Carol Davis

yeah the questions on the actual exam come word for word from the published question pool, so if you can memorize the pool you will pass, thats just the reality of it. a lot of people use hamstudy.org which is free and it drills you on the questions in a way that adapts to what youre getting wrong. i used the gordon west book back when i got my tech but honestly the website combined with the ARRL book is probably a better combo these days. dont stress too much about understanding every single concept deeply at this stage, some of the electronics theory stuff you can learn over time once youre actually on the air. just focus on getting the answers down and then the understanding follows naturally when you start using the radio. the pool does change every few years so just make sure whatever resource you're using is on the current cycle.

so i finally did my first activation up on a local summit, W4V/SH-001 if anyone knows the area. been putting it off for like a year because i kept convincing myself i needed more gear or a better antenna setup but my buddy just told me to stop overthinking it and go. ended up bringing the KX2 and a 40m EFHW strung up between two trees maybe 20 feet up, nothing fancy. took me probably 45 minutes to get 4 contacts which i know isnt great but hey it counts. the last contact was a guy in ohio who was genuinely excited i was on a summit which was kinda cool, made it feel more real i guess. only issue was the wind kept messing with my antenna and i had to retune twice but whatever it worked. already planning the next one, thinking about trying 20m next time too. anyone else do a lot of SOTA in the southeast?

i just did this like two months ago, same situation came from Tech and wanted HF. used hamstudy almost exclusively and passed first try. the propagation questions tripped me up a little at first but once it clicked it made sense. dont stress too much about the math just memorize the formulas they give you in the pool and plug in numbers

so ive been licensed for about 8 months now, got my technician last spring and just upgraded to general a couple months ago. been mostly doing local repeater stuff and a little HF but honestly i want to do something more meaningful with the hobby if that makes sense. a buddy at my club mentioned ARES and said theres a local group that meets monthly and does training exercises. i looked up some stuff online but its hard to tell what actually happens at these meetings vs what the official org websites say happens, you know? like the ARRL page makes it sound really formal and structured but my buddy says its pretty relaxed. i guess my main question is, if i show up to my first ARES meeting, what should i bring and what are they actually going to ask me to do? do they care that im pretty new? im comfortable on the radio but i definitely dont have years of net control experience or anything like that. also wondering if you need to have specific gear to participate in activations or if you kind of figure that out as you go.

so i've been studying for about two months and passed my technician exam last thursday, got my callsign showing up in the FCC database like four days later which i was told could take longer so that was a nice surprise. anyway today i finally keyed up on the local 2 meter repeater and actually talked to someone. i was so nervous i forgot to give my callsign at the end of the transmission which i felt bad about but the guy on the other end was super patient with me and we had like a 10 minute QSO about nothing in particular really, mostly just him asking me questions about how long ive been into radio and what got me into it. my hands were literally shaking the whole time. i know its just a repeater contact and not some crazy DX or anything but man it felt like a big deal. anyone else remember their first contact being weirdly emotional or is that just me

Classic Digirig audio issue - you need to set your radio's deviation to about 2.5kHz max for VARA FM. Also check that you're not using VOX mode, use PTT control instead. The red audio levels usually indicate you're overdriving the input.

so ive been licensed for about 3 years now and mostly just ragchewed and did some local nets but lately ive been getting really into working DX and now im kind of obsessed with the idea of actually going for DXCC. got maybe 60-something confirmed on lotw so far which i know isnt a ton but its a start right anyway my main question is about the credits — do all 60 of those just automatically count toward DXCC or do i have to actually apply first and then submit them. i went on the ARRL website and it kind of confused me honestly. also does WAS and WAZ use the same confirmed contacts or do you have to work them again separately for each award. like if i work Wyoming and it confirms on lotw does that count toward both DXCC (assuming its a valid entity which i know it isnt lol) and WAS at the same time also is there a good logging program that tracks all three of these automatically so i know where im at without having to manually count stuff. running windows 10 if that matters. been using the basic hamlog thing that came with my radio software but it doesnt seem to show award tracking at all

tx audio is almost certainly your issue, or at least the first thing to check. the D710 internal TNC is pretty picky about deviation. if youre overdeviating the packets sound like garbage to the digi and just get dropped. grab a copy of direwolf or even just tune to 144.390 on an SDR and look at the waveform — you want clean AFSK not clipping. also double check your MYCALL is actually set right in the TNC config and not just in the radio memory. ive seen people spend days on this and it was just the callsign had a typo in one place. and yeah WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 is fine, thats what most people run.

