Jennifer Park

had a 7610 for about a year, sold it actually and went back to a 7300 plus pocketed the difference lol. for my operating style the dual watch just wasnt something i used that often and i found myself not noticing much difference day to day. the panadapter on both is good enough that i dont feel handicapped.
if you ever get into SO2R type stuff or serious contesting its probably more relevant. but if youre mostly casual dx i honestly couldnt justify it when i sat down and thought about it. your mileage will vary obviously but thats my two cents

the telnet thing is totally valid for testing, dont let anyone tell you otherwise. if your messages flow correctly over telnet then you know the account setup and message handling side is working and you can focus on the RF/VARA issues separately. i spent two weeks thinking my messages were broken when really it was just my audio levels into VARA being way off — like clipping badly. check your IC-7300 USB audio output levels in windows, it should be set pretty conservatively, i run mine around 40-50% and let VARA control the power through the radio's CI-V. the gateway selection matters too, just because something is geographically close doesnt mean you have a good path to it on whatever band you're using. try sorting by MBO type and look at recent activity, some of those gateways havent been active in months even though they show up in the list.
on the retry question — yeah Winlink will queue and you can set it to retry but honestly for emcomm work i wouldnt rely on that, just manually reconnect once you have a solid path. the queue behavior is fine for casual use but under deployment conditions you want to know your message actually went through.

nice work getting out there. im still working up the nerve to do my first one lol. question for you actually — did you have any trouble finding the exact boundary of the reference area when you were on site? thats one thing that worries me, like how do you know youre actually inside the reference and not just near it

Check if you're running the latest N1MM+ build - there was a fix in version 1.0.11148 for digital mode integration issues. Also verify that your WSJT-X instance created by N1MM+ (the "ForEW1" version) has the same station configuration as your standalone WSJT-X, including your rover callsign format.

2-3 weeks is plenty of time dont stress it. the pool has 426 questions but the actual exam is only 35 and you need 26 right to pass so the bar isnt super high. i'd say just do hamstudy every day for like 20-30 minutes and you'll be fine. the parts that trip people up are usually the band privileges stuff and some of the basic electronics questions about ohms law and that kind of thing but there are only a handful of those and once you see the pattern you'll get them. good luck, the test isnt as scary as it looks

what's going on with the 857 front end? like is it overloading or just deaf? because that might be fixable before you spend money on a whole new rig. had a similar thing happen with mine turned out to be a cold solder joint on the RF board, tech fixed it for like 60 bucks. anyway not trying to talk you out of the 7610 just seems worth checking first

Check if you're running the latest N1MM+ build - there was a fix in version 1.0.11148 for digital mode integration issues. Also verify that your WSJT-X instance created by N1MM+ (the "ForEW1" version) has the same station configuration as your standalone WSJT-X, including your rover callsign format.

what's going on with the 857 front end? like is it overloading or just deaf? because that might be fixable before you spend money on a whole new rig. had a similar thing happen with mine turned out to be a cold solder joint on the RF board, tech fixed it for like 60 bucks. anyway not trying to talk you out of the 7610 just seems worth checking first

yeah the tone thing got me too when i started out. one thing i'll add is that some repeaters dont require a tone at all to access them, they're open. so if you're not getting through even with a tone try transmitting without one and see what happens. also baofengs can be a little weird with how the menu labels CTCSS vs DCS, make sure you're setting the actual CTCSS and not accidentally set it to DCS or something. i wasted like a weekend on that before someone pointed it out to me lol