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

So i've been running a little handheld clipped to my visor for about a year now and honestly it works okay for local repeaters but the audio is terrible and i keep missing calls when im driving. Finally decided to do a proper mobile install in my F-150 and picked up a Kenwood TM-V71A which i got a decent deal on used from a guy at the club swap meet. Anyway the radio itself is great but im kind of lost on where to run the coax from the antenna. I mounted a mag mount on the roof for now (i know i know, not permanent) and right now the coax is just kind of going through my rear passenger door jamb which is not ideal at all. The door still closes fine but i dont love it and i figure if i do this right i might as well actually do it right. Has anybody run coax through the firewall on a newer F-150? Im on a 2018 model and i can see there are some rubber grommets on the firewall but they look pretty stuffed already. Or should i try to find a way to go through the floor? Just looking for ideas before i start drilling anything i cant undo.

yeah happens to me every summer honestly. i think part of it is propagation just being garbage on the bands i like. when 17m opens up again in the fall i always get the bug back real quick. sometimes i just throw on a contest weekend and work a few stations just to feel something lol. nothing crazy but it gets me back in the chair.

so ive been a Tech for about 8 months now and honestly i got really into HF after listening to some guys on 40m with my friend's radio at a field day event last summer. i want to get on HF myself but i keep putting off studying for the General because i heard the question pool is way bigger and there's a bunch of electrical theory stuff i never really understood even back when i got my Tech. i guess my main question is like... is it actually hard or am i overthinking it. the propagation stuff and the operating rules i think ill be fine with but the circuit stuff with the impedance and reactance formulas kind of scares me. i dont even remember the math from the Tech exam honestly, i just memorized enough to pass. anyone else come from a non-technical background and manage to do it? how long did it take you to feel ready

yeah the cluster stuff can be a little overwhelming at first but it clicks pretty quick once you get the basic idea. DXwatch, the QRZ spots, DX Summit, they're all basically pulling from the same DX cluster network — it's a big interconnected web of nodes that hams feed spots into. so the data is mostly the same no matter which frontend you use, just displayed differently. for filtering to your QTH, on DXwatch look for the options to set your continent or even your specific callsign zone. once you do that it'll show you propagation-relevant stuff more than just random spots from europe or wherever. honestly for your setup a dipole at 100w you're going to have pretty good luck on 17 and 20 meters for a lot of DX, maybe 40m in the evenings for closer stuff. for apps i've been using DX Toolbox on and off for years but a lot of guys at my club swear by Ham Radio Deluxe if you want everything integrated. though HRD is not free anymore. there's also just using the mobile browser version of DX Summit which isnt pretty but it works fine on a phone.

so ive been running FT8 and FT4 for a while now, mostly chasing DX on 20m and 17m, got WSJT-X dialed in pretty well and the whole workflow just kind of clicks at this point. but lately ive been trying to get more into actual like... conversations? and someone at the club mentioned JS8Call as a middle ground between FT8 and something like PSK31 where you can actually type to people. i tried it a few weeks ago and honestly i couldnt get anyone to respond on 40m, maybe wrong time of day or i was just unlucky. the decode threshold seems similar to FT8 which is great but the whole relay/store-forward thing is kind of confusing to set up if im being honest. does anyone actually run JS8Call regularly and find a consistent group to ragchew with, or is it kind of a dead band outside of specific nets also wondering if PSK31 is even worth learning at this point or if it's just nostalgia at this point. i see it on 14.070 occasionally but the waterfall is pretty thin compared to what it used to be apparently

had almost the exact same symptom on a friends 7300 last year. turned out to be one of the driver transistors running hot and going into thermal shutdown before the finals themselves got warm enough to trigger any protection. the ALC was also doing weird things on the scope when it happened - were you watching the ALC meter when it drops out? if the ALC slams to max and holds there right when you lose power that points pretty strongly at a driver stage issue rather than the finals themselves. the tricky part is catching it in the act with probes on it because the board layout is pretty tight. what we ended up doing was running it with the lid off pointed at a small desk fan, which delayed the symptom by like 45 minutes, so we could at least rule out ambient airflow being the problem. didnt fix it obviously but helped narrow things down. icom actually has decent service docs for that rig if you can find them, the voltage rails at certain test points should tell you a lot.

yeah the datum thing is real, had that bite me once on a trip when i borrowed a friends GPS unit. but also — two miles SE is a pretty specific error. that kind of consistent offset sometimes points to a coordinate conversion issue in how the radio is parsing the NMEA string. the D710 has had some quirks with certain GPS firmware versions where it gets confused between decimal degrees and degrees/decimal minutes and just silently does it wrong. its not common but it happens. honestly id just try a different GPS if you have one laying around, even a cheap phone running APRSDroid over bluetooth just to see if the position problem follows the radio or stays with the garmin. that'll at least narrow it down fast.

$850 for a used 7300 in good shape is decent, ive seen them go higher lately. im still on a 718 which i know is a completely different class of radio but it works and i cant justify the upgrade when the antenna situation at my QTH is the actual limiting factor lol. one day maybe. enjoy the new rig

welcome to the rabbit hole, you're gonna love it and also hate it sometimes haha. okay so yes your 7300 absolutely has a built in keyer, it's pretty decent actually. you plug paddles straight into the key jack on the front and then go into the menu and set the keyer mode — you want iambic mode B to start, most people run that. the radio handles all the dits and dahs timing for you once you set your speed. for paddles themselves honestly dont overthink it at first. a basic set of Bencher paddles or even a cheap set off amazon will get you going while you figure out if you actually like iambic keying. some folks swear by single lever paddles instead of dual lever iambic ones, which is a whole other conversation. i ran a straight key for about 6 months before switching and i think it actually helped me a lot because you really feel the rhythm of each character before the keyer starts doing it for you. for receiving — just run lcwo.net every day. seriously even 10-15 minutes. dont try to copy everything, just relax and let it wash over you a bit, the characters start to click eventually. the worst thing you can do is tense up when you miss something because then you miss the next three too.

im kind of in the same boat actually so following this thread. been using a straight key up till now and just got a paddle last week and its a totally different animal. the squeeze thing is way harder than i expected lol