John Johnson16

i drilled my roof for a NMO on my last truck and honestly it was fine, used a good rubber grommet and sealant, never had a leak in 4 years. but i get the hesitation. on my current car i went with a trunk lip just because i lease it and yeah that pattern compromise is real but like the other guy said for repeater stuff its pretty much irrelevant. 70cm especially you have enough signal margin most of the time that a slightly lopsided pattern doesnt matter unless youre at the edge of range

i was in the same spot not long ago lol. the part 97 document is honestly kind of dense to just read straight through. what helped me was the ARRL handbook has a section that kinda summarizes what each license class gets in plain language. also there's a privilege chart floating around online somewhere that someone made that shows it all visually, way easier than reading the actual regulatory text. the 15 meter thing your club friend mentioned sounds right to me but yeah you'd want to confirm that before relying on it

im in basically the same boat as you, been licensed about a year. what finally got me to actually do LoTW was finding a youtube video that walked through the whole tqsl thing step by step, took me maybe 45 minutes total and then it just kind of works in the background with my logging software.
i do all three honestly just because why not — LoTW uploads automatically when i close a log session, i have eQSL set up too and check it maybe once a week, and i've sent maybe a dozen physical cards to stations that either requested one or where it was a meaningful contact to me. got a few back in the mail and they're honestly really cool to have, especially the ones from far away. there's something about holding an actual card that just feels different you know

ok so i just passed my technician exam last week (finally) and now im trying to figure out what handheld to actually buy. ive been reading threads on here for like two hours and now im more confused than when i started lol
everyone seems to have a strong opinion and they all contradict each other. some people say just get the cheap baofeng and learn on that, others say baofengs are garbage and ill regret it, then someone else says get a yaesu ft-65 and someone else says no get the ft-60 which is older but bombproof... i dont even know what half these features mean yet honestly
main things i want to do starting out are just talk on local repeaters, maybe some simplex with my brother who lives about 8 miles away, and eventually APRS stuff would be cool but thats not urgent. budget is probably $100-150 give or take, could stretch a little if something is really worth it
do i really need dual band right away or is 2m only fine to start? and does the chirp software work with most of these or is that another whole headache to figure out

Check your baud rate settings and add some delay between CI-V message processing. The watchdog timer can help if you're missing input data - set it to about 10 seconds to reset relays if CI-V goes quiet.

pretty common question honestly. general rule most people follow is you say it normally first and if theres any doubt or the band is rough you go phonetic. but on a busy contest or a pileup a lot of guys will phonetic right from the start just to cut through. no hard rule written anywhere, its more situational
the 'sugar' thing is just old timers using pre-NATO phonetics, there were a few different systems floating around before NATO standardized everything in the 50s. you still hear roger, able, baker from guys who been doing this since forever. doesnt really cause problems as long as context is clear but yeah it can throw you off when youre not expecting it