Jennifer Walsh53

just to add one thing — if youre still not getting into the repeater after setting the tone, double check you have the offset right. most 2m repeaters are plus or minus 600 kHz and if your radio is set to simplex or the wrong offset direction youll transmit on the wrong frequency and the repeater just wont hear you at all. i spent like two days debugging a tone issue once and it turned out i just had the offset backwards lol. easy fix but easy to miss.

your friend isnt entirely wrong tbh, a lot of people do pass just by pattern matching the answers and theres nothing wrong with that to get your foot in the door. the license is really just the beginning anyway, the real learning happens on the air. dont stress too much about fully understanding every single question in the pool before your exam date. one thing i'd say is pay attention to the RF safety questions because there seem to be more of them than people expect and they tripped up a couple guys at our club's recent license session. also anything about repeater operations since thats probably what youll be using most as a new tech. good luck with it, its really not that hard once you just commit to sitting down and going through it

honestly the technician exam is way easier than most people expect, dont psych yourself out. theres 35 questions pulled from a pool of like 400 or so and you need 26 right to pass. the math is pretty minimal, mostly just ohms law stuff and even then theres only a handful of those questions on the actual test. what worked for me was just using hamstudy.org every day for like 2 weeks, maybe 20-30 minutes at a time. it shows you the actual question pool and tracks which ones you keep getting wrong. by the time i was consistently scoring above 80% on the practice tests i figured i was ready and i passed no problem. some people use the Gordon West book or the ARRL technician manual if they want more explanation behind the answers, but honestly just drilling the question pool got me through it fine. the test isnt really about deep understanding, its more about recognizing the right answer. find a local club near you too, they usually run testing sessions pretty regularly and some even do free license classes on weekends. way less intimidating than you think

so ive been putting this off for like two years but finally cracked open the 857D last weekend to do the extended TX mod. you know the one, mars/cap mod, just pulling the diode on the main board. straightforward enough if youve done any rig surgery before but there were a couple things that caught me off guard that i figured id post about since the writeups i found online were a little vague on certain steps. first thing is the board in mine (i have a later production unit, not sure exactly when it was made but the serial puts it somewhere around 2011 or so) had the diode in a slightly different spot than the photos i was working from. not drastically different but enough that i was poking around in there longer than i should have been. if you have a later unit double check before you go snipping anything. second thing, and this is the one that almost got me, the ribbon cable on the front panel is way more fragile than it looks. i disconnected it fine going in but clipping it back i felt it snag just slightly and spent a good 20 minutes convincing myself i hadnt damaged it. ended up being fine but just go slow on that part. everything powers up and works normally now, no issues on the ham bands and the wider TX is doing what its supposed to do. just sharing in case anybody else is about to go down this road.

yeah what he said about LOTW. i was in the same boat when i started chasing DXCC and i kept thinking it was more automated than it is lol. you basically have to go in and submit when youre ready to claim the award. the credits just sit there until you do one thing i'd add — grab the DX spotting clusters if you havent already, like DXSummit or DX Watch, it makes finding new entities way less random. thats how i found out about a rare one from the south atlantic last spring and managed to get in the pileup. didnt work out that time but still. just having that running in the background while youre at the shack changes everything

honestly just do it, the General exam is not that bad. i was in the same boat about two years ago, zero electronics background, and i used HamStudy.org basically every day on my lunch break for maybe three weeks and passed on the first try. the electrical theory stuff looks scary but the question pool is finite so you can just brute force memorize a lot of it and get by fine. understanding it helps but its not strictly required to pass. as for whether to get the license before the gear, yeah definitely get the license first. no point dropping money on an HF rig if something comes up and you dont follow through on the exam. and once you have General you can actually listen to the bands on a cheap SDR or something while you save up for a real radio. 40 meters especially is pretty active and you'll want to be able to transmit and join in sooner or later, its way more interesting than just listening

nice work man, i did my first one earlier this year and got totally hooked. theres something about operating from a real park reference that makes the contacts feel more meaningful than just sitting in the shack yknow. i was running a similar setup, kx2 into an efhw and it did the job fine. the pile ups when you first spot yourself are kinda wild if youve never experienced it before lol dont stress too much about the submission process, just take your time reading the wwff.net instructions once and it clicks pretty fast

