Michael Stevens

yeah you've got the right idea basically. the allocation is the legal part — as a general you can transmit phone from 7.175 up to 7.300, everything below that on 40 is cw and digital only for you until you upgrade to extra. the band plan on top of that is just kind of a community convention, nobody's going to fine you for ignoring it but people might give you grief if you park an ssb signal in the middle of where everyone expects to find psk31 or whatever. the band edge thing is real and worth paying attention to. if youre on usb and you set your rig to 7.175 your actual transmitted signal has sidebands that extend upward from there, so technically youre fine, but if you drift or your audio is wide you could end up with part of your signal below 7.175 which would be out of band. most people just stay a few khz inside the edge to give themselves some breathing room. 7.178 or so is pretty common for that reason. listening below your privileges is totally fine by the way, receive all you want anywhere.

So I just passed my Technician exam last week (finally) and im starting to look at handheld radios. I had no idea there were this many options. I've been reading threads here for like two hours and now im more confused than when i started honestly. My main thing is I want something that can hit the local repeaters, maybe do some simplex if anyone nearby is on, and eventually I want to mess around with APRS once I figure out what that even is. Budget is somewhere around $80-150 but i could stretch a little if something is really worth it. I keep seeing the Baofeng UV-5R stuff and it's so cheap I'm suspicious of it. Then theres the Yaesu FT-65 and the Kenwood TH-D74 but that last one is way out of my budget lol. Someone at the exam session mentioned the Wouxun KG-UV9D and i wrote it down but haven't looked into it yet. Any thoughts from people who actually use these day to day? I dont want to buy something and immediately regret it.

The audio setup is a bit trickier. If all you want to do is listen and talk, then wfview does fine all by itself. For Icom rigs, wfview has much lower audio latency than traditional CAT+VoIP combinations. Worth trying if you're not locked into Kenwood.

so ive been putting off learning morse code for probably two years now and i finally just bought a cheap iambic paddle off amazon to get started. got it hooked up to my radio's keyer and i can make dits and dahs which is progress i guess but i have no idea if im actually doing this right. the main thing confusing me is the iambic mode stuff — my radio has mode A and mode B and i honestly dont know which one to use or if it even matters at this point when im only sending like 8-10 wpm. ive been watching some youtube videos and everybody seems to have a strong opinion about it but nobody really explains it for beginners. also my paddle feels kind of stiff and i keep accidentally sending extra dits when i dont mean to. is that a tension adjustment thing or just me not being used to it yet? the little screws on the side i assume are for tension but i dont want to mess something up. just trying to figure out if im on the right track before i build any bad habits. ive been using the lcwo.net site to practice receiving which seems to work pretty well so far

yeah what he said about encode vs decode is the big thing, i made that exact mistake when i first started. also some repeaters have a timeout timer so if you key up and just hold it without talking it might cut you off before you even get a word out. try keying up, wait just a tiny beat after the squelch opens, then talk. some guys also just do a quick roger beep check — key up, say your call, unkey and listen for the courtesy tone from the repeater, that tells you youre actually getting in.

honestly same, i do this all the time. my wife thinks im weird for just having static on but its not static its the BAND lol she doesnt get it. caught some good propogation last thursday around 7.250 area, couple of guys real loud from what sounded like the midwest

Check your HackRF gain settings in GQRX - try IF gain around 16-20dB and RF gain around 14dB for VHF. Also make sure you're using the correct input (no DC bias). The HackRF can work decently but needs proper configuration and possibly a good LNA for weak signal work.

so ive been a general for about two years now and i keep going back and forth on whether to bother with the extra. mostly i just do HF digital modes and some SSB on 40m and 20m, and honestly i dont feel like im missing out on a ton of frequencies that i desperately need. but the thing is i kind of want to understand more of what im actually doing, like the theory behind how the radio works and filters and all that. my buddy told me the extra exam is basically a different beast compared to general, like theres actual math and you have to understand stuff not just memorize it. is that true or is it still mostly just memorizing the question pool? i looked at a few sample questions and some of them i had no idea what they were even asking about. the ones about op-amps and filter design especially. been out of school for a long time so trig and that stuff is a little rusty anyway just curious if anyone has gone through it recently and what helped them study, or if its really as intimidating as it looks from the outside

Just passed my Tech last month using Ham Radio Prep! The feedback system really helped me identify weak areas and focus my studying. The mobile app was perfect for studying during lunch breaks. Worth the cost for the structured approach, especially if you're new to electronics concepts.

