James Davis67

so i just got my technician license like 3 weeks ago and ive been lurking on the local 2m repeater for forever trying to work up the nerve to actually key up. last night i just did it. called out and this guy W5something came back to me right away and we had like a 10 minute ragchew about nothing really, he asked where i was, what radio i had, all that stuff. i was stumbling over my callsign like an idiot but he was super patient about it. anyway im KD9 something (still weird to say) and i guess im officially a ham now? feels different after that first contact for real. anyone else remember their first QSO being kind of a big deal even if it was totally mundane?

the relay thing is worth checking first honestly. i had weird band-specific weirdness on an older icom and it was just a relay contact that needed cleaning. way less scary than digging into the driver stage. deoxit and a few cycles of keying it sometimes sorts it out, sometimes not, but its a 5 minute thing to try before anything else.

oh man i totally missed the opening, was out running errands all afternoon and saw people posting about it later. so frustrating. i feel like every time conditions actually do something interesting im not at the radio. i just got my general a few months ago and havent really worked much DX yet so im still chasing that first real Europe contact on HF. one day.

yeah the coax thing would have done it, an antenna switch with a scorch mark means that transient went somewhere and your radio was the most likely destination. ive seen 7300s come in for exactly this kind of thing and it's usually the PA transistors or something in the low pass filter switching that gets cooked just enough to degrade but not fail outright. the band-specific behavior is the tell. one thing you can check without a scope — if you have any way to monitor your transmitted signal on another receiver, even a cheap SDR dongle on a dummy load tap, watch the signal quality while you key up. if you're seeing harmonics or the signal looks ragged that narrows it down. but realistically man, if the coax switch is scorched that surge went through your rig and you're probably looking at a shop visit. it might not be super expensive if it's just a transistor or two but you need someone with a proper bench to sort it out.

That Virginia contact on 40m with 5w and a wire in a tree is nothing to sneeze at, conditions have been pretty decent lately but still that's a solid first outing. I remember my first QRP contact clear as anything — i was using an old Oak Hills OHR 100A that a friend basically gave me, ugly little thing but it worked, and i called CQ for about 45 minutes before someone finally came back to me and i think i scared my wife by yelling in the shack The QCX mini is a great kit to start with. Hans does good work and the receiver on those is surprisingly decent for what it costs. Only thing i'd say is once you get comfortable with it start thinking about your antenna situation a little more — that end fed is fine but if you can get a 9:1 unun on there and maybe a bit more wire length you'll notice a difference. Also dont underestimate a good paddle, it makes a huge difference when you're out portable and tired and trying to copy in the field. Doesnt have to be expensive, there are some decent cheap ones from various places if you look around

so i just passed my general last week (still kind of in shock honestly) and i've been reading about vanity callsigns and i'm not totally sure i understand how the whole thing works. like i know you can apply through the FCC for a specific callsign but there seems to be a whole system to it and i cant figure out if theres a waiting period or what. my sequential call is KD9 something and its fine but my grandfather was a ham back in the day and had a really clean 2x1 call in the W5 district. i'd love to get something like that or at least a shorter call. do i just go to the ULS and apply or is there more to it? also does it cost money now? i remember reading something about fees being added but wasnt sure if that applied to vanity too. any help appreciated, still figuring all this stuff out

the Farnsworth method absolutely works, its not gimmicky at all. the whole idea is you want your brain to learn characters as sounds not as individual dits and dahs counted out, and if you practice at too slow a speed your brain never makes that jump. i kept myself stuck at 10 wpm for almost a year doing it the wrong way. once i cranked character speed to 20 and dropped word speed to like 8 or so it clicked within a couple months. frustrating at first because you feel like youre failing constantly but stick with it. on the paddle side of things, tension and spacing make a huge difference but honestly even a cheap paddle can work if its adjusted right. grab a small screwdriver and start with very light tension, lighter than you think you need, and make sure the gap between the contacts is consistent on both sides. if ones tighter than the other youll keep triggering the wrong element. also think about where your elbow is relative to the paddle, a lot of people have their arm at a weird angle and it creates tension in the wrist that throws everything off. took me forever to figure that out.

