Carlos Santos

yeah this is super common and youre not doing anything wrong, your hand just hasnt built up the muscle memory yet. three weeks is nothing, i was cramping up for the first two months easily. the tension thing though -- i'd actually loosen it up a bit more than you think feels right. a lot of people crank it down because they're afraid of accidental contacts but lighter tension means your hand doesn't have to work as hard. also check where your elbow is sitting, if its hanging in the air at all that'll tire you out fast. rest your forearm on the desk and let the fingers do the work not the whole arm. the farnsworth method at 15 is fine but honestly if your hand is tensing up that bad just drop the character speed too for now. get the feel right first, speed comes later whether you want it to or not.

oh man i just started looking into WWFF myself after doing a bunch of POTA stuff. didnt realize how many parks and nature references were in the database, its kind of overwhelming at first. good to hear the KX3 worked well out there, i've been thinking about getting one for exactly this kind of thing but the price is a lot. did you run off batteries the whole time or did you have a way to charge out there?

so i've been putting off doing a proper mobile install for like two years now and last weekend i finally just did it. got the FT-857D mounted under the passenger seat with the head unit up on the dash, ran the power cables directly to the battery with an inline fuse, the whole deal. antenna is a Tram 1185 on a NMO mount i drilled into the roof. problem is when im on 2m or 70cm i keep getting this kind of scratchy buzzing noise that comes and goes with the engine RPM. so when i rev it up the pitch of the interference changes. i know this is probably alternator whine or something related but ive read like 15 different pages about it and im more confused than when i started. some people say ferrite chokes, some say a ground loop isolator, some say my ground is bad. i did ground the radio chassis to a bolt on the seat rail which maybe wasnt the best choice. anyone dealt with this before on a modern truck? its a 2019 F-150 if that matters. just want to be able to use the thing on my commute without the noise driving me crazy

the ribbon cable thing is real. i tore one on a different rig years ago and it was a whole thing getting a replacement, ended up waiting three weeks for a part from japan. now i literally sit there with a flashlight and tweezers and take way more time than i probably need to on those connectors. did you do anything to brace the TCXO after swapping it? i've heard of people having issues with vibration on mobile installs but i imagine for a base station setup it doesnt really matter. curious what oscillator you ended up going with too if you remember the part number off the top of your head.

so i finally did my first activation up on W4T/SU-051 this past saturday and man i dont even know where to start. ive been chasing for about 8 months now and kept telling myself id get out and activate eventually, well i finally did it and honestly it was a little overwhelming in the best way possible. i brought my KX2 and a 20m end fed halfwave that i threw up between two trees, took me probably 20 minutes longer than it should have to get the antenna sorted because the trees were not cooperating and the wind kept blowing everything around. once i finally got on the air though it just clicked — spotted myself on SOTAwatch and within maybe 3 minutes i had a pileup going. nothing huge but probably 12-15 contacts in a row which felt crazy sitting on top of a mountain with a 10 watt radio. the 4 contact minimum is deceptively easy once you get going but i was paranoid the whole time that i wasnt going to make it. anyone else remember that feeling from their first activation? also i totally forgot to log the summit reference on two of my paper contacts so im hoping i can piece it together from memory when i upload to the database. lesson learned i guess.

field day is honestly the perfect intro and it sounds like you already did it so youre ahead of where i was at 8 months. i remember my first CQ WW i just sat there for like an hour listening before i worked up the nerve to call anyone lol. just jump in, worst that happens is nobody comes back to you and you move on. one tip — download N1MM or even just use the free version of whatever logging software before the contest and practice entering calls so you're not fumbling with it during the actual event. nothing worse than having someone come back to you and you're typing in the wrong field

i went the other direction actually, had an 890 and sold it and bought a 7300 plus a bunch of other stuff with the leftover cash. the panadapter on the 7300 is honestly more fun to use day to day imo and the audio DSP is really good. people sleep on how usable that radio is for the price. the 890 is technically better on paper in some areas but i found myself just enjoying the operating experience more on the icom. totally subjective thing though

i just passed mine like two months ago and honestly the thing that surprised me was some of the regulatory questions, like the specifics around third party traffic and auxilary operations. i kind of glazed over that section assuming id know it from General but there were a few that made me go wait which rule applies here exactly. nothing crazy but worth not skimming.

yeah i went through the same thing when i first got my general, kinda overwhelming how many nets are out there once you start looking. i ended up just picking one or two and sticking with them for a few weeks until i got the hang of how that particular net runs, because they all have slightly different procedures and it helps to get familiar before jumping around too much. there was a special event station for a lighthouse activation near me last summer and i worked them on like three different bands trying to get a clean contact, had a great chat with the op between pileups. they had a certificate you could request through their club website and it showed up maybe six weeks later. pretty cool wall art honestly

nice work getting it going on a first build honestly. i remember my first dc receiver was a total disaster, took me three tries to get audio out of it at all. the drift thing drove me nuts too. one thing that helped me was just putting a small piece of foam over the oscillator section to thermally isolate it a bit while it comes up to temp — buys you a few minutes. not a real fix obviously but if you're just doing SWL or casual listening it makes it usable sooner. eventually i redid my oscillator with a DDS module which kinda felt like cheating but the stability was worth it for SSB work.

i just want to say im in the same boat, only been licensed about a year and the QSL stuff still trips me up sometimes. one thing i didnt realize for a while is that even if you upload to LoTW the other station has to have uploaded their log too AND your callsigns and dates have to match exactly or it wont confirm. i had a few contacts that wouldnt confirm for weeks and it turned out i had the wrong time in my log by like an hour because i hadnt set my logging software to UTC properly. classic mistake i guess. i ended up ordering some cheap cards off one of those online printers and honestly even a simple design looks good, people seem happy to get them. so id say go ahead and get some made, you dont have to spend a lot

yeah the rain thing is the worst, i've had two activations get rained out mid-session and its just demoralizing. definitely go back though, once you get that first qualified one it kinda gets addictive. i started doing SOTA too and now im planning every hiking trip around summits which my wife thinks is hilarious

what power level are you typically running at during those longer sessions? because i went through the same spiral worrying about my battery setup and then realized i had the 7300 set to 100w out of habit when honestly 50w was doing the same job 90% of the time and my runtime basically doubled. not the most exciting fix but worth checking before you throw money at more iron. also the eu2200i is fine but if weight is a real concern the predator 2000 is like 10 lbs lighter and cheaper. its louder but not hideously so. depends on your situation i guess.

Log4OM with WSJT-X is what i run and it mostly just works. had one weird thing where it stopped logging FT8 contacts after an update to WSJT-X but that turned out to be the UDP port number had reset to default in WSJT-X and i hadnt noticed. once i sorted that out it was fine. i think the Log4OM forums have a setup guide thats pretty clear if you get stuck

yeah what he said about the clock, that was my issue too when i started. also just double check that you dont have the split or RIT engaged on the 991A, ive seen people transmit way off frequency because of that and not realize it. the radio looks like its on 7.074 but its actually not. other than that your setup sounds fine honestly