Elizabeth Patel

yeah what the other guy said about HamStudy is right, that site is great. i'll add though that if you actually want to understand the impedance and reactance stuff rather than just memorize it, the ARRL General Class License Manual isn't bad. some people find it dry but it helped me connect the dots on why certain things work the way they do. it does matter a little bit in practice, like when you're trying to figure out why your antenna tuner isnt happy or whatever. but you dont need to be an engineer to pass the test or even to be a decent operator. the exam itself is 35 questions and you need a 74% so you can actually miss quite a few. once you get General you'll want to get on 40 meters and just listen for a while before you transmit, get a feel for how HF is different from the repeater stuff. its a pretty different world

so ive been kicking around the idea of making the drive out to dayton this may, never been before and a buddy of mine keeps telling me its worth it at least once. problem is its like 9 hours from where i am and i dont really know if ill have anyone to ride with. wondering if anyone here has been recently and if the flea market is still worth the trip or if its gotten kind of watered down over the years. also our local club is doing a swap meet next month which is way more realistic for me honestly but its pretty small, maybe 30 or 40 vendors tops

yeah what he said. also most nets have a net preamble they read at the start that kinda explains the format so if you can catch it at the beginning that helps a lot. i just got my general too and started checking into nets maybe two months ago, it does get way less nerve-wracking after like the third or fourth time. the tuesday group sounds like your local ARES or traffic net maybe? ours does the same thing where they do formal traffic first then open it up.

yeah this trips up a lot of newly licensed folks so dont feel bad. the short answer is the ARRL band plan is basically a gentlemens agreement, the actual legal limits are in Part 97 which defines things like which license class can use which frequencies and modes. so for example as a general you have specific sub-bands on 40m and 20m etc where you're authorized, and going outside those is an actual FCC violation, not just bad form
the third party traffic thing is relevant to you actually. Mexico does have a third party agreement with the US so your wife saying hi is fine in that case, but there are countries where that would technically be a violation because no agreement exists. the ARRL has a list of which countries have agreements and which dont, worth bookmarking
for plain english explanations i always point people to the ARRL's own regulatory info pages, and honestly Gordon West's study material still has decent summaries even after you pass the exam. Part 97 itself isnt that bad once you find the sections that apply to you, mostly 97.301 and 97.305 for frequency and mode privileges

the ALC jumping around is your main problem right there. when the ALC is working hard it's basically compressing your audio in a way you didn't choose, and it sounds bad. back off your mic gain until the ALC barely moves on voice peaks, like just kissing the first couple segments on the meter. you'll probably feel like you're not loud enough but you actually will be, and the audio will clean up a lot.
on the 7300 specifically the TX equalizer can do a lot of heavy lifting. a lot of guys boost a little in the 2-3kHz range for presence and roll off some of the low end below maybe 200Hz because that's where the boominess comes from and it doesnt really help intelligibility anyway. the PR-40 is a pretty flat mic so it's not going to fight you on this. also make sure you have the speech processor off while you're first dialing things in, that thing makes bad audio worse before it makes good audio better if that makes sense.
USB vs LSB doesnt affect audio quality itself, it's just convention. 40m below 7.2 is LSB, 20m is USB, you already know the rules. that's not your issue.

congrats on the ticket. that first QSO feeling is something else, you never really forget it. i remember mine was on a repeater in 2003 and i was so nervous i forgot my own callsign for a second, had to look at the paper i had taped to the desk. dont worry about the baofeng stuff, get comfortable first and worry about gear later. whats your general area if you dont mind me asking, might be some nets nearby worth checking out

ok so ive been licensed about 8 months now and i keep seeing people talk about chasing DXCC and WAS and i sort of understand what they are individually but im confused about how people actually pursue these at the same time. like do you just log everything and sort it out later or is there some strategy to it?
i got my general a few months ago and ive been slowly working DX on 20m mostly and i've confirmed maybe 40 entities so far which i know isnt a lot but its a start. someone at my club told me i should be applying for credits as i go rather than waiting until i have 100 but honestly the LoTW stuff still confuses me a little bit. i uploaded my log but i only have like 12 confirmed there so far.
also the zones thing for WAZ, is that tracked separately or does LoTW handle that too? i feel like every time i read about this i get more confused not less lol

timing is everything man, youre not wrong about that. i ran a DXpedition to a small pacific entity a couple years ago (nothing huge, 6 man team) and from the other side of the pileup its really obvious who understands timing and who doesnt. the guys who just machine-gun their callsigns continuously are almost never the ones we pull out. its the ones who listen first, figure out the rhythm of how we're working the pile, and then drop in at exactly the right moment.
the suffix thing works but it depends a lot on the operator. some DXpedition ops love working by suffix, others find it annoying because you get collisions from people with the same suffix. when it works it works great though. tail-ending i have mixed feelings on — done right its fine, done badly it just makes more QRM. if youre stepping on the tail end of the previous guy finishing his callsign youre doing it wrong.
on your second radio question — yeah absolutely, SO2R style monitoring is a real advantage if you can do it without causing intermod in your own setup. spacing matters a lot. i run two radios with a bunch of filtering between them and even then certain band combos are just not practical. 40 and 15 works pretty well, 40 and 20 can get ugly depending on your antenna situation.