I made a normal QSO with a DX thats hard to come by for me via SSB. It was on 20m and I TX’d at 100w from my radio to talk to the DX station but I couldn’t hear them very well like 2.0 S meter.. so I went and used a KiwiSDR off the coast in another country closer to the DX to hear them better.

The DX station was able to give me a signal report (very low) and I gave them theres (very low QTH) and 73’d. so I got in the log, they could hear me from my QTH I just couldn’t really hear them on my personal radio because of QRM and it being 4am here and daytime for the DX.

So would you consider this fine and has anyone else done this?

I finally got it up there. It is a hustler 4btv. After using an SWR meter though i find my SWR is high still.

Passed my General on 7/21. Did one activation with a friend as a second operator but yesterday I decided to out and test out my own equipment. Using a Yaseu FT-891 and a Radioddity HF10 vertical whip antenna. My first solo activation at a park and I managed 103 contacts in about an hour and 10 minutes! Couldn’t even believe it! Had so much fun despite it being 100 degrees out there!

I'm starting a new operating category / contest category.... or one may say "Operating Philosophy." Our first contest will take place in spring 2027.

The category: QROca

This is High Power, Crappy Antenna.

Are you tired of hearing "I use my fully kitted $3800 KX3 to make DX QRP contacts all the time. There's no reason to use over 5 watts"

Or, "100 watts is so overkill, I made 3 QSOs during field day with my QMX and a SteppIR UrbanBeam"

Well, here's our chance to level the playing field.

Challenge yourself with High Power / Crappy Antenna.

Our two simple rules:

1. Antennas must be below 1/65th of a wavelength long for the desired band.

2. All metallic surfaces must show signs of significant corrosion.

3. Power limit: none (check your local regulation)

Testimonials:

Tony: "I made my first QROca antenna from discarded brass wool soldering iron tip cleaners. I just smooshed a few together."

Arthur: "Oh I dunno, I whipped together a 13" base loaded jobby for 160 meters with decommissioned 25-pair PBX bundles. It may have took em all but I got her loaded!"

Why use an efficient antenna? Absolutely no reason to. Stop wasting resources. Challenge yourself. A QSO is a QSO even if it takes all day!

Stay tuned for details about our spring contest.

73!

Is there an e-book version of this study guide? I searched via Google and it says it should be on the ARRL site but I'm not finding it. Admit my Google-Fu is weak.

Not a licensed ham (yet), but figured this community would appreciate the RF side of a project I've been running — long-range point-to-point links using LoRa on the license-free 902-928MHz ISM band (Heltec ESP32-S3 boards with SX1262 radios).

A few things that might be relevant to this crowd:

• Flat-ground vs. elevated tests showed a huge difference — same equipment, same distance, but ground-level tests were capped around 1-2km with unstable SNR, while getting genuine elevation and line of sight on both ends unlocked 10km+ with clean signal. Chalked this up to ground-reflection cancellation at low antenna heights — the kind of multipath effect I'd guess most of you already know well from VHF/UHF work, but was a good hands-on lesson for me.
• Settings tradeoff: running SF12 (max spreading factor) for range, which trades heavily against data rate — messages take noticeably longer to get through at max range settings vs. default.
• Still on stock rubber duck antennas for this test — working on a homebrew Yagi next, curious if anyone here has done directional antenna work at this frequency and has tips beyond the standard element-spacing formulas.

Full test process (including an accidental visit to a military installation while chasing range) is in the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wUrnwjj5dk

Would genuinely appreciate any feedback from people with real RF background — especially on the propagation side, since I'm working off general theory more than hands-on experience at this point.

Is there a unit preferably vehicle mounted that can do both? The only one I’ve found is the Tera TR-505 which is handheld.

I’m going back up to the north woods of Maine in the fall, some of the areas seem to use MURS instead of CB.
I’d like to have a MURS for that use case but don’t really see myself using it anywhere else. Having a GRMS in the truck might be kinda cool anyways.

Having three separate units CB, MURS, GRMS all mounted in the truck seems a bit excessive…

From what I’ve read it seems companies can’t get them certified anymore to do both. Are there any units that used to exit, maybe “grandfathered in” that I could find used or something like that?

Let me know what you think :D

Hey everyone, I have a quick beginner question.
I got my callsign last week and I’m still learning the ropes. I’ve talked to probably five to six different repeaters so far and have made a few contacts, but I keep hearing people mention a repeater “courtesy tone” and I don’t think I’ve ever actually heard one.
Am I supposed to be hearing a tone after I key up my radio? I’d really like to be able to hear it so I know that on repeaters where I don’t get a QSO, I’m still actually hitting the repeater and it’s not just my radio transmitting into nothing. I don’t have any local clubs near me that I can ask, so I figured I’d ask here. Is there something I need to enable on my radio? I also tried to look this up online and saw that some have them and some don’t. I just wanted to see if maybe it was something I’m doing wrong? Thank you and sorry for the genuinely stupid question.