I went last year for the first time and honestly had no idea what half the stuff even was lol. picked up some coax connectors and a book. is there usually a license testing session at these things? someone at my club mentioned it but I wasnt sure if that was just for certain hamfests

okay so i just passed my technician exam like three weeks ago and ive been trying to figure out exactly what im allowed to do. i understand i have HF privileges on 10m and some other bands but every time i try to read the actual Part 97 rules my eyes glaze over. the FCC document is written in such a weird legal way that i cant tell if im reading it right. specifically im confused about the phone privileges. i thought techs could do SSB on 10m but my buddy said something about only certain frequencies and i dont want to accidentally transmit somewhere i shouldnt. is there a plain english version of this somewhere or does someone just want to explain it to me like im five

this is exactly why i got my ticket lol. nobody tells you that just listening is half the hobby. i was so focused on passing the test and getting on the air that i didnt realize how much of it is just... vibing honestly

the birdie thing is almost certainly a grounding issue or you've got a tiny solder bridge you missed. happened to me on a 7000 years ago after i replaced a cap near the IF stage, took me forever to find it because it was only visible under magnification. get yourself a loupe or a decent USB microscope if you dont have one, totally worth it for this kind of work. the 7300 board is dense and icom doesn't exactly leave you a ton of margin for error in there. as for doing both mods at the same time, id honestly sort the birdie problem first before you go touching anything else. no point compounding the troubleshooting. the TX range mod is pretty benign on the 7300 and there are a ton of documented methods but clean up what you broke first, then expand from there.

generator separation absolutely helps but you need more than you think. at field day a few years back we had the eu2000 (older version, same basic deal) about 30 feet from the HF station and still had some hash coming in. moved it to maybe 60 feet with the cord run along the ground and it cleared up noticeably. the other thing that made a huge difference was a common mode choke right at the rig — just wound some of the power cable through a mix31 toroid, maybe 8-9 turns. killed a lot of what was getting in on the dc side. your lifepo4 plan sounds smarter honestly if you can make the capacity work. 100ah at 12.8v nominal is what, about 1280wh theoretical, real world maybe 900-1000wh usable before you'd want to back off. at 100w out youre pulling maybe 22-25a on transmit, way less on receive. if your duty cycle is reasonable you could probably go 4-5 hours easy without touching the charger. i'd bring the honda as insurance but run off the battery primary, keep the genny away from the antenna farm and just use it to top up between nets if needed. the EFHW vs buddipole thing — i'd go EFHW without hesitation for actual HF work. buddipole is convenient but its a compromise in every direction. get the wire up as high as you can and you'll hear the difference immediately.

ok so ive been listening to a lot of HF lately and people are throwing around all these abbreviations and Q codes and i can only figure out like half of them from context. like i get QSL means confirming receipt and QTH is your location but then someone said QRM and QRN and i wasnt sure if those were the same thing or different. and whats the deal with 73 and 88, are those Q codes too or something else entirely also heard someone say QRP and assumed it meant they had a weak signal but then someone else used it to describe their radio setup so now im even more confused. is there like a master list somewhere or do people just kind of pick these up over time. been licensed about 4 months, tech currently studying for general

so ive been sitting on doing the mars/cap mod on my FT-857D for probably two years now, kept putting it off because honestly i was nervous about voiding warranty on a radio i paid decent money for. anyway the warranty is long gone at this point so i finally cracked it open last weekend. the mod itself is dead simple, just moving a couple diodes on the main board, theres a million guides online and they all basically say the same thing. took me maybe 20 minutes including the time i spent second guessing myself and triple checking which diode was which. radio came back together fine, transmits on extended ranges now no issues. but heres the thing i actually wanted to ask about — while i had the thing open i noticed the cooling situation in there is kind of grim. the fan doesnt kick on until the radio is pretty warm and on extended digital mode sessions like i do with FT8 it runs hot. has anyone swapped in a higher cfm fan or done anything to improve airflow in these? i know theres a mod floating around where you tie the fan to always on at low speed but i cant remember where i saw it and searching hasnt turned up much. the stock fan is just so loud when it does run that id almost rather have a quieter one running continuously than the on/off cycling.

ok so i've been licensed about 8 months now and i keep seeing people talk about chasing DXCC and WAS and WAZ and honestly i thought they were all kind of the same thing but they're clearly not and i'm getting confused trying to figure out which one i should even be working toward first from what i can tell WAS is just working all 50 states which seems more doable for me right now since i'm running 100 watts into a dipole in a suburban backyard, and DXCC is working 100 entities which sounds cool but i dont even know what counts as an entity vs a country because apparently they're different? like is Hawaii its own entity or is it just part of the US and then WAZ is zones and i honestly havent even started to figure that one out yet also how does lotw work with all this, do i need separate accounts or does it just track everything automatically once i start logging confirmed contacts. my elmer mentioned something about applying for credits separately for each award which sounds annoying but maybe im misunderstanding him

yeah its not actually a rule in the regulatory sense, more of a best practice that got baked into culture over decades. the reason HF folks are more consistent about it is because HF propagation is unpredictable — you might be copying someone through static and a pileup at the same time, so if they say their call is KD9 and then something that sounds like "wex" you need that W-E-X to come through unambiguous. on the local repeater where the signal is usually full quieting it honestly doesnt matter as much, everybody can hear you fine. that said i always use them for my callsign when i first ID, just habit at this point. where people get lazy is mid-QSO when they're referencing something like "go to frequency 146 point something" and they'll just rattle off numbers without phonetics, which is usually fine because numbers dont have the same ambiguity problem letters do. the real answer to your question is: use phonetics whenever there's any chance of confusion, especially for calls and names. skip them when the context is totally clear and the signal is solid. youll develop a feel for it.

