It might just be easier to get an N-Male to SMA-Male cable (195 or 240 are both great) and to use an N-F to N-F barrel adapter to connect the two cables.

The '195 would be easier on the SMA connector so you are not mechanically stressing the connection to the radio.

Yea, Rat-Shack trying to make a barrel plug connector into some special sizing.

What they call "size M" is one of the most common barrel connector dimensions for DC power apps.

Tip size: 5.5mm O.D. x 2.1mm I.D.

There is a larger barrel connector that Radio Shack calls "size N" that has a fatter center pin;

Tip size: 5.5mm O.D. x 2.5mm I.D.

And there are bunch more with a smaller body and smaller center pin. That goes all the way down to things that are practically microscopic.

Polarity (DC) seems to be non-standard but manufacturers that do not go positive-center-pin should be beaten with sticks. Also you have manufacturers who will put AC on there and it all comes in a variety of voltages.

Most everything I have is positive center pin except for a few portable SW receivers. Getting tired of forgetting what supply to use on those I put in a tiny bridge rectifier inside of the portable and now it does not matter if I use a positive or negative center pin supply on those devices. They work just fine as the bridge rectifier takes care of the transition.

Assuming that this is your first ticket it will be a technician class license where most of your privileges will be >VHF it would not be an issue there. If you are going to jump to general by passing two elements then you pick up most of the HF allocations as well.
I agree that running a bit more power while getting started will minimize your frustrations on HF.
Also, even without a license or even with a tech class license there is nothing stopping you from getting a good antenna up in the air. Your ability to receive is more important than your transmitter power and having a good set of "ears" (antenna/receiver) is invaluable before you make your first transmission.

As short as possible with the largest diameter wire as possible. If you are going through your crawl space that should be fine.

If you "go around" then it does not hurt you at all to drive in another ground rod or two and to bond that ground conductor at those points as well. It ends up being just more copper in contact with the earth that improves your grounding system.

Lowes/ Home Depot are not renowned for their low prices on wire. Shop around or pay for the convenience.

I have no financial interest in W4RT but I have bought from them before. They sell great products and are perfectly willing to ring you up on the phone to talk with you if they have a supply issue with something you want (just a genuine person). If you talk with the BHI folks they will immediately refer you to W4RT if you are a US customer.

I like the BHI products, the plug-in external DSP speaker, the modules, whatever. I am very pleased with them and use them on an FT-857d in my car and on a few boat-anchors (R-390A and SP-600) at my operating position. It really does make SSB work very nice. Listen to the examples of how the audio processing works off of the W4RT web site.

A bare buried bonding conductor will also improve the general performance of your grounding system as there is more bare metal in contact with earth.

I have GFCI outlets on all of my radio gear. I have had to make some changes on some legacy gear that had leaky capacitors on the primary side of the power supply that was causing trickle currents down the safety ground.

That is how a GFCI works; it monitors the current through the ground pin and if it sees current flow it will trigger the GFCI to open the circuit. We are talking about currents in the low milliamps range.

A downside of GFCI protectors is they can also trigger on RF current in the ground conductor. That may point to a different problem where you have excessive RFI in the shack that is causing nuisance trips. Just be prepared for them and deal with the problems one at a time.

It could be that in certain operating modes or bands that the transmitter current is slightly higher than the output rating of the supply and the crowbar protection is kicking in.

Try lowering the power output of the radio in the bands in question and see what happens. If you have the ability to put an in-line ammeter to measure transmitter current I bet you would find that there is a current peak right that exceeds the supply rating right before the supply goes into shutdown mode.

Don't get in a big rush, we will not miss you. 

Make sure your beverage is terminated with a good non-inductive resistor of sufficient power handling rating so it is not va-poo-rized every time a cloud burps out a flash of lighting. Getting a good ground at the end of that beverage is pretty important.

If you do not, then it is nothing more than just a low, random length chunk of wire attached to a 9:1 balun.

Beverages are not renowned as particularly quiet antennas. (I have several and I am quite pleased for the application they are in). There are some others like delta, flag or pennant antennas. Tom (W8JI) or Dallas Lankford have done quite a bit of work on the larger receive antennas and would be invaluable references (Google them).

If it is conventional roofing materials (wood, tar shingles) not really. If it is a metal roof then yes indeed.

Ideally you do not want it just laying on anything. Roofs collect snow, rain, etc.

You will always need to tweak it, no device is going to have the exact same tuning performance as an antenna simulator (dummy load). They will be minor tweaks but if you are paying attention it is something that you end up doing without even thinking. The same goes when you change frequencies more than a few tens of KHz, it is always a good idea to just touch the knobs to make sure you are still in the sweet spot on the controls. It is not quite the same as going through the entire set-up dance and you will quickly see how much "move" you can do on the tuning dial and what sort of minor change that makes to amp loading.

It will be a little different for each amp, for each band, for each antenna. It depends upon a bunch of factors, The Q of the antenna (bandwidth), what band you are on, how well your entire system (transmitter, amp, feedline, grounding, antenna) all plays together. This too becomes "the touch" that you will develop and when it becomes refined you will be able to tell if something just feels "off" with your setup. You may not know "why" it feels off but it is something you should pay attention to and try to remember what things that are different and what the end result was (like finding out that you had a bad trap in your antenna or water in a feedline). If you apply that knowledge right you will gain understanding of the nuances that make the difference between a good op and a great op.

Mary,
Good luck, you are not alone! We need more YL's on the air, someone has to be common-sense around here. <lol>

73' hope to hear you on the air,

Tisha

I would say it is, their intention is to "obscure" the purpose, intent and content of their communications.

They really do not care about Joe Q Citizen listening in on them, they are afraid the 'govmnt will be listening in.

It would be really easy for them to modify this into becoming a "one time pad" type system. (cipher)

yes

Even common sense needs to be applied to calculators that have the basic M+ type functions. It is not as if you are going to store electromagnetic theory, ohms law, time constants, frequency/wavelength calculations in them.

It is pretty easy to spot a scientific type function calculator that has "smarts". Those are not permitted. I keep a cheapo +-*/ calculator in my purse if someone needs to borrow one during a test session.