Susan Davis

congrats on the first activation, that feeling when the pile starts answering your CQ is pretty great isnt it. for frequency selection honestly the best thing i do is check the POTA spots page before i even leave the house so i know whats already in use, and then when i get set up i do a quick scan and just listen for 30 seconds before i plant myself anywhere. on 40m SSB i usually start around 7.250 or so and work down depending on QRM but it really varies by time of day and where you are.
one thing that helped me a lot early on was self-spotting on the app as soon as i start calling, the hunters monitor that constantly and youll usually get a run going within a minute or two once your spot shows up. 23 QSOs for a first activation is solid, ive seen people stress out trying to get 10 and give up so you did fine.

had something similar happen with mine about a year ago, turned out to be a menu setting that somehow got changed, specifically the TX bass and treble in the tone settings under the set menu. i think i bumped something during a firmware update or the update reset a few values, cant remember exactly. worth checking those first before assuming its hardware because the 7300 has a ton of audio shaping options and if one of them drifts or resets it can make the TX sound really weird.
also check your microphone equalizer settings if you're using the built in one. i had mine set up pretty specifically and after one of icom's updates it went back to flat which didnt sound great with my sm-30. if you can factory reset just the audio profile without wiping everything else that might tell you whether its a settings issue or actual hardware.

The IC-7300 suffers from overload problems in the face of nearby strong signals like you might find at Field Day, and proper bandpass filters are the solution. For your amp issue, try adding a sequencer with adjustable timing delays between the radio and amplifier PTT lines.

yeah the PL tone thing gets people every single time, you'd think after all these years groups would have a better system for pushing out repeater changes but it never seems to happen. our group had almost the exact same issue during a drill a few years back, except it was the input frequency on our backup simplex channel being wrong in like half the members' radios.
the tabletop idea is solid. we started doing those before every full exercise and it really does help surface the dumb stuff early. doesnt have to be fancy, we just get 6-8 people around a table with a map and a scenario sheet and basically talk through what happens if X goes wrong. the questions that come up in those sessions always surprise me. someone always asks something like 'wait who actually has the key to the trailer' and suddenly you realize nobody has written that down anywhere.
one thing we added to our drills that helped a lot was a dedicated 'inject coordinator' whose whole job during the exercise is to throw curveballs at the team. radio fails, operator has to leave, shelter site reports their count doubled unexpectedly. keeps people from getting too comfortable and actually tests whether your backup plans are real plans or just words on a document.

so my buddy kept bugging me to try CQ WW with him this year and I finally said yeah sure why not. I have my general ticket and a pretty basic setup, IC-7300 into a dipole up maybe 30 feet, nothing fancy. I've done a little bit of Field Day before but only as a helper, never really operated the radio myself for more than a few contacts.
honestly I dont really know what to expect with something like CQ WW. I've been reading about it and the exchange is zone numbers right? I looked up my CQ zone and I think im in zone 5 but I want to double check that. also is it worth jumping in even if you're just gonna be running search and pounce the whole time? I feel like I'd just be in the way of the serious contesters who actually know what theyre doing. any advice from people who've actually done it before would be great, especially for someone who's never really operated a contest from their own station

honestly the memorize vs understand debate has been going on forever and both sides have a point but for tech i think you can get away with mostly memorizing and filling in the gaps with some basic understanding. the question pool is the actual pool they pull from so if you know all those questions youre going to pass, full stop. hamstudy.org is what most people use and it tracks which ones you keep getting wrong so you can focus there. the math stuff does show up, maybe 3 or 4 questions on actual ohms law and power calculations, its not that bad once you just remember the triangle trick. spend maybe two weeks on it consistently and you should be fine, the tech exam really isnt that hard compared to general

yeah the eu2200i is pretty clean as generators go but light loading is definitely when they get noisier — the inverter section seems to generate more garbage when its only pulling like 200-300w. running a small dummy load in parallel can help stabilize it, sounds dumb but it works. some guys use a cheap space heater on low just to keep the loading up.
one thing i'd add is dont overlook your feedline routing relative to the generator. even 30ft separation doesnt help much if the coax is running parallel to the power cord for any length. try to cross them at 90 degrees or keep significant physical distance. picked that up the hard way at a field day a few years back, spent an hour chasing noise that turned out to be coupling between the coax and the generator extension cord that were bundled together for about 20ft.

Check your Windows default audio devices first. Set internal soundcard as default for both device and communication, should show green checkmark. VARA needs clean separation between radio interface and system audio.

Just noticed on the solar reports that we have a K-index of 1 and SFI around 158. I know low K is good, but I'm still learning what bands to focus on during quiet geomagnetic conditions like this.
Planning to get on the air after dinner - should I fire up the rig on 20M or try something higher like 15M/12M? My setup is just a G5RV at 30 feet, nothing fancy. Any advice from the more experienced ops?

honestly you're not as far off as you think, at least for initial QSOs with the big gun stations. JT65B on 2m EME is doing a lot of the heavy lifting these days and there are stations running 4 x 19el arrays with a kilowatt that are actively hunting for small stations to work. your NF sounds solid which is actually half the battle on receive, and 500w is workable if your antenna has decent gain.
the 17el yagi, whats the boom length and who made it? thats going to matter a lot. something like an M2 or a home brew based on DL6WU dimensions is going to be very different from a cheap commercial antenna with sloppy element spacing. if you can get your ERP up to maybe 300-400w equivalent into a antenna with 17-18 dBd youll show up in someones JT65 decode, especially during the big EME contests like the ARRL EME contest in the fall. i worked my first moon contact with a single yagi setup not too different from yours, took a while to find the right opportunity but it happened.
the main thing id say is get on the logger at df2zc.de and start watching who is calling CQ on 144.120, youll get a sense pretty quickly of whos hearable from your location and which big stations to aim at first.

so ive been trying to get back into CW after about a 15 year break and honestly its like starting over. i picked up an old Bencher paddle at a hamfest a few months ago and its been sitting on my desk mostly collecting dust because every time i sit down to practice i just get frustrated with myself.
the main thing bugging me right now is the keyer timing — im running an Icom 7300 with the built in keyer and i cannot for the life of me find a speed and weight setting that feels natural. like if i slow it down enough to be accurate the dits and dahs feel too mushy and spaced out, but if i speed it up to where it sounds good to my ear i start making all kinds of errors. i think part of the problem might be the paddle tension too but im not sure. anybody else gone through this coming back after a long break and what did you do to get the feel back.
also should i just bite the bullet and get a standalone keyer or is the 7300 built in good enough for practicing