had almost the exact same problem on a friends 7300 last year. before you go digging into the driver or finals, check the menu setting for output power first — there's a separate power limit setting buried in the set menu that a lot of people dont realize exists. its not the front panel knob, its like a software cap. i forget exactly where it is offhand but its in there. the previous owner might have had it limited for some reason, apartment QRM complaints or whatever, and just never mentioned it. if thats not it then yeah i'd start looking at the ALC line with a scope while keying up. the 7300 driver chain isnt too bad to trace once you have the service manual, which you can find floating around online. the PA transistors are Mitsubishi parts and they do fail but usually they fail harder than what youre describing. low and stable output like that usually points upstream of the finals in my experience.

okay so i just got my tech license last month and ive been listening a lot on local repeaters and sometimes guys use the nato phonetic alphabet and sometimes they just say their call sign normally. like one guy will say his call as kilo four whiskey romeo november and another just says K4WRN or whatever. is there a rule about when you have to use them or is it just preference? i thought you had to always use phonetics but maybe im wrong. also sometimes i hear people use weird ones that arent the nato ones, like someone said sugar instead of sierra and it threw me off completely

HackRF is fun but yeah the RX is mediocre, i use mine mostly for transmitting test signals and replay stuff, not for actual listening. for HF monitoring id stick with a proper RX-focused device. the RSP2 is worth looking at too if you can stretch the budget a bit, has multiple antenna ports which is actually handy. also have you tried SDR++ yet? way better than SDR# imo, cleaner interface and the modules system is nice. works with basically everything including RTL dongles so you can try it now before you even upgrade.

wait so is 6 meters like always good during summer or is this actually unusual? im a tech class right now studying for general and honestly didnt even realize 6m was a thing people got excited about. i thought VHF was mostly just local repeater stuff. now im kind of wishing i had gotten into this sooner before the opening ends or whatever.

honestly the thing that surprised me when i actually activated for a real event was how much i needed stuff that had nothing to do with radio. like a power strip (the kind with the long cord), extra extension cord, hand sanitizer, a small first aid kit just for myself, ear protection because gyms and EOCs are LOUD and wearing headphones for 8 hours on a hard chair is rough. also a camp chair because sometimes theres nowhere to sit and you feel weird asking. on the radio side the one thing id add is some kind of external speaker or at least a good earpiece. the internal speaker on the 857 isnt bad but in a noisy environment you miss stuff constantly. and yeah the slim jim suggestion in the other reply is spot on, i have one made from 300 ohm tv twinlead thats been in my kit for years and it goes up in like 2 minutes.

im kinda in the same boat as you, got my ticket back in march and ended up going with the ft-65 after reading a bunch of stuff online. no regrets so far, it fits pretty comfortably in my hand and the audio on the speaker is decent enough that i can hear it clearly on the trail without cranking the volume all the way up. programming it with chirp took me maybe an hour to figure out the first time but once you get it it's easy one thing nobody told me that i wish i'd known is to check what your local repeaters actually need before you buy anything, like some want CTCSS tones and you just want to make sure whatever radio you get supports that, they all do but still, just double check. good luck and congrats on passing

welcome to the hobby, first off. what you experienced with that guy transmitting over people is unfortunately pretty common on some repeaters and no, it's not correct procedure. could be a few things — his radio might have a timeout issue where he doesnt realize he's stepping on people, or sometimes folks just have bad habits they've picked up over years and nobody ever said anything. you weren't wrong to feel like something was off, because something was off. as for the traffic question, yeah that tripped me up too when i was new. most casual nets you just say no traffic and move on. if the net has a formal structure sometimes you hear people say "no traffic, just a signal report" or something like that. the main thing is just listen for a few weeks on whatever net you join, you pick up the rhythm pretty fast. you did fine checking in, the fact that you waited and listened first puts you ahead of a lot of new hams who just jump right in.

yeah im kind of in the same boat as you actually, been messing around with it on and off for a few weeks. i've been using the morse toad app on my phone which is decent for drilling individual characters but i honestly dunno if im building bad habits or not. someone in my local club told me about that lcwo site too so maybe ill actually sit down and try that properly