Robert Kim97

Band plans are voluntary guidelines that help organize different activities within your legal allocations. Your license class determines which frequency bands you can access legally, but the band plan shows you where different modes typically operate. Think of it like traffic lanes on a highway - you can legally drive in any lane, but following the conventions keeps everyone moving smoothly.

so i finally did my first activation last weekend at a state park about 45 minutes from my house. been wanting to try this for probably 6 months but kept putting it off for one reason or another. anyway i packed up the KX2 and a random wire antenna, found a picnic table near the parking lot and just went for it. got my 10 contacts in about 35 minutes on 40m which honestly surprised me, i expected to be sitting there forever calling CQ. a few of the contacts were hunters who clearly knew what they were doing and gave me signal reports super fast and moved on, which was great. one guy stuck around and chatted for a few minutes which was nice too. my questions are -- do i need to spot myself on the POTA website before i start operating or can i just start calling CQ and hope people find me? i spotted myself but it was kind of awkward fumbling with my phone while trying to set up. also is there a standard way people announce their park reference during the call, like do you say it every transmission or just when someone asks? i was saying "activating K-2345" every single CQ which felt like a lot but wasnt sure what the practice is. also wondering if 40m is the go-to band or if people have better luck on other bands depending on time of day. i want to do another one next month and just want to get a little smoother at it.

Congratulations on your General! For your first HT, I'd recommend the Yaesu FT-65R - it's that sweet spot between the cheap Baofengs and expensive digital rigs. Solid build quality, easy to program, and will serve you well for years. Save the digital experimentation for later when you know what you actually want.

so i've been messing with this for a few weeks now and honestly it started as a simple thing and has completely taken over my workbench. i wanted a way to automatically point my yagi based on APRS position data from a balloon launch our club was doing and one thing led to another and now i've got a raspberry pi running direwolf feeding position packets into a python script that spits out azimuth/elevation to an arduino mega which is controlling the H-bridge for my old Yaesu G-450A rotator. mostly works. the problem im having is the feedback pot on the rotator is giving me noisy ADC readings and im not sure if its a grounding issue between the arduino and the rotator controller or just the pot itself getting old. ive tried adding a small cap across the pot terminals to smooth it out a little and that helped some but i still get like plus or minus 5 degree jitter when the thing is supposed to be sitting still. not a huge deal for HF but for 70cm EME eventually it'll matter. curious if anyone else has built something like this or has dealt with the ADC noise thing. also wondering if i should just swap out the pot entirely, ive seen people put encoders on these but that seems like a bigger job than i want right now

honest answer — at 30 feet on 40m your dipole isnt going to be a DX monster but its not terrible either. ive run a dipole at 25 feet and still worked plenty of EU from the midwest on good evenings. the radiation angle isnt ideal but propagation covers a lot of sins especially around the bottom of a solar cycle when the lower bands come alive. the radial thing with verticals is real though and people underestimate how much it matters. ive seen guys put up a vertical with like 4 radials and then wonder why their dipole at 20 feet outperforms it. if you go vertical, do it right or dont bother — i'd say minimum 16 radials, more if you can. if that sounds like too much work then just do the dipole and call it a day, you'll have it on the air this weekend instead of next summer.

welcome to the hobby, the QSL confirmation thing is genuinely confusing at first so dont feel bad about it. short answer is that for DXCC specifically, LoTW is really the gold standard and thats what the ARRL uses. eQSL has its own award system which is fine but its separate. paper cards are accepted for DXCC too if you submit them physically to the ARRL but honestly most people just use LoTW now because its way easier once you get it set up. the certificate setup for LoTW is the annoying part — you have to request a certificate through their system and they mail you a postcard to your address on record to verify you, which takes a little while. but once thats done uploading logs is pretty straightforward especially if you use something like WSJT-X or Log4OM because they can upload directly. i'd say go ahead and do all three honestly. eQSL is quick and easy and some people only confirm there, and paper cards are just fun to collect. but if you want to chase DXCC someday make sure LoTW is working. dont skip it just because the setup is annoying, future you will be glad you started logging from day one.

