Sarah Martinez

the paper cards are honestly my favorite part of the hobby, i know that sounds old fashioned but getting something physical in the mail from someone you talked to over the radio is just really satisfying. i have a whole binder of them going back years now.
one thing worth knowing — you can print your own cards at home pretty cheaply or order them from places like kb0pgf or a few others that do custom designs. doesnt have to be fancy, even a simple one with your call, grid square, and rig info is totally fine. most people just appreciate getting something back when they send one.

omg YES the nervousness is so real!! i got my tech license last month and still haven't made a contact yet because im terrified ill mess something up or sound stupid. your post is making me think maybe i should just do it
was there anything specific you said or did you just wing it? i keep listening to the local net but havent checked in yet either

Been looking forward to this one! Last year's event generated 292,496 contacts around the world. That's impressive participation. I'll be running QRP from the park - should be fun to work them with just 5 watts. PSK31 is perfect for low power.

congrats on passing the tech exam, that's the hard part done. okay so honestly for what you're describing the baofeng criticism is a bit overblown for a beginner. yeah they're not the cleanest radios in the world but for simplex and hitting local repeaters they work fine, ive seen plenty of people run them for years without issues. the main thing is just program it correctly and dont transmit on frequencies you shouldnt be on.
that said if you can stretch your budget even a little the Yaesu FT-65 or the FT-4XR are genuinely nicer to use day to day. the menu system makes more sense, the audio is cleaner, and they feel more solid in the hand. i started on a baofeng and eventually got a yaesu and the difference was noticeable but not like night and day or anything. if $50 is what you have go baofeng and dont feel bad about it. if you have $90 get the yaesu and you probably wont feel the need to upgrade for a while.
for APRS down the road you'd want something with a built in TNC eventually anyway so that's kind of a separate conversation

i just passed mine like three weeks ago so this is fresh. the smith chart questions stressed me out way more than they should have tbh, but when it came to the actual test i only got maybe two or three questions that really made me think hard. a lot of it does come down to recognizing patterns from the question pool. that said i did go through the ARRL guide and read the theory sections properly because i figured if im gonna have the ticket i should at least understand what im doing.
the band privileges are nice but i mainly wanted the Extra for the vanity callsign option which i know sounds dumb but thats the truth. already applied for a 1x2 and waiting to hear back.

yeah saw that too, there was a pretty detailed thread on eham about it. from what i read the big thing is supposedly dual receive but in a smaller form factor than the 7610, which if true would be genuinely useful for a lot of people who dont have room for a bigger rig or just dont want to spend 7610 money. take everything pre-release with a grain of salt though, specs always seem to shift before these things actually hit shelves and the initial pricing is usually optimistic.
and yes 10m has been wild, i havent seen propagation like this since the last peak honestly. if you havent tried FT8 on 10 during a good opening its kind of mind blowing how far you can get with almost nothing. though i know some folks think FT8 is ruining everything lol, to each their own i guess

honestly at 18 feet on 40m your dipole is going to be pretty much a cloud warmer, which like you said might actually work in your favor for regional stuff. i ran a dipole at similar height for years and worked plenty of stateside contacts no problem, the angle is high but for 300-500 miles that's kind of what you want anyway. the dx suffers but if youre not chasing dx then who cares.
the vertical with a compromised radial system is a toss up in my experience. i put up a ground mounted quarter wave 40m vertical a few years back with only 8 radials because i was lazy and the performance was honestly underwhelming, noisier than the dipole and i felt like i was fighting the feedline the whole time. eventually laid down 24 radials and it got better but it was a project. if you dont want to do the radial work the dipole is probably the easier win for your use case.
one thing worth considering — an inverted vee off that roof mast would let you get the apex up at 18-20 feet and the ends can drop down to like 6-8 feet and still work fine, and it fits in a smaller horizontal footprint than a flat dipole. might solve your space problem and the neighbor visibility thing since its one central support instead of two obvious end poles.

so ive been using an RTL-SDR v3 dongle for about a year now, mostly just poking around HF with the direct sampling mode and running SDR# on windows. its been fine for getting started but i keep reading that the dynamic range is pretty limited and i notice it when theres a strong broadcast station nearby kind of washing out stuff around it.
been looking at either picking up a HackRF One or stepping up to an SDRplay RSPdx. the HackRF is tempting because you get TX capability too and the frequency range is insane, but from what i understand the noise figure on it is pretty bad compared to something like the RSPdx? like 20+ dB noise figure on the HackRF versus something like 4-5 on the RSPdx. for just receiving shortwave and maybe some VHF air band stuff, does the HackRF even make sense or is it basically a transmit-focused device that happens to also receive.
budget isnt unlimited obviously. RSPdx is around $200 which feels like a lot coming from a $30 dongle but if its genuinely that much better for HF i can probably justify it. anyone gone through this same upgrade path and have thoughts

Been looking forward to this one! Last year's event generated 292,496 contacts around the world. That's impressive participation. I'll be running QRP from the park - should be fun to work them with just 5 watts. PSK31 is perfect for low power.

nice one, two pointers are underated imo especially if theyre easy to access. i do a lot of POTA too and the park activations are even more chill if you want something with no elevation gain haha. bring more battery next time though, two hours on 40m will eat through a small lipo faster than you think depending on how hard you were driving it