Robert Johnson

so ive been trying to learn CW for about three months now and just picked up a used set of Begali paddles off a guy at the club swap meet last weekend. really nice paddles honestly, way better than the cheap bencher clone i was using before. anyway i have them hooked into my ic-7300 and using the internal keyer set to iambic mode B.
the problem is when im trying to send certain letter combinations like C or Y or anything with a dash-dot pattern i keep squeezing both paddles at the wrong moment and getting extra elements inserted. i know thats kind of the whole thing with iambic mode B is that it remembers your last squeeze but its driving me crazy because my sending sounds like garbage and i can hear it on the sidetone. been practicing with the keyer speed set around 15 wpm which might actually be too fast for where im at right now, not sure.
do most people just eventually get the muscle memory or is there some kind of trick to timing your squeeze releases that im missing? or should i just switch to mode A and see if that feels more natural? any advice appreciated, getting a little frustrated but i dont want to give up on this

so this has been driving me nuts for the past couple weeks. picked up a used 7300 from a local ham who said it was 'working fine' but needed a cleaning. well it powers on, receives perfectly, but i cannot get more than about 20 watts out of it on any band. tried it on 40, 20, 10, 2m through a transverter, same deal everywhere. the power meter on the rig itself agrees with my external wattmeter so at least the display isnt lying to me.
ive already checked the obvious stuff - ALC is not pegged, the RF power knob is all the way up, not in low power mode, mic gain is set normal. did the touch screen calibration thing just in case. nothing changed. also noticed the finals dont get particularly warm even when transmitting which makes me think its not a thermal protection thing kicking in.
before i crack it open and start poking around, has anyone seen this specific symptom? wondering if theres a driver stage issue or maybe something upstream of the finals. or honestly could just be a bad PA board. really dont want to send it to Icom if i can help it, their turnaround times are brutal right now.

The ignition noise thing is super common and kind of a rite of passage honestly. Few things to try — first check that your antenna feedline shield is actually grounded well at the mount, a loose NMO mount is a surprisingly common culprit. Also if you haven't already, get a ferrite choke and put it on the power leads right at the radio, that cleans up a lot of stuff. Some guys swear by putting one on the coax too near the radio end.
For the coax through the door jamb I would honestly redo it if you can. I did that on my old Tacoma and within a year had a short that took me forever to track down. Most vehicles have a grommet on the firewall that you can sneak a coax through if you're patient and have a good fish tape. Way cleaner and you'll sleep better knowing its not getting pinched every time you open the door. The FT-7900 is a solid radio by the way, been running one for probably 8 years now with no complaints.

i had almost the exact same thing with my 706 years ago and it drove me crazy for months. turned out my power wires were running parallel to the coax for about 18 inches under the carpet and that was enough to cause problems. separating them fixed most of it. also ended up putting a cheap noise filter on the power line right at the radio, one of those astron or similar inline ones, and that got rid of the last of it. not the most elegant solution but it worked fine for years after that.

so ive been chasing a few entities on my most wanted list for a while now and honestly pileups used to completely destroy me. id call and call for like an hour and get nothing, or id get a partial call back and then lose it. real frustrating stuff especially when youre running maybe 100w and a modest antenna.
anyway the one that finally clicked things for me was a recent dxpedition to one of the central african entities, i wont name it because this isnt really about that specifically. what changed was i stopped calling on top of everyone else and actually started listening to where the dx station was pulling calls from. like actually sitting on the dx tx frequency and just listening for a full 10-15 minutes before touching my key. you start to hear patterns — whether theyre working split and how wide, whether theyre favoring certain parts of the spread, whether theres a rhythm to how they come back.
the other thing i started doing was calling slightly off the main pileup cluster. if everyone is hammering 14.025 to 14.027 i'd try 14.028 or even 14.029. sometimes the dx op is spinning the vfo looking for a clear signal and if youre sitting just outside the chaos you stand out. not always, but more than i expected.
also just getting my timing right made a huge difference. waiting until the pile thins just slightly after the dx works someone — theres like a 2 second window where the chaos resets and if you're in there clean and quick with just your call, sometimes thats enough. anyone else have stuff thats worked for them?

recount those toroid turns, seriously. i built a 7mhz lpf once and was off by two turns on one winding and the thing was passing harmonics like it wasnt even there. grabbed my antenna analyzer and the rolloff was way off from what the design said. fixed the turns and suddenly everything looked right. probably not your whole problem but if your filter isnt right the scope is going to show you a mess regardless of what the amp is doing. whats your cutoff frequency supposed to be and do you know what core you used

so ive been using Log4OM for general logging for about two years now and i really like it for day to day stuff, the integration with WSJT-X is pretty solid once you get the UDP ports sorted out. but every time a contest rolls around i feel like i should just switch over to N1MM because thats what everyone seems to use and i dont want to miss out on the multiplier tracking and stuff.
my question is does anyone actually run both at the same time or is that just asking for trouble with the UDP ports conflicting. i tried once and Log4OM kept grabbing the WSJT-X traffic before N1MM could see it. or maybe i had something misconfigured, honestly not sure. the contest last weekend (ARRL DX CW) i just ended up using N1MM standalone without WSJT-X which was fine but im trying to figure out a cleaner workflow for when i want to do FT8 during a contest like the state QSO parties where it counts

so ive been using Log4OM for general logging for about two years now and i really like it for day to day stuff, the integration with WSJT-X is pretty solid once you get the UDP ports sorted out. but every time a contest rolls around i feel like i should just switch over to N1MM because thats what everyone seems to use and i dont want to miss out on the multiplier tracking and stuff.
my question is does anyone actually run both at the same time or is that just asking for trouble with the UDP ports conflicting. i tried once and Log4OM kept grabbing the WSJT-X traffic before N1MM could see it. or maybe i had something misconfigured, honestly not sure. the contest last weekend (ARRL DX CW) i just ended up using N1MM standalone without WSJT-X which was fine but im trying to figure out a cleaner workflow for when i want to do FT8 during a contest like the state QSO parties where it counts

so i finally got off my butt and did an actual SOTA activation instead of just chasing from home. took my FT-818 and a linked dipole up to a local summit, nothing crazy elevation wise but it counts. the hike was only like 45 minutes but man carrying all that gear plus the mast and tent stakes and rope and everything adds up fast. my back was not happy.
anyway what i wasnt prepared for was how long it takes to get set up once youre up there. i figured id be on the air in like 10 minutes but between finding a spot to anchor the mast and getting the feedline sorted and then actually alerting on the app it was almost 40 minutes before i made my first qso. wind was also way stronger than at the trailhead which i should have expected but didnt.
made 12 contacts on 20m SSB and 4 on 40m before the clouds started rolling in and i decided to pack it up. still qualified the summit which was the goal but i feel like i left a lot on the table. anyone have tips for speeding up the setup process, im thinking about pre-rigging more stuff at home before the hike