yeah what he said about height is right. i'd also add that the inverted V shape actually helps a little with the azimuth pattern compared to a flat top, it kind of broadens things out so you're not as directional which at 20 feet is probably a good thing anyway. one thing i noticed building mine is that the feedpoint impedance drops a bit with the V angle so if you went with a really steep V you might see the SWR shift slightly over time as the wire stretches and the angle changes, something to keep an eye on in a few months. also 14 gauge stranded is a bit heavier so watch the center insulator connection, sometimes the solder joint fatigues if theres a lot of wind load and the wire is pulling on it. not trying to scare you, just something i learned the hard way with mine, add a strain relief loop at the feedpoint if you havent already.

same boat as you a few months ago lol. what got me was i didnt realize Log4OM could connect to telnet clusters directly and cross-check against your log. took me forever to find that setting. once i set that up i stopped using the browser tabs almost completely except sometimes ill still glance at DXwatch just cause the interface shows propagation direction which i like visually

Consider EchoIRLP - it lets you run both systems from the same hardware, giving your users the best of both worlds. We've found that different folks prefer different linking methods, and this way you're not forcing anyone into one camp or the other. The setup is a bit more complex, but the flexibility is worth it for a club repeater.

Are you using the same gain settings? HackRF's AGC behavior can cause unnecessary CPU spikes if not properly configured. Also worth checking if you're hitting USB3 vs USB2 bandwidth limitations - that can affect processing overhead significantly.

im kind of in the same boat as you actually, been slowly building mine out. one thing i added that i didn't think about at first was just like a basic first aid kit and some food/water in a separate bag that lives next to the radio kit. not ham radio stuff obviously but if youre deployed somewhere for 12 hours it matters. also somebody at my radio club told me to put a notepad and a couple pens in there because you end up logging things by hand more than you think. what antenna are you planning to run? thats the part im still figuring out for mine, i have a linked dipole kit but setting it up by myself is kind of a pain

Thanks for sharing the hard data! This confirms what I've been telling newer hams. Countries with small amateur populations are less likely to have bureaus, which means the more sought-after QSLs often can't go via bureau and need direct mail - it costs much more but it's needed for the prized cards.

so ive been interested in ham radio for a while now, my neighbor has a big antenna setup and got me curious. i looked into it and apparently you need a license which i kind of knew but i dont really know what the process is or how hard the test is. i downloaded some app called ham study or something like that and it has a bunch of questions but honestly some of them seem really hard and i dont have a background in electronics at all. is there like a certain order you should study things or do most people just go through the question pool and memorize stuff? also how do i actually find a test session near me, the arrl website confused me a bit

the inverted V geometry definitely pulls the resonant frequency down compared to a flat top dipole, the closer the ends are to the ground the more pronounced it gets. with your ends at 8 feet youre getting significant ground interaction which effectively electrically lengthens the antenna. its not unusual to see it resonate 200-400 kHz lower than calculated depending on the angle and soil conditions under it. just start trimming a few inches at a time off each leg equally, recheck with the analyzer, repeat. tedious but thats just how it goes with wire antennas. stranded vs solid doesnt really matter for HF, that guys advice was fine. the velocity factor difference is negligible at those frequencies and the flexibility of stranded is usually worth it for a wire antenna that goes up and comes down a lot. solid is fine too if thats what you have. just trim and get it where you want it.

yeah what KD5XYZ said, plus make sure you know your phonetics and can copy down messages reasonably well. i remember my first drill i was so focused on not screwing up the radio part that i completely botched writing down a simple health and welfare message lol. also might want to review the ICS forms if your group uses them, though they'll probably go over that stuff during the training portion

so ive been running FT8 for about a year now and yeah its great for racking up contacts and all that but honestly it feels more like playing a video game than actually talking to anyone. you know what i mean. the whole 15 second exchange thing is fine if you just want a grid square but thats about all you're getting out of it. anyway a buddy of mine at the club keeps going on about JS8Call and how you can actually send messages back and forth, relay stuff through other stations, even store and forward messages when someone isnt on frequency at the same time. sounds interesting but he also says the decode sensitivity isnt quite as good as FT8, which makes sense because you're sending actual text and not just a fixed format message. my question is whether anyone has actually used both regularly and can tell me if JS8Call is worth setting up alongside WSJT-X or if its kind of a niche thing that only a handful of people are actually running. i dont want to go through all the config headaches if its basically a ghost town on the dial frequencies. running a IC-7300 into a trapped vertical on 40m mostly, sometimes 20m in the afternoon.

