Michael Stevens

dont overthink the HF vs VHF thing too much, for most ARES activations around here its 90% VHF/UHF work on repeaters and simplex. the HF capability is nice if you need to link to a section net or something but day to day local emcomm is almost all 2m and 70cm in my experience. that said having the 891 available is never a bad thing. one thing i didnt see mentioned -- make sure somebody besides you knows where the kit is and roughly how to power it up. had a situation a couple years back where the designated operator got sick right before an activation and we scrambled because his kit was in his truck and nobody else was familiar with it. basic stuff but easy to overlook.

so ive been licensed for about 8 months now and just recently started getting into DX chasing and i kept hearing people mention cluster spots and DXwatch and i honestly had no idea what any of it meant for the longest time. i thought it was some kind of separate radio network you had to subscribe to or something lol anyway i finally sat down and figured it out and now i feel kind of dumb because its actually really straightforward. you go to DXwatch or dx.qsl.net or even just look at the cluster tab on QRZ and you can see spots that other hams are posting in real time when they hear a DX station. so if somebodys working ZL or whatever youll see it pop up with the frequency and the callsign and usually a comment. then you can just spin your radio to that freq and hopefully catch them before the pileup dies down my question is though — does anyone use a specific app for this on their phone? ive been just using the browser which is kind of clunky when im trying to do this quickly. i saw something called DX Toolkit and also Ham Radio Deluxe has some kind of cluster integration but i dont really want to pay for HRD just for that one feature. curious what other people are actually using day to day

yeah the ribbon cable thing is no joke, i nicked one on an 817 a few years back and it was a bad time. had intermittent audio issues for weeks before i figured out that was the culprit. ended up having to order a replacement from a parts supplier in Japan which took forever. good reminder to just be patient with those connectors, they are not made to be reconnected fifty times. on the diode placement thing, i think Yaesu made a running change somewhere in the production run but nobody really documented it cleanly. ive seen a couple threads on eham where people were confused by the same thing. once you find it its obvious but finding it is the annoying part. glad it worked out, the 857D is a solid rig to have opened up TX on, pretty useful for the go-kit stuff.

so ive been running our local ARES net on wednesday nights for about 8 months now and turnout has been kind of inconsistent lately. we usually get maybe 6-8 check-ins on a good night but last week we only had 3 and one of them was my buddy dave who lives next door and basically feels obligated lol i know its summer and people are busy doing outdoor stuff but i was wondering if anyone has had luck getting more operators to participate regularly. we do announce it on the club facebook page and i post the schedule to the repeater trustee but i feel like thats not reaching people who are newer to the hobby or maybe just dont know the net exists also curious if anyone here participates in any regular HF nets too — i caught part of the 40m traffic net the other night just browsing around and it seemed pretty active, way more than our local 2m stuff. wondering if thats just because HF has more range obviously or if those communities are just more organized about it any ideas welcome, really dont want to see the net fold because its actually good practice for emcomm stuff and i feel like thats kind of the whole point of having it

ive been doing qrp portable stuff for a few years and the chirp thing drove me nuts on my first build too. what worked for me was a small regulator on the oscillator stage even if the rest of the rig runs straight off battery. like a 78L05 or similar just for that part of the circuit. keeps the voltage rock steady when you key down and the current draw spikes. total overkill maybe but my signal cleaned right up. also the park operating thing is so underrated, theres something about sitting outside with a tiny rig and a wire in a tree that just feels like what ham radio is supposed to be. keep at it

ha dont even worry about it, my first qso i forgot to let go of the PTT button so nobody could respond and i just sat there in silence for like 30 seconds wondering why no one was talking back. took me embarrassingly long to figure out what i did wrong. the guys on my local repeater still give me a hard time about it and that was like 3 years ago

so ive been a tech for about 8 months now and mostly just been doing local repeater stuff and some simplex. honestly its been fun but i keep hearing people talk about HF and working DX and i kind of want to get into that. problem is i look at the general class pool and some of it looks pretty intimidating, like the electrical theory stuff and the operating procedures for HF bands. my question is how much time did you guys spend studying before you felt ready to take the general exam and is there like a specific resource that actually helped. ive been looking at hamstudy.org and it seems decent but i dont know if thats enough or if i need to actually buy a book. also is the 40m and 20m stuff pretty accessible once you get the ticket or do you need like a big fancy antenna setup to actually make contacts

