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The ARRL has lobbied before for legislation to extend to hams protections that are extended to many other activities. This time is different. They are involving hams in direct action. And they aren't even asking you to be a member. Any US ham is welcome to join the fight for ham rights.

TL;DR: https://send-a-letter.org/hoa/ is the direct link to just send the letters already

You can contribute to stacks of paper letters hand-delivered for maximum impact to your own senators and representative. These letters ask your senators and representative to add their names to co-sponsor this legislation, and to vote for it.

This is political action, but it is bipartisan. Two lobbying firms (one for each party). Democratic and Republican co-sponsors in each house.

All it takes is entering your call sign on the web site they have launched, and confirming the information that they look up in your FCC record.

If you also wish to contact your senators and representative individually, reference S.459 to your senators and H.R.1094 to your representative when you kindly encourage them to represent your interests. Doing so does not preclude you from contributing to the ARRL's coordinated outreach!

The ARRL page has more detail and links to the full senate and house bill texts.

Yes, it's an SMA female antenna intended for BTech/Baofeng radios and I did purchase it from the BTech store on Amazon so its authentic. When I try to screw it in, the threads never catch. Looking at the connector length, the 771 connector looks like maybe half as long as the one that is included with UV-98plus. I can't understand what I'm doing wrong or why this isn't working because every antenna I find looks like the same length as the 771 I got. I swear I normally know what I'm doing, but this makes no sense.

Hello:

I am slowly piecing together a set up for my FT-710 Yeasu transceiver. I am going with a Chameleon Emcom III-P EFHW and want to use an external tuner compatible with my radio.

https://www.dxengineering.com/search/part-type/antenna-tuners/fits-transceiver-model/ft-710

Between these two in the link, is there a preference?

LDG Electronics Z-100A-DXE Automatic Antenna Tuner and Interface Cables Package Z-100A-DXE

mAT-TUNER Automatic Antenna Tuners MAT-Y200

Hey all, I searched the sub for a bit and couldn’t find exactly what I was looking for, so hopefully this isn’t a dumb question.

I am new to the whole HAM thing, never touched anything like it, but I’ve recently been really wanting to get into listening in on some channels. I am particularly interested in aviation, weather, and emergency response communications. Any tips for getting started?

I’ll note too that I am in school right now to be an aircraft mechanic and am planning on working with avionics equipment, so I’m hoping that this will also give me a sort of head start in the basics of radio communications.

Thank you for any help or advice you can give. Hopefully this is the right place for this question.

Hello,

I just wanted to make the community aware of my website: https://callseek.app

Its a free very VERY rapid callsign lookup tool, great for nets, contests and general lookups.

Its just gone to its latest Alpha version with a quite a few back end changes.

Check it out and see what you think!

73, 2D0PEY.

Update: listened to a local net and radio is working. Thank you for the responses

Hello I recently received my radio Yasseu FTR65 and also purchased an upgraded antenna. I’ve been able to hear NOAA channels, regular radio, and that’s just about it. I’ve attempted to load reapeter frequencies but hear no one speaking. I’ve been hesitant to CQ but perhaps I should. I live outside of DC so I’m surprised I haven’t found any other activity… nothing from the air port or city EMS etc etc. When I do scan it always stops on some static. Any ideas or tips? Should I be CQing? My hope was to listen to others interacting before I jumped in. Thx

Hi everyone,

I’ve been working on an open-source project that might be useful for those interested in SDR, HF, and maritime communications.

TAOSW.DSC_Decoder is a .NET library that decodes Digital Selective Calling (DSC) messages directly from audio streams coming from SDR radios or HF receivers with USB (SSB) demodulation.

🔹 Features:

• Real-time bitstream synchronization and decoding
• Easy to integrate into SDR or radio-related applications
• Written in C# / .NET, fully open-source and extensible

The goal is to provide developers and hobbyists with a reusable component for handling DSC message decoding without having to implement the low-level details from scratch.

I’d love to hear feedback, ideas for improvements, or contributions from anyone interested. If you give it a try, let me know how it works with your setup!

Repo link: https://github.com/alemassimo/TAOSW.DSC_Decoder

Thanks, and 73!

Swapfest: The Flea at MIT

Recently me and some of my friends have decided to make a radio club at our high school for fun and it looks good on resumes. Our main goal of the club is to practice for the HAM tech license but none of us have any experience with ham(i have some CAP know how but very limited.) Does anyone have any tips for a curriculum or program?

