Michael Brown

the roofing filters are the real thing to look at imo. the 7300 has a 3kHz roofing filter if i remember right and the 7610 has tighter options which makes a difference when someone is 2kHz away running a kilowatt. i havent done that exact comparison myself but ive talked to a few guys at the club who have and they all said the same thing — great radio but maybe not a must-upgrade unless you're really running into the limits of the 7300 regularly. also check if your current mic and desk setup will even feel different with the new radio before you commit, sometimes people swap radios and realize the rest of the chain was the actual weak link the whole time.

The Array Solutions SixPak is ideal for SO2R as it prevents the same antenna from being connected to both radios simultaneously. I've been running one for three years with excellent results. For budget BPFs, start with homebrew stubs for your most-used band combinations - they're surprisingly effective and cost under $20 in parts per band.

yeah i had the same question when i started lol. eQSL confirmed my first ever contact within like 20 minutes which was pretty cool for a new ham. LoTW took me a little longer to set up but im glad i did it. i think some of the older ops look down on eQSL a bit but for just getting started and seeing confirmations come in its great for motivation honestly

yeah the balun thing is worth doing at some point but your setup is working so dont panic about it. i ran a dipole without one for probably two years before i noticed my SWR was doing weird stuff depending on where i stood in the room, which was the common mode current messing with things. threw a ugly balun on it (just coax wound on a pvc pipe) and it settled right down. side note — 14 gauge stranded is fine but if that antenna stays up long term you might find the stranded starts to corrode at the twist points especially if you're getting rain and freezing. had one let go on me after about 18 months. solid copper or even copper-weld holds up better for permanent installs. just something to keep in mind down the road

congrats on the first activation, 34 QSOs is a solid outing especially with a KX2 and a wire. to answer your question -- yeah a lot of parks are in both databases and you absolutely can count it for both POTA and WWFF, you just submit separate logs to each program. POTA wants your log through their site and WWFF gets theirs through the wwff.us portal. the formats are a little different but if you exported from your logging software it shouldnt be too painful. the spotting thing is a bit overlapping too, some people use both the WWFF spotter and pota.app at the same time since hunters on one might not see you on the other. i usually just post to both when im out, takes like 30 extra seconds. and yeah the chaser community for WWFF is really active, especially in europe -- you probably had some EU stations in that pileup if you were on 20m at all.

so ive been licensed about 8 months now (general class) and just started getting into chasing DX a little bit. a buddy at the club mentioned DXwatch and QRZ's logbook and i've been trying to figure out how these all fit together. like i get that DXwatch shows spots from the cluster network but im not totally sure how to filter it down so im not looking at stuff thats way out of my range or on bands i cant work right now. also the QRZ page for a station sometimes shows spots too? or is that pulling from the same place. i honestly cant tell if im looking at duplicate info or two different things. right now i just kind of have both tabs open and refresh them manually which feels pretty dumb. is there a better workflow people actually use or some app that ties this together cleaner. been poking around with a few android apps and none of them feel quite right yet.

So ive been trying to get my FT-7900R sorted in my F-150 and the coax routing is driving me nuts. I ran it under the door sill but now im getting this weird scratchy noise whenever i hit the brakes or go over a bump and i cant figure out if its the coax getting pinched somewhere or if its RF getting into the truck's electronics somehow. The radio itself works fine parked in the driveway, signals sound clean, but the moment im rolling it just gets terrible. Its on 2m mostly, sometimes 70cm. I used some RG-58 i had lying around, maybe thats the problem? I dont know, ive done installs before but this one is just being weird. The antenna is a Tram 1185 on a mag mount on the roof. Running it off the battery direct with a 5A fuse inline, which should be fine for this radio. Anyone dealt with something like this before, any ideas where to start poking around?