Ashley Wilson

so i dont know if anyone else has been watching the wspr spots or just generally hanging out on 10m but holy cow the last few weeks have been something else. i was just sitting there running low power like maybe 10 watts into my end fed and i was getting spots from europe, south america, even a JA station which i honestly wasnt expecting at all on a tuesday afternoon. its got me thinking about finally dusting off my old tribander that i hasnt used in probably two years because the rotor cable got chewed up by something. anyway been reading that we're really hitting the stride of solar cycle 25 now and the flux numbers have been consistently high. saw something about a new sunspot region rotating into view too. also heard there was a new handheld coming from yaesu, something in the FT-60 replacement family maybe? i saw a thread somewhere but lost the link. anyone know anything about that or is it just rumor at this point

so this has been driving me nuts for about two weeks now. my 7300 started acting up during a contest — was running fine at 100w then suddenly power dropped to like 8-10 watts and the ALC was pegged way into the red. thought maybe it was a software glitch or something so i rebooted it, no change. tried different bands, same thing across the board which made me think probably not a filter issue. checked the antenna, SWR was fine on the dummy load too so its not a reflection problem. pulled up the radio's internal power meter and its definitely not putting out anywhere near rated power. the receive side seems totally normal which is kind of confusing me — like why would RX be fine if the finals were actually gone. anyone dealt with this before? im wondering if its the driver stage rather than the finals themselves but honestly i havent cracked the lid yet because im a little nervous about digging into a radio this new. its about 3 years old and out of warranty obviously. should i just send it to icom or is this something diagnoseable at home if you have a decent DMM and some patience

so ive been running single op for a few years now mostly on SSB sweepstakes and the occasional FD and im starting to hit a wall with my rates. like i can do okay for the first couple hours and then it just kind of falls off and i watch my score stagnate while guys with similar antennas seem to keep pulling contacts. been reading about SO2R and i get the concept but i genuinely dont know if its the operating technique thats holding me back or if two radios would actually help at my level. my current setup is an IC-7300 and a pretty decent dipole situation for 40 and 20. not running any amplifier. my rates on a good run hover around 80-90/hr at the start and then drop to like 40-50 after the first couple hours which i always assumed was just band conditions thinning out but maybe im doing something wrong with how im managing the bands. is SO2R even a realistic thing to get into without spending a ton and rebuilding the whole station? or are there just better techniques to squeeze more out of single radio operating that i havent figured out yet

so i decided i want to get my technician license and i bought a study guide at a hamfest a couple weeks ago but honestly its kind of overwhelming. theres so much stuff in the question pool about electrical theory and i dont really have a background in any of that. like i understand the basic radio stuff conceptually but when it gets into ohms law and calculating things i kind of zone out. is there a better way to go about this or do i just need to grind through all 400+ questions until i know them. a guy at the hamfest told me to just memorize the answers without understanding them but that feels wrong somehow. also how long did it take most people to actually feel ready to take the test