Finally got my callsign

[beerftw]

So this morning I finally recieved my callsign, and my retevis a3 showed up a day early. So I decided to play around on the local repeater, sounding like  a retard as I do not have my callsign memorized, and am still fumbling around the controls of a new ht, but on a 2m repeater I waited until after the net had concluded to run an equipment test.

 

  I got a xxxxxx out of waco I can hear you so you are getting through to someone, mind you waco is a 45 minute drive from where I live. I doubt the ht simply transmitted that far so I likely set something up right for repeater use considering how stupid it is to program a repeater through an ht keypad. Either way up until about 8pm the repeater is fairly alive, judging by the bedtime calls I am betting most of the users are very up there in age.

 

  It is exciting though finally after all that studying got to contact someone, and after the radio confusion with the ht is gone it should be easy as I have heard no sad hams on there yet. saturday I will set up my 10 meter rig and my jpc-12 mobile antenna and see how 10m usb is. Though with active repeaters a simple ht seems to easily be able to reach out of state, some of the contacts are a 3-4 hour drive from me and this kind of range I could not ever see with gmrs or uhf short of tropospheric ducting.

[Northcutt114]

Congrats!

 

[WSKY396]

Nice!, I’m taking my test this Saturday and should have my call sign by next week. I was just looking at the A3.

If I could ask you some advice on getting a 10m setup I would appreciate it.  I want to be able to pack up and then set up outdoors away from an outlet. Is this done with “plug and play” type stuff to external battery or does it need to be DIY manufactured? I got into this about a month ago and getting close to internet research fatigue.  I have a role up slim jim on order for testing simplex distance VHF/UHF on hills/mountains.
 

[WRYS709]

2 hours ago, beerftw said:

So this morning I finally recieved my callsign, and my retevis a3 showed up a day early...

Wait: Quad band: AM/FM/CW and SSB -- $99???

How long has this unit been available?

[WSKY396]

If I could also reach out and ask about grounding while using an outdoor battery powered setup (aside from “look up”) and ask what is the basic common sense, consensus beyond local electrical codes for a setup of any kind. I once saw a clear day while fishing with a completely clear sky and then a violent bolt of lighting from the east accompanied by dark clouds moving quickly towards me. I put my pole down and went home. While operating mobile what else is there to know in addition to this kind of hazard?

[SteveShannon]

7 hours ago, WSKY396 said:

If I could also reach out and ask about grounding while using an outdoor battery powered setup (aside from “look up”) and ask what is the basic common sense, consensus beyond local electrical codes for a setup of any kind. I once saw a clear day while fishing with a completely clear sky and then a violent bolt of lighting from the east accompanied by dark clouds moving quickly towards me. I put my pole down and went home. While operating mobile what else is there to know in addition to this kind of hazard?

Unlike a home based ham station you do not need to bond a battery powered mobile or portable station to the service ground.

If lightning appears, do just what you did, pack up and leave.  If it surprises you and is close by, leave your radio and antenna and get in your car, better to let the radio and antenna be destroyed than risk injury or death by attempting to save it.

[WRYS709]

1 hour ago, WRYS709 said:

Wait: Quad band: AM/FM/CW and SSB -- $99???

How long has this unit been available?

Oh: I looked closer at the marketing materials: Quad Band; yes!  Quad Mode: Receive only!  

[TNFrank]

Congrats. Don't wait, go have some fun on 10M and start studying for your General.

I didn't think I'd want to move up to General but once I started playing on HF I discovered it's the coolest part of having an Amature license and want more HF. 

HamStudy.org really makes it easy to study for the General and really, the questions aren't all that hard to memorize with a bit of work. 

POTA is a ton of fun and if you don't have many Parks nearby to activate you can always hunt right from home. It's one of my favorite things to do. See you on 10M. 73

[beerftw]

7 hours ago, WRYS709 said:

Wait: Quad band: AM/FM/CW and SSB -- $99???

How long has this unit been available?

For atleast a year but it does not transmit am or ssb just fm. The quad band part is it can transmit in 10m 6m 2m and 70cm, all fm only, so 10m on the ht is outside my license since techs can only use ssb for phone on 10m not fm, and 6m on fm is useful if there are 6m repeaters in the area, which 6m repeaters are scarce.

 

  It can recieve am but not transmit it same with ssb, few ht's can do ssb and most that did ceased production and the few that still can are icom levels of cost.

[beerftw]

8 hours ago, WSKY396 said:

Nice!, I’m taking my test this Saturday and should have my call sign by next week. I was just looking at the A3.

If I could ask you some advice on getting a 10m setup I would appreciate it.  I want to be able to pack up and then set up outdoors away from an outlet. Is this done with “plug and play” type stuff to external battery or does it need to be DIY manufactured? I got into this about a month ago and getting close to internet research fatigue.  I have a role up slim jim on order for testing simplex distance VHF/UHF on hills/mountains.
 

