Anna Petrov

so i finally pulled the trigger on a yaesu ft-7900r for my truck and im trying to figure out the best way to do the install. ive been a tech for about 8 months now and mostly just used handhelds so this is my first real mobile setup. the main thing im not sure about is the antenna situation. i have a tacoma with a bed and i was thinking of putting a lip mount on the cab but i keep reading conflicting stuff about ground planes on trucks with beds vs just going with a mag mount to start. my buddy who got me into the hobby says just do the mag mount first and see if i like it, but another guy at the club said the lip mount is way cleaner and worth doing right the first time. also for running the power cable, is it really necessary to run it all the way to the battery or can i just tap into something under the dash? i know i know, everyone says run it to the battery but the firewall passthrough on this truck is kind of a pain and i was hoping to avoid it if possible. anyway just looking for some thoughts from folks who have done this before, the radio is sitting in the box in my garage and i have a free weekend coming up so hoping to just get it done

so ive been licensed for about 3 months now and i keep seeing people use these codes on the air and in posts here like QSL and QRZ and QTH and honestly theres like a hundred of them and i dont know which ones actually matter vs which ones nobody uses anymore. my elmer just said "youll pick it up" but thats not super helpful when im sitting there in a pileup not knowing what anyones saying also i see people use abbreviations that arent even Q codes, like 73 and 55 and stuff like that, are those in the same category or totally different thing. and sometimes i see people write like GM or GE and im guessing thats good morning and good evening but is that standard or just something some people do basically just trying to get a sense of what i actually need to know vs what i can ignore for now. mostly doing HF SSB if that matters

So ive been doing POTA for about a year now and someone in our club mentioned WWFF and honestly i had no idea it was even a thing. Did some reading last night and it seems like its basically the same idea but international and with a different set of references. Were lucky enough to have a few KFF references nearby that are also in the WWFF database which is cool i guess. My question is — is there anything specific i need to do differently for a WWFF activation versus what im used to with POTA? Like do i need to register somewhere separately or is the logging handled the same way. I use HAMRS on my tablet and just upload to the POTA site after. Not sure if WWFF has its own portal or what the deal is. Also do hunters actually spot for WWFF or is it kind of a ghost town compared to POTA. Planning to head out to a state natural area next weekend with the KX3 and a linked dipole, weather permitting. Any advice appreciated.

the thing that gets me every time is cables and adapters. i thought i had everything covered and then showed up to a served agency drill and realized i had the wrong PL-259 for the antenna connector on the backup rig we were using. now i keep a little ziplock bag with like four or five different adapters, a couple short jumpers, and some coax seal just in case. sounds dumb but it saved me twice already. also and this is the one people really overlook -- food and water for yourself. not for the equipment, for YOU. i did a 12 hour activation at a red cross shelter a few years back and basically ran on vending machine coffee the whole time because i hadnt packed anything. now theres always a few granola bars and a water bottle in the kit. your radio works great, you dont, whats the point. the harbor freight cases are fine honestly. i use one for my go-kit and it holds up. just get the foam and cut it to fit, takes an afternoon but worth it.

ok so ive been messing with FO-29 for a few weeks now and i just cannot get a clean uplink going. im using a 2m yagi for the uplink and a 70cm yagi for downlink, both on az/el rotor. tracking with gpredict and it seems pretty spot on but honestly im not 100% sure my doppler correction is set up right because im doing it manually and shifting the uplink and downlink independently which is probably wrong. the thing that really gets me is i can hear myself on the downlink occasionally, like very faintly, but then it just drops out. i figured maybe my uplink power is too low but i've been told you dont want to drive a linear transponder too hard anyway. running about 25w into the yagi which should be more than enough for a decent pass. the satellite is getting old and i know the transponder isnt always on so maybe i just keep catching it in a weird state. anyone dealt with this consistently and figured out a workflow that actually works

so ive been licensed about 8 months now (general class) and just starting to get into DX chasing which is way more addictive than i expected. someone at my local club mentioned cluster spotting and i went down a rabbit hole. right now i have QRZ open in one tab and DXwatch in another and im kind of manually crossreferencing spots to figure out who's actually on and worth trying to work. is that just... how people do it? it feels clunky. like DXwatch will show a spot for some station on 17m and then i'll go look them up on QRZ to see their DXCC entity and check my log to see if i need them. there has to be a better workflow. some guys at the club mentioned something called DX4WIN and also something about logging software that integrates cluster feeds directly but i haven't really figured out what that means in practice. also side note - are all the spots on these clusters accurate? i've chased a few that turned out to be busted calls or the frequency was way off by the time i got there. just wondering if thats normal or if im missing something about how to filter the good spots from the garbage.

