Maria Garcia

i had the exact same problem with a used set of paddles i got off ebay. turned out one of the contact screws was slightly bent and the gap was totally uneven side to side. i spent like two weeks thinking i just sucked at sending before someone at the club looked at it and spotted it immediately. might be worth having someone who knows paddles take a look at yours before you spend too much time adjusting technique around a mechanical problem.

the PR-40 is a large diaphragm condenser-style dynamic and it does have a pretty pronounced proximity effect if youre too close to it, which will give you exactly that boomy sound you're describing. most people put their mouth like 2-3 inches away but with that mic you probably want to back off a bit more than you think, or angle it slightly off-axis. even just moving it 4-5 inches changes the low end a lot.
on the 7300 TX eq i started with cutting somewhere around -6 to -8dB at 100hz, leave the mids pretty flat or bump them slightly around 1.5k, and roll off above 2.8k or so. honestly the best thing you can do is get someone to give you a live report on a sideband frequency and just tweak in real time. the waterfall on the 7300 can also give you a rough idea of where your energy is concentrated if you watch the TX monitor. also yes the TX bandwidth matters — 2.4k is fine for general use but some guys narrow it to 2.0k for more punchiness, just depends what youre after

okay so i just got my technician license last month and ive been trying to get on the local 2m repeater but nobody ever seems to hear me. i can hear other people talking just fine, crystal clear, but when i key up and say my callsign nobody responds. at first i thought maybe the repeater was just busy or something but this has been going on for like two weeks now.
someone at the club meeting mentioned CTCSS tones and i think thats my problem but im not totally sure how they work or how to program them into my radio. i have a baofeng uv-5r (i know i know, everyone says get a better radio but its what i could afford to start). the repeater directory shows a tone of 100.0 hz but i dont really know where to go from there in the menu system. also is there some kind of protocol for getting on a repeater for the first time, like do you just start talking or is there something you're supposed to say first?

honestly i tried SO2R once and it completely wrecked my focus for the whole contest, went back to single radio and my score actually went up lol. might just be a personal thing, some guys are wired for that kind of split attention and some arent. if your single radio rate is already solid you might get more mileage just tightening up your exchange timing and making sure your antenna is pointed right during the peak propagation windows than fighting with all the SO2R plumbing
that said if you do want to pursue it there's some good stuff in the N6TR and K3LR write-ups about station layout and keyer setup, N1MM+ has pretty decent SO2R support built in now too with the radio focus switching. just dont expect miracles the first time out

your club guy is wrong, techs absolutely can do phone on 10 meters. you get 28.300 to 28.500 MHz for SSB and AM, up to 200 watts PEP. thats the main phone privilege you have on HF. on 40 meters techs only get CW, no phone, its a pretty narrow slice around 7.025 to 7.125 i think, you'd want to double check the exact edges in part 97.301. same story on 15 and 80 meters, CW only. 10 meters is really where techs can actually have some fun with voice. honestly 10 meters when its open is fantastic anyway so its not a bad deal

SWR matters just as much at QRP levels, maybe more actually because you have so little power to waste. if youre running 300mw into a bad match you might actually be radiating closer to 100mw or less after losses, and at that point youre really fighting an uphill battle. with higher power rigs people kind of get away with a mediocre match because they have headroom to burn. you dont.
for your park setup honestly just bring a length of wire, like 40 feet or so, throw it up as high as you can in a tree and use a simple 9:1 unun or even just a tuner if you have one. the antenna is everything with QRP. ive worked stations 2000 miles away with 5 watts and a wire in a tree and i couldnt do the same with 100 watts into a dummy load. the Pixie is a fun little rig, enjoy it. just manage your expectations a bit since CW is really the sweet spot for those kits and if youre trying SSB you'll have a harder time of it.

so i was up late last night just scanning around and 6 meters was absolutely lit up with stations, heard a bunch of DX coming through from europe which i wasnt expecting at all for this time of year. caught a few JA stations too which was a nice surprise. propagation has been doing weird stuff lately and i cant tell if its just the solar cycle ramping up or something else going on.
anyway while i was messing around on PSKreporter watching the spots come in i saw someone in one of the facebook groups mention that Icom is supposedly announcing something new at a trade show next month. nobody seems to know exactly what it is but theres a lot of speculation its a new HF rig in the IC-7300 price range. i dunno how reliable that info is but figured id mention it here since people always seem to know stuff before it goes official.
anyone else been taking advantage of the 6m openings? curious what youre running for an antenna up there, im just on a 5 element yagi which feels pretty modest compared to some of the setups people talk about.

i had the exact same problem with a used set of paddles i got off ebay. turned out one of the contact screws was slightly bent and the gap was totally uneven side to side. i spent like two weeks thinking i just sucked at sending before someone at the club looked at it and spotted it immediately. might be worth having someone who knows paddles take a look at yours before you spend too much time adjusting technique around a mechanical problem.

DC receivers are sensitive to LO stability issues. If your local oscillator isn't locked properly to the signal you want, you'll get frequency offset problems that sound like what you're describing. Consider adding a PLL or using a more stable reference.

DC receivers are sensitive to LO stability issues. If your local oscillator isn't locked properly to the signal you want, you'll get frequency offset problems that sound like what you're describing. Consider adding a PLL or using a more stable reference.