CW Lover

yeah i was terrified my first few nets too honestly. one thing that helped me was just listening for like a month before i ever checked in, just so i could hear how net control handles things and what the flow is. also the ARRL has a net directory thing and some nets actually publish their script or preamble online so you can read through it ahead of time and know what to expect. not all nets are the same either, some are pretty formal and some are super casual so it just takes a bit to learn each one's vibe

the spreadsheet thing is totally normal, i have a notepad next to my radio with all my regular nets written down and my wife gives me the same look haha. for special event stations the ARRL has a page that lists them but honestly i find out about most of them through the W1AW bulletins — if you're not copying those yet, worth tuning in or just reading them on the website. also QRZ sometimes has announcements in the forums and club newsletters are goldmines for this kind of thing if you're on a few email lists.
one thing i started doing is just listening around on weekends when i have time. you'd be surprised how many special event stations you stumble across just by slowly tuning the HF bands on a saturday morning. caught a 13 colonies station that way a couple summers ago and had no idea the event was even going on until i heard them calling CQ

i was in the same boat not that long ago honestly. what helped me was just picking ONE cluster source and sticking with it for a while so i could get a feel for how it works before comparing them. i went with DXwatch because someone here recommended it and the band filter thing is pretty easy once you find it. took me like three sessions to figure out where everything was but now i dont even think about it.
one thing nobody told me early on — double check the spot before you jump on a frequency, sometimes spots are wrong or way out of date and youll just be transmitting into nothing wondering why nobody responds lol. learned that one the hard way

oh man i was so nervous on my first one too. mine ended up being totally fine, had like 8 contacts in 20 minutes once i got spotted. the chasers are really patient people in my experience, they know you're dealing with wind and cold hands and whatever else is happening on a mountaintop. dont overthink it too much. just get up there and call CQ SOTA on a clear frequency and youll be surprised how fast people come back to you.

did both on my ND about two years ago. the jumper diagrams floating around from eham are mostly right but there's one that gets W10 and W11 mixed up depending on which revision of the service manual they copied from, so double check that before you touch anything. i used a good stereo microscope borrowed from a friend and it still took me like 45 minutes just to be sure i had the right pads.
the extended RX is noticeable on MW, youll actually pull in AM broadcast pretty decently with a good antenna. dont expect miracles on the low end, the front end wasnt designed for it, but its usable. MARS mod worked fine, verified TX out of band at low power just to confirm. just make sure you re-enter your callsign in the menu after because sometimes it resets.

Looking for advice on a 40m dipole build where I need to keep total length under 50 feet due to property constraints. Experimenting a 20 40 meter short coil loaded dipole antenna with the goal to keep the total length under 40 feet so that the dipole can be mounted on two 20 foot fiberglass pole to make a 20/40 meter rotatable dipole. I'm considering loading coils at about 11 meters from center feed point similar to what I've seen documented.
Planning to use speaker wire construction with homebrew balun. What inductance values have others used for 40m loading coils? Also concerned about bandwidth limitations with loaded elements.

im kind of in the same boat as you, just started putting mine together this winter. one thing i did not think about at all was logging. like what do i do if there's no laptop or the batteries die on it. ended up just throwing a waterproof notebook and a couple pens in a ziploc bag and taping it to the inside of the lid. probably not the most elegant solution but it works.
someone at my club mentioned keeping a second small HT already programmed with all the local repeaters in the kit too, separate from the main rig. so if you need to do something quick on VHF you dont have to haul out the whole setup. that made a lot of sense to me.

yeah the door seal thing is gonna chafe through the jacket eventually, seen it happen. on my Ram i ran it through the firewall using an existing grommet — there's usually one on the driver side that has maybe a heater hose or nothing going through it and you can work a small hole through it with a pick tool. takes some patience but the end result is clean and weather tight. i used some self-amalgamating tape around where it exits just to be safe.
on fords specifically i've heard people go through the base of the A-pillar trim, there's often a gap behind the weatherstripping that you can fish through without drilling anything. might be worth pulling that trim back and having a look before you commit to anything permanent. either way get yourself a fish tape or even just a stiff wire to help guide it, trying to do it blind is a nightmare.

yeah the rate optimization thing is kind of separate from SO2R tbh. even single radio there's a lot of people leaving points on the table just with bad operating habits — like staying on a dead frequency too long, not knowing when to switch from run to S&P based on the rate, stuff like that. i kept a rate sheet for the first time in WPX last year and it was kind of eye opening how much variance there was hour to hour and it wasnt always band conditions causing it
SO2R is great but if your fundamentals arent solid yet it might just be adding complexity without the payoff. get your single radio rate really dialed in first is my take

congrats on your first one, that feeling when the pile hits you is pretty addictive honestly. yeah re-spotting is totally a thing and a lot of activators do it especially if you want to work another band or if the pile dies down. just spot yourself again on sotawatch and mention the frequency, youll usually get another wave of chasers. some guys also post on the SOTA reflector or even just text other activators they know to spread the word if its a harder summit that doesnt get activated much.
the grid square on the database i dont think is mandatory, at least i never fill it in and my activations have all gone through fine. the important parts are the summit ref, date, band, mode and callsigns of the contacts. make sure you have at least 4 unique callsigns by the way, not 10 total -- wait actually it IS 10 points of contacts not 10 unique calls... hmm actually i might be misremembering, check the general rules document on the sota website because i dont want to steer you wrong on that one.