Sarah Anderson

I had the exact same problem with my 7300 and DM780. It's definitely a software timing issue - FSK requires precise PTT and keying coordination that DM780 sometimes struggles with. Try switching to MMTTY engine instead, or consider Fldigi which handles FSK much more reliably on the 7300.

omg same, i worked my first ever european station on 10m like two weeks ago and i was shaking a little honestly. im pretty new too so reading this thread is helpful. gonna go look up that spaceweather site now

congrats on the ticket first of all. okay so the baofeng thing - your brother isnt wrong that they work, i know plenty of people who use them and have no issues hitting local repeaters. the faces people make are usually about build quality and the fact that they can be a little quirky to program, not that they're dangerous or anything. for just getting started and talking on local machines a uv-5r will absolutely do the job.
that said if you want something that'll last longer and is easier to live with, the yaesu ft-65r is around $80-90 and its a solid step up. dual band, decent audio, much easier to program. if you want to spend more and get something you probably wont outgrow for a while, look at the yaesu ft-70dr which does fusion digital and analog both, or the kenwood th-d75a if you want aprs built in but thats more than your budget. honestly for where youre at right now i'd say either the baofeng to get started cheap, or the ft-65r if you want something that feels a bit more like a real radio without spending a ton.

yeah the pending status is totally normal, dont panic. the FCC has a 30-day filing window for vanity applications and during that time anybody else who wants that same callsign can throw their hat in too. if nobody else applies for it you get it automatically at the end of the window, but if multiple people do apply then yeah it goes to a kind of lottery system to pick the winner. its not really first come first served which surprised me when I first learned about it.
as for the region thing, I believe they dropped the old requirement that tied your callsign to your license district a while back so you should be able to apply for pretty much any available 1x2 or 2x1 or whatever format youre going after regardless of your address. just make sure the call you picked is actually showing as available on the ULS lookup before you got too attached to it. the AE7Q website is way better for checking availability than the FCC's own tools honestly, worth bookmarking that one

yeah i was in the exact same spot when i started, the whole thing felt weirdly complicated for what is basically just confirming you talked to someone lol. i ended up just doing LoTW first because thats what everyone kept saying mattered and then i started doing eQSL too because its basically zero effort once you're logging stuff anyway. i use WSJT-X too and there are settings to auto-upload to both which is pretty nice once you configure it.
physical cards i only send for stuff that feels special to me, like my first contact with Japan or whatever, not gonna print and mail a card for every FT8 qso you know

honestly the General pool isnt as bad as people make it sound. the electrical theory stuff can look scary but most of it is the same concepts from Tech just gone a little deeper. if you understood ohms law and basic circuits for Tech youre not starting from zero.
what worked for me was just doing HamStudy.org every day for like 20-30 minutes. they track which questions you keep missing and hammer those. i think i studied maybe 3 weeks before i felt solid and passed with only a couple wrong. the propagation stuff actually got interesting once i started understanding why 40m goes long at night and stuff like that, made it feel less like memorizing and more like actually learning something useful.
the part that tripped me up was some of the operating procedures and the band plan questions, just stuff i hadnt thought about much as a Tech who mostly just did repeaters. worth paying attention to those sections.

Just upgraded to General a few weeks ago and starting to explore HF. I keep seeing people mention solar flux index and K-index numbers but I'm getting confused by all the different values. Current SFI is around 135-143, which seems decent, but how do I know if that's actually good for working DX on 20m?
Also seeing K-index at 1 which people say is "very quiet" - does that mean good or bad for propagation? Any simple rules of thumb for a new HF operator?

As someone new to both contesting and POTA, I started with mobile apps and they're great for learning. The ADIF import/export works seamlessly and GPS auto-calculates your gridsquare which is perfect when you're still figuring things out. You can always add N1MM later for serious contest work.

the eu2200i is genuinely cleaner than most cheap inverter gennys ive tested, but youre still gonna want a filter between it and your radio. i use a westmountain rigrunner with a ferrite on the dc line and that cleans up most of the remaining garbage. running the radio off the battery while the generator charges it is honestly the best of both worlds — the battery acts like a big filter cap and you get clean power to the rig. just watch your charge rate vs discharge rate math so you dont end up net negative over 18 hours.
for the antenna honestly for a county-level exercise on 40m the inverted vee is probably overkill unless youre trying to hit repeaters or simplex nodes more than 60-70 miles out. the buddipole will get you there for local and regional stuff and you wont hate yourself at hour 14 when youre tired and everything hurts. ive done 24 hour SET deployments and simple is almost always better because something will go wrong and you want mental bandwidth left over to actually operate.

the eu2200i is genuinely cleaner than most cheap inverter gennys ive tested, but youre still gonna want a filter between it and your radio. i use a westmountain rigrunner with a ferrite on the dc line and that cleans up most of the remaining garbage. running the radio off the battery while the generator charges it is honestly the best of both worlds — the battery acts like a big filter cap and you get clean power to the rig. just watch your charge rate vs discharge rate math so you dont end up net negative over 18 hours.
for the antenna honestly for a county-level exercise on 40m the inverted vee is probably overkill unless youre trying to hit repeaters or simplex nodes more than 60-70 miles out. the buddipole will get you there for local and regional stuff and you wont hate yourself at hour 14 when youre tired and everything hurts. ive done 24 hour SET deployments and simple is almost always better because something will go wrong and you want mental bandwidth left over to actually operate.