Patricia Garcia

yeah what he said about the chart is true, i wasted probably two weeks doing that and had to basically start over. i use justa app called hammorese or something like that, cant remember the exact name but you can find it easy enough. one thing nobody told me was to practice copying by hand writing it out, not typing, something about writing it slows you down enough that your brain processes it better i guess. im still only at like 8wpm after 6 months but i only practice like 3 times a week so thats on me honestly

oh man i went through exactly this about two years ago. the tension thing is real — if the paddle is too light you end up making contacts you didnt mean to and it throws everything off. i actually tightened mine up quite a bit more than what felt "right" at first and it made a huge difference because it forced me to be more deliberate with each squeeze rather than just kind of resting my fingers on the contacts. on the mode A vs mode B thing, honestly for most people starting out it doesnt matter that much. mode B just completes the element that was in progress when you release, mode A cuts it off. some guys swear by one or the other but i spent way too long worrying about it. just pick one and leave it. i wouldnt go back to a straight key personally. i mean nothing wrong with straight keys and some ops love them but if your goal is paddle sending then just stick with the paddle and put in the reps. the muscle memory takes time but it does click eventually. also try slowing the keyer speed down a little more than feels comfortable, like to the point where you think its too slow, and focus on clean characters. speed comes on its own after the accuracy is there.

so ive had the 7300 for about three weeks now and figured id share some impressions since i spent way too long reading threads like this before buying it. coming from an old FT-450D which honestly served me well for years but the display was always kind of an afterthought on that thing. first thing — the waterfall is genuinely useful and not just a gimmick like i half expected. i actually find myself catching signals i would have tuned past before just because something catches my eye on the scope. took maybe a day or two to figure out the ref level and range settings to get it looking right for my noise floor but after that its been great. audio is noticeably better both on receive and apparently on transmit too, had a few people comment without me asking which is usually a good sign. the built in tuner handles my 40m dipole no problem though i do have a manual tuner in line for 80 and it obviously wont match everything. one thing thats mildly annoying — the touch screen is fine but i keep accidentally changing things when im writing in the log and my hand brushes the panel. probably a me problem but worth mentioning. also the fan kicks on more than i expected even at 50w but its not loud, just noticeable in a quiet shack. anyway for what theyre going for used these days i think its still a solid buy, mine came from a silent key estate and was basically mint. curious if anyone else has opinions on the twin PBT versus the older style analog IF shift — i kind of miss just having a single knob to grab honestly

so ive had the 7300 for about three weeks now and figured id share some impressions since i spent way too long reading threads like this before buying it. coming from an old FT-450D which was fine but the waterfall on that thing was basically useless compared to what icom did with the 7300's touchscreen panadapter. first thing i noticed is the receive is just noticeably cleaner on 40 and 80 meters, my local noise floor hasnt changed obviously but im pulling out signals i would have missed before. the real time spectrum scope is genuinely useful and not just a gimmick, i actually use it to find open spots before calling CQ instead of just spinning the dial forever like i used to do. one thing that bugged me out of the box was the TX audio — people were telling me i sounded a little thin on SSB. spent an evening messing with the TX equalizer settings in the menu and got it sounding much better, there's a lot of adjustability in there if you dig into it. also had to turn the mic gain down from the default, it was set way too hot for my shure SM58 that i repurposed for radio use. overall really happy with it. shack is just a desk in the spare bedroom, running it into a homebrew off-center fed dipole at about 25 feet which isnt ideal but it gets on the air. curious if anyone else went through the audio adjustment thing or if thats just me.

yeah the stock mic on the 7300 is fine honestly, its not gonna be the main culprit. the thing that gets most people is the TX bandwidth being set too wide — on SSB you generally want to keep it somewhere around 100hz on the low end and maybe 2800 or 2900 on the high side. if you go wider than that youre just adding low frequency rumble and high end hiss that makes you sound muddy and also wastes power outside the passband nobody can hear anyway. the ALC thing is real important too. you dont want the ALC working hard at all on SSB — if its constantly getting hammered your audio is gonna be compressed in a bad way and start sounding distorted. mic gain should be set so the ALC only just barely moves on peaks. like a slight nudge, not pinning it. the built in compressor on the 7300 is actually decent but i'd leave it off until you get the basics dialed in, then add maybe 3-5db of compression if you want a bit more punch for pileups. start without it.

