David Kowalski

that scotland contact at 5w is awesome, 20m was probably in good shape but still thats a solid result for a first portable outing. i've been doing POTA with a KX2 for about a year and a half and honestly the QRP thing becomes kind of addictive. you start looking at every contact differently.
for antennas i bounced around a lot before settling on a linked dipole for multiband work. the EFHW you're using is great but if you ever want to try 40m or 17m without a tuner it's worth making one with the links, its a little more fiddly to set up but not bad once you get used to it. also worth experimenting with your feedpoint height, ive found even a foot or two makes a noticeable difference sometimes depending on the terrain.
what logging software are you using for the parks stuff, or are you doing paper log?

done this exact thing a few times for our ARES group and honestly once you go lifepo4 for field work you dont really go back to dragging a genny unless you genuinely need the runtime or youre running something power hungry like a linear. two 100ah battleborns in parallel for a 7300 at 50-100w is totally workable for 10 hours, especially if youre not transmitting constantly. figure maybe 20-25% duty cycle on a nets-and-traffic kind of exercise and youre probably drawing somewhere around 5-8 amps average. do the math and youre fine.
the thing people forget is keeping an eye on it. bring a good battery monitor, not just the voltage readout on the radio. i use a victron smartshunt and it actually tells me amp-hours consumed which is way more useful than guessing from voltage. lifepo4 voltage curves are flat enough that by the time the voltage starts dropping noticeably youre already in trouble.
on the antenna question — i have a similar linked dipole and yeah the efhw is definitely faster to throw up but the tuner situation on 80 is real. some 9:1 ununs are better than others and the 7300's tuner doesnt have unlimited range. if youre primary net frequency is 80m id stick with the linked dipole honestly, just practice the deployment a couple times before the exercise so it becomes muscle memory.

so ive been a tech for about two years now mostly doing VHF and some APRS stuff and i finally decided i want to actually get on HF and talk to people further than like 50 miles lol. signed up to take the General exam next month at a local club session and honestly i dont even know where to start studying. i looked at the question pool and it seems like a lot of it is electrical theory which i was never great at in school. the propagation stuff seems interesting though and i think i can get through that ok.
is the HamStudy website actually good for this or should i get a book? i saw some people mention the ARRL handbook but that seems like way overkill for just passing the test. also curious how much of the HF stuff i kind of just need to understand vs just memorize to pass because some of those electrical formulas are intimidating. anyone gone through this recently have tips?

ok so ive been licensed about 8 months now and ive been making contacts pretty regularly, mostly on 40m and some 20m when the band cooperates. people keep mentioning LoTW and eQSL and i went ahead and made an account on eQSL but honestly im still confused about how all this confirmation stuff is supposed to work together.
like do i need to upload to both LoTW AND eQSL every time i make a contact? and what about paper QSL cards, i designed one through one of those printing services and have a small stack sitting here but i dont really know the etiquette around when to send them vs when to just do it digitally. someone in a pileup actually sent me their card info over the air and i didnt know what to do with it in the moment.
also the LoTW setup with the certificate stuff seemed really complicated and i kept getting errors so i sort of gave up on it for a while. is it worth pushing through that or is eQSL basically the same thing for most purposes

Performance tip: If you experience lag with Log4OM, try using the SQLite database instead of the default and ensure your antivirus isn't scanning the database files during operation. Also disable some of the real-time cluster processing if you don't need it - makes a huge difference on older hardware.

okay so ive been licensed for about 8 months now and ive been making contacts pretty regularly on 40m and 20m SSB, done a few digital modes too. the whole QSL confirmation thing is kind of confusing me though. like i understand the basic idea, you confirm the contact with another station, but there seem to be like three different systems and i cant figure out which one is actually worth setting up.
i signed up for eQSL pretty early on because someone told me to and i do get cards through there occasionally which is cool. but then people keep mentioning LoTW and saying thats the one that counts for DXCC and the big awards. i went to set it up and it seems way more complicated, you have to request a certificate from the ARRL and wait and do all this stuff. is it worth going through all that for a new ham? or should i just focus on eQSL for now and do paper cards for the really special contacts.
also do people still actually mail paper QSL cards or is that kind of dying out? i made contact with a station in Japan last week on 20m and part of me wants to send him a card but i have no idea how to even do that, like do i need to find his address somewhere and put foreign stamps on it or what

had the exact same problem last year. turned out the RMS gateways i was picking looked green on the map but were like 800 miles away and propagation just wasnt cooperating that day even though they technically showed active. started sorting by distance and picking closer ones and it got way better. also worth checking the Winlink.org site for gateway status, sometimes the map is a little behind reality.
one more thing — are you on the paid VARA license or the free version? free version has a speed cap and some gateways i think have issues with it, or at least the connection is flakier in my experience. might not be your issue but worth knowing

had the same exact problem with mine a few years back. turned out to be the ALC circuit acting up. you might want to check the alc voltage while transmitting in ssb - should see some deflection on the meter when you talk into the mic. also make sure your processor settings are right, sometimes they get messed up and the radio thinks its overdriving when its not. mine needed a cap replacement on the main board but that was after like 15 years of use