I was an early user of LoTW. Your question is impossible to answer because of the sweeping generalizations required to fill in the blanks. I've received LoTW QSLs within 5 minutes of a QSO and I've seen new users come onboard LoTW and upload years and years worth of QSOs. Many of my LoTW QSLs go back many years.

Personally, I upload my QSOs to LoTW at the end of every operating session. So people get my QSLs quickly. But not everyone handles it that way.

73, N4KZ

Personally, I have an iPhone but seldom text. I have worked a lot of CW for 4 decades and if I got an LOL or some other recent texting abbreviation during CW QSO, I'm not sure I would immediately get it. No harm in trying, I suppose, but a lot of old ham geezers like me might be confused and dazed for a moment or two...hi hi.

73, N4KZ

I've run my FT-817 mobile several times from the cigarette lighter plug. No problem at all.

73, N4KZ

I have operated from beaches in Florida and South Carolina several times. And I have used dipoles and small verticals. While the verticals are convenient, their efficiency can be suspect while the dipoles played very well with good signal reports and lots of QSOs. If you're working 20 meters and higher, go with the dipole if possible.

73, N4KZ

Now that 10 meters has finally returned to the living, I've had 4 QSOs with West Coast stations who all indicated they were new to ham radio, mainly got involved in it for the emcomm and had heard about the fantastic 10-meter conditions and wanted to get on the air to experience them. A couple of the guys were so green to HF that they really didn't know how to initiate a QSO, how to turn it back over to the other station at the end of their transmissions, etc.

But we all have to start somewhere. I recall 30 years ago running into new hams on the air who mainly got their tech tickets to use the autopatch on their local 2 meter repeaters. Being a die-hard traditional ham, I wasn't real thrilled to hear folks getting their tickets just to make phone calls from their car but I always tried to be friendly and welcoming to them.

Thirty years ago, a woman called me on the phone. Her son was a U.S. Marine stationed overseas and she really wanted to be able to converse with him frequently. She had some vague knowledge that people with ham licenses could sometimes communicate long distances and she wanted to know if there was much hope finding anyone with the ability to patch phone calls through. I explained about third party agreements and that the places where her son was stationed or likely to be stationed didn't have third party agreements with the U.S. I told her that I thought her best chance at success would require she and her son both get their ham tickets and converse directly with each other on the ham bands.

You know what? That's exactly what she and her son did. She went from having little radio knowledge to getting an advanced ticket and setting up a nice station. Her son got licensed too and apparently managed to find access to ham gear on his end -- MARS station, embassy club station, or whatever -- but the last I heard they were successful in talking on the air from time to time.

Amazing determination, I would say. So, we might be leery of some of the reasons people get their ham tickets but sometimes it all works out in the end.

73, N4KZ

I gave up on using IRCs years ago and have successfully been using green stamps for a long time. Never any problems. But honestly, it never even occurred to me to include more $$$ for QSOs on several bands. The green stamps are for postage for the return card -- not payment for the contacts themselves. I suppose if you had a bunch of QSOs with a DX station and therefore it took 2 or 3 cards to include them all, more postage reimbursement might be in order. But then how would you know that ahead of time? When I work a DX station and send off direct for his card, I don't have any way of knowing how many QSOs he can include on one card. So I am having a hard time seeing why more postage comes into play.

73, N4KZ

Geoff,

You're not crazy or going insane. I've heard the same signal while sitting in my car in Lexington. The song is the UK fight song and in fact does include the line, "Fight, fight, fight." I first heard this signal about two years ago while sitting at the mall in Lexington. My wife was inside and I stayed in the car and was doing a little AM listening when I stumbled across this signal. I heard it during two different trips to Lexington from Frankfort, where I live. The station never identified. The song by a chorus just looped over and over and over. The signal is fairly strong in Lexington but with enough noise that it just might be in the central Kentucky area, and not specifically in Lexington. I don't recall the exact frequency that I heard it on but do remember that it was in the "new" part of the AM band, between 1600 and 1700 khz.

73, Dave, N4KZ
Frankfort, KY

The 10-10 organization runs many nets on 10 meters. 10-10 offers different levels of achievement as one collects more and more 10-10 membership numbers from working other stations. One of the levels of achievement is called "Director." That might be what you heard.

73, N4KZ

The contact was made using your station. You are free to claim the contact for award purposes. For most awards, the station operator at the time is a non-issue. Big contest stations often have DXCC or WAZ on multiple bands -- the work of many different operators from various contests.

