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Blogs

Contest Joe's Amateur Radio Journey

Two Months Into CW - The Moment It Finally Clicked

If you read my post from last month about my first month of learning CW, you know I was pretty frustrated. I was drilling away with the Koch method using the trainer software every single morning before work, usually 15 or 20 minutes, sometimes longer on weekends. I was stuck around 10 words per minute and the characters just weren't sticking the way I wanted them to. I'd hear a V and think "dit dit dit dah" and by the time I'd consciously worked through that in my head, I'd already missed the
Guest
Keys, Coax, and Coffee

Finally Posting Something — A Little About My Ham Radio Journey So Far

I got my Technician license about two years ago and then upgraded to General maybe eight months after that. The upgrade was one of those things where I studied for like three weeks straight, convinced myself I was going to fail, and then actually did fine on the test. Classic anxiety spiral for nothing. I've been slowly working toward Extra but honestly life keeps getting in the way and I'm not in a huge rush. Someday. So what do I actually do on the radio? Honestly it's kind of all over the p
Guest
Signals & Solder

Finally Setting Up My First Real Shack (It's a Work in Progress)

First thing I had to deal with was a desk. I almost bought one of those cheap particle board computer desks but my husband talked me out of it, which was the right call. We ended up finding a solid-core door at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore for twelve dollars. Threw some basic metal legs on it and now I have a desk that's about 30 inches deep and six feet wide. That depth is something I did not know I needed until I had it. There's actually room to spread out the manual, have the radio, a not
Guest
Grounded in RF

My First Real DX Contact and What the Bands Taught Me

That changed about six weeks ago and I'm still kind of processing it, which is part of why I wanted to write this down somewhere. I'd been watching the propagation forecasts more seriously over the past couple months. I downloaded a couple of apps, started checking the solar flux index every morning like some people check the weather, and generally started paying attention to what the bands were actually doing rather than just tuning around and wondering why I wasn't hearing much. The SFI had
Guest
Rebecca's Radio Adventures

Finally Tackled the Feed Line Mess — Upgrading to LMR-400

The final straw was when I started noticing my signal reports on 20m were consistently a little soft. Not terrible, but guys on the other end would say things like "you're Q5 but a bit down compared to others." And I knew my antenna was decent. I'd modeled it, I'd trimmed it, the SWR at the radio was reasonable. But something felt off and I kept coming back to that sad, weathered collection of coax running from my shack window out to the fence post and up to the antenna. So I finally ordered a
Guest
Susan's Radio Adventures

My First POTA Activation (It Did Not Go Perfectly and That's Okay)

The park I chose is a small state recreation area, nothing dramatic, but it qualified for the Parks on the Air program and more importantly it's close enough that if everything went wrong I wasn't stranded somewhere two hours from home. I pulled into the parking lot around nine in the morning thinking I'd have plenty of time to get set up before the bands got too noisy. What I Brought (And What I Forgot) My radio for this was a Xiegu G90 running at 20 watts. I know a lot of POTA folks go ful
Guest
Emily Talks Radio

My First Real DX Contact and What I Learned About Propagation the Hard Way

I made my first real DX contact. Like, not just a domestic contact that happens to be far away. An actual across-the-ocean, different-continent, holy-cow-did-that-just-happen contact. I'm still kind of buzzing about it. The Setup (Such As It Is) I should explain what I'm working with so this makes sense. My station is pretty modest. I've got a used mid-range HF transceiver that I picked up locally, running about 80 watts, and my antenna is a 40-meter dipole that I hung between two trees in m
Guest
Contest Joe's Amateur Radio Journey

The Humbling Experience of Learning CW - My First Month

I started with one of those popular computer programs that everyone recommends. You know the type - starts you off with individual letters at 5 WPM, builds up from there. Seemed logical enough. The first week went pretty well. I was feeling confident recognizing A, B, C, and the handful of other letters I'd learned. Dah-dit, dit-dah-dit, dah-dit-dit. Easy enough, right? Reality Check Number One Then I tried listening to actual CW on 40 meters during prime time. Holy cow. What I heard sounded
Guest
Diana's Ham Radio Journey

Finally Got My First Real HF Rig - Yaesu FT-891 Setup

The FT-891 arrived yesterday and I spent most of the evening getting it set up. I have to say, coming from the simple world of VHF/UHF repeaters, this thing is pretty intimidating! So many buttons, menus, and settings. The manual is thick enough to use as a doorstop. Why I Chose the FT-891 I went back and forth between several radios for weeks. The IC-7300 kept coming up in reviews as the gold standard for new HF operators, but honestly it was just out of my budget range. The FT-891 seemed l
Guest
Mike's Mobile QRP Adventures

First POTA Activation - Lessons from a Frozen Park

I picked a local state park about 45 minutes from home that I knew would be mostly empty on a cold February weekday. The temperature was hovering around 28 degrees, but I figured that would just make it more authentic, right? Famous last words. The Setup My portable kit is pretty basic - a 20-watt QRP transceiver, a 29-foot end-fed half wave antenna, and a small 7Ah sealed lead acid battery. I also brought along a folding table, a camp chair, and what I thought was adequate cold weather gear
Guest
Sarah's Ham Radio Journey

Finally Got My First Real Shack Set Up - What a Learning Experience!

When I first got my license back in February, I was so excited to get on the air that I immediately bought a Baofeng UV-5R and started hitting the local repeaters. That was fun for a while, but I kept hearing about HF and all the amazing contacts people were making around the world. The problem was, I had absolutely no idea where to begin with putting together an HF station. The Research Phase (aka Going Down the Rabbit Hole) I spent weeks watching YouTube videos, reading forums, and asking
Guest

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