dont stress it too much, i was in the same boat when i started. one that got me for a while was QSY which means change frequency, so if someones saying "let's QSY up a bit" they want to move. and QRP means low power which you see all over the place, there's whole groups dedicated to it the BK thing in digital is just "back to you" basically, like handing the conversation over. PSE is please, OM is old man which sounds rude but it's just how guys refer to each other, YL is young lady. 73 means best regards and 88 is hugs and kisses technically but you mostly just see 73 to sign off

yeah the pattern thing is huge and you're right that not enough people talk about it. ive worked enough DXpeditions now that i can usually tell within the first few minutes whether the op is a seasoned pileup handler or someone who's just kinda winging it. the good ones are incredibly systematic and once you lock onto their rhythm its almost like you can predict exactly when your window is. one thing i'd add — listening to where the op is NOT coming back is just as useful as listening to where they are. if you hear them pick somebody out of the upper end of the spread a few times in a row, that's your cue to drop down a bit. the pile tends to chase the DX station's last QSO frequency like a herd, so being slightly contrarian about placement actually pays off more often than not. also the zero beat thing is real. i've seen guys on pskreporter or whatever call like 3 kHz above the top of the pile and occasionally sneak through just because the op swept their VFO wider than usual. its messy and chaotic but DXing kind of rewards chaos sometimes honestly

so ive been trying to figure out if its worth the drive this year, last time i went was like 3 years ago and honestly had a blast just walking the flea market tables even tho i didnt buy much. thinking about going again but gas prices and all that. anyone else from the midwest planning to make the trip? would be cool to meetup if a few of us are going from around the same area

yeah that 13-15 range is where a lot of people get stuck, you're definitely not alone. what helped me more than anything was just stopping the head copying entirely and forcing myself to write nothing down for a while. sounds backwards but when you're trying to write every letter you end up in this loop where your hand is still busy with the last character while your ears are already two ahead. i spent a few weeks just listening at 16-17wpm without trying to copy anything at all, just absorbing the rhythm, and when i went back to actually copying it clicked way faster than i expected. also honestly the jump from 15 to 18 felt easier than 13 to 15 did so there's that to look forward to i guess.

okay so ive been checking into the local 2m net every tuesday for about a year now and i still feel like im guessing half the time. like last week the net control called for any stations with traffic and i had a quick question i wanted to ask but i wasnt sure if that counted as traffic or if i was supposed to wait for general check-ins. ended up just saying my callsign at the regular check-in time and then felt awkward trying to bring up my question afterward. also theres this thing where sometimes net control will say QNI and sometimes they say something else i cant quite catch and i just kinda key up and hope for the best. is there like an unwritten rulebook for this stuff that nobody told me about or do most people just figure it out by listening long enough dont want to step on anyone or come across as rude, everyone on the net seems to know exactly what theyre doing and im still over here second guessing myself every single week

so i finally got activated for a real event last weekend, been doing ARES training for about 8 months now and honestly the nets and tabletop exercises only prepare you so much. we got called out to support the county EOC during the flooding situation up near the northern part of the county and it was... a lot different than i expected. like the training nets we do every tuesday are pretty structured and calm obviously, but when youre actually sitting in the EOC and the served agency folks are stressed out and asking for traffic to get passed and you have marginal conditions on the 2m repeater it just feels different. my hands were actually a little shaky the first hour or so which was embarrassing. ended up being fine but i kept second-guessing myself on net control stuff. for anyone whos been doing ARES a while — does that nervousness ever really go away? i felt pretty solid in the exercises but the real thing just had a different energy to it. also we had a couple operators who showed up without their go-bags basically ready and the EC had to scramble a bit which was kind of a mess. anyway glad i did it, just processing it all i guess.

