Stephanie Chang

that intermittent-on-one-band behavior is suspicious for a band switching relay issue. the 7300 routes different bands through different relays for the BPF stages and if one of those relays has a dirty or worn contact it'll do exactly what you're describing — works fine when the contact happens to seat right, then degrades when it shifts a little or heats up. the thermal aspect you mentioned, coming back after 20-30 min, could be the relay contact expanding slightly which either makes or breaks whatever marginal connection is there depending on which direction its failing.
not a trivial fix to do yourself since you'd have to get into the RF board but if you're comfortable with SMD work it's worth pulling the top cover and looking for the BPF relay bank. some guys have had luck just reflowing the solder joints on those relays. there's a service manual floating around if you search for it, has the relay locations marked. if you're not comfortable going in there honestly icom's service isn't that expensive and they'll find it fast since they see this stuff all the time.

so ive been a Tech for about 2 years now and mostly been doing VHF/UHF stuff, some APRS, got my first HT and then a mobile rig, the usual path i guess. but lately ive been really curious about HF and everyone keeps telling me to just get my General and i keep putting it off because honestly the exam just looks intimidating compared to the Tech one.
like i looked at the question pool and there's a lot of stuff about propagation and electrical theory that i dont really understand. i passed my Tech by mostly memorizing answers with HamStudy which worked fine but im not sure if that approach works as well for General or if the questions are harder in a way that trips you up more. also someone at my local club said something about needing to know math for the General which kind of scared me off for a bit.
anyway i guess my main question is, is it actually worth the time investment and how long did it take you guys to feel ready for the test. and also once you have General what are the HF privileges like, can you actually get on 40m and work DX or is it still pretty limited until you get your Extra

yeah 40 has been my go-to lately too, usually got it on while im cooking dinner or whatever. heard a couple guys from Tennessee last night going on about antenna stuff for like an hour, didnt mind though it was good background noise lol. the band was surprisingly quiet for a weeknight

honestly just use hamstudy.org and grind the practice tests, thats basically all i did. the actual exam questions come directly from the published pool so if youre getting them right on the practice site youll get them right on the real thing. i probably studied for like 2 weeks and passed no problem. the math questions are annoying but there are only a few of them and if you memorize the formulas you can usually work through it even if you dont fully understand why it works that way
the HF thing is the best part though, once you get your upgrade in the system you can just fire up on 40m and start listening. thats how you really learn what the bands are doing anyway

nice work. i built my first dipole about a month ago for 20m and it was kind of a revelation honestly. i way overthought it before i started. mine's just hung between two trees with some paracord and it works better than anything i was using before. the commercial HF antennas in my price range were all compromised in some way anyway so the homebrew route made sense.

congrats on the first one, 32 is a solid number especially for 40m with a wire. honestly the pileup thing catches a lot of people off guard the first time, the hunters are out there refreshing that map constantly.
for the logging question — yeah hamrs should be tagging every QSO with the park reference automatically, when you export the adif and upload it the site reads the sig and sig_info fields. just open the adif file in a text editor real quick before you upload and spot check a few entries, you should see something like SIG: POTA and SIG_INFO: K-XXXX in there. if it looks right you're good. had a guy in our club upload a whole activation without the park ref attached once and had to resubmit everything manually, not a huge deal but worth the quick check.