Tom Wilson

so ive been interested in ham radio for probably two years now and kept putting it off but my neighbor finally convinced me to just go for it and take the technician exam. problem is i have no idea where to start with studying. i looked at the question pool online and honestly it was kind of overwhelming, theres like 400 something questions and i dont know which ones actually show up on the test or if i need to memorize all of them.
someone told me to just use hamstudy.org and grind through it but another guy at the club meeting said i should actually read a book first so i understand the concepts not just memorize answers. i kind of see both sides of that but i also dont want to spend months on this when the test is only 35 questions. does anyone have a sense of how long it actually takes to be ready? im not totally new to electronics but the regulations stuff is where im worried.

so ive been watching the solar flux numbers creep up over the past few weeks and figured id finally get some decent DX on 17 meters, which has been my favorite band for a while now. last tuesday the SFI was sitting around 178 and the K index looked pretty calm, maybe a 2, so i figured alright lets do this. set up around 1400 UTC and just... nothing. i mean i could hear some weak SSB from what sounded like it might have been somewhere in eastern europe but couldnt pull a callsign out of it. tried for maybe 45 minutes and gave up.
then i come back maybe 3 hours later not even really expecting anything and worked 4 stations — JA, two from UA9, and a ZL — like back to back within 20 minutes. didnt change anything on my end. same antenna, same power. is this just how 17 is right now or am i missing something about when the band actually opens toward the pacific vs europe? i feel like i dont have a good mental model of how to predict this stuff beyond just checking propquest or voacap and hoping for the best.

Prosigns are different again - letters strung together as one continuous symbol, like CQ for "calling any station" or AR for "end of message." In contests you'll also hear cut numbers - like using N for 9 instead of sending all five dits and dahs.

I had almost the exact same thing happen when I got my first iambic paddle and it drove me crazy for like two weeks. Turned out part of my problem was that I was coming from a straight key and unconsciously holding the paddle a split second too long — my brain was still thinking in the old mode. The keyer was faithfully interpreting that extra contact time as two dits. Slowing down a bit and really paying attention to how long you're actually pressing helped me a lot. Also some folks find the iambic mode B vs mode A makes a difference depending on your sending style, worth poking around in the 7300 menu if you havent already.

so ive been messing with an RTL-SDR v3 for about 6 months now and honestly its been great for learning but im starting to hit the walls on dynamic range, especially on 40m at night when the band is busy. the direct sampling mode works ok but its pretty noisy and i keep reading that an SDRplay RSP1A would be a noticeable step up.
my main use is just general monitoring, some aircraft stuff with dump1090 which obviously the RTL handles fine, and id like to do more shortwave and eventually get into decoding some of the digital modes on HF. im running SDR# on windows mostly but ive played with SDR++ a bit which i actually think i like better now.
question is whether the RSP1A is worth the price difference over just getting a better upconverter for the rtl dongle. ive seen the SpyVerter recommended a bunch but not sure if im just throwing money at a problem that a proper receiver would solve more cleanly. anybody made that jump and actually noticed a big difference day to day

WAS is probably the most natural starting point honestly, especially since you're in the US — 50 states is very achievable even with a modest setup and you'll get a feel for how the whole QSL and credit thing works without it costing a fortune. LoTW makes it way easier these days, most stateside ops are on there. once you get comfortable with that then DXCC starts to make sense to chase because you'll have already worked a bunch of entities just by accident while hunting states anyway.
WAZ is fun but 40 zones takes a bit more patience and some of them are genuinely hard to get from certain parts of the country. dont stress too much about the order though — just work what you hear and the awards kind of fill in on their own over time. i didnt really plan any of it and ended up with WAS confirmed in about my first year without even really trying that hard.

The first WIDEn-N digi should insert its callsign before forwarding to show packet origin. If you're not seeing that callsign substitution in your raw packets, the digipeater may not be APRS-aware. Try WIDE2-1 instead - you rarely need more than single hop and it reduces network congestion.