Jeff Parker

i was in the exact same spot about 8 months ago and ended up with a uv-5r just to get started. it works fine for hitting the local repeater, no complaints really. but i will say once i borrowed a friends yaesu at a hamfest i noticed right away the audio was clearer and the menus made more sense. im probably gonna upgrade sometime this year. either way just get something and get on the air, dont overthink it too long or youll still be reading reviews in 6 months lol

im pretty much in the same boat as you, been at cw for maybe 6 months. what helped me was switching to a straight key for a while actually, feels weird at first but it made me slow down and think about each element more deliberately. then going back to the paddles felt more natural somehow. might not work for everyone but worth a try if you have access to one

Don't forget DE (from/this is), CQ (calling any station), and SK (end of contact). Also 88 for "love and kisses" when signing with YLs. The telegraph operators developed these to speed up transmission, and we've inherited this efficient shorthand.

yeah unfortunately 44 is the threshold so those 38 contacts wont count as a valid activation for the WWFF database, but dont let that discourage you at all. everyone has a partial activation at some point, weather especially has a way of ruining plans. the good news is the contacts themselves still count for the hunters who logged them, so youre not wasting peoples time or anything.
for spotting, wwff.cc has its own self-spotting system built in and theres also a cluster specifically for WWFF. a lot of hunters watch the POTA spots too since theres so much overlap between the two programs, a lot of references are in both. i usually post to both when im out just to maximize the pile. next time you go back to that same reference the 44 should be pretty easy if conditions are decent and you get spotted early, the hunters really do show up once they see a new spot come through.

yeah it's not exactly luck but it's also not totally first come first served either, which is what trips most people up. the FCC runs it in waves basically — there's a filing window that opens and everyone who applies during that window is treated equally, then they do a random selection among all the applicants if more than one person wants the same call. so filing the very second the window opens doesnt give you an edge over someone who files a few hours later, as long as youre both in the same window.
the priority system is real though. if youre going after a call that belonged to a silent key (recently deceased ham), the family gets first crack at it, then certain license classes before others. a general class going after a 1x3 in a nonresident district is totally doable but yeah youre probably competing with a lot of people for the popular ones. if the call you want has been sitting available for a while your odds are better.
you can absolutely do it yourself through ULS, I did mine that way no problem. the filing services arent a scam or anything but honestly for a single application its not hard to do on your own, just takes a little patience navigating the FCC site. took about 2 weeks for mine to come back if I remember right.

so the phone vs digital thing trips up a lot of people. phone in part 97 language means voice modes basically, SSB, AM, FM. FT8 and other weak signal digital stuff falls under a different emission type designation, usually listed as data or RTTY/data in the band plans. as a tech you do have some data privileges on HF but it depends on the band and the frequency range within it. the ARRL band plan chart is honestly the easiest thing to bookmark, its not perfect but its way less painful than reading the actual CFR text.
for power limits as a tech on HF youre generally looking at 200 watts PEP on most of those privileges, not the full 1500 that extras run. your buddy might be mixing up general and tech limits which happens constantly. just double check the specific band section in part 97.301 and 97.313, those are the two you want.

I keep meaning to go to one of these but something always comes up. let me know what the swap tables are like if you go, specifically curious if anyone ever sells antenna tuners at these things or if its mostly handhelds and random junk

yeah i had basically the same headache for a while. what i ended up doing was making Log4OM the master log and setting WSJT-X to log directly to it via the UDP port — Log4OM handles that pretty well once you get the settings right, took me maybe 20 minutes to figure out the port config but after that it just works. FT8 contacts show up automatically, no manual imports.
for contests i still fire up N1MM because honestly nothing touches it for that, but when the contest is done i export the ADIF from N1MM and import into Log4OM. ive been doing this for about a year and a half and havent had any real dupe issues, Log4OM seems to flag them during import. the timestamps have been fine too as long as your PC clock is synced which it should be anyway if youre running WSJT-X.
the one thing i will say is dont try to run WSJT-X and N1MM at the same time pointing at the same UDP port, learned that the hard way during a contest weekend when i forgot to close Log4OM and everything got weird

honestly the advice about speaking across the mic changed everything for me when i first got into HF. i was treating it like a phone and talking directly into it and getting terrible reports. took me embarrasingly long to figure that one out.
the bandwidth thing you mentioned — yeah i had the same issue. i think a lot of people default to narrow because they read somewhere that its the considerate thing to do and then they sound like theyre calling from 1940. 2.4 to 2.8k is pretty much the sweet spot for me. anything wider and youre just adding noise floor without much benefit for speech.
not sure about the high end desk mics though, i use a pretty cheap dynamic and get decent reports so i wonder sometimes how much the mic itself matters vs just getting the settings right on the radio

they absolutely can and will find out if you make it a habit. the FCC has automated monitoring systems and volunteer monitors too. plus other hams will notice if you're operating outside your privileges - we tend to police ourselves pretty well in this hobby
as for penalties, first offense might get you a warning letter but repeat violations or blatant disregard can result in fines ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars, or even license revocation in serious cases. not worth the risk when you can just upgrade your license instead

the ARRL net directory is probably your best bet for finding scheduled nets, its at arrl.org/arrl-net-directory-search and you can filter by band and mode and all that. but honestly a lot of the best nets i know about i found just by word of mouth from other hams or by stumbling across them while tuning around.
for special event stations, the ARRL website does have a special event stations page that gets updated pretty regularly. W1AW also puts out bulletins that mention upcoming events, so if you have a way to receive or read those its worth checking. some of the state QSO parties and things like that run special event calls too and those are listed on the contest calendar if you poke around.
i've been running the same tuesday night 40m net for going on eleven years now and we still get new check-ins from people who just happened to be tuning through. so sometimes just being on the air and listening gets you plugged in faster than any website will

so i finally did my first WWFF activation last weekend at a state forest near me, KFF reference, been wanting to try this for ages after seeing people post their logs on the WWFF facebook group. took my FT-818 and a linked dipole up a trail about a mile in and found a decent clearing with some tree branches to string the antenna between.
ended up with 34 QSOs over about 2.5 hours mostly on 40m with a handful on 20m when the band opened up a bit, which i think is more than enough to validate the reference but i wasnt totally sure — i read somewhere you need 44 contacts to qualify the activation? or is that for SOTA? i always get those mixed up. WWFF is just 44 right and thats it, there isnt a points system like SOTA has?
also wondering about logging — i used paper in the field then transferred to ADIF when i got home and uploaded to WWFF Logsearch. seemed to work fine but the reference didnt show as activated on my profile for like two days. is that normal or did i mess something up with the upload format? the date showed correctly at least.
overall it was just a really good time honestly. way less stressful than i expected, the park hunters were super patient and a few guys gave me signal reports and asked what gear i was running which was nice. definitely doing more of these.

im pretty much in the same boat as you, been licensed about a year and still figuring all this out. one thing i stumbled on that nobody told me was that QRZ's logbook will actually flag when a station you spot is a new DXCC entity for you which is kinda cool if you're working toward awards or whatever. not sure if that helps with your workflow question exactly but i thought it was neat when i found it. the integration between logging software and live cluster data is something i keep meaning to figure out properly, i think some of the paid loggers like DXKeeper do it automatically but havent gotten there yet myself.