Brian Murphy

so i just passed my technician exam last month and im finally ready to actually buy something. everyone keeps telling me to get an HT to start out and i get that, but man there are so many of them i dont even know where to start. ive been reading threads for like two weeks and now im more confused than when i started.
my main thing is i want to hit the local repeaters, maybe do some simplex, and eventually i'd like to get into APRS if thats something i can do on a handheld. budget is probably under $100 but i could stretch a little if something is really worth it. i see people mention the Baofeng UV-5R constantly and then other people act like suggesting it is basically a crime. then theres the Yaesu FT-60, the VX-6R, some Kenwood thing... i just dont know what actually matters for a beginner vs what is just cool features i wont use for years.
is programming these things as painful as it looks? i saw something about CHIRP which seems helpful but even that looked a little intimidating when i watched a video on it.

honest answer? just work everything you can hear and upload to LoTW regularly and all three will start filling in on their own without you stressing about it too much
that said if i had to pick a starting point for someone with your setup WAS is probably the most achievable in a reasonable timeframe because working stateside is way more forgiving propagation wise and you dont need to stay up until 2am hunting a rare pacific island or whatever
DXCC starts getting addictive fast though, once you hit 100 confirmed you'll want 150 and then 200 and before you know it you're researching what bands the T8 or whatever is going to be on. its a trap in the best possible way. just make sure your LoTW account is set up properly and you're logging everything from day one because there's nothing worse than realizing you worked a rare entity six months ago and didn't log it right

yeah the theory jump is real but its not unsurmountable or whatever the word is. i was scared of the math too but most of the actual exam questions you can work through with just ohms law and some basic formulas, you dont need to be an engineer. just spend a few weeks on hamstudy.org and youll start to recognize the patterns. the filter Q stuff tripped me up for a while but once it clicks it clicks.

yeah what he said about levels is spot on. i spent probably two weeks chasing what i thought was a propagation problem and it turned out my mic gain in the 7300's menu was way too high. the IC-7300 has that built in USB audio and theres like three different places you can adjust gain which is honestly kind of annoying. go into the menu and look at the USB AF output level, make sure that one is set reasonable before you start tweaking anything in Windows or SignaLink.
one other thing - are you on the latest version of VARA? there was a version a while back that had some weirdness with certain gateway handshakes and it drove people nuts. Winlink Express itself also pushes updates pretty regularly, worth checking you're current on both.

check your IGSERVER line and also make sure IGLOGIN actually has the right callsign-ssid format. i had mine set as just my base call without the ssid and it connected fine but wasnt passing authentication properly. also worth looking at the direwolf log output when it starts up — if the igate login fails it does print something but its easy to scroll past. another thing to check is whether your firewall is blocking outbound on 14580, had that bite me once on a fresh pi install.

the CTCSS thing is almost certainly your problem, those baofengs can be tricky to program. T-CTCS is the tone you transmit to the repeater which is what you want, so that part sounds right. but double-check that you actually saved it — on the uv-5r you have to press menu again after selecting the value or it just reverts. a lot of people get bit by that.
also make sure your offset is going the right direction. most 2m repeaters are plus or minus 600 kHz and repeaterbook will usually say which. if you're transmitting on the wrong side of the offset you'll just be shouting into the void.
as for etiquette — yeah waiting for the courtesy tone is the normal thing. it's that little beep the repeater sends after someone unkeys, kind of signals the squelch tail is done and the system is ready again. waiting for it before you transmit helps avoid people doubling up. you dont have to wait a long time, just a beat or two after the beep. you'll get a feel for it pretty quick once you're actually getting into the machine.

yeah ive gone pretty deep on this exact thing. pi zero is fine for light stuff but if youre doing CAT control and want to also run something like fldigi or wsjtx in the background it can get sluggish. i ended up moving to a pi 4 for the main shack controller just because the zero kept choking when i had too many things polling at once.
for the 7300 specifically the USB connection is pretty straightforward, rigctld from hamlib handles the CAT side and you can write python scripts that talk to it no problem. the temp sensor stuff is almost easier honestly, DS18B20 is what most people use, one wire protocol, theres a million tutorials. i wired mine up to trigger a 12v relay that controls the exhaust fan on my amp and it took maybe an afternoon including me screwing up the wiring once.
the thing that took the longest was writing clean logging integration. i wanted it to sync with my logbook software and that was honestly more software headache than hardware. if you just want the fan automation and basic CAT stuff youll get that working in a weekend probably.

honestly the rtl-sdr v3 direct sampling is pretty impressive for what it costs but yeah the ADC resolution difference between that and the RSP1A is significant on paper, 8 bit vs 12/14 bit depending on mode. whether that translates to something you actually notice depends a lot on your antenna and local noise situation. if youre in a noisy suburban environment the SDRplay isnt going to magically fix RFI from your neighbors switching supplies or whatever.
one thing worth mentioning, have you tried upconverter route instead? an ham-it-up or similar gets you a lot of the HF sensitivity back on the RTL without the full SDRplay cost. probably not as clean but its another option in between. i ran that combo for a while before going to a HackRF and it was pretty usable.

so ive been on HF for about two years now running an IC-7300 and i keep getting reports that my audio sounds kind of muffled or like im talking through a blanket. i thought the 7300 had decent audio processing built in but something isnt clicking for me. my mic gain is sitting around 50% and the compression is on but not cranked. i did the whole ALC thing and kept it just barely moving which is what i read online. speech processor is on at like 3 or 4 out of 8.
people can copy me fine most of the time but on 40m when theres a pileup or just a little qrm i notice folks seem to struggle more than they should. my signal reports on a meter are fine, like 57 or 59, so its not a power issue. i wonder if its an eq thing? or maybe my mic placement? im using the hm-219 that came with the radio. would a different mic actually make that much of a difference or am i chasing the wrong thing here

im in the same boat as you more or less, been licensed about a year. what i do is i just use phonetics every time because i kept second guessing myself otherwise. foxtrot uniform november or whatever. after a while it just comes out automatically and you stop thinking about it. the NATO ones are the standard and people recognize them immediately, i tried making up my own once early on because i blanked and the other op asked me to repeat twice lol so just stick with the real ones

honestly same experience here when i first tried JS8, sat there for like an hour thinking my radio was broken or something. turns out i had the wrong heartbeat interval set and wasnt actually transmitting as often as i thought. check your settings for the transmission interval, theres a normal and slow and turbo mode and i had mine set weird.
also just to throw it out there — FT4 is worth trying if you want something faster than FT8 but still weak signal capable. its basically the same thing but the sequences are shorter so a full QSO takes less time. doesnt feel much more like a conversation but for contest-style operating its pretty fun