73, N4KZ

As G3RZP said, up until the late 1930s, hams were allocated the 40-meter band exclusively worldwide. But that changed when Germany, recognizing that 7 MHz was an excellent part of the HF spectrum for shortwave broadcasts, began pushing for shortwave broadcasting to move into 40 meters. (Think back to your WWII history to figure out why Germany was so interested in shortwave broadcasting at this particular time.) And while the Germans were influential, nations in ITU Region 2 - North and South America - did not want their amateurs to relinquish part of 40 for shortwave broadcasting. That's how the sharing arrangement began. Actually, the shortwave broadcasters were not supposed to interference with amateur communications but that was a joke, of course. Even after WWII ended, the broadcasters were so entrenched on 40 meters at that point that hams in Regions 1 and 3 continued losing small portions of the band with subsequent radio conferences. But finally, the ITU, with ARRL leading the charge, managed just recently to get the shortwave broadcast stations to abandon 7.1 to 7.2 MHz. There are still a few renegade broadcasters in that part of the band but today it sounds nothing like it did for so many years with mega-watt stations making 7.1 to 7.2 very difficult for hams to use at night. And while we - the amateur community - tried to get them out of 7.2 to 7.3 as well, it was not to be this time. But when I tune from 7.2 to 7.3 MHz at night these days, the broadcast interference is annoying but less intense than it used to be lower in the band. Part of that comes from the fact that several nations have given up on international shortwave broadcasting in recent years. So the story of 40 meters, amateur radio and shortwave broadcasters goes back many decades and is an interesting mix of politics, world history, radio science and more.

73, N4KZ

I suppose ham radio's usefulness to missionaries will largely depend on how isolated they might be. While some missionaries undoubtedly have access to email, cell phones and Skype, I suspect some do not because of their remote locations. That said, are you going to be relaying messages via the ham bands? If so, do you have a station capable of fairly reliable communication with folks in some far-away locales? If so, another big issue is whether there's a third-party agreement in place between the U.S. and the other country? If the answer is yes, then you can pass non-commercial radio traffic at will. And we have third-party agreements with many nations around the world but not all. If no agreement is in place, you cannot pass traffic with people who are not hams. And that leads to the question of whether the missionaries you want to work with are hams or will be depend on hams in-country?

In the late '60s, all through the '70s and into the early 80s, I passed traffic -- mainly phone patches -- for some missionaries in Bolivia and Peru. But much of the need for that service has passed with advancing technology. It's been quite a while since I heard anyone on the air request such assistance.

73, Dave, N4KZ

From a practical standpoint, the IF shift control on this rig will often help you get rid of SSB splatter from an adjacent frequency. Not always but quite often it will accomplish this. Sometimes you can effectively get rid of the splatter entirely while other times it will help reduce it but it won't disappear completely. And as another posted said, some other manufacturers call this function passband tuning. Some basic function, different name. It can also be effective at times while operating CW and you encounter interference although I think it gives a better showing when on sideband.

Play with it. You won't hurt the rig.

73, N4KZ

Asking hams for a recommendation on a rig often results in a near tidal wave of answers -- many of them all over the board since just about everyone has a different opinion based on their personal preferences, experiences, bank accounts, brand loyalty, etc. I think hams-to-be can easily become overwhelmed because of the many different views expressed on this topic. But that said, the Yaesu FT-857D is a mobile rig that operates on HF, VHF and UHF and all modes with 100 watts out on HF and 6 meters, 50 watts out on 2 meters and a bit less on 70 cm. I've had two of them and used them mobile as well as a home station rig. It's not a perfect rig by any means but does represent, in my humble view, quite a good value in that it does a lot of stuff pretty darn well for a reasonable price. There's a lot of versatility in that little box. And if you want to learn CW, I do very much recommend purchasing an optional CW filter -- probably 400 or 500 Hz wide. You can buy one from Yaesu or one of a couple different vendors. Yaesu's filter is good but costs more but if you really plan to listen to and/or operate CW, a filter is a must. Otherwise, you will be receiving CW signals while using the much wider SSB filter and you will hear several CW signals at the same time and this makes copying very difficult. Whereas a good CW filter will permit you to receive just one CW signal at a time. Trust me, this is what you want. Plus, the FT-857D makes a darn good shortwave radio.

73, Dave, N4KZ

My SB-200 and SB-201 both ran fine on 120v. So did my Ameritron AL-811H. But I switched over to a ALS-600 solid state amp and then had 220v run into the shack. For that particular amp, it does well on 220v but I'm certain it would have been fine on 120v too. Mainly I got the 220v in case I ever get a bigger amp.

73, N4KZ

I've been very active on the ham bands since early 1969 with no inactive period longer than 3 weeks. I've experienced just about every aspect of ham radio that you can and my two favorites are HF DXing and VHF weak-signal work. I think K5TR said the same thing.

I've always enjoyed the challenge of pushing the envelope of seeing just how far I could communicate on different parts of the radio spectrum. The fruits of my labors so far -- almost 340 countries worked on HF, 40 states worked on 2 meter SSB and CW and so far 70 countries and all continents on 6 meters. Plus, about 140 countries worked on HF CW running 5 watts or less. But I enjoy a good ragchew too on any band. And meeting interesting people is great. I was 16 when station 9N1MM, Father Moran, a Catholic missionary in Nepal, answered my SSB CQ on 20 meters while I was using just a modest dipole antenna. It gave me goose bumps. As did my 40 meter SSB QSO with Barry Goldwater in 1970, and my 2 meter CW moonbounce contacts. And working SSB meteor scatter in the 1990s on 2 meters also gave me chills because it was fast, furious and a lot of fun.

A lot of people over the years have gotten into ham radio and then drifted in and out as their levels of interest went up or down. But mine never did. I just got in and stayed and I believe it's because whenever I felt the least bit bored I would try another new band, or mode or style of operating and it always revved my interest again.

73 and good luck,

Dave, N4KZ