Jennifer Wu

The ComJot device sounds promising but I'm skeptical after what happened with RFinder. Heard Bob cancelled Dayton last minute due to refund issues. Hope this new company has better backing and software development.

honestly the hand mic vs a good headset mic makes a huge difference and nobody talks about that enough. i switched to a Heil headset probably two years ago and the reports got way better almost immediately just from the mic element being more consistent distance from my mouth. with a hand mic you're moving it around and the level changes constantly. also if you're in a room with hard floors and walls it kind of echos weirdly into the mic and that can muddy things up too. not saying go buy a $200 headset right now but maybe borrow one and see if your reports change, that'll at least tell you if the problem is the mic itself or the radio settings.

Just upgraded to General and looking to build my first HF base station. Budget is around $1500 for the transceiver. I'm seeing lots of recommendations for the IC-7300, but also considering the FT-991A for the all-band capability. Will mainly be doing SSB phone and some digital modes - no contesting or DXpedition work planned.
How important is built-in antenna tuner vs external? Worth paying extra for VHF/UHF in the same rig? Thanks for the guidance!

I went through this exact same thing! After using a straight key, a paddle takes practice to get used to the sideways movement and timing, but with a little practice it becomes second nature. Try practicing common letter combinations like 'AR', 'SK', and your callsign over and over until the muscle memory kicks in.

so ive been at this for a while now, started learning morse back in the spring and got up to about 13wpm pretty quickly using the Koch method and just hammering away at it every day. felt great at first, like i was actually making progress and could see the light at the end of the tunnel.
but now its been probably 3 months and i just cant seem to break through to the next level. im doing 30-45 minutes a day with lcwo.net and sometimes Just Learn Morse Code on my laptop. i can copy clean text okay at 13 but as soon as i push it to 15 everything falls apart and i lose the whole sentence trying to figure out one letter i missed.
anyone else hit this wall and figure out how to get through it? id really like to get to 20wpm eventually, i know people say thats where it really clicks and you stop counting dits and dahs. starting to wonder if im doing something wrong or if this is just how it works.

so ive been trying to get Winlink working for about two weeks now and i think i finally understand what im doing but wanted to check with people who actually use this regularly. my main confusion was around the RMS gateways and how message routing actually works. like i kept assuming the gateway i connect to stores my mail but thats not how it works right? it all goes up to the CMS in the cloud or whatever and the gateway is just a relay basically.
anyway my current setup is a IC-7300 running into a SignaLink USB, using Winlink Express on a pretty old laptop running win10. i got VARA HF working after some pain with the soundcard settings but i can see nearby gateways in the map now. managed to send a test message to my own callsign and got it back so i think the path is working.
the part thats still fuzzy for me is how to handle messages when im doing EMCOMM stuff and the internet is actually down. does the RMS gateway itself need internet to forward to the CMS? cause if so then like... whats the point during a real emergency when the backbone might be down. been reading about Winlink Hybrid network but got confused fast. anyone actually deployed this in a real or simulated exercise?