Daniel Garcia

okay so I just got my General ticket last week and I have this sequential callsign that the FCC assigned me, its like a KD9 something or other. A friend at my local club keeps talking about getting a vanity call and I guess I always assumed you could just kinda pick any call you wanted as long as it wasnt taken. But now I'm reading stuff online and it seems way more complicated than that?
Like there are rules about what format you're allowed to apply for based on your license class? I tried reading the FCC rules but honestly it just made my head spin. Can a General class just apply for any 1x3 call or are those only for Extras? And how does the sequential process even work — does the FCC just hand them out in order or is there some queue thing happening. Sorry if this is a super basic question I just want to make sure I understand it before I go filling out forms and getting rejected

yeah there's no hard rule saying you HAVE to use NATO phonetics every single time, its more of a best practice thing especially when conditions are rough or theres any chance of confusion. on a clear local repeater with nobody stepping on each other you can usually just rattle off your callsign as letters and everyone gets it fine. but if youre doing HF or anything where the signal is marginal, phonetics save a lot of back and forth.
the London vs Lima thing — yeah that happens, some older ops learned a different phonetic alphabet before NATO got standardized and they just never fully switched over. you'll also hear Whiskey vs Washington, or some guys who make up their own for whatever reason. it can be annoying when youre trying to copy a callsign and youre not sure if they said November or something else starting with N. stick to NATO and youll be fine, most people will understand you anywhere in the world which is kind of the whole point of standardizing it in the first place.

the mars mod on that radio is pretty harmless yeah, i did mine years ago and nothing bad happened. though i'll be honest i barely even use the extended TX, mostly did it out of curiosity.
caps in the audio chain — interesting, i never thought about doing that. mine is about the same age and the audio has always been a bit meh on VHF but i just assumed thats how it sounded. might actually pull mine apart and have a look now that you mention it. what value caps were the ones you replaced, same value as stock or did you go up at all on the voltage rating?

so ive been wanting to do this for probably two years now and i finally just sat down and built the Pennywhistle 40 from the GQRP club kit. took me three evenings spread across a couple weeks because i kept second guessing my soldering on the toroids. anyway got it done, threw a wire up in the backyard first just to check it was actually putting out something, and sure enough heard a few signals so figured it was working at least receiver-wise.
yesterday i packed it up with my KX3 paddle, a 9v battery pack i cobbled together from some holders, and a random wire antenna with a little tuner i also built (that one was from a QRPme kit, super simple). drove about 20 minutes to a local park, found a tree to hang the wire from, and just started calling CQ on 40m around 7.030.
made 5 contacts in about an hour and a half. two of them were over 800 miles away which honestly blew my mind a little because im only running like 3-4 watts. one guy gave me a 569 which i thought was pretty decent. the whole setup fits in a small backpack and costs almost nothing to run. i think im hooked on this. anyone else doing park activations with homebrew stuff? curious what antennas people are using for portable QRP

I started EME on 70cm with similar power levels and had good success. WSJT should be set up for JT65b mode, and you should turn on equipment about an hour before scheduled Moonrise. The key is precise timing and understanding the exchange procedures - study the JT65 EME protocols carefully before attempting your first contact.

nice work on the thermal compound, i always forget to do that kind of preventive stuff until something actually goes wrong. whats the temp difference you're seeing approximately, like in terms of the heat on the case or are you measuring the finals directly?

im kind of in the same boat as you, been at it maybe two months now. one thing that helped me a lot was just using the keyer to send random letters and then trying to copy what i sent, feels a bit silly but it actually works. also G4FON and lcwo.net are both really good for practice if you havent already found them. 13 wpm is a solid starting point, some people say learn fast from the beginning but honestly i dont think it matters that much just be consistent

had almost this exact same problem last year, turned out my firewall was blocking something in Winlink Express and the session would partially complete then just die. i know that sounds weird for a radio thing but the software does phone home during sessions and if that call fails it can behave strangely. probably not your issue but worth checking the Winlink event log in the program itself, not just the session log — theres more detail in there about whats actually happening on the software side.

had almost this exact same problem last year, turned out my firewall was blocking something in Winlink Express and the session would partially complete then just die. i know that sounds weird for a radio thing but the software does phone home during sessions and if that call fails it can behave strangely. probably not your issue but worth checking the Winlink event log in the program itself, not just the session log — theres more detail in there about whats actually happening on the software side.

had almost this exact same problem last year, turned out my firewall was blocking something in Winlink Express and the session would partially complete then just die. i know that sounds weird for a radio thing but the software does phone home during sessions and if that call fails it can behave strangely. probably not your issue but worth checking the Winlink event log in the program itself, not just the session log — theres more detail in there about whats actually happening on the software side.

I started EME on 70cm with similar power levels and had good success. WSJT should be set up for JT65b mode, and you should turn on equipment about an hour before scheduled Moonrise. The key is precise timing and understanding the exchange procedures - study the JT65 EME protocols carefully before attempting your first contact.