r/HamRadioBeginner

OK. I finally decided if take the test and get my license. I truly want to learn more about the hobby and also use it for emergency since I live in Florida. It would be nice to help out people in need they can't reach family and friends.

I've read a few different places that you shouldn't put your home address on your license. However I can't really find substantial articles as to why not other than to protect your privacy. I don't really have another address and I don't really want to pay for APO box or similar. I searched on this thread but could not find a good answer?

1. Should you put your home address?

2. What are the dangers?

3. Any other thoughts?

TIA. Dr. Don

I’m wanting to get into HF Base station, I want to get older equipment since it’s most likely cheaper than newer equipment.

What should I look for and what would all be needed to get up and running?

Power supply
Base station
Mic
Antenna
Antenna mount
General License

What else? What base stations should I look at

Won't go into war stories, but I lived through Hurricane Helene which was devastating for my community. One of the scariest parts was the lack of ability to communicate with family or friends, or to have access to news. Please advise me on a set up, preferably not too expensive, that can accomplish these goals:

1. I am in Asheville, and I need to be able to reach nearby mountain towns, (including some extremely remote locations) as well as be able to reach people in Charleston, SC.

2. I would also like to be able to send and receive texts, emails, and even pics or videos via radio.

For each of these goals, keep in mind the possibility of decimated infrastructure (either in Western NC, or Charleston SC). What is my best beginner set up for a newly licensed technician? Also, given my stated goals, what are some frequencies I should program into my radio?

Since SSB trainers seem to be popular lately, I thought I’d share the one I started building back in early January: https://ssbtrainer.com

It’s a ham radio SSB trainer with realistic generated voices, HF background noise modeled from technical recommendations, QRM, pileups, DX-style pileups, auroral and QRO effects, plus a waterfall display. Did I mention it also throws at you all the annoyances you find in a pileup - the ionosondes, whistling, the OTH radar and people yelling ola ola over your dx?

The voices are generated, but I took extra care to make it fun. The DXes can get annoyed if you QRZ too much, if you send repeat partials. Some might be nice and slow down for you, some will show their annoyance in various ways.

You can practice digging callsigns progressively deeper into the noise, with modes for things like non-NATO callsigns, accents, and other harder copy scenarios.

There’s also a not-so-secret CW mode hidden in the pileups: decode the first CW callsign and you’ll find it. The server has been sort of hammered lately. It works great on any device, even cheap phones, since everything happens server side.

It's still in an early stage, feedback is welcome.

AI disclosure: some parts were LLM-supervised. Mostly the UI, voice triage, voice rendering, and a bit of backend plumbing. The DSP is hand-rolled and tuned by ear.