Robert Kim97

okay so ive been licensed for about 4 months now and i finally worked up the nerve to try checking into a local 2m net last tuesday. i had the frequency programmed in and everything, listened for like 20 minutes beforehand to get a feel for it. the net control called for check-ins and i froze completely lol. i keyed up and said my callsign but i think i did it at the wrong time or something because nobody acknowledged me and they just moved on. so my question is — is there like a specific moment where youre supposed to jump in? do you wait for a pause or do you just say your callsign over the net controls transmission? i know it sounds basic but i couldnt find a clear answer anywhere that wasnt just a super formal PDF from the ARRL that made my eyes glaze over. also wondering if special event stations work differently for check-ins or if its the same deal

congrats on the ticket. yeah the rabbit hole is real, i think most of us had that exact same first week. went from baofeng to looking at icom 7300s within like 48 hours of passing. just a warning though, dont rush general just to rush it, actually learn the material because propagation and antenna theory stuff actually matters when youre doing hf. that said, do go for general, hf is a whole different world and your first dx contact will absolutely wreck you in the best way possible.

low elevation passes on the linears are basically practice runs imo, dont get discouraged. i tried working AO-73 for like two weeks before i finally heard my own signal come back and honestly it was kind of an accident when it happened, i was just randomly tuning around on the downlink and there i was. the full duplex monitoring really is the whole game with these birds, once you can hear yourself everything clicks. one thing that helped me was switching to holding the Arrow by hand and physically pointing it rather than trying to track on a tripod — gives you way more control especially at low elevation where the geometry is changing fast. probably not everyones thing but it worked for me.

I had almost the exact same problem last year. for me it turned out i was gripping the paddle too tight when i sped up, like my whole hand would tense up without me realizing it. my elmer told me to rest my elbow on the table and keep my wrist loose and it actually made a noticeable difference. sounds dumb but worth checking if you havent thought about it

welcome to the hobby, sounds like you found a good repeater with patient folks on it which honestly makes all the difference starting out. some repeaters can be a little cliquey so you got lucky there. "over and out" is a classic one, we've all heard worse trust me. once you get comfortable on the local stuff you might want to look into HF when you upgrade your license, that's where things really get interesting. contacts from your own backyard to across the world on a wire antenna, nothing quite like it

congrats on the first one, the 44 QSO requirement trips people up sometimes but it sounds like you had no trouble. yeah you can absolutely log the same activation for both WWFF and POTA if the reference qualifies for both, you just submit to each program separately. the logs dont have to be identical format but the QSOs themselves count for both. i've done quite a few dual-program activations and it's actually great because you get chasers from both communities piling in. on the exchange -- WWFF is pretty relaxed about it honestly, signal report and the reference number is totally fine and thats what most people do. some operators also mention their name and QTH but its not required. you did it right. the main thing WWFF cares about is getting to 44 and submitting the log in the right format to the WWFF logger.

yeah what he said. i used the ARRL technician manual when i studied back in like 2019 or whenever and it was fine but probably overkill if you just want to pass. hamstudy does the job. when you start getting a question wrong repeatedly it kind of drills it in which is annoying but it works one thing i'll add is dont wait too long between studying and actually scheduling the test, i crammed for like 10 days straight and then kept putting off finding a session and forgot probably half of it. VE sessions are everywhere now including a lot of online ones so just book it and go

the log thing tripped me up too my first time. i practiced ICS 309 traffic logs in the kitchen at home and thought i had it down but then in the field i kept hesitating on time format and whether i should be logging every single transmission or just formal messages. ended up asking the EC mid-activation which wasnt ideal haha. worth clarifying that stuff with your EC before the next one so its one less thing on your mind when it actually counts

so ive been licensed about 6 years now and ive done a fair bit of weak signal stuff on 2m and 6m, mostly tropo and a little meteor scatter, but EME has always been this kind of mythical thing i figured was way out of reach for a regular guy with a suburban lot. then last month i actually decoded a couple stations working moonbounce on 2m using WSJT-X and i kind of lost my mind a little bit. like it clicked that this is actually happening on normal radio equipment and not some government facility. so now im researching this properly and the antenna stuff is where i get confused fast. i see people doing it with a single yagi these days with JT65 which i did not think was possible, but then i also see stations running 4x or 8x yagi arrays and dish setups and i honestly dont know what the realistic minimum is if you want to actually make contacts vs just decoding stuff and never getting a response. my yagi situation right now is a single 2m yagi about 12 elements, decent preamp already at the feedpoint, running about 200w from the shack. is that even in the ballpark or am i kidding myself also the elevation rotor thing, do i absolutely need that or can you pick times when the moon is at a useful azimuth without needing to tilt the antenna up. i know this sounds like a dumb question but my current setup is azimuth only and buying another rotor plus replumbing the whole mast sounds like a real project

