Christopher Lee

had almost the exact same thing happen on mine maybe a year ago, turned out to be a cracked solder joint on one of the connectors going to the PA board. not visible to the naked eye, had to use a magnifying glass under good light to find it. the joint looked fine but under load it was making intermittent contact and the rig was just folding back the power to protect itself even though it wasnt showing a fault. re-flowed it and went straight back to 100w. might not be your issue but worth looking before you start suspecting the transistors themselves.

yeah the listening thing is so underrated. i spent probably six months wondering why i couldnt break anything good and then an older guy at my club basically said the same thing you did — just shut up and listen first. the op always has a pattern even if it seems random. some of them are really predictable about working by region or by where they hear the strongest signals geographically and if you can figure that out youre halfway there. the partial call thing is a bit of a gray area for me. technically youre supposed to ID with your full call but in a huge pile i get why it works. what i've found that helps is timing more than anything. theres always this brief lull right after the DX comes back to someone and before the pileup erupts again, maybe half a second, and if you can hit that exact moment youre transmitting into relative quiet instead of the wall of noise everyone else is generating. takes practice to feel it but once you do it becomes kind of instinctual. congrats on the VP6 by the way, thats a tough one. still need it myself on 40m.

oh man this is kind of timely because i literally just passed my general last month and somebody at my club meeting mentioned 10 meters being open and i had no idea what that even meant at first. i thought something was wrong with the band or like a repeater went down lol. had to look up what a band opening actually is and now i kind of cant stop reading about solar cycles and propagation which is a whole rabbit hole. havent made my first HF contact yet because i dont have an HF radio yet but im saving up. congrats on the new radio whenever you go pick it up

I tried the two-logger approach for a while and it works but you have to be disciplined about it or your main log turns into a mess. I once forgot to strip out a bunch of dupe QSOs before importing from a state QSO party and spent like an hour cleaning it up in Log4OM afterward. not the end of the world but annoying. honestly for WSJT-X my reccomendation is just let it do its own thing and treat the WSJT-X log as the source of truth for those QSOs, then merge periodically. trying to get real time UDP logging working cleanly across multiple programs is more trouble than its worth unless you're doing something where you really need it live like a multi-op situation or whatever

the things that always bite people are the stupid small stuff — anderson powerpole connectors and a handful of different adapters, a good multimeter, coax adapters (BNC to PL-259, SMA to BNC, etc) because you will always need the one you dont have. also a notebook and pencils, like actual physical paper, because logging on a device when your battery situation is uncertain is just asking for trouble. the pelican vs backpack question really does depend on what kind of deployment you're thinking. if you're setting up at an EOC or a fixed location for a while, the case is great because you can organize everything and it protects the gear. if you might need to hump it any distance at all, you want a backpack or at least a rolling case. i actually ended up with two kits eventually — a lighter grab-and-go bag with a smaller radio (ft-818 in my case) and then a bigger more capable setup in a case for when i have a vehicle and a real deployment. took me a couple actual ARES activations to figure that out the hard way. also dont forget a headlamp. sounds dumb but you'd be amazed how often you're trying to set up an antenna at 2am.

so ive been using Log4OM for a couple years now as my main shack logger and honestly its been fine for day to day stuff, keeps track of my QSOs, syncs to QRZ, does the ADIF export thing without drama. but every time contest season rolls around im kind of fumbling around trying to figure out if i should just run N1MM instead and then import everything back into Log4OM afterward. the thing is i also run WSJT-X pretty regularly for FT8 and the UDP integration with Log4OM has been mostly solid but i had a weird thing happen last month where it stopped auto-logging for like two days and i couldnt figure out why, turned out to be some firewall thing but still. does N1MM handle the WSJT-X UDP feed any differently? i always assumed they were basically the same on that front but maybe not. anyway main question i guess is whether anyone actually runs two loggers simultaneously or if that's just asking for trouble. like Log4OM for the daily stuff and N1MM just for contests and then merging the logs after. seems like it could get messy with dupes and stuff but maybe im overthinking it

field day is probably worth mentioning too since its coming up next june — if your club does a group activation that might actually be an easier first experience than sitting alone at home doing CQ WW. theres usually people around to answer questions and you can take breaks without feeling like you're wasting rate lol i did my first solo contest attempt last sweepstakes and honestly just surviving the whole 24 hours felt like an accomplishment even though my score was nothing impressive. the section exchange tripped me up a few times at first but you get it pretty quick

not a basic question at all, this stuff genuinely trips people up. So the short version is that vanity calls have a format system tied to your license class. As a General you can apply for certain formats but not others — the 1x2 and 2x1 calls (like W6AB or WA6B style) are reserved for Extras only. As a General you can apply for a 1x3 like KD9XYZ or a 2x3, basically what you probably already have but you can choose which specific one within those formats. The sequential process is separate from vanity — that's just what happens automatically when you pass your exam, the FCC system assigns you the next available call in sequence for your district. Vanity is when you actively go to the FCC ULS and apply for a specific call you want. There's a 30 day application window after you file and if nobody else applies for the same call in that window you get it, but if multiple people apply for the same call it goes to whoever has held a license longer I think, or there's some tiebreaker system. AE7Q's website is honestly the best resource for tracking call availability and understanding the rules, way better than trying to parse the FCC docs directly.

yeah what he said about practicing in the backyard, i did that and realized my coax was like 6 inches too short to reach from where i'd actually set the radio up and it was embarrassing to figure that out at a drill lol. also i keep a small inverter in mine so i can run off a car if the battery dies, saved me once already.

haha yeah my first one i forgot the coax adapter and had to literally drive back down to the car. didnt even make it to the summit that day. now i have a checklist taped inside my pack lid, never leaving without it again. 12 contacts is actually solid for a first run especially in wind, some summits i barely scratch 10 even on a good day

For contest timing, bypass software PTT and use hardware VOX or direct relay control. I trigger PTT via GPIO immediately when audio starts rather than relying on CAT commands. Much faster response.

Had the same Windows 11 driver nightmare! Finally gave up and dedicated an old laptop just for radio programming with Windows 10. Sometimes the old ways work best. For cables, genuine FTDI chipsets are worth the extra cost - no driver headaches.