Patricia Lee

i just passed mine like six weeks ago so this is fresh. the oscillator stability questions and the stuff about op-amp circuits was the part that got me, had to watch a bunch of youtube videos to even get close to understanding it. but yeah once i actually had the ticket and jumped down into the extra portion on 17m during a contest weekend it immediately felt worth it. stations i could never work before just sitting right there.

yeah i caught the tail end of that opening, was on around 28.400 and it was genuinely nuts for a while. worked a ZL which i havent done on 10 in probably two years. the SFI has been hovering around 180 which for this part of the cycle is pretty solid. cycle 25 is really delivering honestly, better than a lot of people predicted a few years back when everyone was doom and gloom about it.
on the Icom thing — ive seen the same teaser and someone on reddit (i know i know) was saying it might be a new mobile rig rather than a base station update. like an updated version of the 7100 form factor maybe? pure speculation but if they update the IC-7100 with a better screen and maybe add some of the 7300 DSP features that would actually be a really compelling radio for people doing mobile HF. guess we wait and see. Hamvention is only a few months out anyway so shouldnt be too long before we know for real.

honestly most active operators are doing at least LoTW and eQSL together, they're both free and once you get your logging software set up it usually uploads to both automatically so its not much extra work. LoTW is definitely the one that matters for ARRL awards like DXCC and WAS, eQSL has its own award system and some people chase those too.
physical cards are kind of a whole separate thing. a lot of DX stations still love them and some rare ones wont confirm any other way, plus like you said they look great. i'd say dont stress about sending cards to every qso but if you work something interesting or rare its worth doing direct mail at least. the bureau system is cheap but slow, like months slow sometimes. if you worked a /p station on a rare island or something just send direct with a return envelope and a couple dollars for postage, most operators really appreciate it and youll usually get a card back pretty quick.
just get comfortable with LoTW first since youre already set up there, then add eQSL when you feel like it. dont burn yourself out trying to do everything at once

yeah the low bands are a whole different beast, 40m pileups at night when a rare one is on can be absolutely insane. i remember trying to work a VP8 a couple years back on 40 and just gave up after an hour, my antenna situation wasnt cutting it at all.
one thing nobody tells beginners — listen to where the dx is actually coming back, not just where everybody is transmitting. theres usually a sweet spot and if you can identify it and park there right before the dx comes back to that area you have a much better shot. some ops work a predictable pattern, others are all over the place and you just gotta hunt.
i dont think 100w is your problem at all for most situations. its almost always technique and timing over power, unless youre trying to break through to somewhere thats genuinely path-challenged from your location. a dipole at 35 feet and good timing beats a kw with bad timing pretty regularly in my experience

on the IC-905 thing, my buddy at the local radio club actually got to play with one at a hamfest last month and said the receiver is really impressive but the price tag made him wince pretty hard lol. i think for most of us the microwave bands stuff is kind of a niche within a niche but its cool that icom is doing something different. most of the news i follow lately has been about the FT-710 used prices dropping which is more in my wheelhouse honestly

not a dumb question at all, this trips up a lot of new hams. so the CTCSS tone (some people call it PL tone, same thing basically) is what you transmit to open the repeater's squelch on the input side — without the right tone the repeater just ignores your signal. if you can hear traffic on it then your receive is fine, the issue is almost definitely your transmit tone setting. on the baofeng you need to make sure the tone is set on the TX side specifically, not just decode/receive. there's a setting in the menus where you can have it encode, decode, or both — you just want encode for most repeaters.
as for nobody responding, that's honestly just how it is sometimes. some repeaters are pretty quiet during the day and then come alive around commute hours. try calling out around 5-6pm local time and you'll probably get a response. just say your callsign and that you're monitoring or looking for a chat, keep it simple.
the echolink thing is separate — some repeaters are connected to the internet and can link to other repeaters or stations worldwide, but that doesn't change how you access it locally, you still need the right tone. some linked systems have their own etiquette about pausing between overs to let linked stations come back but you'll pick that up as you go.

x50a is a solid choice but just so you know that thing is like 3.5 feet tall, parking garages are gonna be an adventure. just something to think about with a hatchback since youre already lower to the ground than a truck or suv would be

Try using Tools > Rescore Current Contest to fix any FT8/FT4 QSOs that weren't assigned the correct score. There's an updated N1MMWSJTInstructions.pdf file in the Additional Support directory that covers recent changes to the integration setup.