Welcome to VA
You might get better results posting in the Virginia forum, scroll down on the opening page.
Most of your questions have been answered here many times by people who have done a far better job of it than I can. However, the basic reality is that OC is not prohibited in VA, if you can legally possess a firearm in a particular situation, you can OC it. There are certain narrow exceptions, e.g. state parks, and in a car on K-12 school grounds, and you should familiarize yourself with these.
Also, there is no prohibition against carrying loaded (I define this as with a loaded chamber), nor are you required to carry ID or show it to law enforcement (identifying yourself is not the same thing as showing a piece of paper). The police may stop and question you if they have reasonable suspicion that a crime has been or is about to be committed. The simple act of OC is not grounds for suspicion as it is a patently legal act (unless, e.g. you look under 18).
Yes it is complicated. You are very brave for OC'ing without learning some of the ropes. I submit few learn them all. I'm certainly not one of them, but the more you learn, the lower your risk
Some of those who can help you can be found at the VCDL meeting, see
www.vcdl.org.
Finally, and I'm sure I won't be the last to tell you, "clip" is spelled em aye gee aye zee eye en e.
