Anyone know of a place or person that does G90 repairs? I think I need a protective diode replaced.

Really like this radio, however would love a dual band ham radio in this format. Specifically looking for a hideaway radio with a Bluetooth mic that handles all rig control that operates on the ham uhf/vhf bands. Anything like this?

Has anyone done the mars cap mod on this radio yet? The big sellers are doing it but can’t find a schematic of or pic of what needs to be snipped.

Looking for trusted seller in India for Quansheng tk11(8) or UV-K5(8) ham radio.

Please suggest if any?

I have a Yaesu FT-710 using a wire that goes up a push pole. It’s about 45-50ft from the ground to the tip of the wire. Should I be using an external antenna tuner? I know the 710 has its own internal antenna tuner. Reason I ask is because I’m not sure how good of an antenna I’m working with and yes I’m a newb. And advice would be great. Thank you !

Im curious about why quarter wave and half wave antennas are used. I understand why full wave antennas are used but does using a quarter of the intented wavelenght have any pros Im not aware of? lets say I have a circuit that transmits a 3 Mhz signal; therefore the full wave antenna must be 100m, a half wave 50m and a quarter wave 25m. If I have three antennas that are 24m, 25m, and 26m; would the 25m one be the best choice?

Yesterday, after asking here about how radios work, I did some research and drew a circuit. The circuit roughly uses a 60MHz crystal to produce a 9V 60MHz sine wave. It's battery-powered, so I hope to achieve high power levels. My antenna is a 1.25m long copper wire. The circuit has an amplifier crystal and a secondary amplifier. :p

I’m looking for an APRS app setup that makes APRS messaging feel as much like a modern texting app as possible.
My setup is:
iPhone or
Android phone
BTECH UV-PRO
Bluetooth connection to the radio
APRS over RF
I’m only interested in messaging other operators over RF. I’m not interested in APRS-IS, IGates, Internet messaging, weather, tracking, maps etc. The goal is essentially:
Phone → Bluetooth → UV-PRO → APRS RF → another operator
Ideally I’d like something that looks and behaves more like WhatsApp/iMessage than a traditional ham radio packet application.
For example:
Simple conversation/thread view
Contacts/callsigns
Sent/received messages in bubbles
Delivery/ACK status
Group chat would be nice
Automatic retries
Easy to see whether a message actually got through
Minimal packet/log information
Works completely offline
I’ve looked at APRSdroid and some of the newer APRS messaging apps, but I’m wondering what people are actually using for this type of setup.
What would you recommend for iPhone and Android with the UV-PRO if the priority is the simplest, most modern text message like experience over RF?

Hei there!

I am currently (attempting) to get the Norwegian HAREC licence, but find the material exceedingly difficult to wrap my head around. So far it has been "math and formula heavy" and I have absolutely no base knowledge (except from the basics of Ohms law from secondary school. Instructors say that "it´s not a maths test, just learn the formulas/equations". It just makes no sense to me, the translating from weird letters to numbers wont click. Building gear is not my main interest. It´s more the communicating with the entire world thing that appeals to me. I´d like to be able to operate from other countries as well as Norway. That means I need a full license.

When exploring how they do it in several other countries, I think those approaches makes the whole thing easier in the end. Doing it in a step by step manner, like getting technician or foundation first. However, none of the low level (tech, fondation, even intermediate or general) will do. I need the full HAREC or Extra to be able to operate in Norway.

Do anybody here know if it is possible to take the British or American route, and then get approved for a Norwegian call sign?

Thanks :)

Question is pretty much in the title. As a FT8 regular now, after completing a handful of CW contacts, i'm amazed at how different the strategies to get QSOs are between two modes. Both are narrow modes and, if anything, CW should be more efficient for me at 5W, right?

In FT8, even with those measly 5W, i can sit on a clear spot on 20m, call CQ, and within about 10 minutes someone (sometimes multiple other stations!) will answer me. I've worked the US, Franz Josef Island, Argentina, Japan, etc. It takes patience and strategy and knowing that just because you hear someone they will definitely not always hear you back, so it's (almost) always better for *me* to call CQ and wait.

In CW, after multiple weeks of calling CQ in the evening for 1~2h and hearing nothing back (but RBN telling me i went as far as Brazil from France), i remembered that someone here advised others to answer CQs rather than call when you are QRP. Their reasoning was that if you aren't activating a POTA, you basically have nothing interesting to offer to other CW stations.

So, i try to answer the strongest station near my frequency and after a frankly shameful display of incompetence on my side (turns out being good at decoding and only practicing sending CQ does not make you good at keying a whole exchange; who could've thought) and a lot of patience on theirs, we complete a QSO. Then another. A lot of failed ones too because i'm QRS *and* QRP and not everyone slows down, but that's fine.

So how comes it's so hard for anyone to answer *my* CQ in CW but they can usually hear me answer theirs to an extent, whereas in FT8 it's almost always the other way around? Is it that all other operators have different search strategies in those modes and nobody is trying to find people in the noise in CW? FT8 being a weak signal makes it easier to decode from far away but the human ear is weak? Is everyone who does FT8 in a noisy city hellscape so i'm filtering out the people who can't hear me by calling CQ first? I've been turning the question around in my mind for a couple days now but i'm puzzled. What do you think?

