Robert Kim

ok so i just got my ticket a few months ago and ive been making contacts pretty regularly, mostly on 40m SSB and some FT8. loving it so far. but now i'm trying to figure out this whole QSL confirmation thing and honestly its more confusing than i expected.
so from what i can tell there's LoTW which is run by the ARRL, then there's eQSL which is a separate thing, and then obviously physical paper cards you mail through the bureau or direct. my question is what do most people actually bother with? like is it worth signing up for all three or do people just pick one and stick with it.
i tried registering for LoTW and the whole certificate request process is kind of a pain, had to mail something in i think? and eQSL seemed easier to set up but i've heard some people say awards don't accept it. and paper cards look really cool but i dont even know where to start with that.
also does WSJT-X automatically upload to LoTW or do i have to do that manually? sorry if these are dumb questions, just trying to figure out the workflow here before i have a huge backlog of unconfirmed contacts

HackRF is another option if you want TX capability too, though its receive performance is actually worse than the RTL in some ways, higher noise floor. people forget that. its great for transmit experimentation and the bandwidth is huge (20MHz) but for pure receive monitoring the RSP1A or even an Airspy would probably serve you better. just something to factor in depending on what direction you want to go with this stuff.

i went 7300 about 18 months ago and zero regrets, thing just works. the roofing filter argument is real but unless youre in a contest environment or your local band is absolutely packed i think most people wont notice in practice. and the resale value on the icom is pretty solid too if you ever want to move on.

yeah the two sites pull from overlapping but not always identical cluster networks so you will see some differences, totally normal. dxwatch aggregates from a bunch of telnet nodes and tends to be pretty current. qrz's spot feed is decent but i've noticed it can lag a few minutes sometimes depending on where the spot originated.
for the app question — honestly clublog has a pretty solid spot alert thing and so does the hrdlog app. but what really changed things for me was just setting up a proper telnet connection in my logging software directly to a cluster node. if you're on windows and using something like log4om or even just the built in stuff in hamradio deluxe you can get spots piped right into your bandmap in near real time. way better than refreshing a webpage. the ft-991a should work fine with any of that once you get the rig control sorted.

did the D42 pull on mine probably 2 years ago. honestly the extended rx is usable but you're right that the front end starts getting a bit deaf and overloaded depending on band conditions. around the 11 meter area its fine but if you go much lower than that you notice the sensitivity drops off. still handy if you just want to casually monitor something without dragging out a dedicated rx radio.
the mic gain thing is totally separate, thats a different spot on the board. there's a trimmer pot near the mic input circuit and you can tweak it to bring the gain up a bit. i found a decent writeup on one of the Yaesu mod sites, think it was on mods.dk or somewhere similar. made a noticeable difference for me on SSB, got better reports. just go slow with the trimmer, tiny adjustments matter a lot there.

Don't forget about the third-party restrictions in 97.115 when working DX stations. Some foreign countries don't allow third-party traffic, so check the list before passing messages internationally.

the Farnsworth thing is genuinely the way to go, i wish someone had told me that earlier instead of spending like 6 months slogging at slow character speeds. your brain learns the rhythm of the letter as a sound instead of counting dots and dashes and that makes all the difference when you try to speed up. i was in your exact spot probably 2 years ago and what finally broke me through was just making myself get on the air before i felt ready. like seriously just called CQ on 40m at 8wpm with a really slow sending speed and a few people actually came back to me. the live QSO pressure is different from practicing alone and it kind of forces your brain to engage differently.
also dont underestimate just listening to code in the background while you're doing other stuff. not active copying, just having it on. sounds silly but it helped me a lot with recognizing letter sounds without thinking about it. took me about a year to get comfortable around 15-16wpm and i kind of plateau'd there for a while but it did eventually move. dont give up on it.

Don't forget about the third-party restrictions in 97.115 when working DX stations. Some foreign countries don't allow third-party traffic, so check the list before passing messages internationally.

Don't forget about the third-party restrictions in 97.115 when working DX stations. Some foreign countries don't allow third-party traffic, so check the list before passing messages internationally.