so i've been putting this off forever but last weekend i finally just went ahead and built a simple 40m dipole from scratch. used some 14awg stranded wire i had laying around from an old extension cord project, grabbed a so-239 chassis connector from the junk box, and just went at it. cut each leg to about 33.5 feet based on the 468/f formula and figured id tune from there. fed it with about 50 feet of RG-8X which i know isnt ideal but its what i had. hung it in an inverted V configuration off a 25 foot mast in the backyard, ends tied off to the fence posts maybe 8 feet up. SWR on the low end of 40 came out around 1.4:1 without any tuner which honestly surprised me. i was expecting a disaster. made a few contacts into the midwest and even one down to florida which was cool. the whole thing cost me basically nothing. i kind of wish i'd done this years ago instead of spending money on commercial HF antennas. anyway im just sharing this because if you've been on the fence about building something, the 468 formula really does get you close enough to start.

so ive been using the hamstudy.org site and also got the ARRL technician manual but honestly its a lot and i dont really know where to start. like some of the questions make sense to me and others are just completely over my head. the electrical stuff especially, ohms law and all that i kind of remember from high school but the antenna and propagation stuff is just confusing to me right now. is there a specific order i should go through the question pools or should i just do the random practice exams over and over until i pass? i heard the actual test questions come directly from the pool so maybe just memorizing answers is enough but that feels wrong somehow. anyway i just want to pass and get on the air, not trying to become an engineer lol

yeah there's no FCC rule that says you have to use NATO phonetics specifically, at least not for amateur radio. it's different for aviation and some other services but for ham you're just required to identify, not HOW you identify as long as its intelligible. that said NATO became standard for a reason — if you're working someone with a heavy accent or in a pile up the standardized words are way less ambiguous. "sugar" vs "sierra" doesnt matter on a quiet local repeater but try working DX on HF with weird phonetics and people will start asking you to repeat. the guys who use their own phonetics on local FM are fine for that context but id learn the NATO ones properly first just so its muscle memory when you actually need it

yeah the 7300's built in keyer is actually pretty good, the issue you're describing is almost always paddle gap first, weight second. the gap between the contacts on those Vibroplex paddles — if it's too tight you're getting accidental closures, too loose and you're having to really squeeze which throws off your rhythm. i'd start there honestly. a business card thickness is the old rule of thumb for gap but really just experiment until the paddle feels like it's responding to the lightest touch without false triggering. once the gap feels right then mess with the speed and weight. on the 7300 the weight control is under the keyer menu, default is 50 which is supposed to be 1:3 ratio but a lot of people bump it up just slightly, like 52 or 53, and it cleans things up noticeably. the choppy letters thing is probably a combination of the gap issue and just muscle memory still catching up — at 6 months in honestly you're doing fine, it just takes a while before your hand stops thinking about it

the leakage across the room is definitely a shielding problem more than a balance problem id say. altoids cans are fine for audio stuff but at 7 MHz you really want a proper copper or brass enclosure with feedthrough caps on every line going in and out. the ground bond on the lid matters a lot too, a lot of people just set the lid on and wonder why it doesnt help much. that said DBM balance does affect how much LO gets coupled back out through the RF port, so its worth spending time on. with hand wound toroids on a breadboard you're probably not going to get better than 30-35 dB of isolation anyway which is part of why the leakage is showing up. i built something similar a few years back and ended up just using a Mini-Circuits SBL-1 for the mixer and it made a huge difference even though it felt like cheating on a homebrew project. if you want to stick with the diode ring you can try matching the diodes more carefully with a DMM checking forward voltage. on image rejection — a pure DC receiver has essentially zero image rejection, both sidebands fold on top of each other which is why everything sounds kind of mushy on SSB. you can do the phasing trick with a quadrature LO and two matched audio channels but thats a whole other rabbit hole

congrats man, that first contact feeling is something else isnt it. i still remember mine, i was shaking a little bit which seems ridiculous now but it felt like a big deal at the time. the repeater crowd is usually pretty welcoming to new folks, you lucked out if someone actually stuck around and chatted for 15 minutes. on the radio question, depends what you want to do i guess. if youre just gonna do local repeater stuff for a while the baofeng is honestly fine, people give it grief but it works. when you start wanting to do more youll know and by then youll have a better idea what to get. no rush on that part.