Digital Mode

our club is doing a small swap meet in april i think, not sure of the exact date yet they havent posted it. its nothing huge but people bring decent stuff sometimes. im in the cincinnati area if thats anywhere near you

so ive been messing around with a cheap RTL-SDR v3 dongle for a few months now, mostly just listening to aircraft on 1090 MHz and poking around the 2m band to see whats happening locally. its been fun and honestly way more capable than i expected for like $30 but i keep seeing people mention the SDRplay and the RSP1A specifically and im wondering if its actually worth the jump in price
my main thing is i want to get better HF coverage, like actually decent HF not just the direct sampling hack on the rtl-sdr which works but honestly feels kinda janky. also i notice a lot of intermod garbage when theres strong FM broadcast stations nearby, the rtl dongle just gets hammered. does the RSP1A handle that better with its preselection filters or whatever they call them
not super interested in the HackRF right now because i dont really need to transmit and the price is higher than i want to spend. just trying to figure out if the SDRplay is a meaningful step up for receive only use or if im just gonna spend $120 and notice basically the same thing

oh man the QCX Mini is such a great first build, good choice. i built the full size QCX+ a couple years back and it was the kit that really got me into homebrewing seriously. Hans does really good work with those designs.
for a portable antenna on SOTA i've been using an end fed half wave with a small 49:1 unun that i wound myself, the whole thing rolls up into a stuff sack and weighs next to nothing. you can cut it for 40 or 20 and just trim from there, or go the linked dipole route like you said which is more flexible if you want to work multiple bands. i've also seen people do really well with just a simple wire dipole and a short collapsible fiberglass mast, that combo is hard to beat for the weight to performance ratio. the key for QRP portable is really just getting the antenna up as high as you can manage, that extra height makes more difference than most people realize when you're only running a few watts

so ive been trying to figure out if its worth the 2 hour drive up to the Tri-County hamfest in March. last time i went was like 3 years ago and honestly the swap tables were kinda sparse but i did pick up a pretty decent MFJ tuner for like 12 bucks so maybe its worth it. anybody been recently and know if the vendors have been decent or is it just a bunch of guys selling old CB radios and coax adapters

congrats on the first one, 47 QSOs is a solid activation especially if you werent fully set up for the pileup situation. the 44 contact minimum is correct for a valid activation so you cleared it fine.
on the dual reference question yeah that comes up a lot. if the area genuinely has two separate program references you can absolutely log and submit for both, you just submit to each program separately with the same log. the hunters do get credit in both programs as long as whoever runs the other program accepts cross-submissions, most of the big ones do. worth double checking with the specific state program though since some of them have their own quirks about what counts.
for the portal i just export an ADIF from my logging software and upload it, never really tried to enter things manually which seems like it would be a pain. if youre using something like Log4OM or even HAMRS it should be pretty straightforward to get a clean ADIF out of it

yeah the mic distance thing is real, I went through the exact same thing last winter. what finally helped me was borrowing a friend's headset mic — just having it right next to my mouth changed everything overnight and I got way better reports. ended up buying an electret headset not long after, nothing fancy, and the difference vs the stock desk mic was pretty noticeable for casual operating.
also someone on here told me once to try listening to my own transmitted audio on a second receiver if you have one, or even a cheap SDR dongle. hearing yourself the way others hear you is kind of eye opening. you realize stuff sounds way different than what you think it sounds like from inside your own head

yeah what he said. one thing i'd add is that LoTW can be a little annoying to set up the first time because you have to request a certificate and there's some back and forth with the ARRL but once its running it pretty much works in the background. TQSL is the software you use to sign and upload your logs, its not the prettiest program in the world but it works.
i personally use all three systems just because why not, some contacts only confirm on eQSL and some guys still send beautiful paper cards and honestly getting a QSL card in the mail from somewhere like Kazakhstan or whatever never gets old. took me a while to appreciate the paper card thing but now i actually have a little album going