so i've been building this 40m direct conversion receiver from scratch, been at it for probably 3 weekends now. based loosely on the Sudden design but i changed a few things because i didnt have all the parts. anyway got it to the point where im actually hearing signals which is exciting but the audio is kind of... flangy? like everything sounds like its going through a phaser pedal or something. both sidebands are coming through at once i think which i know is a thing with DC receivers but this seems worse than what people describe online. the BFO is running a colpitts oscillator around 7.1 MHz, NE602 as the mixer, then im running the audio into an LM386 amp. the problem might be my audio filtering, i basically just slapped a cap across the feedback resistor on the 386 and called it a day. i have a bunch of op amps in my junk box and i was thinking about adding a proper audio bandpass filter stage somewhere around 300-3000hz but not sure if that'll actually fix the flangy thing or if its something else going on upstream. anyone built something similar and run into this? pictures of my ugly construction available if anyone wants to see what a mess looks like haha

Don't worry, we've all been there! Most nets will read their format over the air at the beginning, outlining how to check in and when you'll be called on to speak. Yes, definitely mention you're new - most net controls love welcoming newcomers and will often give you extra encouragement.

For anyone struggling with FT-991A CAT control on Windows 11: Just spent two hours troubleshooting why WSJT-X couldn't connect to my rig. For Windows 11 need install USB driver manually - the automatic driver installation doesn't work properly. Download the FT-991/ SCU-17 USB Driver (Virtual COM Port Driver) from Yaesu and follow the directions to install them on your computer. You will end up installing: TWO (2) COM ports. One is an ENHANCED COM port (in my case COM 4) the other is a Standard COM port (in my case COM 5). Use the Enhanced port for CAT control in your logging software.

so ive been running an old FT-450D for about four years now and always kind of wanted to upgrade but never really had a good reason to. anyway the 450D developed some weird issue where the finals were getting hot way faster than they should and i figured instead of sinking money into a repair i'd just move up. looked at the 7300 forever, read every thread on here, watched probably too many youtube videos, and finally just ordered one. first thing i noticed is the waterfall is actually useful, like i know everyone says that but coming from no panadapter at all it genuinely changes how you operate. found a pileup on 17m the other day just by watching the display which i wouldnt have done before. the touch screen is responsive enough, no complaints there. audio out of the speaker is way better than the 450D which had this kind of thin sound that always bugged me. one thing i'm still figuring out is the twin PBT. i understand what it's supposed to do but i keep overcorrecting and making things worse. also the default noise reduction settings are pretty aggressive, turned NR off most of the time honestly. anybody else find that the factory presets for NR are kind of overkill or is that just me.

i was in the exact same spot last year lol. took general about 6 months after tech and yeah hamstudy is fine, same approach works. the impedance stuff i just memorized the formulas enough to recognize which answer was right without really understanding why and that got me through it. probably should learn it properly at some point but anyway my first HF setup was just a used ic-7300 i found locally and a random wire up in a tree and i was making contacts the first night. 40 meters is super forgiving, especially after dark you can work all over the place even with a janky antenna

im pretty new to all this, just got my general last spring and just joined the local ARES group so i havent been in a full drill yet but reading this is actually really useful to know what to expect. i kind of assumed the experienced operators would just have everything handled and i'd be following along. maybe thats not quite how it works haha. is there stuff a newer person can do to actually be useful in these drills or is it mostly just watch and learn the first time?

you're not overthinking it but also dont stress too much — honestly any of those will get you on a repeater and let you start having QSOs. the Baofeng criticism is real but its also kind of overblown for basic local use. the transmit frequency issue people complain about is usually like a few hundred hz off which repeaters dont care about. where the cheap ones bite you is receive sensitivity sometimes, and the audio does get a little crunchy on some of them. that said if you can stretch to the Yaesu FT-65 or even the FT-4XR i'd probably do it. the build quality feels noticeably better in hand and the menu system is way less confusing than programming a Baofeng blind. i gave a UV-5R to my nephew when he got his ticket and he spent like two weeks just trying to get a repeater tone set right. the Yaesus just make more sense out of the box. CHIRP works with all of them for programming so that part isnt a big deal either way Wouxun is pronounced something like WO-shun by the way, at least thats how most people say it at hamfests around here

Congrats on passing the exam, welcome to the hobby. Honestly for where you're at right now the Baofeng will do the job fine. Yeah the receiver isnt as clean as a Yaesu and the transmit audio can be a little rough but for hitting a local repeater and getting your feet wet you wont notice most of that. The programming software is a bit of a headache at first but theres tons of guides out there. That said if you think youre gonna stick with this and you want something that just works without fussing around, the Yaesu FT-65 is usually around $70-80 and its a massive step up in terms of build quality and receiver sensitivity. I started with a UV-5R years ago and within about 6 months I was wishing I'd just spent the extra money upfront. But thats just me, plenty of people run Baofengs for years and love em.