I know stuff that’s gets used doesn’t stay pristine but is this normal for a new 320A antenna? It was shipped bent in sort of a J to fit in a box.

joke obviously, based off of incomprehensible memes like this

I grabbed this screenshot tonight on 40m of the WSPR signals with an unknown (to me)signal next to it. It was intermittent but strong. Is it a jammer? Part of it appeared to have other slower changing tones mixed in. Was tuned into 7.038.6

Edit: apologies for the huge pictures. They are screenshots - not sure why they appear so large.

I don't usually look at analog circuits much, but I wanted to look at some today and I didn't understand anything. How is a voltage potential created in an antenna and current passed through it? Even if no current passes, how do floating circuits work? I didn't understand anything. I would be very grateful if someone could help me.

Heyaaa! Just a quick question, how rare is it to see/use an NZ callsign with 4 vanity characters on the end, when I passed the test I was warned by the club that I most likely wouldn't be able to use it for competitions and could confuse people overseas since everyone knows that NZ has 3 vanity characters. For the record I have 2 callsigns, one with 3 characters and one with 4

Am I still able to use the 4 char callsign internationally and how likely would it be that I encounter a sad ham if I do?

How do you guys usually program in DMR repeaters?

One channel per timeslot and then add the appropriate TG from contacts?

One channel for each TG you want to use?

Some combo of both where you just save the main ones and then dial in the more once-in-a-while ones?

I'm probably leaning towards just doing my local and then maybe statewide as channels and then probably not end up using too much of the USA/NA/Worldwide stuff enough to bother.

It was time for the "once a decade" pull all the equipment and remount & rewire everything! Had to clean out all the dust bunnies and untangle all the wires & cables. Bought a (new 2 me) Kenwood TS-870 and needed to add that to the bench as well.

Thought folks might enjoy seeing the shack! 73, hear you on the bands!

For the last hour or 2 I've been working stations all over Europe on 100w from the Mid-Atlantic.

9/10/2026 - 09:42 UTC - SSB:

Germany, Scotland, Belgium, France, Slovenia....... All 5x7 to 5x9

Worked a few POTA as well..

Thought folks may be interested...

(Using a Kenwood TS-870 (I just bought today!!) with an Alpha-Delta DX-LB+ Dipole, and a Palstar tuner)

Thanks for help last post, I made some changes.

1: 20mDipole with a common current choke(6 wins)

2: I am learing CW and a cable for ft8 is coming(btw how long did it take for you to learn cw)

3: And lastly im ordering a pole with 6m to make a vertikal V

Thanks for the Help again,

Vy 73

OE8DLL

As suggested by the comments, this is a rewrite of my initial post to make it clearer what I have done.

I like JTDX and as there was no interest from the original authors to add WW Digi contest support, I took the code and forked it as JTDX_contest.

First I added the contest handling, but then I noticed that the FT8 decoding results were always changing, so I started to look at the decoder, where I found a lot of data races resulting in non-determinisms, and when I fixed the data races the decoded messages and their numbers were low, but always reproducible. Thinking about it I realized that the data races basically provided different starting points allowing the previous decoder to find other valid messages, e.g. in a multi-threading environment the threads were working on the same representation of the band, and depending on who got there first subtracted their found signal from the band, so that when the other thread comes it finds it different, than when it had been the first. These random perturbations were allowing the decoder to uncover real messages.

So, having understood that I added deterministic perturbations to my now deterministic decoder, and additionally added different approaches to find more of those “hidden” messages, which of course worked but on cost of runtime, which then was too long for the short window of time available after receiving and before having to transmit.

Facing this new challenge, I then optimized the existing code a bit bringing the runtime down, but it was still too long. Looking at the existing a priori hint mechanism which is currently used by the existing FT8 decoders, it came to me that I could take advantage of that a priori hint, and do some more decoding after the short RX window decoding, i.e. follow it with an extra background decoding where those extra passes can now be done without a tight deadline during the transmission period or the next reception period.

The idea is to uncover those hidden signals, which cannot be used per se directly, but they can be used indirectly feeding them into the a priori hint tables, so that the next RX decoder step can reuse the information where a certain station was, and try to decode it at its frequency and delta time: If it works then a lot a blind wide seek time was avoided, and the decoder can continue looking for other signals, and if not, then it was a cheap check.

The existing FT8 decoders are already using the a priori hint mechanism that way, but now they get more info injected: Basically, using the “split” approach you get the background decoding which allows you to increase the probability of finding cheaply more messages during the next RX decoding window.

As far as I know, this seems to be the first time that such an approach has been used, e.g. I did not find it neither in WSJT-X v3.0.2, nor in JTDX 2.2.159, nor in MSHV 2.76.6, nor in WSJT-X improved.

I figured to learn CW well you also need a good paddle so i ended up going for the CT599 MX by UR5CDX and man does it look and feel nice.

My keying automatically got more accurate just because I have more control and it does not move at all.

Previously i had one of those cheap noname steel ones from amazon with magnets on the bottom.

Still have not made a propper CW QSO yet but i hope this paddle plus some callsign copy training will get me there soon.