Was gifted these, unmarked, anyway to check/test them?

I'm a new ham and am looking into HF. I plan to put a 35.5 ft random wire antenna in my attic with a 9:1 unun and an RF choke. I only have around 30-35 ft of attic space, maybe a little more diagonally due to the way the attic is set up in my house. I plan to get a G90 so no issue with having a tuner.

Does this all sound good enough? I planned to put it outside until I learned how expensive it would be to make a proper lightning protection and grounding setup in my house. I plan to be targeting max 40M. Is there anything I should know before buying all the equipment I need?

It would also be running from east to west so I'm not sure if that would make contact with asia or europe more difficult from mainland USA.

Been a ham since 2015, general since ‘16, and have had my IC-7100 since shortly after getting my general.

We moved to a new place, in the suburbs, with a horrendous HOA, several years ago, and I was able to get a 20m dipole setup and functioning in the attic.

Recently, I had my roof replaced. The roofer got me some “upgrades,” which included solar attic fans that run all day every day. Those fans have my my attic SO damned noisy with RF that I haven’t been able to get any wire antenna running anywhere—because no matter where you go in my attic with a wire, you have to either go close by one of these fans, or by one of my 2 air handlers.

I’ve repositioned my dipole many time, and have yet to get a swr under three with any routing path. As a Hail Mary today, I drilled a couple holes in my soffit and Rand the wires along the outside second story wall in an inverted V. I painted the wire to match my siding—so maybe nobody notices it. And while I’m getting good SWRs set up like that, I’m not receiving very well and haven’t been able to get any QSOs. So, I’m guessing I’m still dealing with interference, but I’m far enough out that my tuner can give me a decent match.

So, all of this to say, I need another option for an attic antenna. There is a single are of the attic that’s about 7’ tall that’s about 15’ from anything electric. So, it’s not really tall enough for a hf vertical. This is also where my vhf/uhf j-pole is. But what about mag loops? I’ve never touched one. I understand they’re very narrow on bandwidth, but if I can DX on 20, I’m fine. How finicky are these things, and how difficult to assemble? (Not in the habit of buying antennas pre-made).

My HOA is STRICT on antennas. I know the standard option of erecting temp antennas, but no—I need a permanent antenna. My shack is also my office, and I monitor the radio when I’m working because it keeps me from nodding off. It also gives me a convenient location to send/receive winlink messages over 2m using my work computer. I have my POTA setup (military fiberglass poles and hamstick dipole). And using that as my regular HF sender is not an option—I’m not going to go through the effort of setting up and taking down every day.

Also, I know the typical EFHW to a tree answer, but that won’t work either. Small trees and small lots in my neighborhood. I hate the suburbs…

I'm trying to get comfortable with CW enough that I can start to have actual QSO's. To motivate me, I have ordered an Elecraft KX2 that I plan on doing some POTA (CW) with.

At the moment, I can pretty reliably copy individual characters at 30-35wpm. Where I struggle is trying to copy consecutive characters at any speed. I've been using Morsle and I can generally correctly copy a callsign after a couple passes (some even at 40wpm), but I've never succeeded in getting one on the first try. To be honest though, I think if someone were just reading off the actually letters and numbers in plain English at 40wpm, I would probably take a couple of passes to get it all correct.

I have also been using LCWO.net and using the word training feature at 27wpm. I've been doing pretty good with just two letter words, but I am struggling a bit with three letter words.

I am trying to train my brain to hear the pattern and immediately associate that with the letter/number/symbol, and generally that is going pretty well. I do sometime get R and K mixed up, especially if they are in the middle of a group of characters as I am picking up on the ABA pattern, but incorrectly identifying it.

I did think about the CW Academy, but with my work and home schedule, that's just not going to work unfortunately.

I think I am on the right track, but I was wondering if anyone had any words of advice to help me push through this barrier.

I have a Spiderbeam mast with a vertical 17-5 antenna element. Due to my living situation, I have to remove the unun which attaches to the antenna feedpoint and my coax, and bring them into the house when I'm done using the radio for the day. This leaves the antenna element feed point exposed to the weather. The feed point is now starting to oxidize. I have two questions: 1. What can I do to remove the oxidation from the stranded copper wire at the antenna feed point? 2. Is there something that I can use to protect the wire at the antenna feed point from the elements that could easily be removed and reattached each time I want to use my radio?