For a 10 meter portable rig you need to figure either good 12 volt battery or a portable power supply like a jackery or similar plus a 12 volt styepdown if the power supply does not have sufficient 12v amp output. You will need a 10m rig, to be portable many of the chinese made ones that do ssb are fairly compact and will easily fit in a backpack, plus they are cheap enough no crying when they get damaged.

 

  You will also need an antenna, I have the jpc-12 because packed up with 50 foot of coax in the bag the bag is not much bigger than a half sized tackle box, it extends to 13 foot tall and is stabbed in the ground and run your radials, it can also be adapted to a tripod. Radioddity makes a similar antenna that is cheaper that is also just as portable.

[beerftw]

2 hours ago, TNFrank said:

Congrats. Don't wait, go have some fun on 10M and start studying for your General.

I didn't think I'd want to move up to General but once I started playing on HF I discovered it's the coolest part of having an Amature license and want more HF. 

HamStudy.org really makes it easy to study for the General and really, the questions aren't all that hard to memorize with a bit of work. 

POTA is a ton of fun and if you don't have many Parks nearby to activate you can always hunt right from home. It's one of my favorite things to do. See you on 10M. 73

Already planning to practice for general, most hams that use their radio for anything but emergency backup usually settle atleast on general as that gives the vast majority of bandwidth available for use.

[Jaay]

14 hours ago, beerftw said:

So this morning I finally recieved my callsign, and my retevis a3 showed up a day early. So I decided to play around on the local repeater, sounding like  a retard as I do not have my callsign memorized, and am still fumbling around the controls of a new ht, but on a 2m repeater I waited until after the net had concluded to run an equipment test.

 

  I got a xxxxxx out of waco I can hear you so you are getting through to someone, mind you waco is a 45 minute drive from where I live. I doubt the ht simply transmitted that far so I likely set something up right for repeater use considering how stupid it is to program a repeater through an ht keypad. Either way up until about 8pm the repeater is fairly alive, judging by the bedtime calls I am betting most of the users are very up there in age.

 

  It is exciting though finally after all that studying got to contact someone, and after the radio confusion with the ht is gone it should be easy as I have heard no sad hams on there yet. saturday I will set up my 10 meter rig and my jpc-12 mobile antenna and see how 10m usb is. Though with active repeaters a simple ht seems to easily be able to reach out of state, some of the contacts are a 3-4 hour drive from me and this kind of range I could not ever see with gmrs or uhf short of tropospheric ducting.

Congrats, and put a sticky note up until your call becomes burned in lol!

[Davichko5650]

15 hours ago, beerftw said:

so I likely set something up right for repeater use considering how stupid it is to program a repeater through an ht keypad.

First off, congrats on obtaining the Amateur license, now you can go much further down the RF Rabbit Hole!

It can be seen as stupid, programming an HT on the radio's keypad, but it is an essential skill to have. If out in the boonies with no laptop and needing to enter a simplex frequency or repeater input/output and tones, etc. knowing how to do this can save you! CPS and Chirp are fine and also good to know how to navigate, but if that's not an option, being able to program on the fly on the HT will yield benefits.

73 hope to see you on the radio!

[beerftw]

Retevis a3 already died, it worked great while it did work, I think the battery shorted on it. Either way amazon said free replacement as soon as I mentioned shorted battery, not sure how often they get ht issues with batteries but how quick they jumped to that makes me wonder if they are scared of them batteries catching fire if they have any defects and want them no where near their warehouses.

 

  This has me worried in the future if it is a common issue or not with battery failure, as no one but retevis on their website sells batteries that I have found for the a3, it seems fairly proprietary to what model it is and or what it was a rebrand of.

[Northcutt114]

10 hours ago, beerftw said:

Retevis a3 already died, it worked great while it did work, I think the battery shorted on it. Either way amazon said free replacement as soon as I mentioned shorted battery, not sure how often they get ht issues with batteries but how quick they jumped to that makes me wonder if they are scared of them batteries catching fire if they have any defects and want them no where near their warehouses.

That's pretty much amazon's MO with any refund. They don't ask a lot of questions. It doesn't really have anything to do with your reason as the refund process is largely automated.

So the radio lasted three whole days, huh? That's nuts. What makes you think the battery shorted?

 

10 hours ago, beerftw said:

This has me worried in the future if it is a common issue or not with battery failure, as no one but retevis on their website sells batteries that I have found for the a3, it seems fairly proprietary to what model it is and or what it was a rebrand of.

Most HT batteries are going to be proprietary. There's no real "standard" across brands and models. Expect that to be the norm.