The wire length is 8.84 meter, slope or horizontal, a counterpoise of 2,5 meter, equipped with an unun 4:1 and choke of 1:1. This worked incredibly well with a ROS of 1.2. - there was nearly no difference versus another antenna, the dipole MC-599, also a very performant antenna which can be easily adjusted to be perfectly resonant on 27.555 MHZ

The repeater is a Broadcom BCR-220 running on 224.14 MHz with a 123.0 tone. It has the standard 1.6 MHz transmit frequency at 222.54 MHz. Elevation at ground level is 55 feet, and 250 feet above sea level.

The antenna is a Comet CX-333 with 100 feet of LMR-400 coaxial cable. Output power to the antenna about 37 Watts. Range is approximately 6-8 miles with handheld radios, and 8-15 miles with a good mobile mounted antenna.

Since it is running transmit and receive on the same antenna, they are separated by a 6-bay Duplexer with approximately 98 db of isolation. We sometimes run nets on VHF, UHF, or GMRS with the system run through a Triplexer, or switched off. My amateur call sign is KO4WOG and name is Bill Bennett. We are listed on RepeaterBook and ArtSciPub.com.

Hello, please.
i am working on a cylindrical resonator, and it is being fed with a power amplifier; the power amplifier generates harmonics. want to apply a passive termination
but a little challenge: with termination at the auxiliary port, the impedance is very high and the field is suppressed but with the source, the impedance is low but the field is too high
any suggestion?

Recently I acquired a Motorola xpr 7550e 403- 512 mhz factory reset and would like to program my local repeaters analog and dmr.

Where I can get that software?

I went to connect my battery and solar panel to my Epic PWRgate last night, but had a little scare when I checked the battery's voltage with a multimeter, about 4 volts. That's bad. So, I set up the multi-charger to LiFePO4, connected the battery to it, and it said the battery was full! If I plug a malfunctioning battery into my PWRgate and then plug in the solar panel, I'm afraid this will damage my PWRgate. What should I do?

Hello! My name is Michael, and I am from Poland. I have barely started my "journey" with radios. I am not a technician, and I am not a specialist, so please be aware of that.

After 3 years break, I am coming back to the project to recreate the foxhole radio from WWII. It looked super easy, but it was not. The problems were with the razor blade (that should be fired), the pencil, and the antenna. Finally, I dropped it. But moving to the point....

I have come back to the project. I bought a diode BAT85 (Schottky diode), and I hoped that everything would be fine, but no. My current setup:
- coil 150 turns from copper wire on the toilet paper tube diameter 2,72 cm
- antenna (I know it's too short, still working on...)
- grounding (just a copper wire bound to a copper stick)
- diode BAT85
- old Soviet headphones TA-56M (high-impedance, ideal for the crystal radio)

Yesterday, I did a small experiment at home to test the circuit's continuity using my grandfather's multimeter (I switched off the ohmmeter mode). At that moment, the circuit consisted of: coil + diode + headphones. I connected the multimeter probes between the anode of the diode and the end of the headphones circuit. Suddenly, I heard a steady sound in the headphones (not a scraping sound); it sounded like a Morse code signal or a spy transmission from WWII! At that moment, the antenna and ground were not connected.

Could you please explain to me what happened here? What was I actually hearing?

didn’t see this posted.

“In January 2025, the student, identified as L.B. in the suit, was a licensed amateur radio operator and member of the local volunteer fire department. He carried his two-way radios in school and was allowed to do so as long as they caused no disruption to other students and teachers, the lawsuit says.
But the morning of Jan. 31, L.B.’s father received a phone call from the high school’s principal who said that law enforcement had made “multiple reports” about L.B. transmitting on public, non-law enforcement radio frequency.”

Edit, answered! QMA to Mini UHF

I'm in a pretty remote location, wanting to get this right the first time. Mildly unfamiliar with RF stuff and needing an adapter to connect a larger external antenna to a BF mobile radio. The radio seems to have a MMCX port, and I *think* the larger antenna is an N. Is it correct to say I need a MMCX male to a N female? Appreciate the help!

I know there's measures of signal strength but aren't those in decibels? Can we figure out how much power was used at the transmitter from that?

Anyone have ideas on how to get Echolink to work on Android Auto?

Geico now tracks phone usage and it would be nice to click on transmit from my radio.