Passed my technician exam

[WRYZ926]

49 minutes ago, AdmiralCochrane said:

I found out I could get rebuilt Aouye soldering stations cheap. 

How are those compared to Weller and Hako soldering stations? 

I know those two are pretty much the go to for most hobbyists and repair shops that only use a soldering station occasionally.

[SteveShannon]

1 hour ago, WRYZ926 said:

How are those compared to Weller and Hako soldering stations? 

I know those two are pretty much the go to for most hobbyists and repair shops that only use a soldering station occasionally.

I have an Aoyue SMT hot air rework station.  It works, but it’s big and clunky.  The only reason I got it instead of something else was because it was cheap.  I mean really cheap.

[Jaay]

22 hours ago, SteveShannon said:

N9ZAS?

Yes SIR ! 

[SteveShannon]

6 minutes ago, Jaay said:

Yes SIR ! 

I’ll add you to Buddy Watch Alert.  I’m AI7KS.

Okay, if I see you’re on the air when I’m on the air I’ll call you.

[Jaay]

1 minute ago, SteveShannon said:

I’ll add you to Buddy Watch Alert.  I’m AI7KS.

Gotcha ! I'll keep my ears open for your call ! 

[AdmiralCochrane]

10 hours ago, SteveShannon said:

I have an Aoyue SMT hot air rework station.  It works, but it’s big and clunky.  The only reason I got it instead of something else was because it was cheap.  I mean really cheap.

Yes, it's clunky.  Same reason for purchase.

[hxpx]

Alright, I passed my general, so now I can talk to anonymous men across the country instead of just anonymous men in my area.
 

 

On 5/28/2025 at 7:48 PM, hxpx said:

I've been listening to the old dudes on the local GMRS repeater talk about french onion soup and basketball (separate conversations) for too long and decided I need different soup conversations*, so I took my technician exam today. Got 33/35. Thanks, hamstudy.org!

Since I don't have an HF rig yet, I hopped on someone's public KiwiSDR and started poking through the 40m/80m bands and heard... old dudes talking about soup. I can't get away from it. Apparently radios are meant for soup chat.

[marcspaz]

My two favorite HF radios for newer operators and for people who aren't DX contest junkies are the Yaesu FT-991A and the iCom IC-7300.  The Yaesu includes 160m through 70cm (all bands, all modes) and the IC-7300 covers 160m to 6m (all bands, all modes).

 

My personal opinion, the IC-7300 has much better receive sensitivity, but it is more prone to interference because of it.  It is almost impossible to use in a group for things like contests or Field Day, but its great if you typically use it at home or with no other operators around.

 

The FT-991A is truly a "Shack in a Box".  Good at everything, not great at anything.  If you have any interest in 2m or 70cm SSB, its a good choice and one of the few "new" radios that support it.  Otherwise you are paying original retail or more for used radios that have been discontinued a decade or more.  For example, I have an IC-7000 that was discontinued in 2014.  Last known retail price when on sale was $900 from HRO.  They are for sale today for between $900 and $1,100 depending on if they have the head separation kit or not.

[WRYZ926]

Band pass filters are a must when operating multiple HF radios in close proximity to each other. We use them in our trailer for field day with good results. A few of us even use them on POTA if there are 2 or more people close to each other. 

[marcspaz]

They don't help with the IC-7300.  If there was a radio within a half mile pushing more than 1w and they were on a frequency below me, I couldn't hear anything but that radio.

I made two for 20m and ended up buying a third that was a high dollar commercially made and none of them worked.  I ever skipped a patch cable and used a double male barrel connector direct to the radio and the filter did nothing.  They all looked great on the analyzer, but the radio just lacks the proper shielding in the IF circuits or some other critical part of the system.  Never did figure it out.  Just started using mt FT-891 for contesting with the group, since it has a native amp keyer.

[marcspaz]

Here are a few sweeps of one of my band-pass filters.  I'm confident the filter works fine with about -60dB of attenuation on the other bands.  The assumption is that key parts of the radio are not shielded well enough.

10m

 

20m

 

 

40m

 

 

80m

 

[WRYZ926]

We are using the Morgan High Performance band pass filters with great success. And the two IC-7300s are sitting one on top of the other in a mini rack in our e-com trailer. 

I'm not trying to argue or say you are right or wrong. I'm only stating my club's experiences.

[Lscott]

12 hours ago, marcspaz said:

Here are a few sweeps of one of my band-pass filters.  I'm confident the filter works fine with about -60dB of attenuation on the other bands.  The assumption is that key parts of the radio are not shielded well enough.