 

[TNFrank]

Still going to say for a HAM HT that's Tri-Band the BF-F8HP-Pro is hard to beat. It takes the same battery as the AR-5RM and has GPS and 10 Zones of 100 channels each so you can organize your channels.

[beerftw]

12 hours ago, Northcutt114 said:

That's pretty much amazon's MO with any refund. They don't ask a lot of questions. It doesn't really have anything to do with your reason as the refund process is largely automated.

So the radio lasted three whole days, huh? That's nuts. What makes you think the battery shorted?

 

Most HT batteries are going to be proprietary. There's no real "standard" across brands and models. Expect that to be the norm.

 

Actually the refund or should I say replacement was done by a service rep, because the automated process told me to stop and call when I clicked defective battery. I really think they do not want the risk of a defective battery causing a fire because usually they want me to ship back the old stuff.

 

  I turned it off and it would not turn back on and had a full charge when shut off, it would power up if usb was plugged in but would do the rapid red/green light flash indicating battery failed. My guess would be the battery had an internal short and had short protection that cut off the battery altogether to prevent overheating and explosion.

[WSKY396]

On 2/11/2026 at 7:08 PM, beerftw said:

So this morning I finally recieved my callsign, and my retevis a3 showed up a day early. So I decided to play around on the local repeater, sounding like  a retard as I do not have my callsign memorized, and am still fumbling around the controls of a new ht, but on a 2m repeater I waited until after the net had concluded to run an equipment test.

 

  I got a xxxxxx out of waco I can hear you so you are getting through to someone, mind you waco is a 45 minute drive from where I live. I doubt the ht simply transmitted that far so I likely set something up right for repeater use considering how stupid it is to program a repeater through an ht keypad. Either way up until about 8pm the repeater is fairly alive, judging by the bedtime calls I am betting most of the users are very up there in age.

 

  It is exciting though finally after all that studying got to contact someone, and after the radio confusion with the ht is gone it should be easy as I have heard no sad hams on there yet. saturday I will set up my 10 meter rig and my jpc-12 mobile antenna and see how 10m usb is. Though with active repeaters a simple ht seems to easily be able to reach out of state, some of the contacts are a 3-4 hour drive from me and this kind of range I could not ever see with gmrs or uhf short of tropospheric ducting.

I just passed the exam this morning and should have my call sign next week they said. I was the only one there to be tested. If you could buy the A3 again would you. I was thinking about ordering one.

[SteveShannon]

Just now, WSKY396 said:

I just passed the exam this morning and should have my call sign next week they said. I was the only one there to be tested. If you could buy the A3 again would you. I was thinking about ordering one.

Congratulations!!

[WSKY396]

29 minutes ago, SteveShannon said:

Congratulations!!

Thank you!

[TNFrank]

I'd thought about a Vanity Call Sign but so many people I HUNT on POTA know my current call sign I really don't know if I want to change it or not. There's also some stuff like DMR and QRZ associated with my current call sign so I think I might as well keep it. 

[WSKY396]

10 minutes ago, TNFrank said:

I'd thought about a Vanity Call Sign but so many people I HUNT on POTA know my current call sign I really don't know if I want to change it or not. There's also some stuff like DMR and QRZ associated with my current call sign so I think I might as well keep it. 

I was talking with someone on a GMRS repeater a bit ago and they said my call sign would probably be kilo something.

[beerftw]

57 minutes ago, WSKY396 said:

I just passed the exam this morning and should have my call sign next week they said. I was the only one there to be tested. If you could buy the A3 again would you. I was thinking about ordering one.

Congrats on passing. If I would buy the a3 again I will have to wait to give you an answer, only had the replacement since yesterday and have not had enough time to test durability. In terms of functions it is very good and sound and transmit are very clear even with the factory antenna.

 

  Now for the fun part, after getting your license you will spend hours for every minute you talk tuning and figuring out your gear, and doing many radio checks. Once you get figured out setting channels to memory with right uplink and downlink tones, and frequency offsets, you can then spend more time talking and less time figuring out how to use your gear.

[beerftw]

10 minutes ago, WSKY396 said:

I was talking with someone on a GMRS repeater a bit ago and they said my call sign would probably be kilo something.

My callsign starts with kj5 so they are probably not wrong. Not sure the fcc assignment scheme but it seems kilo seems to be the starting letter of most new licenses.

[SteveShannon]

19 minutes ago, WSKY396 said:

I was talking with someone on a GMRS repeater a bit ago and they said my call sign would probably be kilo something.

A few years ago they were all KK. Now they’re KJ. Kilo India will be next and so on. Yours will be KJ6**. 
Watch your email. You’ll receive an email that tells you how to pay. Your call sign will not be granted until you pay (assuming it’s your technician license).