Rebecca Davis

the WSJT-X plus N1MM thing is doable but you kind of have to decide whos in charge of the radio. i tried it once during a mixed mode sprint and it was more trouble than it was worth, kept getting into this situation where N1MM thought it had CAT control and WSJT-X was also trying to do things and the rig just sat there confused. there are guides online about setting up a virtual COM port splitter to let both programs share the serial connection but i never got it totally stable on my machine.
for actual FT8 contesting though like FT Roundup or whatever, most people just run WSJT-X by itself and use its built in log and then export after. its not perfect but trying to tightly integrate the two during a live contest seems like a recipe for something breaking at the worst time

not a dumb question at all, this stuff is genuinely confusing when you first start out. the short version is LoTW is run by the ARRL and is generally considered the gold standard for award credit — things like DXCC basically require it. eQSL is a separate private service and some awards accept it but a lot of the big ones dont. paper cards are kind of a tradition and some DXers really love them, personally i still enjoy getting them in the mail even though i have everything confirmed digitally.
you dont have to do all three but if youre going for any ARRL awards you pretty much need LoTW. for that Japan card that you received, if the station uploaded to LoTW and you did too it might already show as confirmed in your account, worth checking. and honestly if you want to send a paper card back you can get some made pretty cheap from a few different printers, heck i just reordered mine from a place that does them for like 20 bucks per 100 cards. but there's no obligation, a lot of people are fine with just digital these days.

so ive been licensed for about 8 months now and ive been just kind of ignoring the whole QSL confirmation thing but i keep seeing people talk about it and i think i need to figure this out before i lose track of all my contacts in my log
from what i can tell there's like three different ways to confirm contacts? there's LoTW which is the ARRL one, eQSL which is a different website, and then actual physical cards you mail to each other or through a bureau. but i dont really understand how they relate to each other or if one is better than the other or if i need all three
i applied for my LoTW certificate thing a few weeks ago and got it set up in WSJT-X which apparently does it automatically for FT8 which is most of what im doing right now. so does that mean im already confirming contacts without doing anything else? and do i need to bother with the other methods too
also what even is the bureau, people keep mentioning it and i have no idea what it means in this context. sorry if these are dumb questions just trying to wrap my head around it all

ok so ive been interested in ham radio for a while now, like probably a year or two of just watching youtube videos and reading stuff online but never actually committing to anything. my neighbor is licensed and he keeps telling me to just do it already and honestly he's right but i dont even know where to start with the studying part.
like i know theres different license classes and you have to take a test but thats about it. do you have to know morse code still? i heard that got dropped but wasnt sure. also is the test hard? i work full time so i dont have as much time to study as i'd like but i can probably squeeze in maybe 30-45 minutes a night. someone mentioned ham study dot com or something like that but i dont know if thats the best resource or if there's something better. just kinda lost and looking for a pointer in the right direction i guess

yeah the listening thing is huge and most people dont do it nearly enough. ive worked a lot of rare ones over the years and the single biggest mistake i see is guys who clearly havent figured out where the DX is actually pulling from before they start calling. the operator tells you the split but that's like a 10khz range sometimes, you gotta narrow it down yourself by watching who gets picked.
one thing i'd add to your suffix-only tip — it depends heavily on band conditions and how big the pileup is. on a really huge pileup like a genuine top-10 most wanted entity, sometimes just your suffix gets lost because there are 40 other guys with the same suffix. in those cases i've had good luck going full callsign but saying it once very cleanly, good mic audio, not too fast. on CW obviously you just keep it tight, no prosigns, no extra garbage.
the other thing that doesnt get talked about enough is timing relative to propagation peaks. if you're chasing something transoceanic, there's usually a window of maybe 15-20 minutes where your signal path is optimum and the DX station's signal to you is loudest. that's when you go hard, not when the band sounds marginal. ive seen guys pound away for hours and then quit right before their window opens up.

i was in the exact same spot about eight months ago, zero background in any of this. i used the hamstudy app on my phone and just did it while waiting in line or whatever, took me maybe three weeks of casual studying. the test itself was 35 questions and i think i only got like 3 wrong so dont psych yourself out too much about the technical stuff. some of it you just kind of absorb without fully understanding why and thats fine for the tech license. general is a bigger jump but cross that bridge when you get there i guess

yeah i was confused about the same thing when i upgraded last year. the band plan thing tripped me up too. one thing that helped me was just downloading the ARRL frequency chart and keeping it next to the radio for a while, eventually it just kind of sinks in. the CW guys get pretty annoyed if you start throwing phone signals down in their end of the band so its worth paying attention to even if its not technically enforceable

not dumb at all, everyone starts somewhere. honestly the easiest way to go about it is just use HamStudy dot org and drill the question pool every day for like two or three weeks. the technician test isnt that hard, most people pass without any formal class. the question pool is public so what you're studying is literally what shows up on the test, just randomized. some of the questions are wordy but once you do enough practice tests you start recognizing the patterns. i think i did maybe 10 practice exams before i felt ready and ended up passing no problem. as for testing sessions, ARRL has a search tool to find VE sessions near you, and a lot of clubs do them regularly. some are even online now through Zoom or whatever if theres nothing close. just sign up, bring your ID and the fee, and go for it

I had the same issue with my Pluto setup. The problem was my home router's QoS settings prioritizing other traffic. Make sure you configure your router to give priority to the Pi's traffic, especially UDP packets.