Lisa Chen

I did basically this exact comparison a few years back, had a 40m dipole in inverted-V and tried a vertical I homebrewed from some aluminum tubing. ran about 20 radials which still isnt great. the vertical was definitely louder in every sense — more noise, more signal, just more everything. whether that translated to better contacts was kinda situational honestly. for Japan and Pacific stuff on 40 at sunset the vertical seemed to have an edge but for EU from the east coast the dipole broadside held its own pretty well.
one thing i'll say is if your inverted-V apex is only at 30 feet youre not getting great low angle radiation out of it either so both antennas are kinda compromised in their own ways. if you can get the dipole up higher thats probably the easiest win before messing around with a vertical and all the radial work that comes with it

Field Day is genuinely the best starting point, dont stress about it too much. The whole point is that its a club activity and nobody expects a new ham to know everything. Show up, tell people its your first time, and someone will sit next to you and walk you through the exchange. Most Field Day groups are thrilled to have extra operators because it means more contact hours.
CQ WW is a different beast and i wouldnt start there honestly, especially as a phone op it gets pretty chaotic and the pileups can be brutal when you're still figuring out how logging software works. N1MM is what most people use and theres a learning curve. If you want to ease into HF contesting before Field Day i'd say try the ARRL Sweepstakes or even just a state QSO party, the exchanges are simpler and the pace is a bit less insane.
SOTA is totally separate from contests, its more of an awards program where you activate summits and chase other activators, very different vibe but also a lot of fun if you like hiking. some people do both.

deer crashing around near your antenna is basically a rite of passage at this point lol. ive had squirrels investigate my feedline and one time a very confused turkey just stood there staring at me for like ten minutes while i was in the middle of a pileup. nature references indeed.
im pretty new to WWFF myself so cant help much with the log upload stuff but the community on the WWFF groups.io list is really helpful if you have specific questions, people there are super responsive.

had something weirdly similar on an older 746 pro, not a 7300 but same kind of symptom. turned out to be a tiny crack in a trace on the RF board that you genuinely could not see without like 10x magnification. only showed up under load and heat. ran a jumper wire across it and its been fine for two years since. might be worth checking your boards really carefully around any mounting points where the board flexes a little when things expand.

honestly same, im pretty new to HF and the propagation stuff is kind of overwhelming at first. someone told me to just install the DX Toolkit app and watch the alerts, which helps a little. still dont fully understand all the numbers but im learning. the random ZL contact sounds awesome though, thats exactly the kind of thing that makes me want to keep at it

Start with what you can afford! A good 35Ah AGM battery will serve you well and cost half what lithium does. You can always upgrade later. Focus on getting on the air first - the best go-kit is the one you actually have ready to deploy.

so ive been thinking about getting my general and eventually extra and i know morse isnt required anymore but honestly i kind of want to learn it anyway, seems like it would be useful and also just cool to know. the problem is i have no idea where to even start. ive seen people mention stuff like koch method and also just apps but i dont know if apps are actually useful or if its one of those things where you need like a real teacher or a class or something.
also how long does it realistically take to get to where you can actually have a qso on the air, not just copy random letters but like an actual conversation. i know it probably varies a lot but just trying to get a rough idea before i invest a bunch of time into it