Michelle Davis

been on a 7300 for about two years now, coming from an FT-450D. the USB audio thing is huge, i remember fighting with virtual audio cable and all that mess on the old setup. now its just plug in and it works basically. the receive audio took me a while to dial in to my liking but once i got the treble and bass settings where i wanted them its really pleasant to listen to for long periods.

so i finally pulled the trigger and tried my first activation on Saturday. been chasing for about 6 months and figured how hard can it really be right. picked a 1 point summit close to home, W4T/SU-099 if anyone knows it, the hike wasnt bad at all maybe 45 minutes up. brought my KX2 and a linked dipole i built from the sotabeams kit and my phone for the reflector.
everything was going fine until i got to the top and realized i forgot to spot myself before losing cell service about halfway up. so im up there calling CQ on 40 and 20 for like 20 minutes getting nothing. a couple QRM situations but no actual contacts. eventually someone came back to me on 20 but i couldnt pull their call out of the noise at all, was really frustrating. ended up sitting there for almost an hour and only got 2 contacts total, didnt qualify the summit.
not giving up though. i think i need to either prespot before i lose signal or figure out the SMS spotting thing. also wondering if my dipole was even resonant up there, i tuned it at home but the feedpoint height was way different on the actual summit. anyway just wanted to share, felt like a bit of a failure but i know these things happen

so ive been licensed about 8 months now and ive been slowly figuring out the whole QSL confirmation thing and honestly its more complicated than i expected. like i knew paper cards were a thing but then everyone kept mentioning LoTW and i set that up last month and now people are also talking about eQSL and i just dont know if i need all of them or if one is better than the other or what
right now i send paper cards through the bureau for anyone who seems interested and ive uploaded a few logs to LoTW but i havent done anything with eQSL yet. is eQSL even worth bothering with? i see some people have the authenticated member thing and some dont and im not sure what that means for the confirmations counting toward awards or whatever
also kind of a separate thing — when i get a paper card in the mail i genuinely get excited in a way that a digital confirmation just doesnt give me. is that weird or does everyone feel that way haha

honestly this is the kind of post i needed like two years ago. im still pretty new to chasing DX and pileups are intimidating as heck. i tried working a VP8 last winter and just gave up after like 45 minutes of getting nowhere. didnt even know what split operating really meant at the time, had to look it up, and by the time i figured out i was probably transmitting on the wrong freq the DX was gone lol. gonna save this thread. the timing thing you mentioned makes a lot of sense intuitively, gonna try that next time theres something good on.

so this has been sitting on my bench for about three weeks now and im finally getting around to posting about it. neighbor down the street had a lightning strike pretty close to his shack during that storm we had back in late september, took out his IC-7300 among other things. he asked if i could take a look before he sends it off to icom for a repair quote because apparently they want like $200 just to evaluate it.
the radio powers on fine, display looks normal, all the menus work, SWR meter responds, ALC moves around like it should. but zero RF out. im talking literally nothing on my dummy load with a power meter in line. TX light comes on when i key up, everything looks normal except no power coming out the antenna port.
ive got a decent scope and a DMM, comfortable doing component level repair if i can figure out what to chase. my first thought was the finals but the driver stage before it could also be cooked. anyone dealt with one of these after a nearby strike? wondering if there's a known weak point in the PA section or if i should be checking something obvious first that im missing.

been doing cw for about 6 months now with my old vibroplex bug and honestly im getting frustrated. everyone keeps telling me to get a paddle and keyer but i dont really understand what the big deal is. isnt morse code supposed to be about developing good timing and rhythm? feels like using a keyer is kind of cheating or something. maybe im just old fashioned but my granddad worked the world with a straight key back in the day
anyway just curious what you guys think, am i missing something obvious here or should i stick with what im doing