Emily Williams

so ive been chasing this one for a while now and its starting to drive me nuts. got my IC-7300 probably 4 years ago and it was flawless up until a couple months back. what it does is starts out fine, full 100w into my dummy load, but after maybe 5 or 10 minutes of operating it starts pulling back power on its own. doesnt throw any fault codes or anything, the ALC looks normal on the scope display, just... less power coming out. like it'll drop to 60-70w and just sit there. let it cool down for 20 minutes and it comes back to full power again. my first guess was the PA transistors running hot but i pulled the top cover and stuck a thermal probe around and nothing is getting crazy hot, the finals look fine. someone on another forum suggested maybe the LPF relays but i havent gotten that far yet. i did recap a kenwood once but the 7300 feels way more involved to get into. anyone dealt with this specifically on a 7300 or similar ICOM? wondering if this is a known thing before i start throwing parts at it.

yeah what the other guy said about not counting is huge, i made that mistake for like the first month and had to basically unlearn everything. also just throwing this out there but the app Morse Mania on the phone is pretty decent for squeezing in practice when youre waiting around somewhere, it wont replace actual sitting down practice but its something. one thing nobody told me was that copying by hand is really diffrent from just recognizing letters in your head, so even when you think you know a letter you might fumble when youre trying to write it at the same time. i had to slow way down when i added the pencil into it. anyway dont stress the WPM thing yet, just get the letters solid first

so ive been running an RTL-SDR v3 for about a year now mostly doing aircraft stuff and some amateur band monitoring and honestly its been fine for what it is but im starting to feel the limitations especially on HF below 25 MHz where the direct sampling mode is just kind of mediocre at best been looking at either picking up a HackRF One or jumping straight to the SDRplay RSPdx and the price difference is pretty significant, HackRF is around $300-ish for the real one (not the clones which i hear are hit or miss) and the RSPdx is like $200 but obviously they do completely different things my main use case is honestly just HF monitoring, shortwave broadcast, some 40m and 80m listening, maybe poking around on 630m if i ever get a decent antenna for it. not really interested in transmitting so the HackRF's TX capability doesnt mean much to me. just want better sensitivity and dynamic range than what im getting now anyone running the RSPdx with SDRuno or maybe SDR++ and have opinions? also does the RSPdx actually handle strong local broadcast stations without totally collapsing or do you still need external filtering

welcome to the hobby, dont stress too much about the CTCSS stuff, it clicks pretty fast once you get it sorted. so basically the tone in the repeater directory is usually right but sometimes those listings are outdated — your best bet is to check if the club or group that runs that repeater has a website, they usually list the correct PL tone there. also double check that your radio is actually set to encode the tone on transmit, not just decode it on receive. the baofeng menus can be a little confusing about that, its easy to set one and not the other. as for joining a conversation — yeah what you saw was the right move. just wait for a pause between transmissions and say your callsign, something like just "KD9XYZ" and thats usually enough for the folks in the QSO to acknowledge you and let you in. most people on local repeaters are pretty welcoming especially if you mention youre new. dont overthink it, honestly the first time you just key up and say something is the hardest part and then it gets way easier after that.

honestly its way more approachable than most people expect. the technician exam is 35 questions and you need to get 26 right, which sounds scary but the question pool is completely public so you basically study the exact questions that will be on the test. hamStudy.org is probably where id send anyone first, just make flashcards and keep grinding through them until you're consistently passing the practice tests. HamStudy also has an app if you want to study on your phone during breaks or whatever. as for cost, the exam fee is usually around 15 bucks give or take depending on the VE team running it, some clubs do it cheaper or even free occasionally. after you pass your info goes to the FCC and a callsign usually shows up in the ULS database within a few days, sometimes faster. technically you can transmit as soon as your license shows up there, you dont have to wait for a paper license in the mail or anything like that. your neighbor might actually be a ham himself, if so ask him, having someone local to help is honestly huge when youre starting out

yeah repeaterbook is def the move for finding tones, thats how i figured it out too when i was starting. one thing i'll add — some repeaters have no tone required at all, they're "carrier squelch" so if yours isnt listed with a tone you might be fine without one. but if it IS listed and you dont have it set, yeah youre basically invisible to the machine. the UV-5R menus are kind of a pain to navigate honestly but once you find the right menu item its pretty straightforward

so ive been running FT8 for about a year now and yeah its great for contacts and watching the propagation but honestly it feels like a glorified beacon sometimes. you log the contact and thats basically it. someone at my club mentioned JS8Call and i set it up last weekend and its a completely different vibe — like you can actually type back and forth with someone over a weak signal path which is what i thought digital modes were supposed to be about in the first place my question is whether people actually use it regularly or is it kind of a ghost town on most bands. i found some activity on 40m around 14.078 i think but wasnt sure if i was even tuned to the right spot. also curious how it compares to PSK31 for actual ragchewing because i used to run PSK31 years ago on 20m and there was always someone to talk to on weekends not trying to start a modes war just genuinely curious what people are using when they actually want to have a qso and not just exchange grid squares

So for 40m as a General you get 7.025 to 7.300 MHz for phone (SSB), and then CW you can go down to 7.025 as well. The portion from 7.000 to 7.025 is Extra class only for CW. So basically don't go below 7.025 and you're fine for voice. The band edge thing -- your rig's displayed frequency is usually the carrier or the suppressed carrier frequency, and with SSB the actual signal has bandwidth, so if you're on USB and you dial up to say 7.300.0 your signal is actually extending above that which is outside the allocation. Most people say stay at least 3 kHz inside the edge to be safe, so like 7.297 or so for the upper end. Some rigs will even warn you or limit you but not all of them do. The 891 should be fine just watch your dial.

honestly for 40m ragchewing at that height the inverted V is probably fine. yeah 25 feet is low but inverted V's actually have a higher angle of radiation which works pretty well for regional contacts, 200-800 miles or so. i ran one at about 28 feet for two years before i moved and worked all 48 states without much trouble. the feedpoint impedance is a little lower than a flat dipole but nothing a 1:1 balun cant deal with. the vertical with radials is more work and if your ground is average you need a lot of radials to really get performance out of it. some people lay down like 16-32 and call it done but buried radials in a suburban lot are kind of a pain. i wouldnt bother unless you're really after dx.

had almost the exact same thing on my 746 pro years ago, different radio i know but similar architecture. turned out to be a cold solder joint on the driver stage for that particular band. wasnt visible without a magnifier and a good light. resoldering that area fixed it completely. not saying thats definitely your problem but worth looking at the board under magnification if you go in there anyway.

Finally taking the plunge and heading up to Mount Monadnock (W1/HA-001) tomorrow morning with my KX2 and random wire. I've got my alert posted and gear checked, but I'm honestly a bit nervous about the whole thing. Any seasoned activators have tips for a SOTA newbie? How long should I plan to operate to get my 4 contacts? I'm worried about getting skunked on my first summit! Planning to start on 20m around 1400z if propagation cooperates.