so ive been wanting to get into ham radio for a while now and finally decided to just go for it and take the technician exam. i downloaded the question pool from the arrl website and honestly its kind of overwhelming. like there are what, 400+ questions in the pool and i dont really know where to start or if i should just memorize the answers or actually try to understand the material. someone at my local club meeting mentioned hamstudy.org but i wasnt sure if thats enough on its own or if i should also get a book. i looked at the arrl tech manual but it seems really long for what i need. any tips from people who have been through this recently? also is the math stuff as hard as it looks because some of those formulas are making me nervous

the thing that finally made it click for me was stopping trying to count dits and dahs. like seriously if you're sitting there going dot dot dash in your head you're already doing it wrong for anything above about 5 wpm. the Koch method is what most people recommend and honestly it works, you start with just two characters at full speed like 20wpm and you dont add a new one until you can copy the current set at like 90% accuracy. sounds slow at first but it builds the right habit of hearing the whole character as a sound instead of individual elements. LCWO dot net is free and it does Koch, thats where i spent most of my early practice time. just do like 15 minutes a day consistently, dont try to marathon it, your brain needs time to process between sessions. took me about 4 months to get to where i could have a basic qso and i was not particularly talented at it

nice work getting out there, i did my first activation about 8 months ago and was also totally stressed about the logging thing lol. one thing i started doing is bringing a small clipboard with a pre-printed log sheet so i can just write fast and not fumble with a notebook. also for spotting yourself — some people use the SOTA Spotter app if you have cell signal, makes it faster than the website. welcome to the addiction, youre going to want to do another one immediately

nets are great man, i've been doing the morning 75m net for probably 8 years now and it's just part of the morning routine at this point. coffee and ragchew, basically. the guys on there are a mix of retired fellas and a few younger operators and the net control rotates so everyone gets a chance which keeps it from getting stale. for special event stations yeah the pileups can be rough right when they first come on but if you wait a couple hours or catch them toward the end of their operating window sometimes its way easier to work them. i've found late sunday afternoons on SSB are often pretty clear compared to saturday morning when everyone's fresh and excited. also check their operating schedule carefully because a lot of the special event guys post specific frequencies and times and if you know exactly when they're coming on 20m vs 40m you can just be there waiting instead of hunting around. the ARRL special event page is decent but honestly the DX bulletins sometimes have better info on timing

i switched from a fan dipole to a vertical a couple years ago mostly because the neighbors complained about the wire running across the yard lol. the vertical is definitely quieter receive wise which some people hate and some people like, depends on your noise floor situation. on transmit i honestly cant tell that much difference on 20m, maybe a tiny bit weaker reports on the vertical but nothing consistent. 40 the dipole was better for sure, especially for regional stuff. if youre doing mostly DX on 20/15 the vertical low angle radiation might actually help you more than that dipole at 30 feet depending on the path.

on 2m fm most folks around here dont bother with phonetics unless the repeater is noisy or something, but i will say when i started doing any kind of digital logging or passing traffic for nets they expect you to use proper NATO phonetics and get a little annoyed if you make up your own. i said "New York" once for N on a traffic net and the net control just kinda paused and repeated it back using November and i got the hint lol

so ive been a licensed tech for about a year and just upgraded to general last month and i've been reading about SOTA for a while now and finally decided to just go do it. picked out a local summit that's only worth 2 points, figured i'd start easy. i registered on the sotadata site and got my callsign set up but i'm still a little fuzzy on a few things. first off, do i need to alert ahead of time or can i just show up and start operating? i've seen the alerts page on sotawatch but wasnt sure if that was like required or just a courtesy thing. also i'm planning to bring my ft-818 with a random wire antenna, probably just throw it over a branch or something. is 5 watts going to be enough to get my 4 contacts? i know i only need 4 to qualify the summit. and one more thing -- the activation zone, is that strictly the top or is there some flexibility there? the summit i picked has a pretty flat area near the top but i'm not sure exactly where the highest point is. thanks in advance, hope this makes sense

oh man i remember that feeling exactly, my first net check-in i completely forgot to say my callsign phonetically and net control had to ask me twice. you're definitely not alone there. the name and location thing is pretty common on a lot of local nets but its usually optional unless the net control specifically asks for it. some nets have a real specific format they follow and if you can find the net's info page or ask someone in the club they might have a little script written out. a lot of nets do it the same way every week so after two or three times it starts to feel natural. giving your call twice is actually a good habit since HTs especially can get stepped on pretty easy. sounds like you did fine honestly, nobody bails on a net because a new check-in was a little rough.