yeah i basically have the same setup you described — N1MM for contests, Log4OM for everything else. been doing it for probably two years now and honestly it works fine once you get the ADIF import dialed in. Log4OM is pretty solid for tracking confirmed QSLs and it handles LoTW sync way better than trying to do it through N1MM in non-contest mode. for WSJT-X i just have it pointed at a UDP port that Log4OM is listening on, so FT8 contacts go straight in during casual operating. when im contesting with WSJT-X i switch the UDP destination over to N1MM and then import to Log4OM after. its an extra step but takes like two minutes so i stopped caring. the duplicate checking in Log4OM is good enough that i havent had issues with doubled entries. one thing i will say — make sure you set up the Log4OM contest module if you havent, its actually more capable than it looks at first glance, but for serious contesting N1MM is still a different league in terms of how fast everything flows. the bandmap integration and the rate display alone are worth keeping it around for.

so ive been chasing this one for a couple weeks now and its driving me nuts. my ic-7300 will start out fine, full 100w on HF, sounds great, but somewhere around 5-10 minutes into a session it starts dropping output. like it'll be down to maybe 40-50w and the ALC is doing weird things, kinda spiking where it shouldnt be. no error codes on the display, fan seems to be running, nothing obviously wrong externally. first thing i did was check the SWR on the antenna side thinking maybe a connector was thermally cycling loose or something but thats all clean. reseated all the connectors i could get to on the PA board without fully stripping the rig down. didnt help. the dropout seems to happen faster if im doing digital modes vs SSB which makes me think its heat related but the fan ramps up like it should and the heatsink doesnt feel crazy hot when i pull the cover. i havent scoped anything yet, mostly because im trying to figure out where to even start. has anyone seen this specific symptom on a 7300 or even a similar icom? wondering if its the finals starting to go or maybe a bias issue that drifts with temp. i do have a service manual PDF but honestly some of the alignment sections are a bit over my head without some guidance on what to actually look for first.

congrats on the first one, 12 QSOs is totally solid especially if conditions were anything like they were here last weekend — 40m was kind of rough in the afternoon. the spot dying down quickly is pretty normal honestly, a lot of hunters are just scanning for new spots and once they work you they move on. what helps is re-spotting yourself if things slow down, you can do it through the app or just have someone spot you again. some folks do it every 20-30 minutes or if they switch bands. timing wise i find mid-morning on weekends tends to be busiest for hunters, like 9-11am local time seems to get a lot of activity. also if you can work a park that isnt activated super frequently you'll get more pile up since hunters are chasing the rarer refs. the POTA website actually shows activation counts per park so you can look that up before you go out.

Yes, this is well documented in the FUNcube telemetry archives. The crystal oscillator frequency increases as temperature drops - classic behavior. I've seen swings of nearly 20 kHz on deep winter eclipse passes.

so ive been running a remote station for about two years now using a combination of hamlib, a cheap VPS, and some port forwarding that frankly i dont fully understand anymore because i set it up drunk one night and it just worked. anyway its been mostly fine for HF but ive been looking at RemoteHams more seriously lately because a buddy of mine swears by it and says the SDR integration is actually usable now. my main question is whether anyone has actually used the RemoteHams client with a real SDR backend, like an SDRplay or an Airspy hanging off the remote end, or if most people are just using it with conventional transceivers and the audio pipe. i tried to find documentation on this but the RemoteHams site is kind of all over the place and i couldnt tell if the SDR remote stuff is a separate thing entirely or if its baked into the main client now. also curious about internet linking in this context — i have an AllStar node at the remote site already for local repeater stuff and i was wondering if anyone has tried to bridge that with a remote HF setup in any meaningful way or if thats just a terrible idea that sounds clever at 2am

Been curious about this since getting my Tech license. I know new calls are assigned sequentially based on the regional-group list for your license class and mailing address, but I'm wondering about the mechanics. Does the FCC literally just go down an alphabetical list? What happens if certain combinations are unavailable or restricted? Also heard different things about what prefixes new Techs and Generals get these days - is it still mostly K-prefix 2x3 calls for us?

dont overthink the two-program thing, lots of people do it. i actually just use N1MM for everything contest related including FT8 contests and then dump it all into my main log after. the UDP stuff with WSJT-X isnt that bad, theres a decent writeup on the N1MM wiki that walks through it step by step. Log4OM is great software but yeah for a fast CW contest it does feel a little heavy if that makes sense.

yeah the latency thing is real and it basically comes down to which cluster nodes the tool is connecting to. DXwatch aggregates from a bunch of sources but there's still propagation delay through the network — not radio propagation, just the data hopping around between cluster nodes before it gets to the web interface. some spots have to touch 3 or 4 nodes before they end up on a site you can see. what i do is run a direct telnet connection to a local cluster node in Ham Radio Deluxe or even just a raw telnet session when im actively hunting something specific. that gets you the raw spot stream with basically zero extra latency compared to a website that might be polling every 30 or 60 seconds. for casual browsing DXwatch is totally fine but when you need to move fast the direct connection makes a real difference. AR Cluster or CC Cluster nodes, whatever one is geographically close to you tends to be a bit snappier in my experience.