That's true of most electronics you buy today. Mostly gone were the old days where the radio/TV etc came in a metal box. Now all you get is a cheap plastic one and people wonder why they get garbage pickup from their LED lights and other crap.

There is a section on an Anytone D878 site where there are instructions on how to spray a nickle coating inside the case to improve the shielding. You might try this with the IC-7300.

 

AT-D868_D878_Info_and_mods_20240607.pdf

[WRYZ926]

1 hour ago, Lscott said:

That's true of most electronics you buy today. Mostly gone were the old days where the radio/TV etc came in a metal box. Now all you get is a cheap plastic one and people wonder why they get garbage pickup from their LED lights and other crap.

There is a section on an Anytone D878 site where there are instructions on how to spray a nickle coating inside the case to improve the shielding. You might try this with the IC-7300.

 

AT-D868_D878_Info_and_mods_20240607.pdf 2.7 MB · 0 downloads

Having the radios sitting on solid shelves helps, at least in our case. The mini rack shelves are solid without any holes in them.

[Lscott]

11 minutes ago, WRYZ926 said:

Having the radios sitting on solid shelves helps, at least in our case. The mini rack shelves are solid without any holes in them.

That's likely helping more than you think. You can test that by taking the radios and just air spacing them.

[WRYZ926]

Like I said in an early post, the fact that both 7300s are in a mini rack along with the Morgan High Performance band pass filters works well for us inside our trailer. 

I do need to double check to make sure that the common mode chokes get put in place on both HF antennas before everyone starts transmitting for field day tomorrow.

[Lscott]

1 minute ago, WRYZ926 said:

Like I said in an early post, the fact that both 7300s are in a mini rack along with the Morgan High Performance band pass filters works well for us inside our trailer. 

I do need to double check to make sure that the common mode chokes get put in place on both HF antennas before everyone starts transmitting for field day tomorrow.

While this is for repeaters the same consideration applies to radios in close proximity. Crappy coax with high RF leakage can cause issues too. 

https://www.repeater-builder.com/antenna/double-shielded-coax.html 

[WRYZ926]

11 minutes ago, Lscott said:

While this is for repeaters the same consideration applies to radios in close proximity. Crappy coax with high RF leakage can cause issues too. 

https://www.repeater-builder.com/antenna/double-shielded-coax.html 

This is true. Guys were having issues with the HF radios causing issues with the VHF/UHF radios in the trailer last year. Come to find out even some of the more experienced guys never thought to use common mode chokes at the antenna feed points and there aren't any toroids or clamp on ferrite beads on anything inside the trailer. I've been working on correcting all of that along with rerouting the different coax cables for some separation from each other and from all of the other cables. 

Poor coax shielding is why I will always suggest to buy the best quality coax that one can afford. The cheap coax will have very thin coverage on the braided shield which causes issues.

I've stripped the outer sheath off of cheap Amazon coax and higher quality coax to show people the differences.

[marcspaz]

10 hours ago, WRYZ926 said:

We are using the Morgan High Performance band pass filters with great success. And the two IC-7300s are sitting one on top of the other in a mini rack in our e-com trailer. 

I'm not trying to argue or say you are right or wrong. I'm only stating my club's experiences.

 

 

I wonder if being in a metal rack is helping with shielding.  Unfortunately that isn't something I can try in the field.  At one point, I did run a 3 foot grounding rod and made sure the case of the radio was well grounded, but that didn't do any good either.

[WRYZ926]

I think the radios in a metal rack is helping and @Lscott said it's likely helping more than I think.

Metal shields will be harder to work with on a portable setup. Having your radios in a metal box would work but you then have to worry about heat too. I know some of the fancy commercially available go boxes have fans in them to help with heat.

[WRYZ926]

Band pass filters are like anything else, buy the best /highest quality you can afford. Again stay away from the cheap ones found on Amazon and eBay.

The Morgan high performance band pass filters are not cheap at $140 each. I will be purchasing some for my shack since there are four other active amateur radio operators within 500 yards of my house. I plan on buying one or two at a time since they are expensive. 

The proper use of common mode chokes, toroids and clamp on ferrite beads along with proper setup will help eliminate RFI issues. I have also found that using a line conditioner or UPS with EMI/RFI filters also helps cut down on noise. This includes computer cables near HF radios too. I had to swap out all of my old non shielded network cable with shielded CAt6 cables and shielded RJ45 connectors.

Chasing down RF noise/interference can drive a person crazy. Take the time to eliminate as much as you can during initial setup of your radios.