so i passed my technician exam like three weeks ago and just got my callsign last week and i've been terrified to actually key up and say anything. been listening on the local 2m repeater for days just trying to figure out how it all works. yesterday i finally just did it, called out on the repeater during what sounded like a quiet moment and this guy came back to me right away. i blanked completely on my callsign for like a full second which was embarrassing but he was super patient and we had a solid 10 minute ragchew about nothing really, just signal reports and weather and what radio i was using. i was shaking the whole time which is ridiculous because its just talking on the radio but still. anyway just wanted to share because it felt like a big deal

yeah WAZ confused me too when i first started, its the CQ Zones — the world is divided into 40 zones and you need to confirm a contact from each one. some zones are pretty tough to get because they cover mostly ocean or places that dont have many active hams so thats part of the fun i guess. DXCC is run by the ARRL and you need 100 confirmed entities to get the basic award, then you can keep adding on from there. WAS is also ARRL, straightforward enough though Alaska and Hawaii trip people up sometimes if youre mostly on HF and not catching the right openings. as for mixing LoTW and paper QSLs — yes you absolutely can mix them for DXCC credit, the ARRL accepts both. LoTW confirmations are just way faster and cheaper than waiting on cards. i'd say start logging everything carefully right now because there's nothing worse than realizing six months later you had a contact with some rare entity and you didn't get it confirmed. your instinct about using awards as a goal is a good one honestly, gave me a lot of direction when i was starting out

yeah the CI-V polling thing is a known headache. icom's baud rate on that interface is not super forgiving and if you're hammering it you'll get collisions especially if the radio itself is trying to send unsolicited data at the same time. what helped me was setting the radio to push mode if your firmware supports it — basically the 7300 can be configured to broadcast its status changes instead of waiting to be asked, which takes all the timing pressure off your polling loop. check the CI-V settings in the menu, theres an option for it. then your pi just sits and listens instead of constantly asking. for the SWR protection i'd honestly separate that out onto a dedicated arduino or even just a standalone comparator circuit. a pi running linux is not really a real time system, theres always gonna be some scheduler jitter that could bite you if you need sub-100ms response times. an arduino will react way faster for anything that's safety-critical like cutting power to an amp. i run a similar setup here, pi does all the logging and network stuff, tiny nano watches the SWR via an AD8307 and trips the relay itself without waiting for anyone's permission.

so ive been trying to get Winlink Express working for a few weeks now and i think i finally have it mostly figured out but there's one part thats still tripping me up. im running it on VHF through a local RMS gateway about 12 miles away, using a TNC-Pi hooked up to my 2m rig. the connection goes through fine most of the time and i can send/receive messages but im not totally sure i understand how the message routing actually works on the backend. like when i send an email to a regular non-ham address, does it go from my station to the RMS gateway, then from there to the CMS (the central message server thing), and then out to the internet? or does the gateway itself have internet access and just forwards it directly? i thought i understood this but then i read something that made me think the gateway is basically just a relay and all the real work happens at the CMS side. also does it matter which RMS i connect to or do they all sync up so my messages are available from any of them? secondary question — when im operating in a more remote area without any nearby RMS gateways, whats the realistic option? HF winlink? ive messed with Vara HF a little but never actually made a successful connection that way. any advice appreciated, been at this longer than i want to admit

So i just passed my Technician exam last week and im finally starting to look at buying my first handheld. I thought itd be a simple decision but wow there are just so many choices and everyone seems to have a very strong opinion about which one is best. I keep seeing the Baofeng UV-5R come up everywhere and the price is obviously hard to argue with, but then I see experienced hams kind of rolling their eyes at it and suggesting I get a Yaesu or Kenwood instead. I dont have a huge budget — probably 60-80 bucks max right now — so the Baofengs are obviously appealing but i dont want to buy junk either. Mainly I just want something to get on the local repeater and maybe do some simplex with my buddy who also just got licensed. Is there something in that price range thats actually decent or should I just save up a bit more? Any thoughts from people who have actually used these things would be really helpful.

so ive been chasing 3Y0J for what feels like forever and last night i actually got through to a rare one on 17m, not quite that level but still a top 10 most wanted for me. thought id write up what actually worked because ive been reading advice for years and some of it is garbage honestly. first thing that made the biggest difference was listening way longer than i wanted to. i sat on the freq for probably 20 minutes just watching where the DX station was actually coming back to before i even keyed up. everyone always says this but i never really did it properly before. the station was consistently working stations about 3-4 up from where most guys were transmitting so i just parked there and waited for a gap. second thing, and this sounds dumb but it worked, i dropped my power a bit. i run an amp and i turned it back to maybe 400w instead of the full legal. my theory is the AGC on the DX end was getting hammered by all the big guns and a slightly cleaner signal at lower power actually stood out. no idea if thats real or i just got lucky with timing. also split technique matters so much more than i thought. i was always too close to the DX. started throwing my TX up 8-10 khz instead of the usual 2-3 everyone else does and got picked up on the second call. could be coincidence but im going to keep doing it. anyway just sharing because its been a long time coming and wanted to post when the details were still fresh. curious if anyone else has found counterintuitive stuff that actually works.

