DX Dude

yeah the tone thing will get you every time when youre starting out. i spent like two weeks thinking my radio was broken before someone at a club meeting told me about CTCSS lol. also just a heads up — some repeaters have pretty specific etiquette about things like waiting a second or two after the courtesy tone before you start talking, and not kerchunking (that's just keying up without saying anything to test if you're getting in). some repeater owners get pretty grumpy about that stuff so just something to keep in mind as you get more comfortable.

Check your N1MM+ SO2R configuration - specifically the TX lockout parameters. For CW, I set mine to 150ms pre-delay and 100ms post-delay. Moment 1, depending if you are CQ or ending a QSO, the way you CQ or end a QSO, your callsign and your speed, can on average last from 150 ms to 3 seconds The key is making sure your brain can handle the constant switching between radios.

so ive been running an old FT-450D for about 4 years now and honestly it served me well but ive had this itch to upgrade for a while. picked up a used IC-7300 last week from a guy in the club and i gotta say the waterfall display alone is worth it for me just to see whats happening on the band before i even key up. but now im reading stuff about how the FT-891 is actually a better rig in some ways and the 7300 is basically just popular because of hype and the pretty screen and now im kinda spiraling a bit. anyone actually done a side by side? or even just used both at different points? my main thing is casual HF, some SSB ragchewing, might try some FT8 eventually. not a contester or anything serious like that. also the previous owner had some weird audio settings tweaked and i cant figure out how to get the mic gain back to sounding normal. feels like im transmitting through a tin can right now

so ive been sitting on doing the mars/cap mod on my IC-7300 for probably six months now, kept reading conflicting stuff about whether it actually degrades the finals over time or if thats just people being overcautious. finally just did it last weekend. took maybe 20 minutes including the time i spent second-guessing myself and looking at the pcb with a flashlight. for anyone who hasnt done it, its basically just moving a couple jumpers on the board to open up transmit outside the ham bands. i mostly wanted it for MARS and some EMCOMM stuff where we occasionally need to work just outside the edges. the radio came back up fine, alignment still looks good on the scope, no weird behavior on receive that i can tell. what i actually wanted to ask is whether anyone has paired this with the other common mods — ive seen people talk about tweaking the mic gain defaults and messing with the TX bandwidth settings beyond what the menu exposes. not sure if thats a firmware thing or actual hardware. anyone gone down that rabbit hole