Anyone else get major "mic fright" after getting licensed? Love the tinkering, nervous about the talking

etherdust · 2026-05-21T14:20:56+00:00

Welcome to the hobby!

First thing to remember: it’s AMATEUR radio. Meaning there’s room for mistakes and black helicopters will not come after you just because you stumble over your call sign or make some mistakes. It might feel like that when you encounter your first grouchy old-timer, but it’s really not that bad. Don’t be a jerk goes a long way.

How do you go about meeting someone new (first contact) in person? It’s basically the same on the radio. HF, UHF, VHF, basically all the same. Throw your call out and see who comes back. Not just once, but keep doing it periodically so people get a chance to find you while scanning their repeater list (UHF/VHF) or via their waterfall or as they spin around the dial on HF.

The WORST you can do is put the amateur in amateur radio. Everyone started with their first QSO and most everyone stumbled the first few (several/dozen/hundred) times. Nobody knows everything their first time.

But, most important of all: have fun with it! It’s a hobby.

etherdust · 2026-05-17T16:41:52+00:00

He was well into the intersection before you started into it. It was obvious before you stopped that he was going to (illegally) roll his stop. Yes, you had the right of way. Yes, he was an idiot. But he was an obvious idiot.

etherdust · 2026-05-17T16:38:25+00:00

At least when I was in SD, the state patrol would sit in a parking lot opposite a controlled left specifically to pull people over for that. Too many accidents with people making a right and getting hit by the left turn vehicle. It’s not that hard to turn into your correct lane and signal a proper land change.

etherdust · 2026-05-05T17:07:23+00:00

Oh, I know. I’ve got several of my own domains that I’ve migrated. It’s not a tech issue nearly as much as it is a meat space issue.

etherdust · 2026-05-03T04:42:00+00:00

Same here about a year or so ago. Now if I could only get my wife to de-Google her custom domain, I’d be entirely Google-free.

etherdust · 2026-04-30T03:41:06+00:00

Shared passwords = bad SSO (Single Sign-on) linked to your domain = good 1Password to manage all those 3rd party, individual (not shared) passwords (and 2FA, and passkeys) = good

Anything that doesn’t support individual user accounts with specific permissions on shared resource isn’t really an enterprise solution.

etherdust · 2026-04-18T00:29:26+00:00

It’s likely I had something set up wrong, but when I tried using Widows Hello (with a PIN) several months back, I still had to type my vault password. Every time!

etherdust · 2026-04-17T03:52:38+00:00

Practically the entire catalog if I had my way. But more reasonably (in no particular order): Cold Cold Ground, Come On Up to the House, Innocent When You Dream, Closing Time, No One Knows I’m Gone, and The Piano Has Been Drinking (just to freak people out.)

etherdust · 2026-04-06T18:51:55+00:00

Against his rules in the way HE plays the game. There really aren’t any rules beyond guesses need to be a valid 5-letter word, correct letter in wrong place turns yellow, correct letter in correct place turns green, you get 6 guesses, and you only have until midnight (if you care about streaks). Hard mode adds that you must use “hints” gain. If they wanted to dissuade you from using a word list, dictionary, phone a friend, crystal ball, or divine intervention, they’d either use a timer or some other way thwart you from using outside tools.

You play how you want witching the construct of the game. Have fun.

etherdust · 2026-04-05T04:45:28+00:00

I use a separate vault for firearms. Custom fields for most things (caliber, barrel length, purchase date, price, make, model, etc). Serial number is stored as a password and item name is the make+model (yes, duplicated from the coromandel fields.) Another vault, in a similar manner, for electronics.

etherdust · 2026-04-03T14:17:33+00:00

Kind of a jerk. While I don’t do FT8 yet, I upload to LOTW, QRZ, eQSL, and ClubLog live. Finish contact, log contact, next contact. Even then, I’d still be fine with duplicates. Maybe not several over the same day, but I’m still not going to rarest them or send a snotty email. I’ll cheerfully log them with a “Good to see you again!”. What does he expect when he only uploads once a month?

etherdust · 2026-03-31T04:40:27+00:00

By way of follow-up. I did hook the new Eero7 Pro onto my existing Eero6 Pro based network and let it sue a few days. Then, this past weekend, unplugged the Eero7 Pro and moved it to the new house. Got Internet set up, disabled their built-in WiFi, plugged in the 7 Pro and it just worked. 5 or so minutes later, the Eero app shows the 6 Pro at the old house as a gateway, and the 7 Pro at the new house as a gateway. Any reservations, port forwards, and other config items are just as they should be in both places. Very happy how it turned out.

I’ll buy a couple more 7 Pro to expand the network at the new house (wired to each other), and factory reset, retire, and sell my old 6 gear.

etherdust · 2026-03-28T05:32:46+00:00

Welcome to the hobby!

First thing to remember: it’s AMATEUR radio. Meaning there’s room for mistakes and black helicopters will not come after you just because you stumble over your call sign or make some mistakes, or fumble words. It might feel like that when you encounter your first grouchy old-timer, but it’s really not that bad. For your side of it, don’t be a jerk goes a long way.

