Rachel Garcia

that hairline crack on the transistor case is almost certainly your problem right there, or at least part of it. the PA finals on the 7300 are the RD70HVF1s and they're not super expensive individually, maybe $15-20 each if you source them right, but the tricky part is they usually dont go alone. when one goes it often takes out the driver stage or blows something in the bias circuit. i'd check the bias voltage on the gate of those FETs before you do anything else — should be around 3-4V with no drive, if its zero or way off something upstream is cooked too.
also worth pulling the finals and doing a diode check on them out of circuit. if the transistor thats cracked reads shorted gate to drain you're replacing it for sure. the surface mount stuff around the PA isnt that bad honestly, the 7300's layout is pretty accessible compared to some older Icoms i've worked on. if you're careful and have hot air or at minimum a fine tip iron you can probably manage it. but if you've never done SMD before maybe get your feet wet on something cheaper first.

So i got my ticket back in the early 2000s and did a little CW back then but life happened and i basically dropped the hobby entirely. Just got back into it a few months ago and im trying to relearn the code. Im at maybe 8-10 wpm on a good day receiving, sending is probably worse honestly.
My old straight key still works fine but i picked up a used Bencher BY-1 paddle at a hamfest and im struggling with it. I dont know if its the keyer in my radio (its an IC-7300) or my technique but my dits keep running together in a weird way. Like i send what i think is an A and it comes out sounding more like a dit-dit-dit or something. I watched some youtube videos on paddle technique but i feel like im gripping it too tight or something. Does anyone have tips on how to actually get comfortable with paddles cause the straight key feels more natural to me still.
Also is there a good way to practice receiving that isnt just listening to W1AW? I find their transmissions kind of stressful for some reason, like i freeze up when i miss a letter and then i miss the next three trying to figure out the first one.

so ive been doing single op for years and finally got a second radio set up properly — K3 on run, FT-991A as a mult radio with a 2x4 bandpass filter setup between them. did my first real SO2R attempt last weekend during the CW sprint and honestly it was kind of a disaster but i could see flashes of why people do this.
my rate on the run radio kept getting wrecked because i was fumbling with the SO2R controller and losing my rhythm. probably spent more time managing the second radio than actually working anyone. ended up pulling it apart about 2 hours in and just going back to single radio where i actually know what im doing.
question for people who've done this a while — how long does it actually take before SO2R starts helping your rate instead of hurting it? i get the theory, find a mult on 15 while you're running on 20, quick QSY, back to run. but in practice i kept missing calls on the run station while i was tuning around on the second one. is this just a practice thing or do people actually run SO2R differently than i was trying to?

yeah its definitely more of a feel thing than a hard rule, at least outside of certain contexts. no regulation says you have to phonetize every transmission, its just good practice when conditions are rough or theres QRM or the other station is clearly struggling to copy you. on a quiet local net with good signal reports nobody cares. but the moment propagation starts doing weird things or someones in a pile-up situation, phonetics save a ton of back and forth.
the mixing up thing goes away on its own honestly. i still occasionally blurt out "november november" when i mean something else if im tired. just drill them when youre driving or something, say your callsign out loud with phonetics ten times and it starts to feel automatic. the ITU/NATO set is what everyone expects so stick to that and dont improvise, some guys think theyre being funny with "whiskey tango foxtrot" type stuff and it just confuses newer ops or non-english speakers on dx contacts

Absolutely worth it! The first contest weekend I heard tons of people making contacts in those parts of the bands I wasn't allowed to transmit in - my competitive nature got the better of me! The Extra-only segments are where the serious operators congregate during major contests and rare DX operations.

yeah 10m has been surprising a lot of people lately, cycle 25 has really been outperforming the predictions which is nice. the flux hitting 180+ is definitely enough to get some solid F2 propagation going on that band, especially in the afternoon when the path to europe and south america tends to open up. honestly the best thing i ever did was just start leaving a radio on 10m in the background while i was doing other stuff around the shack — you start to get a feel for when it comes alive.
for dxmaps specifically, you want to look at the cluster spots for 28 MHz and also check the grey line tool because a lot of those long path openings line up right around sunrise/sunset. pskreporter is great too but its more useful after the fact to see where your signals were actually getting heard. if you havent already, check out the DX world website or even just follow some of the solar weather twitter accounts, they'll often post when there's a big flux jump or a geomagnetic storm coming that'll kill conditions.

so ive been sitting on this idea for a while and finally pulled the trigger on a few mods for the 7300. first thing i did was the rx filter swap, put in a tighter 500hz filter for CW work and honestly the difference is noticeable, less garbage getting through on a crowded band. also did the standard fan mod where you replace the stock fan with a quieter noctua one, which sounds like a minor thing but when youre doing digital modes for hours the constant whirring was driving me nuts.
the audio mod is what im most curious about getting feedback on. i pulled the internal speaker and replaced it with a small aftermarket one, added a tiny bit of capacitance to smooth out the low end. it actually sounds warmer now? hard to describe but received audio is less tinny. not sure if thats placebo or real but my ears say its better.
has anyone else gone down this rabbit hole with the 7300 or any other radio. wondering if theres mods i havent thought of yet, particularly around the PA section or the front end for better dynamic range on crowded bands.

one thing that helped me a ton that nobody ever talks about is just asking for honest reports from people you actually trust rather than random contacts who just say "you're 59" no matter what. i have two or three guys i work regularly who will actually tell me if something sounds off, and we've done back and forth sessions where we tweak and report for half an hour. way more useful than any meter or software imo
also the low end rumble thing — check if your desk or whatever the mic is sitting on is vibrating. i had the same issue for months and it turned out my mic stand was picking up my mechanical keyboard through the desk. stuck some foam under the base and it went away completely. dumb fix but there it is

yeah the RMS gateway map on winlink.org also shows last heard times so you can get a rough idea of whats active before you even try connecting, worth bookmarking that. also if your 7300 is doing weird things with the Vara connection check your USB audio levels in windows, that thing is super sensitive to having the audio too hot and it'll just look like timeouts when really you're just overdriving the input. bit me for a solid weekend before i figured it out.

so ive been running an old FT-450D for like 6 years and honestly it served me well but the receiver always felt a little mushy on crowded bands, especially 40m during contests when everything gets wall to wall. a buddy of mine kept telling me to just get the icom and i kept putting it off because 1100 bucks is not nothing.
anyway picked one up last month from a local ham who was upgrading to a 7610, got it for around 800 which felt fair. first thing i noticed was the waterfall — i know everyone talks about it but until you actually sit there and watch signals pop up in real time you dont really get it. found a few dx stations i would have just tuned past on the 450.
the built in ATU is a bit weak, cant really tame my 80m doublet below like a 3:1 mismatch without complaining, i still end up using my LDG out front for that band. and the fan noise is more noticeable than i expected, my shack is pretty quiet at night so it stands out. minor gripes though.
overall very happy. if anyones on the fence about this radio i'd say just do it, the receiver really is noticeably better in a busy pile up situation. curious if anyone else has done the 450 to 7300 jump and whether they noticed the same thing on receive