Emily Taylor

honest answer — on 40m a dipole at even 30-35 feet is going to be more useful day to day than most verticals unless the vertical has a really solid radial system under it. and you already said your yard is mostly concrete so yeah, elevated radials can work but its more fiddling around. the dipole just works, especially for the kind of operating you described. you dont need a beam-low DX machine for working europe on 40, the band does a lot of the work for you when conditions are decent. the low radiation angle thing with verticals is real but its kind of oversold for someone just getting started. put up the dipole first, get on the air, and worry about optimizing later. you can always add a vertical down the road if you feel like you're missing shots.

congrats on the first one, that feeling when the pileup starts is something else isnt it. dont sweat the fumbled exchanges, everyone does it at first and the chasers are generally pretty patient with activators especially when the signal is decent. for 2m FM backup a baofeng will actually work fine for SOTA honestly, the chasers that are local will hear you no problem and for mountain top operations even a rubber duck does better than you'd expect. the bigger issue is just making sure you self spot on 146.52 or whatever local calling freq and also post it to SOTAwatch so people know to listen. some activators also use the SOTA spotter app to alert before they leave the car which gives chasers more lead time. id say just get comfortable with HF first though, 2m can be hit or miss depending on your region and how many local chasers are tuned in on any given day.

not a rule, no FCC regulation says you have to use phonetics. but there's a reason everyone does it -- letters sound alike on a bad signal. B and D and E and V all start blurring together when theres QRM or youre on a marginal path. NATO phonetics specifically were designed so that each word sounds as different as possible from every other word, so even if half the audio gets chopped up the other person can still figure out what letter you meant. the situation you described is exactly when you should reach for them. if net control is asking you to repeat, that's the cue to slow down and go phonetic. doesnt matter if it feels weird at first, after a few months it just becomes automatic. some guys also mix in non-standard phonetics which can cause confusion, like using "America" for A instead of Alpha, so sticking with NATO is the polite thing for interoperability.