I let my membership expire after they unilaterally cancelled my paper QST. I’m still mad about that, and the steady trickle of other news doesn’t make me want to go back.

Hopefully someone or some other business will buy them. Hate to see them go.

For POTA contacts I’d just fix it.

In a contest that would be cheating.

Some clubs meet in person and on zoom simultaneously, does your local one? I’d get in contact with them anyway, someone might have a loaner rig you can use to get on the air and see what interests you the most.

Parks on the Air and Summits on the Air are popular an a lot of fun, but you’d need a radio first.

With some basic tools you could build your own radio from a kit.

I’d get an SSB capable radio unless you’re only interested in FSK modes.

A j-pole is a half-wavelength vertical with a quarter-wavelength matching section on the bottom.

It turns out that the 70cm band is about 3x the frequency of the 2m band (150MHz * 3 = 450MHz, close enough to each band). So the 2m the long leg of the j-pole is 3/4 wavelength (1/2 + 1/4 matching section), and on 70cm the long leg is 2.25 wavelength (3/2 + 3/4 matching). Both are an odd number of quarter waves, as we expect. The ham who made that briefing probably discovered in their testing that the matching stub wasn’t good for both bands, so they added a second one for 70cm.

This is not a novel design, Arrow Antennas has been selling one like it for years (https://www.arrowantennas.com/osj/j-pole.html)

I’m excited to see the new digital modes people bring to ham radio, or invent.