oh man this was exactly my confusion when i first started too. I spent like two days thinking my HT was broken before someone explained the tone thing to me lol. one thing i'll add — some repeaters have a courtesy beep or a tail when you let go of PTT, if you hear that after you transmit then you're definitely getting into it. if you hear nothing at all after your transmission, either the tone is wrong or your signal just isn't making it there. also just a heads up some repeaters around here are linked to other systems so when you first check in you might suddenly be talking to people in like three different states which was a little surprising the first time it happened to me

the band edge thing got me once when i was fairly new. had my dial sitting right at 7300 thinking i was fine and someone came on and politely told me my upper sideband audio was splashing past the edge. kind of embarrassing but i appreciated it. most rigs will let you tune right to the edge and beyond without complaining so you really do have to think about it yourself. one thing worth knowing is some digital modes have pretty well established spots people expect them to be, like JS8 and FT8 hang out lower in the band and if you park an ssb qso right on top of that frequency youre gonna have a bad time with the locals even if its technically inside your allocation. not illegal just annoying to everyone including yourself

im kind of in the same boat honestly, maybe a little behind you at around 10-11wpm. but i heard the same advice about farnsworth and started doing that a few weeks ago and i think its helping, hard to tell yet. one thing i started doing that feels good is just listening to actual QSOs on the air even when i can only catch maybe half of what theyre saying. like just having real morse in my ears instead of computer generated practice text. W1AW sends practice broadcasts too at different speeds if you dont already know about that.

yeah same experience here when i started doing these, the logbook part confused me for a while too. one thing i'll add is make sure you hit at least 44 QSOs if you want the activation to count as a full valid activation for the reference — i think its 44 for most programs but double check the WWFF rules because i may be misremembering. also some of the hunters are really serious about collecting references so youll find the same callsigns popping up over and over once you do a few of these, kind of a fun little community within a community if that makes sense. your setup sounds great for this kind of thing, i keep meaning to try a linked dipole instead of my endfed

congrats on passing, that's great. so yeah the sequential process is basically just the FCC system handing out the next available call in your region automatically. you dont really get to pick anything with a sequential call, it just shows up in the ULS database once your license is granted. the district number thing — like the 4 in KD4 whatever — yeah it used to mean you literally lived in that region but now it really just reflects where you were when you first got licensed or sometimes just where there were available calls at the time. its not super meaningful geographically anymore for new licenses. as for vanity calls, you actually CAN apply for one right away, you dont have to wait. some people think there's a waiting period but thats not really a thing anymore. you'd go through the FCC's ULS and file a Form 605 requesting a specific available callsign. just be aware the 1x2 and 2x1 format calls — the short prestigious ones — those have eligibility requirements based on license class. as a Tech you can get a 1x3 format vanity if theres one available you like. worth looking into if you have something in mind

dude the ohio contact on 5w is awesome. i've been lurking on this forum trying to decide if i want to get into QRP before i even get my general (just have tech right now) and posts like this make me want to just go for it. how hard was the kit to build? i can solder ok but i've never done a full radio kit before, only smaller stuff like a simple audio amplifier in high school

so i've been running a TM-D710G as a fill-in digi for about 8 months now and it's been working fine but lately i noticed my packets aren't showing up on aprs.fi anymore. the radio is still digipeating locally — i can see other stations hitting off me and their icons pop up on the map — but anything i transmit myself just isn't making it to the IS. checked my path and i've got it set to WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 which should be fine right? the igate that used to pick me up is about 12 miles away, ran by W4something, and i honestly dont know if he's still on. might be the igate went down and not my setup at all. is there a way to check if a specific igate is still active without driving over there? i looked on aprs.fi and i cant tell if it's showing received packets or just the last known position. also semi-related — anyone running direwolf as a software igate on a pi? thinking about just setting one up myself at this point. my location is decent, i'm on a small hill and already have a 2m antenna up for other stuff.

have you tried just listening to actual qso recordings? like not trying to copy everything just having it on while you do something else. i dunno if thats scientifically proven or whatever but i swear it helped me get used to the rhythm of real traffic. there's some good stuff on the web, morse code ninja has a ton of free material at different speeds. his word lists at 20wpm with the long spacing helped me more than any trainer tbh

I made that jump about two years ago and honestly yeah the difference on HF is real. The dynamic range on the RSP1A is noticeably better — you stop getting that weird intermod garbage when a strong AM broadcast station is nearby. With the RTL and the Ham It Up I always had this kind of fuzzy noise floor and strong signals would kind of bleed into adjacent channels. The SDRplay cleaned a lot of that up. That said your antenna is gonna limit you more than the hardware at some point. A 40 foot random wire is fine but if you havent got any kind of common mode choke or feedline filtering you might just be pulling noise in from the house wiring. I'd honestly say try to sort the antenna side a bit first, but if you can stretch the budget the RSP1A is worth it. SDRuno is a bit clunky but you can use it with SDR# or HDSDR with the right plugin and that helps a lot.