1. I tested for Tech and General and a few months later sat for my Extra. I should have studied for a couple more hours and gone straight to Extra.

2. First rig. IC 718. I should have followed my gut instinct and bought myself an IC 7200 to start with instead of later. Lesson here? Buy something you can grow with. While I did sell the IC 718, I would have been better off and saved money had I followed my gut instinct.

3. I suppose I should have gone with a LOtW account from the git-go. It's too late now unless I want to spend the rest of my life transferring my paper logs to electronic format.

4. More to come.

5. CW. I tinkered with that and after I got about a quarter of the way to be halfway good stopped for quite a while and lost what little I had. I should have kept after it. As for my key? I have a Chinese Army straight key and still think I was right starting with that. I have NOT gotten another key and won't until I get good with it. I try and learn by starting with BASICS and go from there.

Pretty short list brother, oh wait you said concerning ham radio. I am going to take your advice on LoTW. Didn't think it would be the effort but I'm only at 40 QSOs right now and 87% are DX so I sent away for my post card.

No worries, it is what it is lol. I'll try for some DX, if I hear it. I'm glad to know I worked it, but after that, no matter. I simply don't chase paper at all. Sometimes I'd rather work on the gear/ antennas than talk, I think that type of interest used to called "tinkering". "Oh well", as one of my former boss' used to say.
73,
Rob
ETA: When the rule about keeping a log went away so did my logging.

I sat for the Advanced in front of the FCC in Cleveland. When they were sending the 20WPM test I was copying without a problem. Like you, should have done it all.

And a 7200...I own higher-performing rigs but I want one of those to pair with an R75. I like twins of any vintage.

Join LOTW.

You REALLY don't have to transcribe every paper log entry into ADIF format to get out of LOTW what YOU want out of it. YOU are the one that counts in this scenario. Just transcribe the entities that you want and need for what ever awards you would either like to actually apply for or even just have on your smartphone to brag about to your friends by showing you LOTW page counts. What I am saying is DON"T enter thousands of QSO's with NA stations. Once you have entered ONE station for the USA and ONE for Canada and one for Mexico, you are likely DONE. That is 3 countries right there. As long as they match. If they don't match, then enter a few more until you have USA, Canada and Mexico done. Then go for Hawaii and Alaska. Enter likely ones to match. Then start eyeballing your paper logs to start adding more countries. You can also see in LOTW if and when likely station even use LOTW and when was the last time the uploaded. You can do all of that BEFORE you take the time to actually put your entries in ADIF format and upload them. No sense keying in and uploading what has NO chance of matching anyway.

Think of your paper logs as a gold mine that you can return to again and again every time you want to make another country match. So by eye check and see what you have, and then check on LOTW to see if they exist over there, and  THEN and only THEN take the time to key in you QSO to see if you get a match. You should have a match in usually 5 to 10 minutes for the server to crunch on it as long as it is not a contest weekend or just after one.

There are ONLY 340 country entities, and of course you haven't worked a lot of them, but lets say you have worked 200 of them. That is JUST 200 entries you have to make, and you can make those entries ANY time you want. If bored with TV, go back to your "gold mine" and mine out some more likely matches. How long would that take?, How much trouble would that be?  We are not talking about hiring a keypunch operator and keying in thousands of entries, we are talking about perusing some paper logs by eye and maybe marking in the margin if you think they would be a good candidate for keying in and uploading. Heck I bet in a week of watching TV and making a few marks in the margin you could come up with a few likely ones you would like to try to match.

Wouldn't take long at all.  When i went thru my paper logs, it took about a day.. But I did start doing electronic logs in 2009, so of course they were easy. Just uploaded the whole thing and that was that. But I gleaned a few from the paper. But I sure as "heck" did not try to transcribe several paper logbooks. Just cherrypicked the good ones. That and wished I had actually logged some of the really good ones that I failed to log at all.

Here take a look at this "Find" function of LOTW. you can look for any call and see if they are active on LOTW and when they last uploaded

I put my call in the box and this result shows when I was last active.

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Once your data is in LOTW you can sort it so many different ways. This is just one example showing the last 25 contacts on 160 meters
The ones with the check marks qualify for the DXCC award because I specified that was the award to apply them to. As you can see the majority shown here don't qualify for DXCC because they are common and I have already qualified for their entity with other previous  matches. As you can see at the bottom there is a Next clickable spot that you can go back further in time. This is just the most recent 25  As you can see Israel is my most recent country on 160

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There are a thousand other things I could tell you about LOTW, but this limited forum is a slow way to convey these things.

bottom line:  I would encourage you to get set up for LOTW
Someone came along and encouraged me to set up in 2016 and I haven't regretted it.

Here is a screenshot of my stats for K0UA  As you can see I have almost 20,000 uploaded, but only a little over 10,000 have actually matched
this is about par for the course. Of course new matches come in out of the blue all the time as people join up with LOTW or upload from their old paper logs.

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I made the mistake of using compromise antennas early on, when I should have gone all out and installed a good vertical from the beginning.  I spent a long time second guessing my antenna plans and was letting perfect be the enemy of good.  No, I don't have the optimum lightning protection setup.  But I have done everything I can do within my budget and it was either that, or waste more years afraid to have a proper antenna.

I also missed out on years of fun by being mic shy and only doing digital.  I credit POTA for getting me some actual HF SSB operating experience.  

Another thing I didn't do early on was get QSL cards made.  I don't get a lot of requests, but it is nice to be able to properly reciprocate when I do.

I also had a mobile HF radio for years that sat on a shelf.  I should have installed it in a vehicle.  By the time I finally got around to installing a mobile radio, I ended up buying a newer radio to install.   Now, I have entertainment in the vehicle, and a way to contact someone in the event of a loss of phone service.

Acquire a PADDLE, Learn CW on the paddle.
Play with the straight key when you are feeling nostalgic.

I just bought one of everything along the way. I wait till I get a group of shit and sell it off or pile it in the corner. Sometimes I mod it and make more $.

I never log a thing. I couldn't care less who I talked to. If I can't remember it then it's not important.

General is dumb. Just study for Extra and do that right off. I will agree with that. Actually, skip Tech and just go Extra. Band limits are dumb and annoying.

Oh, I hate contests. It shits up the bands. There should be contest sections so the rest of us can use the spectrum for talking about the weather and ailments and what it's intended for. Sitting and saying 5/9 for hours seems like a self imposed hell I can't understand the appeal of.

CW. I get the S/N appeal but there is no way I'm training a portion of my brain to essentially be an organic 9600 baud OOK modulated UART. Life is difficult enough as it is. I would rather just talk since I already know how to do that.

FT8. Unless I'm mistaken it seems a serial loopback dongle would achieve the same thing. Just send data out a serial port and watch it bounce back if that turns you on. 24/7 perfect signals every time. Communication without communicating anything baffles me but whatever.

Plus 1 on this. get a good paddle and practice with it. I suggest start with POTA.  POTA is the way to learn to get over the fear. The exchanges are short and sweet, and you know what to send and when. It becomes routine, and builds confidence. And that is what you need. Play with the straight key on Straight Key Night at the end of the year.

Got my postcard last night, went to the website and entered the code. Got an email this morning with my callsign certificate, so far been fairly painless.