Robert Moore66

the tin can thing is almost always too much high frequency or mic too close, not really an EQ problem per se. and yeah the gain/ALC thing trips up a lot of people — the 7300 especially tends to run hot on mic gain out of the box, icom sets it that way for some reason
on the presence boost question, theres actually something to it for voice intelligibility, the 2-4kHz range is where a lot of consonant energy lives so boosting there can help cut through noise. but SSB passband is already pretty narrow so you dont have a ton of room to play before it starts sounding honky or harsh. i usually keep any boost pretty gentle, like 3-4dB max, and actually cut some of the low mids around 300-500Hz if the mic has a lot of chest resonance
the compressor in the 7300 is decent but easy to overdo. i run mine at maybe 20-30% and that's probably enough to help on fading and varying mic distance without making it sound processed. anything past 50% and people start noticing and not in a good way. the trick is to set it and then not touch it, because you start chasing your tail pretty quick

yeah i had the same confusion when i upgraded. the arrl band plan and the actual FCC allocations are two different things btw, the arrl one is kind of a gentlemens agreement about what modes go where, the fcc one is what your license actually covers legally. so like phone for general on 40 is 7.175 to 7.300 mhz, that 7.300 is the hard legal edge. the arrl might suggest you keep ssb in a slightly different spot but thats just courtesy not law. anyway 7.290 is fine youre not doing anything wrong, some guys on 40 are just territorial its kind of a whole thing on that band lol

Great choice volunteering for GOTA duty! The power limit is 100 watts max, and you log separately but don't count toward your club's contact total. More than 31,000 hams get together with their radio clubs on the fourth weekend in June each year. Focus on getting new and inactive hams on the air - that's the real mission.

honestly you're overthinking it and that's totally fine, everybody does at first. when the net control opens check-ins just key up and give your callsign phonetically, nice and clear, and then just wait. net control will come back and acknowledge you and usually ask if you have any traffic or if you're just checking in for the roll call. just say 'no traffic, just checking in' or however it naturally comes out and that's literally it.
some nets are a little different — some want your name and location in the initial check-in and some dont. after lurking for three weeks you probably have a decent feel for how this particular net runs. if the other people are giving names you can throw yours in too, nobody's gonna ding you for giving too much info but cutting it too short can sometimes cause confusion. the main thing is to just do it, you will fumble it slightly the first time and then it'll be completely natural the second time. net control folks are usually really patient with newcomers, they've heard it all.
for finding other nets, the ARRL has a net directory on their website and there's also a site called the nets page or something like that — been a while since i looked but it was still up last i checked. also check HF if you have the privileges, there are tons of daily nets on 40m and 80m that are really active.

so i've been lurking on here for a while and finally took the plunge and built one of those 4state QRP kits, the one for 40m. took me about two weekends to put together mostly because i kept second guessing my solder joints and had to go back and redo a few of them. anyway got it all together, hooked it up to my end fed half wave out the window and figured i'd just listen for a bit before actually trying to transmit.
well about 20 minutes in i heard a CQ from a station down in florida, i'm in ohio so figured why not just try, i mean worst case nobody hears me right. put out like 4 or 5 watts and the guy came back to me first call. i genuinely had to double check he was actually calling my callsign because i couldn't believe it worked that fast honestly. we had a solid 10 minute QSO, he gave me a 559 which felt pretty great for something i built on my kitchen table.
anyway just wanted to share because i know this forum helped me a lot when i was trying to decide if QRP was worth getting into. it really is. the whole experience of making that contact with a rig i actually built myself was something else. now i'm already looking at the 20m version of the same kit because of course i am

yeah i just started doing portable stuff with a similar setup, i have a mountain topper radio not a kit but same idea. one thing i noticed is that conditions matter SO much more at QRP levels than they ever did running 100 watts from home. like a mediocre band day at home is basically a dead band when youre at 5 watts. i had a trip planned to a summit last month and the bands were just garbage, got like 2 contacts in 2 hours which was frustrating but honestly kinda taught me a lot about actually reading propagation before i go out. anyway what frequency you been hanging out on? i might listen for you sometime

honestly the single biggest thing i ever did for my SSB audio was just monitor myself on a second receiver. like actually listen back in real time on an SDR or a second radio while you transmit. you hear things you just cannot hear from the other side of the mic. i was convinced my audio was clean for like a year and then i finally listened back and there was this weird resonance every time i hit certain vowels, turned out i was just too close to the mic.
mic technique is so underrated, people obsess over TX EQ settings and compression ratios and half the time the issue is theyre eating the mic or theyre 2 feet away and the preamp is cranked to compensate. consistent mic distance, talk across it not directly into it if youre using a dynamic, and then the EQ stuff starts to actually matter.

