David Johnson

oh man i was in the exact same spot like a year ago. what helped me was actually finding a net that does an echolink or winlink option so i could listen on my computer first without tying up my radio. kind of cheating maybe but it let me hear what a proper check-in sounded like before i tried it live. also some nets have a specific window where they take mobile and low power stations separately which is nice if you're running qrp or have a compromised antenna situaton like me lol. just worth knowing thats a thing

oh man i remember feeling the exact same way my first time checking in. i must have rehearsed what i was gonna say like ten times before the net and then when net control called me i completely blanked for a second and probably sounded like an idiot. but nobody cared, they were all super welcoming. just keep showing up and it gets totally natural after a few weeks.

i dont know whats going on with me but ive had my rig on the desk for like three weeks and barely touched it. used to be i'd come home and immediately fire up the 40m and just see whats happening. now i sit down and just kinda stare at it. maybe its the winter thing, maybe im just burned out. did a bunch of POTA activations last fall and maybe overdid it. anyone else go through phases like this with the hobby

so ive been running single op for years now and every contest i watch the top scores and they're almost always SO2R guys. i get the concept, radio 1 is running a frequency, radio 2 is hunting mults on the other band, but actually executing it seems like a nightmare especially with the interference between the two rigs. i tried a basic version of it last CQWW with my K3 and a borrowed TS-590 and the bleedover was bad enough that i basically gave up after an hour. been reading about bandpass filters, the 4O3A stuff and the ICE filters, but man the cost adds up fast. for those of you who run SO2R regularly is it something you eased into or did you just go all in with the proper filtering from day one? also curious about the operating rhythm — like how do you mentally switch between two QSOs at once, do you just get used to it or is there some trick to it. feels like rubbing your belly and patting your head at the same time honestly.

the CI-V automation stuff is cool but have you looked at hamlib at all? might save you some wheel reinventing depending on how deep you want to go with the 7300 integration. not trying to steer you off your own project just — its already got the band polling stuff handled and a lot of people pipe it into their own scripts.

So i finally pulled the trigger and signed up to activate a local state park tomorrow morning. its K-4829 if anyone knows it, pretty small park but its about 20 minutes from my house so seemed like a good starting point. im running a KX2 with a homemade end fed and a 20ah lifepo4 battery so the setup should be fine i think. what i keep second guessing myself on is the spotting stuff. i set up an account on the POTA website and i know i can self-spot through the app but im not sure how often to re-spot or if thats even something people do. also do hunters generally expect you to stay on one frequency for a while or is it normal to hop around if 40m dies down and i want to try 20m. ive done plenty of contesting and regular HF so the actual radio part doesnt worry me, its more the logistics of how POTA activations are supposed to flow that im fuzzy on. any advice from folks who have done a bunch of these would be appreciated

yeah the 857 finals are RD70HVF1s if i remember right, and they do fail gradually sometimes rather than all at once which makes it annoying to diagnose. first thing id actually do is pull the top cover and look at the PA board while its running — check if one side of the push-pull pair is running noticeably hotter than the other. if one device is partly dead the other ends up doing most of the work and you can usually feel the difference even just by careful touch after a short TX burst (be careful obviously). also worth checking the bias trimmer on the PA board, sometimes those drift. there's a procedure in the service manual for setting idle current and if its way off that could explain partial power loss. the service manual is floating around online, just search for the 857D service manual PDF, its not hard to find. i went through something similar with mine about two years ago and it ended up being a cold solder joint on the driver board which i only found by flexing the board gently while watching the power meter. not saying thats your problem but worth a look before you start swapping transistors.

i was in roughly the same position about two years ago and ended up building a pair of M2 2M9SSB yagis stacked, ran them with an IC-9700 and about 400w from a cheap LDMOS amp. worked maybe 35 stations first year which i was pretty happy with given the station size. the 9700 is actually a decent rig for this, the built in weak signal modes work fine though some purists will tell you to run WSJT-X on a computer which yeah you probably want to do anyway for logging and the EME specific features in the software. honestly the hardest part for me wasnt the gear it was getting the antenna aimed right. az/el rotators add up fast in cost and a sloppy mount kills you on EME because youre chasing a moving target and every fraction of a dB matters. just something to plan for in the budget before you go buying amps and preamps

oh man CQ WW with an IC-7300 and a dipole is totally doable, dont let anyone tell you otherwise. some of the most fun contest experiences ive had were running low power and working the big signals. you wont win anything but racking up contacts from 50 different countries in a weekend is a blast regardless of your antenna situation. the exchange for CQ WW SSB is super simple once you get it — its just signal report and CQ zone, so like 59 05 if you're in zone 5. zones can be looked up easy, just google the CQ zone map before you start. N1MM Logger is what most people use and it handles a lot of the exchange stuff automatically which helps a ton when youre tired on hour 12. Field Day is definitely a different vibe, more relaxed, more about the experience and emergency prep than pure score chasing. but honestly both are worth doing, Field Day gets you comfortable operating under weird conditions and CQ WW gets your blood pumping. do both.

