Christopher Lopez

yeah the board revision thing is real, i burned like two hours comparing my unit to some youtube video before realizing the guy had an older version. the diode locations are close but not identical and you definitely dont want to lift the wrong pad on that board.
on the deviation question — i did mess with that on mine. theres a service menu you can get into, i think its hold the a/b button during powerup or something like that, been a while. there are pots on the board too but the menu approach is a lot less scary. mine was set conservatively from the factory and bumping it a little made a noticeable difference on the local machine. just dont go overboard or youll start getting complaints about overdeviation which is worse than sounding a bit thin.

ok so i just upgraded to general last month and im trying to figure out where i can actually transmit on 40 meters. ive been reading the band plan stuff but honestly its kind of confusing because theres the FCC allocation and then theres like the "recommended" segments and they dont always match up perfectly?
like i know phone starts somewhere around 7.175 or 7.2 but ive heard people say you should stay away from the edges and i dont really understand why. is it a legal thing or just a courtesy thing. and what even happens if you operate right at the band edge, is that actually illegal or just frowned upon
also heard something about 40m being different in other parts of the world which is making this even more confusing for me

oh yeah this drives me nuts too. what i started doing is using one of those cable reels - not the big heavy ones but like a small plastic one from the hardware store. wind it up nice and neat at home then just unroll it on site. takes up a bit more space in the pack but totally worth it for my sanity

Log4OM took me a while to get used to too, the UI is definitely not obvious at first. but once it clicks its actually pretty solid for day to day logging, cloudlog sync, lotw uploads, all that. i wouldnt use it for a serious contest tho. for RTTY or FT8 contests specifically i still go back to N1MM every time just because the SO2R stuff and the function key macros are so much better tuned for contest pace.
one thing worth mentioning — if your WSJT-X QSOs are ending up in the wrong place check what port Log4OM is listening on versus what WSJT-X is set to broadcast on. default is 2237 i think but if you ever changed it in one app and not the other thats probably your culprit

the split thing is so underrated and half the guys in any given pileup are either not running split at all or running it wrong and just adding QRM to the DX's receive frequency which drives me crazy. listen before you transmit, people.
the partial call trick — honestly it depends on the DX operator. some of them love it because it helps them pull a call out of the mud, but ive heard DXpedition operators say in interviews afterward that it just confuses things when five different stations all think they heard their suffix. if the DX is clearly struggling to pull calls out and keeps asking for repeats, it might help to send just your suffix. but if things are moving smoothly i'd stay with full call. the VP6 guys last year specifically asked for full calls only at one point in their operating notes i think.
what antenna are you running? that makes more difference than any technique tbh. ive got a 2-el yagi at 45 feet and it changed everything for me on 20m pileups compared to when i was on a dipole.

im sort of in the same boat as you actually, just crossed 87 entities confirmed on LoTW last month and been lurking on the cluster waiting for some of the harder ones to pop up. the mode endorsement thing tripped me up too at first but yeah Mixed is basically easy mode, everything counts.
one thing nobody told me early on -- keep an eye on which entities only have LoTW-active ops occasionally. like some of the pacific islands you basically have to catch a DXpedition and then hope they upload in a reasonable time. i had one sit unconfirmed for like 8 months before it finally showed green on LoTW. kind of nerve wracking when youre close to a milestone.

yeah the 6m opening yesterday was real good, i worked into europe for the first time in like two years. totally caught me off guard, i was just doing some idle monitoring and all of a sudden the waterfall just filled up. ended up running about 45 minutes before it faded. one of those moments that reminds you why you keep the radio on even when conditions seem dead
as for the icom thing i think youre maybe thinking of the IC-905 followup rumors? theres been chatter about that for months but nothing official that ive seen. id probably just buy what works now honestly, waiting on gear rumors is a good way to never buy anything

so ive been chasing VP6R for like three days now and finally got them in the log last night on 17m. wanted to share what ended up working because i tried a lot of stuff that didn't before i figured it out.
first couple days i was just calling on their frequency like an idiot, took me way too long to realize they were working split and i wasn't even reading the DX cluster notes properly. once i figured out they were listening up 5 to 10 i started actually getting somewhere but i still couldn't break through for another day and a half.
what finally clicked for me — and i know this sounds obvious but it wasn't obvious to me — is that you cant just transmit on the same frequency everyone else is piling onto. i started listening to where the DX station was actually coming back, noticing he was favoring a certain part of the split window, and then picking a spot maybe 1 or 2 kHz away from where the crowd was. within about 20 minutes i got a response. honestly couldn't believe it after days of nothing.
also started timing my calls to right after he finishes a QSO instead of just calling continuously. and kept my call short — just my callsign twice, no more. the guys sending their calls like five times in a row just bury themselves i think. anyway curious if anyone else has tactics that work consistently, especially for when propagation isn't great and you're running like 100w into a wire antenna.

honest question and maybe this is obvious but how do you even know where to transmit on split if the DX just says "up" and doesnt give a specific frequency. i always end up guessing and i feel like im just landing in a random spot

ok so ive been licensed for about three months now and I keep reading about nets but I honestly have no idea what the actual procedure is when you check in. like I know you wait for the net control to ask for check-ins and then you just say your callsign but is there more to it than that? do you have to give your name every time? your location? I was listening to the 2m local net last tuesday and some people said their name and city and some people just said their callsign and sat down so I'm confused about what the expectation is.
also theres a special event station coming up next month for a civil war battlefield near me and I saw something about a net associated with it but I dont really understand what that means either. is it like a normal net or something different? sorry if these are dumb questions