John Anderson

congrats on the 300DR, thats a solid radio for a first mobile setup. okay so a few things from someone who has done way too many of these installs over the years.
on the antenna - your instinct about the lip mount grounding issues is correct, they can be hit or miss and you'll often get a compromised ground plane that hurts your pattern and efficiency. a proper NMO through the roof is really the gold standard for a reason. i know it feels scary but if you use a good quality mount and seal it properly with self-amalgamating tape, it's really not a big deal. ive had the same hole in my jeep for six years, no leaks, no problems. the signal difference between a good roof mount and a so-so lip mount is noticeable especially on receive.
on the power question - run it to the battery, full stop. a 50W FM radio can pull around 10-12 amps on transmit and you really dont want that going through your fuse box wiring. use at least 12 gauge wire, fuse it within about 18 inches of the battery on both positive and negative, and route it away from anything that produces interference. the extra effort is worth it and you only have to do it once.

ok so i just upgraded from tech to general last month and im still trying to figure out where i can actually transmit on 40 meters. i keep reading about the band plan but then i also see stuff about the actual FCC allocations and they dont always seem to match up? like the band plan shows certain modes in certain spots but is that legally required or just like a gentlemans agreement thing
also whats the deal with operating near the band edges, my elmer told me to stay away from them but didnt really explain why. is it a legal thing or just courtesy or what. sorry if this is a dumb question im just trying to not step on anyone or do something wrong

honestly same boat as you a year ago. what clicked for me was just thinking about it like -- if you had to spell it out to somebody over a really bad phone connection, would you use phonetics? then use them on air too. i pretty much always phonetic my callsign now even on the local repeater just out of habit, takes like two extra seconds and avoids any confusion. people won't think you're weird for it

interesting, i have an 897D not the 857 but they're pretty similar internally from what i understand. been meaning to do the TCXO swap for a while. does it require any realignment after or does it just drop in and work? i dont have a signal generator at home so if it needs cal work thats kind of a pain for me

yeah i did the same mod on mine a couple years back, no issues. one thing i'll mention is double-check your TX audio after you do it, some people report a slight difference in how the ALC behaves when operating near the edges of the extended range. might be nothing, might matter depending on what you're doing. i ran mine into an external wattmeter and everything looked fine but worth verifying with something other than just the built-in meter.

I was in almost the exact same spot about eight months ago and ended up getting the Baofeng just because I was nervous about spending more money on a hobby I wasn't sure would stick. It works fine for what you described, hitting local repeaters and simplex, no complaints really. But yeah I already kind of want to upgrade because the programming software is a little janky and I had some weirdness with it picking up interference at a tailgate we had.
So maybe just go for the Yaesu if you can swing the extra bit, seems like most people end up there anyway eventually.

so ive been licensed about four months now (technician, studying for general) and i keep hearing people talk about nets and checking in but i honestly dont fully understand how it all works in practice. like i know the basic concept, you tune to a frequency, wait for the net control to call for check-ins, and you give your call sign. but when i tried last tuesday on our local 2m repeater net i just kept hearing conversations already happening and wasnt sure if i missed the check-in window or what.
also somebody at my club mentioned special event stations and how you can get certificates for contacting them? that sounds really cool but i have no idea where to find out when those are happening. is there like a central calendar or do people just post about them in places like this? sorry if this is a dumb question, just trying to figure out where to start

you're not doing anything wrong, honestly the ID thing trips up a lot of newer folks. FCC rules say you have to ID at least every ten minutes during a communication and at the end, so you dont need to throw your callsign in every single transmission if you're going back and forth quickly. on a fast-moving net, most people just ID when they first check in and then again at the end when they sign off. net control will usually tell you if they need more than that.
as for doubling, yeah it happens to everyone. if you realize you doubled with someone, just wait for them to finish, then say your call and that you had doubled with the other station and go ahead with what you needed to say. net control usually appreciates you acknowledging it rather than just barreling through. the trick with listening is to give it a good two or three seconds after you think the frequency is clear before you key up, especially on a repeater because sometimes the tail takes a second to drop. sounds like you're paying attention though, youll get the hang of it pretty quick

so ive been a tech for about two years and just upgraded to general last month, and i really want to get into CW. i know i dont need it for the license anymore but theres something about it that just appeals to me, maybe its the history of it or whatever.
anyway i picked up a cheap single lever paddle at a hamfest and im trying to figure out the keyer side of things. my radio (IC-7300) has a built in keyer which i know is a thing, but im reading about external keyers and now im confused about whether i actually need one or if the built in one is fine to start. also whats the difference between iambic mode A and mode B, ive read like four different explanations and im still not totally sure i get it.
mostly just want to know if i should focus on the radio's keyer for now or if theres a reason to get something external eventually. and any tips on actually getting my sending to not sound terrible would be great too, im pretty slow right now maybe 8-10 wpm and my spacing is a mess