oh man i remember feeling exactly like this. i lurked on our Wednesday night net for like three weeks before i finally checked in and honestly it was totally fine. net control on ours is super patient with new people. one thing that helped me was finding the net's website or listing on the ARRL net directory — a lot of nets post their exact check-in procedure right there so you can read it before you even key up. the special event station thing is cool, i worked one last year for a lighthouse weekend event, just called them like anybody else and they gave me a nice QSL. check if they have a website, sometimes they have a specific frequency and time schedule posted

ok so i passed my technician exam about two months ago and ive been reading through part 97 trying to figure out what im actually allowed to do and honestly its kind of confusing. like i understand i have HF privileges on 10 meters and some other bands but the way the rules are written its hard to tell exactly what modes i can use where. someone at my club said techs can do SSB on 10m but only in certain segments and i thought i could do CW on 40m too but now im second guessing myself. also theres all this stuff about third party traffic and prohibited communications that i dont fully get. i dont want to accidentally do something wrong especially since i just got my license. is there like a plain english version of this somewhere or does someone just wanna break it down for me

congrats on the first activation, 10 contacts is all you need and it counts, dont stress about the fumbles. honestly most hunters have been doing this long enough that they expect new activators to be a little rough around the edges, we were all there once. paper logging is totally fine, i did paper for my first dozen or so activations before i started using HAMRS on my phone. the app works great as long as you have a decent screen protector and dont drop it in a creek like i did once. the end-fed in the trees setup is pretty much the classic POTA antenna, you'll get faster at stringing it up after a few times, i can have mine up in about 10 minutes now but the first few times yeah it was a whole ordeal.

so ive been licensed for about three weeks now and everyone keeps telling me to just get a baofeng to start but then other people say dont bother and spend a little more on a yaesu or kenwood. i honestly dont know what to do. my main use case would be local repeaters, maybe some simplex chatting with a friend who just got his ticket too, and eventually i want to get into emcomm stuff with the local ARES group. the UV-5R is like $25 which seems insane for a radio but i keep reading that the programming is a nightmare and the receive is kinda garbage? then theres the Yaesu FT-65 which looks decent and isnt that expensive either. i also saw the BF-F8HP mentioned a lot which is supposedly better than the basic baofeng but im not sure how much of that is just marketing. honestly at this point i might just flip a coin. anyone have strong feelings either way? does it actually matter that much for just hitting local repeaters

the receive side is huge, probably bigger than most people realize starting out. a mediocre preamp at the antenna will kill you even if you have a decent array. you really want noise figure under 0.5dB at the feedpoint, the difference between that and even 1.0dB NF is noticeable on EME signals because you have basically no margin to work with. i run a SSB Electronic preamp right at the mast and it made a real difference when i upgraded from my old unit. on your elevation question — 40 degrees is actually fine for a lot of moonbounce windows depending on your latitude, the moon obviously moves around a lot. some guys at high latitudes struggle more with that than others. your real constraint with a single 9el is just the gain, youre looking at what, maybe 12-13 dBd? for JT65B you theoretically need around 23-24dB of total system gain in your link budget to work stations with similar setups, so either you need a big station on the other end or you need to stack. but honestly starting with JT65 and hunting for big gun stations isnt crazy, some of those guys are running serious hardware and can pull you out of the noise. i worked my first EME contact with less than ideal gear just because the other station had a massive dish.

Study propagation predictions before contests and monitor live ionosphere conditions. The 100+ operators know exactly when each band will peak and position themselves accordingly. Also consider SO2R - it provides more productive use of time and increases your presence on the bands.

i went from a ts-590 to the 7300 last year and yeah the waterfall changes how you operate whether you want it to or not. only thing i'd say is if your attic dipole has any issues the 7300's ATU is pretty limited so you might still be leaning on that LDG anyway. not a dealbreaker just something to keep in mind

so i finally got activated for a real event last weekend, been doing the training nets and monthly meetings for about 8 months now and the county emergency manager requested ARES support for a big outdoor festival, something like 12,000 attendees over two days. our EC had us set up a communications net linking the medical tent, main stage, parking, and the EOC back at the fairgrounds office. i was assigned to the medical tent which honestly was pretty quiet most of the time, handled a few welfare check relays and one actual medical assist relay to EMS dispatch. the net control guy did a great job keeping traffic moving and we used simplex on the designated tactical frequency for most of it with the linked repeater as backup if things got hairy. my question is more about documentation, like after the event i filled out my ICS 309 but i wasnt totally sure what counts as a message vs just a check-in or routine net traffic. my EC was kind of rushed during debrief and i didnt get a chance to ask. anybody else dealt with this or have a feel for how strict your served agencies are about that stuff?

so i just passed my technician exam last week and im trying to figure out what handheld to get. ive been reading a lot and honestly its more confusing than the actual test was. everyone seems to have a different opinion and some people swear by the cheap baofengs and others act like youre committing a crime if you buy one. my main use would probably be local repeaters and maybe some simplex during hikes or whatever. i dont really have a huge budget, maybe 100-150 bucks to start. i looked at the yaesu ft-60 and people seem to like it but its a little older i think? also saw the btech uv-5x3 which does 1.25m which sounds cool but i dont even know if theres any activity on that band around here. does anyone have suggestions or should i just get whatever and upgrade later, i feel like im overthinking this