so ive been sitting on doing the transmit mod on my IC-7300 for probably six months now, kept putting it off because honestly it seemed like more trouble than it was worth and i didnt want to void anything. finally just did it last weekend after a buddy showed me how straightforward it actually is. just a jumper removal on the board, took maybe 20 minutes including the time i spent second guessing myself. the reason i even bothered is i do some MARS work occasionally and needed the extended TX coverage below the ham bands. not looking to do anything sketchy, just practical stuff. anyway the mod itself went fine but what surprised me is the audio seemed... marginally better? or maybe im imagining it. somebody else told me that happens sometimes with the filtering changes but i dont know if thats actually a thing or placebo. the rig does run a tiny bit warmer when i push it on extended freqs but nothing alarming on the fan. anyone else done this and messed around with the TX EQ settings after? im running a Heil PR-40 through a Behringer preamp into the mic input and trying to dial in the audio response now that the mod is done. feels like the passband is a little different but i could just be overthinking it.

had almost the exact same issue on a stretch of I-80 out here. turns out the digi i thought was covering that area had been running with a misconfigured alias for like two years and wasnt actually digipeating WIDE paths at all, just its own direct callsign stuff. ended up finding out by posting in the local club mailing list and someone who maintained it had no idea it was broken. so yeah, definitely worth reaching out to whoever owns that ridge site if you can figure out who it is from the beacon text or the aprs.fi station info. sometimes just asking fixes it faster than troubleshooting your own gear.

so ive been a tech for about two years and just upgraded to general last month and i really want to get into CW. i know i dont need it for the license anymore but theres something about it that just pulls me in, maybe its the old school factor i dont know. anyway i picked up a cheap single lever paddle at a hamfest and im using the keyer built into my IC-7300. its... okay i guess? but i keep reading about iambic mode A vs mode B and honestly i still dont fully understand which one im supposed to use. the radio defaults to mode A i think. is that fine to just leave it or does it matter that much when youre just starting out? also any tips for building up speed would be great. im sitting at maybe 8-10 wpm right now and it feels like ill never get past it. ive been using the lcwo.net site which is pretty good but some days i just cant make my hand and brain work together at all

so ive been a General for about two years now and I keep going back and forth on whether to bother with the Amateur Extra. I mostly do HF, some SSB on 40 and 20, little bit of digital. I dont really have a specific reason I need the extra privileges right now, the General bands are honestly fine for what I do. But it kind of bugs me that there are portions of the bands I cant touch. my main hesitation is the theory. I remember reading somewhere that the Extra exam gets into like transmission line theory, filter design, that kind of stuff. I passed my General without too much trouble but I never went to school for electronics or anything, just kind of self taught from handbooks and youtube. is the theory on the Extra actually difficult if you dont have an engineering background, or is it the kind of thing where if you just grind through the question pool it mostly makes sense? I dont want to spend months studying and then feel like I still dont understand what any of it means.

yeah the C and Y problem is super common when you're starting out with iambic, i remember that frustrating me to no end. one thing that helped me was just doing drills on single letters over and over with the keyer slowed right down and really focusing on when exactly i was letting go of the paddle. like consciously thinking about the release not just the squeeze. also random thought but have you tried Just Code or one of the other practice programs that shows you a character and makes you send it back? that feedback loop of seeing what you actually sent vs what you meant to send was huge for me. anyway stick with it, three months is still pretty early days and it does click eventually i promise

dont stress about it, CQ WW was my first contest too and honestly just jumping in is the best way to learn. search and pounce is what you want to start with — basically just tune around and when you hear someone calling CQ contest, call them, give your report and zone (zone 5 if youre in the midwest, different depending where you are obviously), and move on. dont try to run a frequency your first time out, at least not until you get a feel for the exchange rhythm. for logging definitely use N1MM+, its free and pretty much the standard for contesting. takes maybe an hour to set up but once its going it does a lot of the heavy lifting for you, calculates multipliers automatically and everything. your dipole is totally fine for working a bunch of stations, especially if 15 or 20 meters is open. have fun with it, the bands get pretty wild during CQ WW weekend