the fan mod is one of the best things you can do for those radios if youre doing any kind of sustained digital operation. the stock thermal design was clearly built around SSB duty cycles and just doesnt cut it for WSPR or FT8 running all night. ive seen a few of these come through the shop with burned finals that probably could've been avoided with better airflow. on the TX mod i'm a little more mixed. practically speaking yeah it's useful for emcomm scenarios and a lot of guys do it. just make sure your PA matching is actually optimized for whatever out of band freq you end up using because the 857 isn't flat across a wide range — you can lose a meaningful chunk of power on freqs the finals weren't tuned for. probably not a big deal for 10-20 watts out but worth knowing. i did the ref osc mod on mine a while back, tweaked the TCXO trimmer for better frequency accuracy. the stock calibration on a lot of these mid-range Yaesu's is honestly pretty sloppy if you check it against a GPS reference. made a noticeable difference for weak signal digital modes where you're hunting around in a narrow passband.

mic choice absolutely matters even on HF and ive argued this point probably a hundred times on various forums. the thing people miss is that a bad mic introduces problems that you then try to fix downstream with EQ and processing and you end up chasing your tail. something with a flatter response in the 300-2800hz voice range just gives you cleaner material to work with from the start. that said you dont need a $300 studio condenser, something like an Heil PR40 or even the cheaper PR22 makes a real difference over the stock dynamic that ships with most rigs. on the speech processor question — yeah it helps if you use it right. the key is setting your audio levels properly BEFORE you touch the processor. most people crank their mic gain too high, slap the processor on, and then wonder why they sound like they're transmitting through a tin can. get your ALC sitting at the top of the green and barely kissing the yellow with the processor OFF, then bring the processor in just enough to get maybe 3-4dB of average power increase. that's it. beyond that you're just distorting and killing your intelligibility.

so i just passed my technician exam last week (finally) and now im trying to figure out what handheld to buy. ive been reading threads here for like two hours and im more confused than when i started honestly. everyone seems to have a really strong opinion and they all contradict each other. the main thing i want to do is hit the local repeaters and maybe do some simplex with a friend who lives about 4 miles away. nothing crazy. i dont need it to do everything, i just want something reliable that wont frustrate me while im still learning the basics. budget is probably around $100 give or take. ive seen people mention the baofeng UV-5R about a thousand times and then immediately someone else says dont get it. and then theres the yaesu FT-65 and some other ones. i really cant tell if the baofeng hate is legitimate or just snobbery. can anyone just give me a straight answer on what they would actually buy if they were in my shoes right now

so this has been driving me nuts for about two weeks now. my 7300 started acting weird where receive is just... really weak. like i can barely hear stations that were perfectly readable before. TX power looks normal on the meter, ALC is behaving, SWR on my antenna is unchanged. done all the usual stuff, checked the coax, swapped the feedline at the shack end, even tried a dummy load with a handheld next to it just to confirm its not the antenna. noise floor looks about the same on the waterfall which is confusing me because if it was a preamp issue or front end damage i'd expect the noise floor to drop too, right? but signals that should be S7 or S8 are barely moving the meter. im starting to wonder if its the AGC doing something weird or maybe one of the IF stages. anyone had something similar with this radio or any icom in general? i really dont want to ship it off to icom if i can figure out what's going on first.

yeah this happened to me too when i first started, mine turned out I had the offset set wrong so i was transmitting on the output frequency instead of the input. easy mistake. on the baofeng you gotta make sure the repeater shift is set correct, for 146.940 that should be a minus 600khz offset so your radio transmits on 146.340. if youre transmitting on 146.940 itself the repeater wont pick you up at all and you'd just be talking into the void basically. check that first before anything else

yeah this is honestly one of those things that takes a while to dial in and it really does vary by contest and by where you are in the contest cycle. early in a run when the pile is hot you dont want to touch radio 2 at all, maybe just tune around and park it on a mult you know youll want. the real window for radio 2 work is when the rate on radio 1 drops below like 100-120 and youre starting to fish for Qs anyway. the 3-4 QSO rebuild thing is pretty normal with SSB because people on frequency dont know if youre gone or just between callers. CW is a bit more forgiving because everyone can hear youre not transmitting. one thing that helped me a lot was shortening my CQ to almost the minimum — like just callsign CQ or CQ de [call] and just hammering it fast so callers dont wander. also look at your radio 2 SO2R timing, if youre transmitting on 40 for more than like 12-15 seconds at a stretch youre losing people on 20. not sure what the bandmaster gives you for interlocking but if you can set a tx timer cutoff on radio 2 that forces you back to monitor radio 1 every N seconds that helps a ton with the attention management piece

I just did almost the exact same install a few months ago except i went with a Kenwood TM-V71A and honestly the direct to battery wiring made such a huge difference in audio quality. my first attempt i ran it off an accessory fuse in the panel and the noise was terrible, like a constant whine that tracked with the engine RPM. moved it to direct battery with a 20 amp fuse and it was night and day. haven't dealt with the hatch antenna thing but my buddy runs a magmount on his Tacoma tailgate and swears by it, says it's easier to just swap the whole thing if he needs to. not as clean looking though.

