David Thomas

oh man yeah the 13-15wpm plateau is real, i spent like 4 months parked right there and thought i was just not wired for it. what finally broke it for me was forcing myself to listen at 18 or even 20wpm even when i was only copying maybe 30% of it. sounds counterproductive but your brain starts recognizing the rhythm of whole words instead of individual letters and eventually something clicks. the Koch method talks about this, always train at or slightly above your target speed not below it.
also the panicking and trying to write everything is exactly the wrong instinct, i know its hard to just let letters go but you really do have to get comfortable missing stuff. if you copy 60% of a qso you usually have enough context to fill in the rest. took me forever to actually believe that but its true. keep at it, the plateau does end

yeah that wall around 8-10wpm is super common, pretty much everyone hits it. what's happening is your brain is still spelling out individual letters instead of hearing whole words as sounds, and that transition is genuinely hard. the Farnsworth method your buddy mentioned — that's exactly the right move, it trains your ear to hear characters at real speed even when there's space between them so you never develop the habit of counting dots and dashes.
i went through this myself maybe six years ago. what actually helped me more than anything was just listening to real QSOs on 40m with a decoder running alongside so i could sanity check what i was hearing. even if i only copied 40% of it something about real callsigns and real exchanges made it click faster than any software trainer. w1aw also does code practice broadcasts at different speeds and they publish the text ahead of time so you can follow along — honestly underrated resource.
as for getting on the air, just do it. seriously. find a slow speed net, there are a few specifically for people practicing. nobody is going to laugh at you for sending 8wpm, cw ops are generally pretty patient with folks learning. the real contacts will help more than another month of offline practice, i promise.

thats pretty much every night for me lol. i usually just end up on 2m talking to the guys in the local club instead. 40 feels like a gamble

The WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 path is correct for mobile operation. Smart TNCs are capable of determining what has already happened with the packet and can prevent redundant packet repeating within the network. This two-hop path allows your packets to reach fill-in digipeaters first, then get picked up by wide-area digipeaters for better coverage without excessive repeating.

yeah $850 sounds about right, seen them go for more lately. one thing i'll mention is check if he has the original box and the DC power cable because icom's stock cable on that rig is pretty thin for 100w sustained operation and some guys swap it out. not a dealbreaker just something to know about. also the menu system takes a little getting used to if youre coming from yaesu but after a week or so its fine

so i finally got my callsign in the ULS last night and i was so excited i basically ran to my radio and just started listening to the local repeater for a while. eventually i keyed up and said my callsign and somebody came back to me right away which was awesome but then i completely blanked on what to say next. like i had my signal report and everything but i just kind of fumbled through the whole exchange and forgot to say my callsign at the end like you're supposed to. the guy was super nice about it though and gave me a 59 which i think was probably being generous given how bad my audio probably sounded through that cheap HT i picked up. anyway just wanted to introduce myself i guess, been lurking here for months while i was studying and glad to finally be licensed. KD9 something something, you'll see me on here more i'm sure.

so i've been running a diamond x50 on the roof for a while now, about 50 foot of RG-8X going down through the attic and into the shack. works fine on 2m but i feel like im losing quite a bit on 70cm. been comparing notes with a guy across town and my signal reports on 440 are always a bit softer than i'd expect given the height and location.
i've been trying to figure out if its worth pulling all that coax and replacing with LMR-400 or something comparable. the run isnt super complicated but its not fun either, goes through a couple of bends in the attic and i used one of those right angle adapters at the radio end which i know isnt ideal. probably should have used a proper sweep there but at the time i just wanted to get it working.
anyone done a straight swap like this and noticed a real difference on 70cm specifically? not talking about marginal gains, like actually noticeable on the air difference. the x50 is pointed up at about 20ft agl so im not expecting miracles but i do hit a couple of repeaters that are borderline and it would be nice to nail those consistently.

i just passed mine like two months ago so this is fresh. honestly the sub-bands were not my main reason either, i just wanted to finish what i started when i got my ticket. the theory is intimidating when you first look at it but its not as bad as it looks. i used hamstudy dot org almost exclusively and just kept doing practice exams until i was hitting 85 percent or better consistently. some of the questions about vacuum tubes and older circuit stuff felt pretty random but they come up so you gotta know em
worth it? yeah i think so even if you never touch the extra portions of the bands. just feels good to have the full license

im kind of in the same boat as you honestly, got my ticket in 2020 and just recently started caring about confirmations. one thing i didnt realize until embarrasingly late is that not all QSOs on LoTW match up automatically -- both sides have to upload their log for it to confirm. had a bunch of contacts where i uploaded my side and waited forever and nothing happened. so if you worked someone and its been a while with no LoTW confirm, sometimes sending a direct QSL or even a card via the bureau is worth it just to have a backup.

So ive been seeing a lot of chatter about the IC-905 on various groups and someone at our club meeting last week was going on about it for like 20 minutes straight. I'll be honest I zoned out a bit but from what I gathered its doing some pretty wild stuff on the microwave bands which is not something I ever thought id be interested in but here we are.
Also unrelated but kind of related — anyone been noticing 10 meters lately? We had a solid opening here in the midwest last thursday afternoon, worked a bunch of south american stations without even trying, was just sitting there with the radio on in the background and suddenly the band was just alive. Reminded me of why I got into this hobby in the first place honestly.
Anyway back to the original question, has anyone actually put hands on the 905 or is this still mostly a "wait for stock" situation everywhere. And is the price as bad as people are saying or is that just the usual sticker shock that goes away after a week

yeah $850 sounds about right, seen them go for more lately. one thing i'll mention is check if he has the original box and the DC power cable because icom's stock cable on that rig is pretty thin for 100w sustained operation and some guys swap it out. not a dealbreaker just something to know about. also the menu system takes a little getting used to if youre coming from yaesu but after a week or so its fine