yeah you've got the right idea, CTCSS is basically a continuous tone the radio sends underneath your voice and the repeater uses it to open up the squelch on the input side so it knows to retransmit you. without it most repeaters just ignore your signal entirely which is exactly what sounds like is happening to you.
on the uv-5r T-CTCS is indeed the right setting for what you want to transmit, that's the tone you're sending OUT to the repeater. the R-CTCS is for what tone your radio listens for on the receive side — most people leave that off or set it to the tone the repeater sends back so you only hear traffic from that machine and not random simplex stuff bleeding through. you dont strictly have to set the receive tone, it just keeps your squelch cleaner.
as for etiquette — the big ones are just listen before you key up, wait for the courtesy beep before you respond to someone (that little beep means the repeater is ready for the next transmission), and keep your overs reasonably short especially if the repeater is busy. when you first get on just say your callsign and something like "listening" and see if anyone comes back. most repeater groups are pretty welcoming to new folks, dont stress too much about it.

yeah i run pretty much exactly that setup and it works fine once you get the import settings dialed in. the key with Log4OM is to set it to skip duplicates on ADIF import, theres a checkbox in the import dialog that most people miss. so after a contest i export the N1MM log as ADIF, do the same from WSJT-X if i worked any FT8 during the contest, and just import both into Log4OM. as long as duplicate checking is on ive never had a problem with double entries.
the only annoying part is that N1MM and WSJT-X can both be running UDP logging at the same time and if youre not careful they can step on each other. i actually just let WSJT-X log to its own file and dont bother with the real-time UDP bridge to N1MM during contests, just do the manual ADIF import after. less elegant but zero headaches.

the USB cable thing is almost certainly your problem with the birdies, or at least part of it. ferrite on the USB cable made a huge difference for me, i put a clamp-on about 6 inches from the radio end and another near the PC. also if youre running any kind of switching power supply near the rig that can do it too. the 7300 is sensitive to that stuff in a way the older analog rigs just werent because of the direct sampling architecture picking up everything
i went through like 3 weeks of chasing noise when i first set mine up. turned out it was a cheap wall wart for my router sitting too close to the power supply. moved it to the other side of the room and half my noise floor dropped. shack layout matters so much more with these SDR-based rigs

yeah the slot machine thing is exactly how i describe FT8 to people who ask why i dont seem excited about my DXCC numbers anymore. JS8Call scratched that itch for me too, though i'll be honest the activity level is pretty thin outside of a few calling frequencies. 40m around 7078 seems to be where most of the action is in north america at least from what ive seen.
as for running both at once, what i do is use two separate instances of audio routing through VB-Cable or VAC depending on your OS and just have the radio in split or use a second SDR as a panadapter to monitor. its not as clean as id like but it works without the alt-tabbing situation. some guys use two separate radios which is obviously the cleaner solution if you have the shack space for it.
PSK31 is basically dead here in the midwest, i fire it up occasionally on 20m and might see a handful of signals in a 30 minute window. the guys still running it are diehards and honestly i respect it, there's something satisfying about watching those waterfall traces that FT8 kind of killed off

so ive been sitting on doing the mars/cap mod on my FT-857D for probably two years now, always talked myself out of it because i was worried about messing something up. finally just did it last weekend and honestly it was way less scary than i expected. the jumper is right there once you open the bottom panel, took maybe 20 minutes including the time i spent double checking the service manual three times like a nervous wreck.
anyway the reason i actually got around to it is i wanted to experiment with some of the 60m channels and also just generally wanted more flexibility without having to think about it. transmit works fine across the extended range, power output seems consistent, no weird behavior on the bands i normally use. i did notice the fan seems to kick on a little earlier now but that might just be me paying more attention to it after poking around inside the radio.
what i really want to do next is the high stability TCXO option but those seem hard to source now. anyone done the TCXO-9 upgrade recently and know if theres still a reliable place to get one? my understanding is it drops the frequency stability from like 5ppm down to 0.5ppm which would actually matter for weak signal stuff on 2m. also been reading about people doing filter swaps on the 857 for better SSB audio but im not sure if thats worth the hassle on a radio this size

Planning my first significant DXpedition activation and studying pileup management techniques. I firmly believe that the pileup is a mirror reflection of the DXpedition operator - if he is successful the pileup will conform and the expedition will be much more successful. The challenge is sometimes a DXpedition operator may not realize how large a pileup he has - it is important to realize that he is likely to have a large pileup and should work split from the beginning.
What specific control techniques have proven most effective? I'm considering calling stations by number in the call which will instantly silence 90% of the pile-up - if you call "1"-stations only, the big guns can be worked easily. Issue calling instructions after every QSO: EU UP5 or NA UP 5-10, and minimize pileup width: suggest max 5kHz CW and 15kHz SSB.