Jennifer Smith

also just to add — dont stress too much about the band plan stuff when you're starting out, like obviously dont intentionally go outside your allocation but the band plan stuff like where cw ends and phone begins, or where digital is supposed to live, thats all just convention. you'll see people ignoring it all the time espcially on weekends during contests when everything gets chaotic anyway

oh man this brought back memories. yeah the second guessing thing is brutal and honestly the only thing that fixed it for me was slowing way way down. like embarrassingly slow. i was running 5 wpm for weeks and felt stupid but then one day it just clicked and i bumped up to 10 without really thinking about it.
one thing that actually helped me a lot was practicing each letter in isolation until i could send it without thinking — not in words, just the letter over and over until my thumb and finger knew what to do without my brain getting involved. the brain is the enemy when youre learning CW honestly.
also check your paddle tension and spacing, if the gap is too tight youll be sending accidental dits all over the place. most cheap paddles ship with the gap way too close. just a tiny adjustment can make a huge difference.

I'll just add — don't underestimate the preamp situation. I made the mistake of running coax from the shack to a preamp inside and my noise figure was terrible, couldnt figure out why i was copying so poorly until someone on the EME reflector pointed it out. went to a relay-switched preamp at the mast and it was like night and day honestly. that detail gets glossed over sometimes when people talk about power and antennas but the receive side matters just as much if not more on EME.
also the moon window thing isnt as limiting as it sounds once you get used to it. you just kind of plan your operating time around it like any other propagation. some days the geometry is great, some days not so much.

yeah the question pool is completely public, its not cheating at all, thats just how the FCC amateur licensing system works. the pool has something like 400 questions and the actual exam pulls 35 from it, so if you know all the questions in the pool youre basically guaranteed to pass. HamStudy.org is what most people use now, its free and does flashcard style learning with spaced repetition so it focuses on the ones you keep getting wrong. theres also the ARRL Tech study guide which is way more manageable than the full handbook, its specifically written for people trying to pass the tech exam and explains the why behind the answers which honestly helps it stick better than just memorizing.
dont stress too much about the electrical theory stuff at first, a lot of people get hung up on ohms law and the antenna questions but once you do a few practice exams it starts clicking. most people study for a couple weeks casually and do fine.

so ive been wanting to get my tech license for a while now and i finally sat down to actually study but honestly im kind of overwhelmed. theres so many different study guides and apps and websites and i dont really know which ones are actually worth using vs which ones are just a waste of time.
a guy at work who has his general told me to just memorize the question pool and not bother understanding it but that feels wrong? like i want to actually know what im doing when i get on the air. but also i dont want to fail the test because i overthought everything and ran out of time studying the theory behind ohms law or whatever.
is there like a standard thing most people do to prep for this or does everyone kind of find their own way. the exam is in about 6 weeks if that matters

i dont know maybe its the time of year or something but ive just been really enjoying just sitting down with a coffee and working 40m in the evenings lately. not chasing dx, not logging for any contest, just talking to people. had a good 45 minute qso with a guy in tennessee last night about old tube rigs and we got onto the topic of fishing somehow and it was just... nice. this hobby is good sometimes

honestly the js8call thing resonated with me too. i run ft8 a lot during contests and for dxcc chasing but sometimes i just want to actually talk to somebody you know? tried js8call a couple times and managed a few back and forth exchanges on 20m, wasnt blazing fast but it worked and it felt like an actual qso.
one thing though — make sure your clock sync is dialed in tight no matter which mode your using. had some weird decode issues with ft4 a while back and spent like two hours messing with audio levels before i realized my pc clock had drifted like 3 seconds. felt pretty dumb about that

dont overthink the dual logging thing, lots of people do it. ADIF import after the contest is fine. Log4OM handles it pretty cleanly in my experience.
the WSJT-X thing is the part id actually be careful about though, ive had N1MM get confused with FT8 contacts during a contest that also had phone and CW segments, the serial numbers get wonky. probably fine if youre doing a purely digital contest but for something like a state QSO party where everyones on different modes it got messy for me real fast

yeah the finals being fine but audio being trashed actually points pretty strongly away from the PA stage, you're right to second-guess that. what you're describing — clipped buzzy audio with normal power — sounds more like something in the baseband processing path. on the 7300 i'd be looking at the main board around the audio input and modulation circuitry before assuming DSP, the DSP failures usually show up in weirder ways like the waterfall going nuts or the radio locking up.
did you check if the ALC is doing anything weird? sometimes after a surge event you get a component thats partially cooked and the ALC starts oscillating or misreading which can cause exactly that clipping effect even at low mic gain. worth putting it on a dummy load and watching the ALC meter while you talk. if it's jumping all over the place before you even get loud that might be your culprit area. icom service manual for the 7300 is actually pretty accessible, the schematic isn't terrible to follow if you're comfortable with a DMM and oscilloscope.

yeah the FT8 thing gets old fast once you realize every QSO is basically identical. i went back to PSK31 for a while and honestly still prefer it for actual conversations — you can send paragraphs, talk about your rig, whatever. the problem is finding activity, like you said. 14.070 used to be wall to wall PSK and now its pretty sparse depending on the time of day. i usually check around 10-11 UTC on 20m and can usually find a few stations but you have to be patient.
JS8Call i played with for a few weeks and the relay/store-forward feature is genuinely clever but the UI drove me nuts. maybe its better now, i havent updated in like 6 months. for EMCOMM groups that have scheduled nets it probably makes more sense than me just randomly calling CQ into the void with it.