Don't forget the low-noise preamp - critical for EME! Install a low noise preamplifier with 0.5-0.8 dB NF at the antenna input point. Also use quality coax like LMR-400. Your 17-element should give you around 14-15 dBi gain which puts you in the game, especially with digital modes doing the heavy lifting.

so ive been a Tech for about 8 months now and mostly just been doing local stuff on 2m and 70cm, some repeaters, a little simplex. but ive been listening to the HF bands on a buddys rig and man it sounds amazing, heard some guy in japan come through on 20m like he was down the street. anyway im thinking about upgrading to General but im kind of intimidated by the exam. the Tech test wasnt too bad but i keep hearing the General has a lot more theory stuff like impedance and propagation and all that and im not great at math. is it actually that hard or am i overthinking it? and like what would i actually be able to do once i pass that i cant do now? i know its more HF but im fuzzy on the specifics of which bands and stuff

yeah the battery thing gets people every single time and yet somehow it keeps happening. we had the exact same problem at a RACES drill a couple years back — guy shows up with a Yaesu FT-60 that hasnt been charged since the previous exercise and spends the first 20 minutes of the drill just standing there. we actually made a rule after that where every member has to check in at the monthly meeting and confirm their go-bag gear is charged and ready, kind of like a verbal checklist thing. it helped a little but you still get the occasional person who forgot. the net control issue is real too. we started doing dedicated NCS training sessions separate from the actual exercises and that made a pretty big difference. just running a practice net on a quiet evening where the only goal is for the NCS to practice traffic handling, prioritization, that kind of thing. nothing fancy but it builds the muscle memory. your point about simplex frequency coordination is a good one — we have ours written into our local ARES plan document but honestly i bet half the guys couldnt tell you what it is without looking it up.

im in kind of the same boat as you actually, been at it for maybe 3 months now. i use the jscwlib trainer and also just listen to slow speed qso's on 40 meters late at night which helps me hear what real cw actually sounds like vs the perfectly clean practice stuff. slow speed nets exist too, W1AW does code practice transmissions on a schedule you can find on the arrl site i think. honestly the hardest part for me has been just staying consistent, like doing a little bit every day is way more effective than doing a big session once a week, at least thats what everyone keeps telling me and from experience its true even if its annoying to hear lol

For a newly licensed Technician, I recommend a dual-band VHF/UHF transceiver that's analog-only, with no digital voice mode complexity, to promote getting on the air as quickly as possible after licensing. The Yaesu FT-65R is a solid choice in your budget - built tough and easy to use. Start analog, learn the basics, then upgrade to digital later if needed.

I was in the same boat last year! One thing that helped me was bookmarking a propagation site and checking it before getting on the air. Focus on 20m, 17m, and 15m during the day with those numbers. Don't get too hung up on perfect conditions - I've worked great DX when the numbers weren't ideal.

yeah the ITU region stuff trips up a lot of people. so in region 2 (thats us, north and south america) 40m goes from 7.000 to 7.300 MHz for amateurs. your general phone privileges start at 7.175 and go up to 7.300. the reason people say stay away from the band edge is basically because your radio isnt perfect -- if youre transmitting on 7.300 your signal has sidebands and carrier artifacts that can bleed above 7.300 which is outside the amateur allocation. so its not necessarily that 7.300 itself is illegal to use, its that its really hard to guarantee your actual transmitted energy stays within the band when youre right at the edge. most people just stay a few kHz inside to be safe. its partly legal and partly just good practice. in region 1 (europe mostly) 40m only goes to 7.200 which is why sometimes you hear DX stations down there that seem to be in your phone segment but actually arent in theirs. leads to some weird situations on the band.

Missing small components can prevent communication entirely, so a complete packing list is essential. Radio equipment should include your primary transceiver, a backup handheld radio, microphone or headset, programming cable, and spare fuses. Don't forget coax adapters and a basic antenna analyzer if you can swing it - field antenna work always throws curveballs.

wait so is 10 meters actually open right now like for regular contacts or just like sporadic e stuff? im still pretty new and i set up my dipole for 10m a while back but every time i tune around i mostly hear noise. maybe im doing something wrong or maybe i just need to be on at the right time? i have no idea when these openings usually happen during the day.