During contests, I've noticed that when using the standardized alphabet, a DL station that pronounces Whiskey as "Viskey" is easily understood. It's this consistency that minimizes misunderstandings due to accents or conditions. The key is using the standard words even if your accent changes the pronunciation slightly.

yeah 40 has been pretty decent in the evenings lately, had a nice qso with a guy in ohio last week just totally random, he was running like 50 watts into a dipole and sounded great here in colorado. those kind of contacts are honestly more fun to me than the big pileups half the time

so ive been messing around with ISS APRS and some of the FM birds for a while now and figured id finally try one of the linear transponder sats, specifically AO-73 since its supposed to be pretty active. got a yagi setup outside, nothing fancy, just a handheld yagi for 2m and a second one for 70cm and im manually pointing them which is already a pain but whatever. the doppler thing is killing me though. i understand the concept, frequency shifts as the bird comes toward you and then goes away, fine. but in practice when im tuned to where i think the downlink should be i either hear nothing or i hear like a sliver of a signal that disappears immediately. im using gpredict on the laptop to track it and it shows me the doppler corrected frequencies but i dont fully understand if i should be adjusting my TX or my RX or both as it passes. my radio is a FT-818 paired with a cheap SDR for receive, thinking maybe that combo is making it more complicated than it needs to be. anyone whos done this before, what did your first few passes actually look like in terms of what you were doing with the dial? like step by step almost. i know thats asking a lot but im really struggling to picture it.

When you load WSJT from within N1MM it uses a totally different settings file so you need to setup your settings with it running from within N1MM. Also verify For some radios, such as the Icom IC-7300, that use USB-D, the setting in the Mode Control screen for PSK will be "AFSK-R" in the Mode Control tab.

CQ WW is fun but honestly it might be a little overwhelming as your very first solo contest just because the exchange has the zone numbers in it and if you dont already know your CQ zones it slows you down a lot at first. Sweepstakes has that long exchange too which trips people up. if i were pointing a new person at something i'd probably say look at the ARRL November Sweepstakes Phone first just because the US and Canada focus means you're not getting buried under a pile of european stations at 3am, or honestly the 10m contest in december is great for newer folks when the band is open because it's simple exchange and 10m can be wild during a good solar flux period. but really just pick one and jump in, theres no wrong answer. you'll make mistakes and feel lost and thats totally normal, everyone does. and yeah SOTA is a different world, its more about portable activating summits and the points system, not really a contest in the traditional sense though some people do chase it hard during special events. worth exploring later once you get the contesting bug out of your system, or maybe it'll scratch a different itch entirely.

Having intermittent noise spikes with my RTL-SDR Blog V4 when using the built-in bias tee to power an external LNA on HF bands. The bias tee is enabled on GPIO PIN 0 but I'm getting broadband hash that comes and goes. Anyone else experienced this? Setup: RTL-SDR V4 -> Ham It Up upconverter -> Nooelec LNA4ALL -> random wire antenna. The V4 is based on the R828D and has a built-in upconverter so I may have redundant upconversion happening. Using SDR# with 2.4MHz bandwidth and standard gain settings. Should I disable the internal upconverter when using external upconverter? Any specific bias voltage specs I should check?

so ive been interested in ham radio for a while now, my neighbor is licensed and he keeps telling me to just go get my ticket already. i finally decided to actually do it but honestly i dont even know where to begin. like do i need to memorize all the questions or is there some actual learning involved? i heard the question pool is public but i dont really understand what that means. also how hard is the test actually, i work full time and dont have a ton of time to study. any advice would be helpful i guess

honestly i just use N1MM for everything and stopped fighting it. took maybe a week to get used to the interface and now it doesnt bother me. the contest modules are obviously great but for regular logging it works fine too, you just ignore most of the contest-specific fields. the WSJT-X integration is solid as well since you can pipe it directly into N1MM if thats your main logger. i get that some people dont like the look of it but ive never had a sync problem because theres only one log