there was also this one guy who kept transmitting while net control was still talking and everyone seemed kind of annoyed but nobody said anything directly to him. is that just how it goes or do people usually address stuff like that? i dont want to be that guy but im also not sure what all the unwritten rules are. like is it rude to just give your call and say you have no traffic or should you at least say hi or something

im still working on getting my ICS stuff done before i can deploy with our group so reading this is both exciting and a little terrifying lol. good to know the net controls are patient with people, our EC has said that a few times but its different hearing it from someone who actually just went through it also curious what radio setup you were running? i keep going back and forth on whether my HT is going to be enough or if i need to get a mobile rig in the car before i try to get on any activations

so i just passed my technician last month and ive been lurking here reading about HTs for like three weeks now and honestly its made things worse lol. everyone seems to have strong opinions and i keep going back and forth between a few options. right now im looking at the Baofeng UV-5R just because its cheap and everyone says its fine for a beginner, but then i read that the receive is noisy or something and maybe its not actually part 97 compliant? i dont fully understand that part. then theres the Yaesu FT-60R which seems way more solid but its like 5x the price. and ive seen people mention the BF-F8HP as kind of a middle ground but im not sure if thats just the same radio with more watts. mostly i want to hit the local repeaters, maybe do some simplex in emergencies, and eventually get into APRS if thats a thing you can do on a handheld. i dont need anything crazy. budget is probably under $150 if i can help it but i could stretch a little. any thoughts from people who have actually used these would be helpful, i feel like im just reading spec sheets at this point.

DX cluster stuff can feel overwhelming at first but you get used to filtering out the noise. one thing i'd say is dont ignore the web clusters entirely just because an app exists — sometimes the raw telnet feed from a cluster node has spots a few seconds faster than the aggregator sites catch up to. probably doesnt matter much when you're starting out though also just a heads up, a lot of spots on those clusters are from people running skimmers which are automated stations decoding FT8 and other digital modes, so not every spot means a human is sitting there actively working the pile. not a big deal just something to know so you're not suprised when you call and the freq is empty

paddle tension and gap matter more than most people admit when theyre starting out. factory settings on a lot of paddles are actually set pretty wide for beginners to avoid false triggers but once youre working on muscle memory you really want to close the gap down until its juuust barely not making contact. tight gap means less finger travel which means less chance of over-squeezing. the extra characters thing is almost certainly you holding the paddle a hair too long - iambic keyers are very literal, they do exactly what your fingers tell them. mode B specifically will complete the last element of a character even after you release which catches a lot of people off guard. try switching to mode A and see if that feels more predictable to you. a lot of ops actually stick with mode A their whole life and there's nothing wrong with that. 15 wpm is actually fine for learning iambic, dont let anyone tell you you need to be going faster first. slow down to 10 or even 8 and really feel each squeeze. the click should happen, then you release. clean inputs make clean code.

For emergency communications, we've standardized on Gpredict because it's open source and runs on Linux systems. The GNU Radio integration for AO-73 telemetry is also a plus. HRD may be more accurate, but Gpredict's reliability and cross-platform support wins for emcomm applications.

welcome to the hobby, dont worry about stepping on people on the repeater everyone does it when they start out. the courtesy tone thing trips up literally everyone. just keep getting on the air and it becomes second nature pretty fast. whats your HT situation, are you running a baofeng or did you go with something else to start

honestly 16 radials on the ground is going to work, its not ideal but its not terrible either. i ran a 40m vertical with about 20 radials just laid on the surface for two years before i moved and it did fine for DX. the key thing people dont say enough is that a dipole at only 25 feet on 40m isnt actually low angle anyway, youre basically doing nvis at that height which is great for regional contacts but not for chasing europe or japan. so the vertical with mediocre radials might actually beat a low dipole for real DX even with the noise disadvantage. the noise thing is real though. if youre in a suburban area the vertical is going to pick up all kinds of garbage. whether thats a dealbreaker depends on your local noise floor. whats your S-meter showing on a quiet band with nothing transmitting

For serious practice, Morse Runner simulates contest environments with QRM, QRN, QSB, and auroral flutter - essential for real-world preparation. On mobile, Ham Morse app is great - I set it to play QSOs while showering, then check how much I copied afterward. The CW Academy trainer by Stephen Phillips is also excellent.

The FT-991 series gets really dirty fast if you hit ALC hard - try backing off mic gain until you see zero ALC deflection, then add just a tiny amount of processing. That radio is notorious for IMD issues even following the manual.

so i finally did my first solo activation last weekend at a state park about 45 minutes from my house, K-4882 if anyone knows it. i was honestly really nervous going in because ive done a couple as a second op with a buddy from my club but never ran my whole station by myself out in the field. ended up with 32 QSOs in about an hour and a half which i know is enough to count but it felt like pulling teeth at times. i was running 10 watts SSB on 40m with my KX2 and a linked dipole i threw up between two trees maybe 20 feet up. conditions werent amazing but workable. my questions are kind of all over the place — first, is there a good way to spot yourself if youre operating alone and dont have cell service? i was lucky my phone had a weak signal but it kept dropping. also i noticed a few times i had a pileup of like 3 or 4 callers and i completely lost track of partials, is that just something that gets easier with time or is there a trick to it. and one more thing, a few hunters called me with their full callsign and then just waited silently, like they didnt say their signal report or anything, is that normal for POTA exchanges or did i do something wrong by just giving them a 59 and moving on