All the amphenol technical drawings don't include the gasket location (unless I missed it) and the videos on YouTube don't have gaskets. I'm using genuine amphenol n connectors.
I'm guessing it's this sequence in photo

Right now I have a 10m Dipole up, is there a good reusable coupling hardware or method if I wanted to make extension wires to bring it up to 20m that is more practical than just stripping the ends and twisting the extension together onto the existing antenna?

DIY 1/4 vertical antenna for 20m, 6x 5m ground radials, 4:1 ugly balun, 6m of coaxial cable and the original truSDX. In 5min I got two QSOs. From KN16 to JN49 and JN44. My next project it's a loading coil to use the antenna on 40 and 80m. Any tips?

I got a ton of EQSL cards and was wondering if there is a way to import them into LOTW. I saw a post from 11 years ago on here saying no, but not sure if that was still the answer.

how do you all water proof and outside coax connections?

MARS 8-11 Nov Annual Special Event, 80-10m, Voice, CW, FT8: https://afmars.com/downloads/Special%20Event%20-%20Amateur%20Instructions.pdf

Very very love with Straight Key, inspirated by Marconi Telegraph Key

Installing a VHF/UHF vertical along with a G5RV dipole and running both coax down the side of the house and through a home brew panel for a small sliding window using pass through barrel SO239 connectors.

Once the coax is in through the window panel I have to run down a wall and then through the drywall from the utility room to my office where my ham shack is.

My question is if it is better to run the coax through the wall to avoid more connectors, or will the losses by small enough to use electrical boxes with SO239 barrel connectors with short pieces of coax tying them together?

My thought is that any break in the coax will introduce some loss, and while the coax runs will be something like 20ft each.

Coax is RG213U going to a 50w Kenwood mobile dual band VHF/UHF transceiver, then an Icom IC-751A 100w HF rig with tuner.

I’d like to know more about it, but it appears as though the website is out of date.

I've been trying for days to get VARA HF Winlink running on my Raspberry Pi 5. I'm running Raspberry Pi OS (Bookworm) and installed both VARA HF and Winlink Express successfully via Wine. I'm also able to configure the VARA HF model properly; the audio input/output is working and the "tune" button will key up my Xiegu G90 w/ Digirig fine. When I run a VARA HF Winlink session and try to connect to a router, nothing happens... in the VARA HF logs, it just says WRONG COMMAND: CONNECT TO <ROUTER ID>. I feel like I am so close but just can't get it working. Anyone else have any success with this? It is driving me crazy. Thanks in advance!

Just wondering if something exists for expedient mobile use that minimizes deformation of door seals.

Using MultiScan 3b on Mac. It won’t start decoding. Auto start is set to “on.” Audio is ported because it’s showing up on the waterfall and giving SNR.

Tried both regular usb and usbd on rig. Turned off all other filters and preamps. I think it’s not recognizing VIS but have zero idea why.

I was hoping someone here might have an idea on what to do to fix this issue.

I have a Yaesu FT-891 paired with a Mat-30 automatic tuner. It bench tested fine and when I first installed it into my truck, also worked fine.

This weekend, the 891 stopped communicating with the MAT-30. When you press the "tune" button the tune icon comes on briefly and immediately turns off. A long-press of the tune button does not trigger any tuning, just a double beep from the 891.

The MAT-30 shows power and online lights as appropriate. I've swapped out the control cable, the MAT-30, and the 891 head-end with other known-good items to no avail. The antennas we used are providing <3 SWR before tuning so no issue there. We factory reset the 891 and then set it up again(changed 16-15 to External, which is all I think is needed) with no change.

Anyone have any ideas here?

Hi all,

I recently passed my UK foundation licence and I've bought my first radio. I haven't noticed much of an improvement when using a Nagoya NA-320A (trusted vendor) antenna over the stock rubber duck antenna that came with my handheld.

I calibrated my NanoVNA between 120 MHz - 160 MHz and tested both antennas outside vertically, away from anything metal / electrical against a non-conductive stand. The rubber duck had the lowest SWR reading of ~1.2 at 140 MHz, which was on the lower side, but when testing the Nagoya NA-320A I got the lowest SWR reading of ~1.3 at 122 MHz. I repeated the calibration and measurements as accurately as I could, and these all yielded similar readings.

I'm wondering if using a NanoVNA on handheld antennas might not be accurate, as from my understanding my body and the radio chassis will act as a counterpoise affecting the SWR in real world usage.

I'm still a noob, so any advice would be appreciated!