man i keep meaning to try SOTA but every time i look at the map the summits near me are either already heavily activated or require like a real hike and im not really in shape for that lol. maybe ill just start with POTA at a flat park and work up to it. what radio did you say you were using again

also worth knowing that 40m is kind of a mess in terms of phone space compared to some other bands just because the general portion isn't huge and it gets crowded especially in the evenings. ive had pretty good luck just tuning around and listening first, you'll get a feel for where people are hanging out after a few sessions. the DX tends to cluster down lower around 7.150-ish and domestic ragchewing moves around but usually higher up. honestly just listen for a while before transmitting and you'll figure it out faster than any chart will tell you

yeah what he said about the supply but also your 0.047uf cap to ground on the output might be rolling off too much of the high end. for audio you usually want that cap to be like 0.001uf or even smaller, 0.047 is pretty big and will definitely take the crispness out. the crossover frequency with a typical 8 ohm speaker load would be way down in the mud. also the NE602 wants to see a fairly high impedance on its output pins, if you're driving the LM386 input directly that might be loading it down. a simple emitter follower buffer between the two can help a lot. i built a 40m DC receiver a few years back and spent way too long chasing audio issues before i figured out it was just impedance mismatch between those two chips

so i finally did my first SOTA activation saturday, been putting it off for like a year because i kept thinking i needed more gear or a better antenna or whatever. ended up just throwing the kx2 in my pack with a 20m end fed and hiking up to a local summit that was only like 1200 feet. nothing crazy. made 9 contacts in maybe 40 minutes which i guess is enough to count. the pile up wasnt massive but there were definitely people waiting which was kinda surreal. only issue was my log sheet kept blowing around in the wind and i forgot a clip or anything to hold it down so i was basically wrestling with it the whole time. next time im bringing a clipboard. also my signal reports were all over the place, some guys said i was loud and a few said i was barely readable, probably just the band conditions doing their thing. overall though i cant believe i waited this long to try this, its way more fun than sitting in the shack

honestly for just casual logging i switched to Log4OM about a year ago and havent looked back for that side of things. the LoTW and eQSL integration is way easier to deal with than fiddling around with TQSL separately every time. contests i still fire up N1MM because nothing really touches it for that, the bandmap alone is worth it. dont overthink the two-program thing, lots of guys do it that way. just export your contest log as ADIF when youre done and import it. takes two minutes.

I'm about 3 weeks into studying for my Technician exam using various online practice tests and I keep getting tripped up on the math questions. I need to get 26 out of 35 questions right to pass (74%), but the Ohm's law and power calculations are killing my practice test scores. Does anyone have good mnemonics or study tricks for remembering the formulas? I understand the concepts but when I see a question asking for current when given voltage and resistance, I second-guess myself on whether to use I=E/R or one of the other variations. Ohm's Law relationships (V, I, R)Power calculations (P=IE, P=I²R, P=E²/R)Frequency/wavelength conversions

yeah what he said about the transponder being off sometimes, i wasted like two weeks before i figured that out lol. check the amsat-uk page they usually have status updates. one other thing, when you do hear yourself come back through the transponder your signal will be inverted — so if youre transmitting USB on the uplink you'll hear yourself as LSB on the downlink. some people get confused by that. the 9700 in satellite mode should handle it automatically if you set the mode right but just something to double check

Just got my General ticket and excited to try 20 meters! I've heard it's great for DX, but I'm confused about exactly where I can operate. I see the band is 14.000-14.350 MHz, but where should I actually tune for voice? And are there any frequencies I should avoid as a new operator?

Every component in the signal path becomes critical when transmitter power cannot compensate for system inefficiencies - congrats on diving into QRP! Yes, get an SWR meter. Even efficient tuners introduce losses that significantly impact effective radiated power at QRP levels.

oh man dont feel bad about that at all, doubling happens to everyone including people who have been doing this for decades. seriously i doubled with an extra class guy at a county net last year and we both just laughed about it when it got sorted out. the way most nets work, net control will usually say something pretty explicit like "QRZ for check-ins" or "any further check-ins" and that pause after is your window. but yeah sometimes its hard to judge over the air especially on a busy repeater. what i usually do is wait just a half beat longer than feels natural, like a full second after the squelch tail drops before i key up. sounds weird but it helps avoid the pile-up moments. if you do double with someone, just wait. net control usually catches it and will ask both stations to check in again one at a time. you dont need to do anything special, just listen and when they call for repeats, give your call nice and slow. you definitely did the right thing not making more noise when you werent sure what was happening, thats actually good instinct.

congrats on the first build, that's always a good feeling when it actually works. on your efficiency question — yeah receive current is often the bigger deal than people expect, especially if you're sitting there for 20-30 minutes scanning around between contacts. a lot of these small QRP rigs pull somewhere in the 25-60ma range on rx depending on the design, and that adds up over an hour of casual operating. your tx current at 4w is obviously higher but you're only keyed up for a few seconds at a time. if you want to stretch your battery life the best bang for buck is usually cutting rx audio when you're not actively listening, some rigs have a standby or mute function, and just generally being deliberate about when you're keyed up vs listening. dropping from 4w to 2w will help a little but honestly going from 4w to 2w is only 3db which the other station probably won't even notice on a decent band day, so its more of a marginal gain on battery vs a pretty noticeable signal difference potentially. id keep it at 4w and just be mindful of the rx time