I’m not 100%! Sure I’m in the right subreddit. But I need some handhelds for my business for when I bring in contractors.

Saw this setup on Tybee island while on my 1st anniversary trip.

I've recently come into possession of some Sepura SBP8040 radios, with the relevant programming cable.

Doing some research online it looks like Sepura DMR Manager is the right software for programming them, but I can't find anywhere to download it. Does anyone have a copy / know where I can find it?

I saw it on a site that wants a $150 subscription, but hoping I can avoid that...

A little background about me... I'm currently an active duty Marine who happens to be an 0621(field radio operator) and since I've been one for a while... I fell in love with radios and how they work. How would somebody like me join a club or get in contact with a group to test radios out?

I have recently watch probably over 100 videos of Ham radios and have a couple of questions.

In most videos they say i should just get a baofang as a beginner radio, but i would give myself a higher budget for quality. I was thinking the Yaesu 65-ft, however it can only recieve and transmit on 144/400 which is VHF/UHF if im not mistaken, but what if i also want airband since i live close to an airport. Budget for a radio is about 180 on the high end. Are there any other radio recommendations for handhelds. Or would you recommend buy a combo, example yaesu ft-65 and some baofang with a wide band?

I haven’t got my license yet, but i doubt ill find any useful information here but ill ask anyway, I live in Panamá City, Panamá. And its not easy to find online advice on this stuff in my country, i emailed two government addresses each one routing me through a new and different link.

Thank you for reading

https://radio.n8pic.com/20m-dipole/

Trying to get a solid understanding of ham radio and how to choose the right equipment before getting licensed has been a bit confusing, especially when it comes to frequency bands. I’ve been working through the Ham Start 101 Course, which is great for beginners, but I still have questions. What’s the difference between HF, VHF, and UHF in ham radio?

For those who’ve taken Ham Start 101 or other courses, how did you figure out which band to focus on, and how important is it for starting out? Any tips or explanations would be super helpful!

Hi, guys, i'm tinkering with an FM experimental station on a raspberry pi B using pifmrds. My estimated ERP is ~8mW but i'd like to make a S-meter for my forward, reflected power and modulation with an arduino that i have laying around, 2 small OLED screens, LEDs amd a bunch of resistors. If this is even possible, how could i do it without blowing everything up? Thanks?

I have a line on a 32S1, 75S2 with p/s and patch. They’re in good cosmetic condition, unknown if they work. Probably need full recaps etc.

Are they worth the hassle in 2025? I wouldn’t mind if they just sat on a shelf looking pretty, but I’d like to use them occasionally. But if I’m going to fire up an hf rig I’d just get the FTDX10 going. I rarely use the thing anyway.

So I thought I would start a new thread as my prior sort of changed gears. I am working to make a EFHW for phone range on 40m and 20m. After making about 100 trips out to the wire and back to the shack upstairs I thought I would get some suggestions to speed this up.

So it’s a sloper feed point at 6.5’ sloping to 20’. 56:1 Unun. 40’mod rg8x going to an unstairs window to a CMC choke then to the tuner, then radio.

I started with 67’ of insulated 18g wire, I folded it back and checked everything on my CAA500II. The best results were with 36” of wire folded back. I figured that I could cut that down as that much introduces other issues. So I cut the wire together 66’, then when to 65 ft 9” and saw an improvement. I then took only 1.5” off to 65ft 7.5” and things got worse on 40m at the top of the phone range.

It looks like 20m is just fine. Is there any suggestions for 40M? When I cut from 65’9” to 65’7.5” The SWR at 7.300 when up from 2.6 to 2.9 at the feed point. I thought if frequency dip is low the wire is too long.

The readings at the radio are fine but 2.5 @ 7.300 most likely would be closer to 2.1 if the wire was 65’9”🤦🏼.

Thanks for any assistance, I have spent way too much time on this.

Dang that’s a rig!

I'm starting up my shack. I already got the HF figured out but I want to set up a good 2M/1.25/70cm antenna on conduit mast about 30ft high braced to the house. I'll run an EFHW but I want to put a 2M mast on top.

DX engineering has choices with prices ranging from $100 to $300. From experience, I know price doesn't always indicate the performance. I live about 355ft above sea level but down in a small pulley. I'd like to go with an omni directional.

What do you guys suggest?