Michael Anderson

yeah the display on those is notoriously dim, yaesu really cheaped out on that part. i replaced the backlight on mine maybe 4 years ago, its not a trivial job because you have to basically fully disassemble the front panel to get to the display assembly. the stock backlight is a cold cathode fluorescent which is already pretty old tech, some guys have converted to LED strips but you have to match the color temp or it looks weird.
i dont have a written procedure bookmarked but i know there were some good threads on eham and also the 857 yahoo group archive if you can dig through that. the resistor mod you mentioned is real — theres a series resistor on the backlight circuit and going slightly lower value does bump the brightness but you're also running the lamp hotter so its a tradeoff on longevity. given the age of yours id probably just convert to LED and be done with it honestly.

If you are using an IC-7300, use the ACC/USB IF Output level (default is 50) to control the audio level sent to your computer. Keep WSJT-X power slider at 100% and adjust the radio's ACC level until ALC just doesn't activate.

not dumb questions at all, this is exactly the kind of thing people dont think about until they're scrambling at 2am during an actual activation. i went through the same thing a few years back.
honestly the way i think about it is just start with what you'd need to make one contact on HF and one on VHF and work backwards from there. for me that ended up being my IC-7300 (though some guys use a smaller radio like the 705 or a Xiegu for portability), a power supply or battery, some kind of antenna that doesnt require a tower to deploy, and all the cables and adapters to connect it all. the cables thing is where people get burned — you show up somewhere and realize you left the right-angle PL-259 adapter at home and now you cant hook anything up.
for the container i use a rolling duffel bag for the main stuff and a smaller sling bag for consumables and paperwork. pelican cases are great but heavy. i dont bring my own power anymore because our county EOC has a generator and a big battery bank but i always carry a small 20ah lifepo4 just in case because generators fail. also bring a headlamp, snacks, and your favorite headset because those chairs at EOCs are not comfortable and youre gonna be there a while

yeah same here in ohio, 40m has been pretty junky after sunset the last few days. i blamed my feedline at first lol but checked everything and its fine. just noisy. i did catch a decent run of stations around 7.240 last night for maybe 20 minutes then it just fell apart. the tube rig thing is real though, you can always tell, something about the way the signal breathes

yeah what he said about the LNA is dead on, i was running a similar setup to yours and the single biggest jump i got was swapping to a good relay-switched preamp at the boom. coax loss at 2m isn't huge but it adds up and your receive noise floor is everything in EME.
one thing i'd add is don't underestimate the azimuth/elevation rotor situation. if you're just doing az you're gonna miss a lot of windows because the moon goes high enough that a fixed elevation mount just won't track it. i ran az-only for about a year and it was frustrating, kept missing the good geometry windows. getting a proper el rotor made a bigger difference to my actual contact rate than anything else i did to the antenna side. anyway good luck, first EME contact is genuinely one of those moments

omg I just got my technician ticket last month and everyone kept telling me HF was dead or whatever so I almost didn't bother studying for general. Now reading stuff like this makes me want to upgrade asap. Do I need like a special antenna for 10m or will a basic wire work to start hearing stuff during openings?