yeah the rate drop is totally normal when you're starting SO2R, honestly expected it to take me about 5-6 serious contests before i stopped feeling like i was patting my head and rubbing my stomach at the same time. the audio thing is interesting though — i went through the same thing with hard L/R panning and hated it. what worked for me was putting the run radio at maybe 60% center and the S&P radio panned maybe 30% to one side, not hard pan. that way your brain starts to associate direction with priority without getting overwhelmed. some guys swear by mono but i feel like you lose the ability to split your attention that way. the bigger thing honestly is setting up N1MM or whatever logger you're using so the SO2R automation is doing as much work as possible. if you're manually switching focus between the two radios you're burning cycles that should be going into the exchange. let the macros and the keyer handle the CQ timing on radio 1 while you tune radio 2 in between. once that becomes muscle memory the rate starts to come back up and then some

i had almost the exact same issue with my first dipole, spent like two weekends messing with it. ended up being that my coax was acting like part of the antenna because i didnt have a choke or anything at the feedpoint. threw a few ferrite beads on the coax near the connector and the SWR dropped almost a full point. common mode current on the shield is sneaky and the MFJ wont tell you thats happening, it just shows you a weird SWR curve that doesnt respond to trimming the way you'd expect. might be worth trying before you start cutting more wire off

yeah 10m has been fantastic, worked a ZL station last Thursday afternoon just completely out of nowhere, called twice and he came right back. been licensed since 1987 and there's still something about a good 10m opening that just doesn't get old. the higher bands during a solar peak are just magic. on the Icom thing, i saw the same chatter, one guy on eHam was saying its going to be priced around the IC-7300 range but with some updated DSP and maybe a built in tuner that actually works decently. take it with a grain of salt but if true that would be a solid move on their part. the 7300 has been the default recommendation for new hams for so long now that a refresh would probably shake things up a bit. Yaesu has been quiet too which is unusual for them going into Hamvention season.

i was in the exact same spot maybe two years ago and what finally clicked for me was just picking one app and sticking with it instead of bouncing around. i used morse toad for a while and then switched to the ham morse app, both are fine but switching constantly just resets your brain i think. the other thing that helped me weirdly was just tapping along to stuff while watching tv, like just tapping out letters of words i saw on screen. feels dumb but it builds the muscle memory. im still not fast by any means, maybe 10wpm on a good day copying, but i had my first actual on-air cw contact about four months in so it does happen

yeah grounding on ugly construction can be a real nightmare, i went through the exact same thing on a 20m DC rx i built maybe three years ago. what helped me more than anything was basically treating the whole ground plane as a single star point and running individual ground returns back to one spot instead of just hoping the copper board ties everything together. also if your LO isnt shielded thats almost certainly contributing, even a little tin can soldered around it makes a huge difference, i used an altoids tin once and it worked fine. the TL072 should be okay for that application, its a bit noisy compared to something like an NE5532 but shouldnt be that bad. id look at your power supply decoupling first honestly, a big electrolytic right at the board plus some 0.1uf caps at each IC and see if that cleans things up before you start tearing into the RF side

not a dumb question at all, this trips up a lot of new generals. so the short version is the FCC allocations are the legal limits and the band plan is more of a gentlemans agreement on top of that. for 40m as a general you can do phone from 7.175 up to 7.300, and CW/data down below that. the band edge thing your elmer mentioned is a real concern though — the issue is that your transmitted signal has sidebands and if you tune right to 7.300 your upper sideband is actually going out above the edge which puts you outside your allocation. most people say stay at least 3 khz inside the edge to be safe, some say more depending on how clean your rig is. the voices you hear that seem to be in the wrong place might be extra or amateur extra class ops who have a wider chunk of the band than generals do, they can go lower on phone for example.