James Thomas

classic GAS but also not wrong to want the waterfall, thats a real quality of life thing not just shiny object stuff. i kept my 590 for years telling myself the same thing and then borrowed a buddys 7300 for a weekend and yeah i bought one the next month. the 590 went to my secondary station and i dont regret either decision. your line noise on 40 probably wont get better with a new radio btw, have you tried tracking down the source? sometimes its a neighbors switching power supply or LED bulbs and its actually fixable, might be worth spending an afternoon on that before dropping money on a new rig.

had a cushcraft 13b2 for years, great antenna but the matching network on those older ones can get flaky if its been outside a while, worth checking the gamma match before you commit to buying it. if the swr looks weird on 2m it's usually that
for what it's worth i ran mine fixed for about a year pointing roughly toward the city and it was fine for what i was doing but i missed a lot of sporadic e openings that went a different direction so eventually i caved and got a rotator. the innovantennas stuff looks nice but ive never used one personally

so i just passed my technician exam last month and im trying to figure out what handheld to get as my first radio. ive been going down a rabbit hole for like two weeks now reading reviews and watching youtube videos and honestly i feel more confused than when i started.
everyone seems to love the baofeng UV-5R because its cheap and i get that, but then other people say get a yaesu or kenwood and dont waste time with the cheap stuff. my budget is probably around $150 maybe a little more if something is really worth it. i mostly want to use it for local repeaters and maybe talking to people at hamfests and stuff, nothing super complicated. does anyone have a recommendation or at least help me figure out what features actually matter versus what sounds impressive but i wont ever use?

okay so i've been wanting to get into ham radio for a while now, my neighbor is licensed and he keeps telling me to just do it already. so i finally decided to start studying but honestly i dont even know where to start. i looked up the question pool online and it's just... a lot. like 400+ questions? do i actually have to memorize all of those or is there a smarter way to do this. also i saw some people mention the ARRL study guide and others say just use hamstudy.org and skip the book entirely. is one better than the other or does it just depend on the person. i'm not totally new to electronics, i took a class in high school like 15 years ago so some of the basic stuff isn't completely foreign to me but the regulations and frequency stuff is kind of confusing. anyway just looking for some direction before i waste money on a book i dont need