Angela Washington

so ive had the 7300 for about three weeks now and figured id share some impressions since i spent like two months reading threads before buying and some of them were pretty outdated
coming from an old TS-570 which honestly served me well for years but the 7300 is just... a different world. the panadapter alone is worth it if youre doing any kind of band hunting or just trying to figure out whats going on across a chunk of spectrum. i caught a VP8 that i wouldve completely missed on the 570 just because i saw the signal pop up on the scope while i was doing something else
the touch screen took some getting used to and i still accidentally tap the wrong thing sometimes but the receiver quality is genuinely impressive, way better than i expected in the $1000 price range. i did notice some IMD issues when i was near the broadcast band, had a couple big AM stations about 15 miles away and there was some bleed through on 40m but i played with the preamp settings and the RF gain and got it mostly under control
only real gripe so far is the menu system feels a little buried for some things. like why is it so many taps to get to the NR settings. anyway still learning it but overall pretty happy with the purchase, wondering if anyone else made a similar jump from older Kenwood iron and what they noticed

yeah theres no hard rule that says you MUST use phonetics every single time, its more just best practice especially when theres any chance of confusion. on a clear local repeater with a strong signal you can usually get away with just saying the letters and people will copy you fine. but on HF or when the band is noisy or youre working someone who doesnt know your call, phonetics really help cut down on the back and forth.
the sugar/king stuff is just old timers using what they learned before NATO standardized everything. used to be a lot of regional and military variations floating around. the NATO alphabet became the standard for good reason — if youre ever doing anything cross-border or with emergency comms groups its the one everyone agrees on. i still hear "Adam" for Alpha from guys who came up through old ARRL materials. doesnt really matter on a local repeater but if youre doing ARES or anything like that just stick to the NATO ones, avoids any confusion.

so ive been a general for about 3 years now and i keep going back and forth on whether to bother with the extra exam. like i mostly do HF, some 40m and 20m SSB, occasional digital stuff on PSK31 and lately a bit of FT8. the general privileges have been pretty much fine for everything ive wanted to do honestly.
but lately ive been lurking on some of the extra portions of 80m and 40m and it does sound less crowded down there, especially during contests when the general segment is just absolute chaos. also someone at my club mentioned the theory questions on the extra exam are actually interesting, not just memorization, like the stuff on filter design and transmission line theory and whatever. is that true or is it still mostly just memorizing answers from the pool like the technician and general were
i guess my main question is — for people who actually went through and got their extra, did you feel like you learned something useful or did you just grind the question pool and forget it all after the test. and how long did it realistically take to study, im not a super fast learner with the math stuff

so ive been trying to get my APRS setup working properly and im losing my mind a little. running a TM-D710G connected to a raspberry pi with direwolf, feeding into APRS-IS through an ethernet connection. the radio is beaconing fine, i can hear my own packets come back out of the speaker and direwolf is decoding them, but when i check aprs.fi i sometimes see my position and sometimes i dont. its totally random. sometimes it shows up within 30 seconds, sometimes not for like 10 minutes, sometimes not at all.
i checked the path and im using WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 which should be getting picked up by the local digis. there are at least 3 digipeaters within range according to the map. RF environment seems decent, im running 50 watts into a vertical on the roof. the thing that really confuses me is that direwolf shows good decode quality on its own packets when it hears them come back, so the RF side seems okay.
anyone dealt with this kind of intermittent thing before? starting to wonder if its a timing issue with my beacon interval or maybe the IGate closest to me is having issues. set to beacon every 2 minutes right now.

the -18dB thing with FT8 still blows my mind every time, im running 10 watts to a compromised antenna in an apartment and working EU from the midwest on 20m on a mediocre day. that said i totally get what you mean about it feeling hollow after a while
havent tried JS8Call yet but this thread is making me want to, is the setup much different from WSJT-X? im using a SignaLink and an older Kenwood so wondering if itll just work or if theres a whole new config nightmare waiting for me

yeah its mostly situational honestly. on a clear local repeater where everyone knows each other people dont bother spelling out phonetics every single time, you just say your call and move on. but on HF especially when the band is noisy or youre working someone far away, phonetics become really important because letters like B and D or M and N can sound identical through static and QSB. the NATO phonetics exist specifically so that every letter has a totally distinct sound that wont get confused even on a terrible signal.
there isnt a hard rule in part 97 that says you MUST use phonetics, its more of a best practice thing. the FCC just says you have to identify with your callsign, how you do it is kind of up to you and the situation. that said during contests or when working DX you really want to use them because the other op might be copying hundreds of calls and needs to get yours right the first time. and in emcomm situations its basically considered mandatory because accuracy matters. so just read the situation, if the band is clean and local, probably fine either way, if its noisy or long distance, use the phonetics.