The DXer

CQ WW is honestly fine to jump into, dont let the size of it intimidate you. the exchange is super simple — signal report and CQ zone, thats it. download N1MM+ and watch a youtube tutorial for like 20 minutes and youll have the basics down. the first few hours will feel chaotic but you get the rhythm pretty quick. SOTA is kind of its own thing but people definitely do SOTA activations during contest weekends, especially CQ WW. some activators will chase contacts during a SOTA activation but the two scoring systems are pretty much separate. its fun if you like portable ops but id figure out one thing at a time honestly. get through your first contest first, even if you only make 50 contacts it teaches you a ton about how the bands actually behave under pile-up conditions.

handheld antennas during a 47 degree pass is a workout, im not gonna lie. i did that for probably my first 6 or 7 contacts and my arms were wrecked after. az-el rotor setup changes everything but thats a whole other rabbit hole and expense. even just getting a cheap camera tripod mount for the yagis helps a lot so you can actually focus on the radio instead of physically holding the beam. also just something i noticed from your post -- are you sure the FT-847 is set up for full duplex satellite mode? theres a specific menu setting and it doesnt default to it, caught me out too. if its in normal mode it might be switching between TX and RX and you'd never hear yourself on the downlink while transmitting which would explain a lot

i was in the exact same spot about 8 months ago and ended up with the ft-65 based on advice from my local club and honestly zero regrets. chirp works great with it, took maybe 20 minutes to load all the local repeaters once i figured out the cable situation (get the genuine programming cable, the cheap knockoffs caused me nothing but grief) the 8 mile simplex thing might be hit or miss depending on terrain, just something to keep in mind. worked fine for me in a fairly flat area but your mileage will literally vary

first thing id check is your symbol table and symbol code — if those are misconfigured sometimes packets go out malformed and igates just drop them silently. also pull up a SDR or a second receiver and actually decode the packet yourself, something like direwolf in receive-only mode or even just a phone app like APRSDroid pointed at your audio. if the packet decodes correctly on your end then the problem is probably path or igate coverage, but if it doesnt decode then yeah its likely your audio drive level into the TNC or something in the config. the D710 internal TNC is usually pretty solid but ive heard of people having issues when the internal volume setting gets nudged. theres a separate audio level setting for the TNC path thats not the same as the speaker volume, worth double checking that in the menu.

went through this same thing a few months ago. the AE7Q site the other guy mentioned is really the way to go for searching, i spent like an hour on there just browsing calls before i found one i actually liked. one thing i didnt realize at first is that when a call becomes available it doesnt just go to whoever applies first, theres like a 18 day application window and if more than one person applies for the same call during that window they do a tiebreaker based on certain criteria like if you previously held the call or if a family member did. so sometimes you see a call thats been available for a while and think oh great nobody wants it, but other times you apply and find out three other people wanted the same one and you lose the tiebreaker. happened to me the first time i tried lol. second choice worked out though

Ham Radio Deluxe works well but you need proper port configuration. Make sure you open up ports 7805 (Ham Radio Deluxe Remote Server) and 7806 (Ham Radio Deluxe Serial Port server) for incoming TCP traffic. This will probably need to be done on your router where your internet service enters your home. Virtual serial ports are key for logging integration.

so ive been going back and forth on this for a while now and i cant quite make up my mind. currently running an inverted V dipole for 40m, apex is at about 35 feet which i know isnt ideal but its what i can do with the trees in my yard. swr is fine, works okay but i feel like im missing stuff especially on the low end of the band around 7.005 or so where the dx tends to hang out. a buddy of mine keeps telling me to just put up a vertical with a good radial field and be done with it. he says the low angle radiation will blow my dipole out of the water for dx. and yeah i get the theory, but my yard is kind of a mess and laying out 32 radials is not exactly something my wife is going to be thrilled about. been thinking maybe i do a compromise, like 16 radials and see what happens. anybody actually done a direct comparison on 40? like real world not just modeling software. i trust eznec and all but sometimes the ground conditions and the neighbors garage roof and whatever else just throws everything off anyway

so ive been chasing LEO sats for a few weeks now with FM birds and that went fine, but decided to try AO-73 last night since i saw a decent pass coming up, like 58 degrees max elevation which should be plenty. got my two VX-8DR handhelds set up, one for uplink on 435 and one for downlink on 145, using a pair of arrow yagis i built from that online calculator. here's the thing — i could hear signals on the downlink, faint but definitely there, some SSB voices and what sounded like CW. but whenever i transmitted i couldnt hear myself come back through the transponder. read that you're supposed to tune the downlink while you transmit to find yourself and then keep adjusting for doppler but i just got nothing. i was putting out maybe 3-4 watts on the uplink which i thought was enough? is there something about linear transponders im missing compared to FM? like do i need to be more precise on the uplink frequency or is 3-4 watts actually not enough for a handheld setup into a yagi? the pass is coming around again tomorrow morning and i want to actually make a contact this time