Thomas White

this is the kind of post i wish i had found when i first got into dx chasing. i only have like 130 entities confirmed and pileups still stress me out honestly. i always feel like im doing something wrong when i cant get through and its hard to know if its technique or just conditions or both.
question for you, were you on ssb or cw for this one? i find ssb pileups feel way more chaotic to me, at least on cw you can kinda hear where people are in the passband if you have a decent receiver. on ssb it just sounds like a wall of noise and i have no idea where to even start.

so this has been driving me nuts for a couple weeks now. picked up a used 7300 from a guy at the club swap meet, seemed fine when i tested it briefly at his table, got home and after maybe 20 minutes of actual use on 40m the output just dropped to almost nothing. like im getting maybe 2-3 watts on a good day when it should be pushing 100.
the weird thing is it doesnt trip the protection or throw any error on the display. SWR looks fine on a dummy load. driver stage seems okay-ish based on what im seeing at the rf board but honestly im not super confident in my diagnosis there. i pulled the lid and nothing looks visibly burned or obviously wrong which i guess is either good or bad depending.
before i go ordering finals and regretting it, has anyone seen this specific symptom on the 7300 where it just quietly loses output without actually faulting? wondering if its a bias issue or maybe the ALC is doing something weird. i have a scope i can use but i want to make sure im probing in the right spots before i poke around in there.

i was in the same boat when i started lol. what finally made it click for me was just picking one thing at a time. i set up LoTW first because thats what the awards guys kept pushing and yeah the certificate setup is a little annoying but you only do it once. after that its just uploading an ADIF every now and then.
i skipped paper cards entirely for the first year and i dont regret it. i do send them now occasionally for special contacts or if someone sends me one first but its definitely not required. some DX stations wont even confirm any other way but LoTW these days so

SOTA and contest weekends are kinda separate worlds yeah, though ive seen some clever folks activate a summit during Field Day and count contacts both ways. its a bit of logistical juggling but people do it.
honestly for your first CQ WW just have fun with it. 100w and a dipole can work suprisingly well especially if conditions cooperate. i worked something like 40 countries my first CQ WW with a similar setup and i was shocked. low expectations and then pleasant surprises is the way to go i think

so I've been licensed for about 6 years now mostly doing VHF stuff and some HF SSB but I always told myself I'd eventually learn morse and I keep putting it off. finally ordered a cheap paddle off amazon (yeah I know, I know) and I've been messing around with my old FT-857 using its built in keyer and honestly I'm kind of lost.
the paddle itself feels a little mushy and the contacts aren't super crisp but I'm not sure if that's the paddle or if I'm just bad at this — probably both. I've been using lcwo.net for code practice which everyone seems to recommend and I'm working through the Koch method starting slow around 13wpm character speed. my question is mainly about the keyer side of things though. what mode should I have the keyer set to, mode A or mode B, and does it actually matter when you're this slow and still learning? also is there a point where I should get a real paddle before I ingrain bad habits or can I stick with the cheap one for a while?
any tips appreciated, I feel like I'm starting completely from scratch which I guess I am

ok so ive been licensed for a few months now and i keep getting confused about the 40 meter band. like i know generals have phone privileges starting at 7.175 but then theres the whole band edge thing people keep warning me about and i dont really understand what the issue is with operating close to 7.3 or whatever the top is. someone at my club said dont get too close to the band edge but didnt really explain why. is it just an FCC rule thing or is there some technical reason. also are the band plans the same worldwide because i keep hearing europeans talking way lower in the band and that throws me off too

i asked basically this same question when i got my license last year lol. what i ended up doing was just keeping wsjt-x open on one monitor while i mess with other stuff. the qso automation thing bothered me at first too but honestly i've just accepted that FT8 is basically beacon mode with a logbook attached, which is fine for what it is.
havent tried JS8Call yet but this thread is making me want to. does it use the same audio interface setup as WSJT-X or do you have to redo all the CAT stuff? my setup with the IC-7300 and a USB cable was pretty painless for FT8 but i dont want to break whats working

ha i did the exact same thing on my first transmission, totally blanked on my callsign and just said "uh over" like i was on a walkie talkie or something. the guy on the other end was super patient about it though. congrats on passing, 33/35 is solid especially if you didnt have any background in electronics. it gets way less awkward after the first few times i promise

N1MM is basically the standard for a reason but i get the frustration. one thing that helped me was just loading up a practice log outside of contest weekend and running fake qsos to get familiar with the keyboard shortcuts. thats really where N1MM shines — you can do almost everything without touching the mouse once you know the shortcuts, and in a big contest that matters a lot when rates get high.
the WSJT-X side of things i actually keep totally separate personally. during contests im not usually doing FT8 anyway so it hasnt been a problem for me. if youre doing something like FT8 roundup or a contest that mixes modes then yeah you kind of have to think about how you want to handle that. some guys use WSJT-X standalone and just import the adif after, which is kind of clunky but it works

okay so i just got my technician license last month and ive been trying to get on the local 2m repeater but nobody ever seems to hear me. i finally found out theres a CTCSS tone required which i guess i had turned off this whole time, oops. anyway i set it to 100hz like the directory says but now i have a different problem which is that i can hear everyone fine but when i try to transmit it opens the repeater (i can hear the tail) but nobody responds and i dont know if im just not being heard or if everyones just busy or ignoring me.
also i noticed there's another repeater on 146.940 that seems to be linked to something because sometimes i hear people talking about being in totally different states. is that an IRLP thing or echolink or what? is there like a different etiquette for linked repeaters vs regular local ones? i dont want to step on anyone or do something embarrassing
radio is a kenwood TH-D74 if that matters, been programming it through chirp