It doesn’t help a whole lot if you attempt to get on the air, and nobody hears you. Even if I have the very best equipment that money can buy, including a great antenna, and even though I feel certain everybody this side of Richland county can hear me, it’s still possible that they can’t. If you’re talking on simplex, your antenna could be oriented incorrectly, you might have a loose or corroded connection, you might not be speaking close enough to the microphone, or your battery is on its last breath.

If you’re trying to talk through a repeater, maybe your tone or offset isn’t set, maybe you are too far from the repeater to hold it open for proper communication, or maybe you have bumped the button, and you’re a little off-frequency, or maybe you just need to get out of the basement.

When you need to get on the air, especially in a hurry, it seems there are a number of obstacles that could hinder your otherwise perfect transmission. For that reason, one of the first things you should do before a net or a drill is to request a signal report. Maybe say:

This is W8ABC. Could I please get a signal report? and you’ll likely find one or more listening hams who’ll be happy to help you out by telling you how you sound.

You’re typically looking for three things as feedback to your transmission:

• The quality of your sound
• Your loudness
• And whether your audio is accompanied by any hiss or other noise.

A responding operator who can report these three sound properties is probably the most helpful. By the same token, you can offer the most help by reporting these same three qualities to people who are asking for a report.

On the other hand, those who say, “You sound fine” mean well, but might be just a bit too brief, and don’t give you a lot to go on, although it’s still kind of them to try and give you some sort of feedback. The brief exception is when a ham operator simply reports, “You’re coming in perfectly!” which, in a nutshell, means crystal clear audio, loud audio, and no perceptible background noise.

Once you do this, you’re relatively confident that the rest of your transmissions could easily be heard by those who need to hear them. Even after that, your signal or audio could still become less-than-perfect if you’re moving around, changing your antenna direction, or your battery starts failing. But, at least you’ve taken that initial step to ensure a smoothly running net or drill.

Just about every modern ham radio has two operating modes: Memory (also known as Channel) mode and VFO (also known as Frequency) mode. Memory or Channel mode is merely a set of memory channels that have a number of frequencies stored in them, along with the appropriate settings for each, such as offset, tone, and power level. You select each by simply scrolling through the stored channels. VFO or Frequency mode, however, doesn’t quite work the same way, and it’s often convenient to understand how to work it.

VFO stands for variable-frequency oscillator, which simply means that this mode will allow you to set your radio to almost any arbitrary frequency and other parameters needed for any desired type of operation on that frequency. That’s useful for manually tuning to a frequency, setting the parameters, and testing it before you commit it to a memory channel. Even though VFO mode is a kind of *scratch pad* location to get a frequency set up, most radios will preserve those settings in VFO, so that, after you turn off your radio, and then power it up again later, all the information you put into VFO will still be there.

Here are some of the parameters that can be set for a particular frequency:

• repeater offset
• repeater shift direction, such as plus, minus, or off
• ARS, which stands for automatic repeater shift, when it’s on, will automatically set your frequency offset and shift direction for *standard* repeater frequencies
• tone mode, such as TONE, TSQL, CSQ, DCS, and CTCSS
• tone frequency
• power level
• squelch level
• bandwidth, meaning wide or narrow
• Also, for HF radios:
• signal mode, such as AM, FM, LSB, USB, CW, and RTTY
• split, to indicate different transmit and receive frequencies

A number of other settings can be saved in memory, some can’t, depending on the radio model, but these are among the important ones.

As you can see, it might be difficult to remember all of the necessary settings, so it’ll take a little time and practice on your part, to manually set up your VFO set correctly for a given frequency on your particular radio. Once you get it set up right, you can then store the frequency and all the details in a memory channel, so that you can retrieve it later in Memory or Channel mode.

It’s helpful to know how to manipulate and program your VFO when you need to, without needing to rely on a manual or another person. Yes, it’s one more thing to learn, about amateur radio, but can be convenient, so that you’re not always dependent on somebody else to program your radio for you, especially when you’re not near a computer.

The new 60-meter frequencies approved by the FCC in December will become available to amateurs as of February 13, 2026, along with new power restrictions on those frequencies. It’s a bit confusing, as different rules apply to different segments of the band. The changes result from the FCC’s action to approve a worldwide 60-meter amateur allocation made by the World Radiocommunication Conference in 2015 (WRC-15). See https://tinyurl.com/mt8p8jpa.

As of February 13, FCC-licensed amateur operators holding General Class or higher licenses may operate on a secondary basis anywhere between 5351.5 and 5366.5 kHz, subject to a maximum bandwidth of 2.8 kHz and maximum transmit power of 9.15 watts ERP (effective radiated power). For the purpose of computing ERP, the transmitter PEP (peak envelope power) is multiplied by the antenna gain relative to a half-wave dipole antenna. A half-wave dipole is presumed to have a gain of 1 (0 dBd). Amateurs using other antennas must maintain in their station records either the antenna manufacturer’s data on the antenna gain or calculations of the antenna gain.

Here’s the confusing part: The existing 60-meter channels centered on 5332, 5348, 5373, and 5405 kHz remain as secondary amateur allocations with maximum power of 100 watts ERP. However, the old channel at 5358.5 kHz is eliminated as it is now part of the new 5351.5-5366.5 kHz subband and subject to the lower power limit.

For all 60-meter transmissions, emission bandwidth is limited to 2.8 kHz or less and amateurs must not cause harmful interference to, and must accept interference from, stations authorized by the United States (NTIA and FCC) and other nations in the fixed service; and all other nations in the mobile service (except aeronautical mobile). Data or RTTY emissions in particular must be limited in transmission length so as not to cause harmful interference. Digital mode operators must be familiar with offsets in order to stay within the authorized frequencies.