QRP Guy

congrats on passing general! i went through this same thing about a year ago. one thing i'll add — definitely use ae7q.com like the other guy said, it shows you pending applications too so you can see if someone else is already going after the call you want before you bother applying. saved me from wasting an application cycle. also just keep in mind once you submit you kind of just have to wait and refresh obsessively for 18 days which is its own kind of torture. i got my vanity on the first try but a friend of mine had to apply like three times before he landed one because he kept picking calls that other people wanted too. if you pick something a little more obscure your odds go way up.

im kind of in the same boat as you so take this with a grain of salt but i've been using an app called Morse Mania on my phone and its actually been pretty decent for just getting started. i do it on my lunch break mostly. only been at it three weeks so i cant say if itll get me to actually making contacts but at least im starting to recognize a few letters without thinking too hard about it which feels like progress the one thing i noticed is if i skip a day or two i feel like i forget stuff pretty fast so consistent short sessions seems better than doing an hour once a week or whatever

yeah this is completely normal, almost everyone hits a plateau somewhere in the 12-15wpm range. what you're describing sounds like you're still processing letters individually instead of hearing words and phrases as chunks. the brain needs time to make that switch and you can't really force it. one thing that really helped me was doing head copy with actual QSO recordings instead of just the trainer. sites like lcwo.net have word training and i'd also recommend just tuning around 40m in the evenings and trying to copy real on-air stuff even if you only get half of it. the rhythm of real operators is different from a machine and it kind of unsticks things. also dont obsess over bumping the speed up, sometimes staying at a speed that feels almost too easy for a week or two and really cementing it does more than constantly pushing the ceiling. i know that sounds backwards but it worked for me. i went from stuck at 13 to comfortable at 18 in about two months once i stopped fighting it.

the thermal drift thing is almost certainly your problem, yeah. crystal oscillators are really sensitive to temperature and if your PA is sitting right next to it on the same board thats gonna be your main culprit. i built a similar rig years ago and had the exact same issue until i put the oscillator in its own little shielded enclosure with some thermal insulation between it and the PA stage. some guys will actually oven the crystal but thats overkill for a QRP rig honestly. also worth checking if the crystal itself is an AT cut — those have better temp stability than some of the older surplus crystals that might be in that '78 handbook design. if its some random surplus FT-243 type crystal you pulled from a junk bin thats also gonna drift more than a modern HC-49 or whatever. separate the boards first though, thats the easy fix and probably solves most of it.

I've been using both for years and honestly LoTW is the gold standard if you care about awards like DXCC. Most serious DXers use it and ARRL endorses it so your confirmations actually count for awards. eQSL is more social and has a nice web interface but not all contests accept it for credit. If you're just starting out id say get on LoTW first - yeah the setup is a pain with the certificate stuff but once its done your logging program can upload automatically. I use N1MM+ and it just pushes contacts right up after each session.