Jessica Davis

S2S on your first activation thats awesome. i did my first one like 3 years ago and totally fumbled the exchange because i wasnt ready for how fast the chasers come in. the counterpoise thing is real, i just clip mine to a tent stake now, way easier than finding a rock every time. what antenna setup were you running exactly, just curious if it was an end fed or something else

Sounds like you're further along than most people ever get honestly. The Baofeng idea is solid, i keep a UV-5R in mine just as a backup scanner/monitor radio even if i wouldnt trust it as a primary. Cheap insurance.
The antenna thing is real though. I'd really encourage you to practice setting up whatever wire antenna you're planning before you actually need it. I spent an embarrassing amount of time at my first SET trying to figure out why my end-fed wasn't loading right and it turned out i had the feedpoint connector half loose. Not the moment you want that to happen. Even just throwing it up in the backyard a few times until it feels automatic makes a huge difference.
One thing i dont see you mention is documentation — like not just frequencies but a written operating procedure card for yourself. When you're tired or stressed it's amazing what your brain forgets. I have a little laminated sheet that walks me through startup checks in order, sounds dumb but ive used it more than once.
Also depending on where you are, look into your local ARES group if you havent already. They sometimes do go-kit check-in exercises and its a good way to find the gaps before an actual event.

Same thing happened to me after I upgraded to General last spring. Passed the test, got all excited, then life got in the way and I barely touched the rig for months. My elmer actually called me out of nowhere just to say hi and it got me motivated again. Sometimes thats all it takes I guess.

I had the same confusion when I started! You'll hear these Q-codes in voice modes and at club meetings, so even if you're not a CW operator, you'll want to know them. Practice listening on the bands - you'll pick up the natural flow quickly. Don't worry about sounding perfect at first, we all learn by doing!

so ive been running an RTL-SDR v3 with the direct sampling mod for a while now, mostly just listening to HF, some shortwave utility stuff, checking out the 40m band when im not on the air. it works ok but the dynamic range is pretty rough when there's a strong local AM broadcast station a few hundred kHz away and it just kind of blobs out everything near it.
been looking at the RSP1A as an upgrade, the 14-bit ADC and better front end filtering sounds like it would help a lot with that. but im also wondering if i should just save up more and look at the HackRF instead even though i know that's more of a transmit-capable thing and not really optimized for receive. i mostly just want cleaner HF reception, some medium wave DX on nights when the band's good, maybe decode some digimodes off the air passively.
anybody gone from RTL-SDR to RSP1A and actually noticed a real difference in a noisy RF environment? my QTH is suburban so there's a fair amount of crud on the lower bands. running SDR# right now but ive been messing with SDRuno a bit since that's what the RSP stuff uses natively.