James Park

ok so i finally upgraded from tech to general last month and im trying to figure out the 40 meter band. i know generals dont get the whole band but im confused about the edges and where exactly phone starts vs cw and all that. like i keep seeing people say dont operate too close to the band edge but how close is too close and why does it even matter if youre within your privleges technically?
also someone at the club meeting said something about the ARRL band plan vs what the FCC actually says and now im even more confused because i thought there was just one set of rules. can someone break this down a bit

js8call is definitely worth playing with but you're right that the activity level is spottier than ft8. i'd say on 40m you can usually find someone in the evenings, 20m during the day occasionally, but dont expect the wall-to-wall signals you see on the ft8 segment. the heartbeat feature is kind of cool though — stations periodically beacon their info so you can see whos around even if nobodys actively calling.
sensitivity wise its not quite ft8, the decode threshold is somewhere around -24db if i remember right vs ft8s -24 too actually, hmm maybe theyre closer than i thought. the messages are longer so the timing is different. honestly for ragchewing purposes the tradeoff is fine, you dont need to be copying -20db stations to have a decent qso. your 7300 and vertical will be totally fine for it.
psk31 i still check once in a while out of nostalgia. caught a decent dx station on it last winter which was a nice surprise. but yeah the activity collapsed pretty hard after wsjtx took off.

so ive been licensed for about 4 months now and i mostly do 2m FM on the local repeaters and occasionally some HF when conditions are decent. one thing i keep noticing is that some guys on the air use the full NATO phonetics every single time they give their callsign, like every transmission, and other guys just say their call normally without spelling it out phonetically at all. and then sometimes people mix random words in like they'll say Tango but then use like... Victor for V but then say something completely different for another letter.
i guess my question is, is there an actual rule about using phonetics or is it just one of those things people do when the signal is rough? i dont want to sound like i dont know what im doing but i also dont want to be that guy who over-does it on a crystal clear local repeater. whats the actual etiquette here

yeah what he said about the ALC, that got me for like a month when i first set up my winlink station. also one thing to check -- make sure Winlink Express actually has the right soundcard selected. i had mine randomly switch to the built in laptop audio after a windows update and it took me embarassingly long to figure out why nothing was getting out. you can test it by just doing a channel opening and watching if anything is actually transmitting on the waterfall in VARA, if you dont see your own signal going out then its a software audio routing thing not a radio thing

yeah the SO-239 thing is gonna be an issue, i learned that the hard way. built a 20m dipole a couple years ago and used one of those cheap connectors from a parts bag and it was corroded to basically useless by the following spring. switched to proper outdoor rated stuff and havent had a problem since. some people just make a simple wire-wound balun right at the feedpoint and skip the connector mess altogether, just solder the coax braid and center directly to the legs through a few turns on a toroid. cleaner install honestly.

yeah what the other guy said about the transmit tone is right. i went through the exact same thing with my first baofeng lol, those menus are not exactly intuitive. one thing i'd add is double check your offset direction — 146.940 is in the 2m band and yeah it should be a negative offset of 600khz so your transmit frequency would be 146.340. if the offset is going the wrong direction the repeater just wont hear you at all regardless of the tone. some baofengs dont always set that automatically depending on how you entered the frequency.
honestly just try calling out once you get the settings sorted, worst case nobody answers and you try again later. the repeater crowd around here is usually pretty welcoming to new calls.

yeah what he said about field day is right, i did my first one with a local club and it was just a good time. even if you mess up the exchange nobody cares, the other station will just ask you to repeat and move on. people forget that most contest operators have heard every possible mistake already.
the SOTA angle you mentioned is interesting too — have you looked at SOTA activator contests? theres sometimes specific SOTA on-the-air events and that might feel more natural since you're already comfortable with that operating style. not quite the same as a traditional contest but good for building confidence making rapid QSOs. anyway dont overthink it just jump in, worst case you make 20 contacts and learn a ton for next time

so this has been driving me nuts for about three weeks now. i have a yaesu ft-7900r mounted under the dash of my f150 and randomly the audio just drops out, like completely silent, and then comes back. sometimes it happens when i go over a rough patch of road, sometimes it happens for no reason at all while im just cruising on the highway. first thing i did was check all the connectors, the power leads going to the battery, the mic connector, all of it looked solid. swapped the mic cable too just to rule that out.
the thing is it doesnt lose the signal entirely — i can still see the squelch light doing its thing on the display, so its receiving but just no sound coming out. then a few seconds later it comes back like nothing happened. its mounted pretty solidly i thought, used the standard bracket and its not rattling around or anything. anyone dealt with something like this before? im starting to wonder if its internal, like a cold solder joint somewhere inside the unit itself. radio is maybe 5 years old, bought it used.

Club Log is worth looking at too if you havent already, its free and the DXCC stats it gives you are pretty useful for knowing what you still need. i cross reference it with DXwatch pretty regularly. not sure if it integrates directly or if you still end up doing the two tab thing though honestly