Mark Thomas

4 states in an hour at 5 watts is solid, dont sell yourself short. i tried QRP last summer and struggled at first but i think i was just picking bad times to operate. the bands were rough all of June around here. what time of day were you running and was it 40m the whole time? im curious because ive heard 20m can be really productive for QRP especially if you want to stretch the range a bit but i havent tried it myself yet with low power

i went through this last year and it took like 22 days total for mine to finally show up in the system. the waiting is the worst part lol. ae7q dot com is your friend, seriously bookmark it, it shows the application status way clearer than the ULS interface which looks like it was designed in 2003 or something

so ive been sitting on doing the mars/cap mod on my FT-857D for probably two years now, kept putting it off because i was paranoid about voiding warranty on a radio i actually use daily. finally just did it last weekend and honestly wish i had done it sooner.
the mod itself is pretty straightforward, theres a diode on the main board — D3001 i think from memory — that you either cut or remove depending on which version of the mod you want, and it opens up extended TX. takes maybe 20 minutes if you're not rushing. i did have to remove the bottom plate and the display assembly which was a little nerve wracking but nothing broke.
what i actually wanted to talk about though is whether anyone has also done the internal cooling fan mod at the same time. mine runs warm during extended digital mode sessions and ive seen a few threads elsewhere about swapping the stock fan for something quieter and higher CFM. thinking about one of those noctua fans but not sure if the voltage regulation on that circuit is stable enough to not cause issues. anybody gone down that road with the 857D specifically? the 897 mods dont always translate directly and id rather not fry the PA section finding out.

this is really helpful, im pretty new to DXing and pileups have been intimidating. i worked my first ever pile last month, it was nothing crazy rare just a VP9 station but i still felt like i had no idea what i was doing. kept transmitting and transmitting and nothing. eventually figured out they were listening up but wasnt sure how far up. i think i called like 3 up for a while then gave up and came back later when the pile died down a bit and got through on like the second call lol. is there a good way to figure out the split range when its not announced? do i just have to listen around?