the noise thing with generators is real, been there. we had one exercise where somebody parked a honda eu2200 about 15 feet from the operating position and it was getting into everything, ended up being a ground loop issue more than actual RF but still a pain to sort out mid-event. one thing worth thinking about with the inverted V off the spiderbeam - if the terrain is at all uneven watch your guy lines, i lost a pole last spring because the ground was softer than it looked and i hadnt staked it properly. 31ft of fiberglass coming down on your feedline is not a great time. might be obvious but yeah. good luck with the exercise

so ive been listening on HF for a few weeks now and i keep seeing people write things like QSL and QRZ and QTH in logs and online and i honestly have no idea what half of them mean. i found a list somewhere but it was like 100+ codes and i cant tell which ones people actually use vs which ones are just historical or whatever. like do people still use all of them or just a handful. also whats the difference between using them on voice vs CW because i heard someone say you dont say the actual Q code out loud on SSB but then i heard someone do exactly that so im confused also seeing abbreviations that arent Q codes at all like 73 and 88 and stuff, are those part of the same system or totally separate thing

i was in the exact same spot about 8 months ago and went with the baofeng just to try it out. its fine for hitting repeaters, me and my buddy use ours for simplex when we go hiking and it works. honestly the biggest annoyance is just getting it programmed the way you want, chirp makes it easier but theres still a learning curve. if money is tight just get the baofeng and upgrade later when you know what you actually want in a radio

yeah start longer and trim, always. the formula gives you a starting point but real wire in real environments is never exactly what the math says. for 40m i usually start with the full half wavelength calculation using the 468 constant and then add maybe 3-4 inches per side before i make the first cut. then check SWR with an analyzer, trim a little at a time from each end equally. you cant put wire back on once its gone. for the center insulator honestly anything non-conductive that holds up outside works. ive used sections of cutting board, PVC end caps drilled out, even some thick nylon cutting board material. the commercial ones are nice but not necessary at all. the coax connector is probably your most important joint - seal it up real well with self-amalgamating tape after you solder everything, water getting in there will mess up your day eventually. on the choke - for 40m with RG-8X people usually do around 8-10 turns at maybe 6 inch diameter, so like a 6 inch coil form. some guys use a piece of PVC. its not super critical but do something, an unbalanced feedline against a dipole will cause all kinds of RF in the shack issues, trust me ive been there.

welcome to the hobby, getting ahead of yourself is basically a ham radio tradition so dont worry about that. the jump to HF is worth it when you're ready, just dont let anyone talk you into spending a fortune right away. plenty of decent used rigs out there. congrats on the first QSO, the nervousness never fully goes away honestly, i still get a little twitchy calling CQ sometimes and ive had my general for like six years

im in a similar boat actually, been lurking on the 2m EME reflector for like a year trying to figure out if my setup would even be worth it. one thing i keep seeing mentioned is system noise temperature being almost as important as antenna gain, like a mediocre preamp can kill you even if the antenna is decent. the low noise preamp right at the feedpoint seems to be where people say dont cheap out. there was a good thread on the moonbouncers groups.io about this a while back if you havent found that community yet, pretty active and people are pretty helpful to newcomers

yeah same thing happened to me when i first started. i actually printed out a little cheat sheet with the phonetic alphabet and kind of a rough script for checking in and kept it next to me the first few times. felt kind of silly but it helped a lot. most net controls are super patient with newer folks, its kind of part of the deal with those nets anyway.

ok so i passed my general back in March and ive been mostly just listening on HF since then trying to figure out where i actually have privileges. i pulled up the part 97 band plan thing and honestly its kind of a mess to read, like the footnotes reference other footnotes and i keep getting lost. my main question is about 40 meters. i see people talking below 7.175 all the time and im not sure if thats where i should be or if thats extra class territory. also someone at my club told me i cant do any digital modes on certain parts of the band but i dont remember which parts or why. is there like a plain english version of this somewhere or do i have to just memorize the whole chart

yeah the venue thing is real, they moved it out of the fairgrounds from what i heard. a guy in my local club said something about it being at a different location but honestly i dont remember where he said. might be worth just emailing the club directly, sometimes those old websites are dead but someone still checks the inbox

yeah JS8Call activity is definitely thinner than FT8 but its not dead, you just have to know when to look. i find 40m in the evenings (my local evening, so like 0100-0300z) has the most going on, and there's a pretty active group on 20m during the day too, around 14.078. the thing that helped me was joining the JS8Call groups.io list because people actually announce when they're going to be on and sometimes coordinate skeds. the other thing is JS8Call has these 'heartbeat' and relay features that make it more of a mesh-ish network thing than a point to point qso mode, so sometimes you're seeing traffic that's being relayed through other stations and it looks quieter than it is. its a totally different operating philosophy from FT8 and once that clicks it gets more interesting. i've had some genuinely good ragchews through it, like actual back and forth about antennas and stuff, which you're never gonna get from FT8's 15 second slots. and yeah PSK31 is pretty much on life support at this point, which is sad. i still call CQ on 14.070 occasionally and sometimes get an answer but it's nothing like 2008-2012 when that whole slice of spectrum was just wall to wall signals. FT8 absolutely wrecked it.