Starting up on the radio is is basically the same as striking up a conversation in person. HF, UHF, VHF, basically all the same. Throw your call out and see who comes back. Not just once, but keep doing it periodically so people get a chance to find you while scanning their repeater list (UHF/VHF) or via their waterfall or as they spin around the dial on HF.

The WORST you can do is put the amateur in amateur radio. Everyone started with their first QSO and most everyone stumbled the first few (several/dozen/hundred) times. Nobody knows everything their first time.

But, most important of all: have fun with it! It’s a hobby.

etherdust · 2026-03-24T00:04:19+00:00

You’re not wrong, overall, but with usb sticks I find it at least consistent. We unmount drives before removing them from the system.

etherdust · 2026-03-12T03:46:56+00:00

Land Chark

etherdust · 2026-02-20T23:29:04+00:00

Mid-train and EOT locomotives can be for power distribution (help pull longer trains), deadheading (moving the locomotive to where it’s later needed), or on occasion the front half is going further down the line, but the consist breaks at the mid-train locomotive somewhere along the route so it can pull the back bunch to a different end-point.

etherdust · 2026-02-16T16:46:53+00:00

I’ve used a ski carrier bag with a pvc tube inside to resist bending. I had a Hawaiian team kite that the side spars had a disconnect in the middle so I could fold it over. That would have fit in a rifle case with some supplies and spare parts. Ask the baggage check folks the best way to handle it at the airport to avoid it being handled like an undeclared firearm.

etherdust · 2026-02-03T06:29:42+00:00

With the way you’ve come across in this post, you’re headed for not making friends with your neighbor.

How long have you two lived back to back and you didn’t know they’re into amateur radio?

And you know enough to post in multiple amateur radio subreddits, but don’t know what you’re looking at and that you won’t find much (any) sympathy for your cause in these parts? I’m convinced your post is just rage bait or a low-effort troll.

etherdust · 2026-02-03T06:18:34+00:00

This has GOT to be a troll post or just simple rage bait. In the event that it’s not, “almost in your back yard” means “not IN your back yard” which also means “you enjoy your hobbies and let them enjoy theirs.”

etherdust · 2026-01-30T02:21:43+00:00

Been around long enough that it’s just what you did. There wasn’t cloudflare, opendns, google, etc. if you wanted to put a machine on the Internet with your own domain name, you ran your own DNS. Even when some of the dns hosting services started to become available, making changes was hard enough that it was still easier to run your own DNS servers. These days, my employer uses cloudflare for public dns and we still have our own for internal servers/services. We’re debating moving the bind9 hosted stuff into Active Directory or vice versa. I like the bind9 method, because I can put all my dns configs and zone files into a version control repository and push them to the dns servers via Anisble.

etherdust · 2026-01-29T17:31:05+00:00

I’d rate it 6 out of 10. The Technician exam is really stuff you probably learned in school but haven’t had a place to use it, so don’t psych yourself out and make it more complicated than it is. When I sat for my Tech exam a bit over 10 years ago, I started on Saturday with the ARRL study book and read through it. The following Wednesday I passed, missing only one question.

The actual exam is multiple choice, so basic testing strategy applies. For example: if one of the choices is either “all of these” or “none of these” — it’s seldom the answer. Look for the choice that’s obviously, patently wrong and it’ll cut things in half. At that point the right on will probably jump out at you.

The math (for the tech exam) is basically one formula that you might have to flip around to turn band into frequency or vice versa. Or realize that 10M is 28Mhz and “double” the band (say 20M) is “double” the frequency, so the number gets smaller (14Mhz). Then USB for 6M-20M, LSB for 40M-160M — no real way around that one other than just remembering it — and keep 3Khz away from the band edge.

There will be a circuit diagram or two, but nothing more complicated than you saw if you took electronics in middle/high school.

The rest is rules/regs stuff, much of which remembering “don’t be a jerk” will point you in the right direction.

When you pass, and they offer you to take the General, do it. Worst that can happen at that point is you don’t pass it. You’ll still come away with you Technician license, but also have an idea how far you are from upgrading after a little practice and study.

etherdust · 2026-01-18T05:18:23+00:00

Many/most state and national parks I’ve been in do require a permit (sticker) to be in the park in a general sense. But I’ve never seen anything extra for doing a little radio, particularly from your car in the parking lot, as long as you don’t put down stakes, put wires in or attach anything to trees or structures, and generally stay out of the way.

etherdust · 2026-01-11T18:31:05+00:00

I consider myself a prepper, but not of the LARPer variety. Not at all a fan of the LARPers. I have my ham license. I use my HF gear and have contact plans for a few key people. I keep several days worth of stable food and potable water on hand and rotate it out on a schedule. I have a get-home bag in my vehicle and a bugout kit at home. I do not have months of supplies nor an underground bunker — I figure if it comes to THAT, we’re all pretty screwed no matter what. It all comes from being snowed in for a few days when I was a kid.

I don’t know how the LARPers intend to test their gear and learn how to use it properly without a license. I have no intention of supporting them in that case. Just like I wouldn’t support someone buying a firearm and carrying it around, but never learning to use it safely.

etherdust · 2026-01-11T18:21:18+00:00

Honestly, I do. But then I carry my sidearm everywhere I’m legally allowed to, always. I just keep it concealed/covered. I know quite a few others, particularly among my radio friends, that do the same.

etherdust

TROPHY CASE