Michael Peterson

yeah I did both mods on mine back when i first got it, probably 2013 or so. the RX mod is worth doing imo just because the 857 actually recieves pretty decently below the broadcast band and you get coverage down into the longwave stuff which is fun to poke around on. the jumper version vs software thing — i went the hardware route because i didn't fully trust the software only approach, seemed like it could get reset by a firmware update or factory reset. with the physical jumper change it's just done and stays done. there's a thread on eham somewhere that lays it out pretty well, look for the one by KD9 something, forget his suffix. just make sure you're looking at the right version of the board because they changed the layout somewhere around 2009 i think and some of the older diagrams are wrong for the newer units

i went through exactly this same thing about a year ago. started on a straight key and was struggling, switched to a cheap kent paddle with a MFJ keyer and honestly it made a huge difference for me just because the iambic keyer handles the dot-dash spacing so you dont have to think about it as much. your brain can focus on the letters instead of the mechanics.
the MFJ-464 i got was like 60 bucks used and its been totally fine for learning. people complain about MFJ quality but mine has been solid. if you want something nicer the Begali paddles are gorgeous but yeah thats real money lol. stick with something cheap until you know youre gonna stick with it

yeah what he said about the strain relief is right. also 33.5 feet is just a starting point, 40m is a wide band and depending on where in the band you want to be centered youll probably need to trim. hook up an antenna analyzer if you have one or borrow one and check the SWR before you finalize the length. i cut mine a little long on purpose and trimmed down in small increments. way easier than trying to add wire back on lol

Good observation! That SFI drop will definitely affect 15M and 10M reliability, especially for European paths during contests. 20M will become even more important - make sure your antennas are optimized there. I've seen similar drops kill 10M completely during winter contests.

I've built several Arduino Nano/Si5351 VFO projects over the past year, but I'm consistently running into calibration problems. The EEPROM does not save the previous VFO frequency and reverts to default upon every restart, even though I've followed the standard calibration procedures from multiple sources. When I try to set correction factors over 32767 (like 93000), I get overflow warnings with 16-bit integers. Has anyone found a reliable workaround for persistent frequency storage and calibration value handling? Currently using the Etherkit Si5351 library v2.1.3 with Arduino IDE 1.8.19.

As someone new to GNU Radio, should I start with 4.0 RC1 or stick with the stable 3.x branch? I'm mainly interested in learning basic DSP concepts with my RTL-SDR dongles.

i went through exactly this same thing about a year ago. started on a straight key and was struggling, switched to a cheap kent paddle with a MFJ keyer and honestly it made a huge difference for me just because the iambic keyer handles the dot-dash spacing so you dont have to think about it as much. your brain can focus on the letters instead of the mechanics.
the MFJ-464 i got was like 60 bucks used and its been totally fine for learning. people complain about MFJ quality but mine has been solid. if you want something nicer the Begali paddles are gorgeous but yeah thats real money lol. stick with something cheap until you know youre gonna stick with it

same boat as you like 6 months ago lol. i was terrified to key up for the first time. the thing that helped me was just listening to the same net for like 3 or 4 weeks before i ever checked in so i knew the flow of how they did things. every net is a little different too, some are real formal with phonetics and signal reports every time and some are super casual. if youre ever unsure just listen to how other people are doing it and copy that. nobody expects new folks to be perfect right away

I've built several Arduino Nano/Si5351 VFO projects over the past year, but I'm consistently running into calibration problems. The EEPROM does not save the previous VFO frequency and reverts to default upon every restart, even though I've followed the standard calibration procedures from multiple sources. When I try to set correction factors over 32767 (like 93000), I get overflow warnings with 16-bit integers. Has anyone found a reliable workaround for persistent frequency storage and calibration value handling? Currently using the Etherkit Si5351 library v2.1.3 with Arduino IDE 1.8.19.

As someone new to GNU Radio, should I start with 4.0 RC1 or stick with the stable 3.x branch? I'm mainly interested in learning basic DSP concepts with my RTL-SDR dongles.