yeah part 97 is written in that classic government legalese that makes your eyes glaze over after like two paragraphs. for techs the short version is you get full privileges on everything 50 MHz and up, and then on HF you get a few slices. on 10m you can do phone in the 28.300 to 28.500 segment, and CW plus some digital modes in other parts of 10m. the 40m CW thing — you do get a small window there, 7.025 to 7.125 i believe, CW only. no phone on 40m as a tech though.
the third party traffic rules are basically about whether you can pass messages for non-hams to other countries, and most of that only really matters if youre doing formal traffic nets or trying to pass a message internationally. day to day casual operating you probably wont run into it much.
ARRL has a decent band plan chart that puts it all in a visual format, way easier than reading the actual CFR text. just google ARRL technician privileges and it should come up. that said i'd also just double check the actual part 97.301 and 97.305 sections because those spell out exactly which frequencies and modes, once you kinda know what youre looking for its not as bad

i was in the same boat when i got my tech. what helped me was just downloading the actual band chart and taping it next to my radio for the first few months so i wasnt second guessing myself every time i wanted to try something. also worth knowing that part 97.301 is specifically the section that covers authorized frequency bands if you ever do want to look it up again, at least that way you can jump straight to the relevant part instead of scrolling through the whole thing

this is driving me nuts tbh. started with some youtube videos then tried that lcwo site for awhile. can get through most of the koch lessons but when i try actual qsos or even just copying call signs i freeze up and miss everything
tried using different apps on my phone too but cant seem to break through this wall. im getting all the letters fine when they come one at a time but put them together in words and my brain just stops working. anyone else had this problem or am i just hopeless lol
also whats the deal with farnsworth vs just regular speed - every app seems to have different settings and im confused which one to use

oh man yeah that wall you're talking about is completely real, almost everyone hits it around 5-7wpm. the problem is exactly what you described — your brain is still decoding individual dits and dahs instead of hearing the whole character as a sound. its like reading letter by letter instead of seeing the whole word at once.
the thing that finally worked for me was bumping the character speed way up even while keeping the overall word speed slow. on LCWO you can set the farnsworth timing so the letters come at like 18-20wpm but with long gaps between them. your brain is forced to hear the character as one chunk of sound instead of counting elements. feels weird at first and your copy rate will drop but stick with it for a few weeks and something just kind of... unlocks.
also honestly just listening to actual QSOs on 40m or 20m even if you cant copy much of it yet helps a lot. just having it on in the background while youre doing something else. dont stress it, 4 months is nothing in the grand scheme of CW learning

oh man the ICS forms thing is SO real. I remember my first SET years ago thinking I knew what I was doing and then completely blanking on the message format under pressure. there's this weird thing that happens where all the stuff you kinda half-learned in training just evaporates when someone hands you a radio and says "okay go."
the battery thing I'd add to that too — I always tell newer folks in our group to bring at least double what you think you need. a SET that's supposed to go three hours has a way of turning into six once command starts extending the scenario. and if it were a real activation after a hurricane or whatever, you're not going home when it gets inconvenient. we actually had a guy in our group show up to a real activation after a bad storm with nothing but a handheld and a half-charged battery bank. he was offline by noon and basically just became a warm body standing around.
the net control congestion thing gets easier with experience honestly. after a few exercises you start to develop a feel for timing, like you can almost hear the gaps coming. but yeah first time is rough, nobody's going to fault you for it. the fact that you noticed what went wrong and signed up again is honestly the whole point of doing these exercises.

the ground thing is real, dont underestimate it. under the seat bolt is usually fine as long as theres good metal-to-metal contact and you scraped off any paint or coating where the lug sits. a lot of noise problems in mobile installs trace right back to a bad ground, either high resistance or a ground loop from running the ground too far from the radio. some guys run both power leads all the way to the battery and swear by it, personally i do the same, positive with fuse close to the battery and negative straight to the battery negative post, keeps everything clean.
the Tram 1185 is a decent antenna, nothing fancy but solid for local work. if people are saying you sound noisy it might be worth checking if the noise follows your engine RPM, that classic alternator whine usually means you need a ferrite choke on the power leads or possibly a filter on the line. also make sure that NMO mount has a good ground plane connection, sometimes the threads dont bite all the way and the coax shield ends up floating a little

the 400-500ms thing is pretty typical if you havent pinned down where the bottleneck actually is. first thing id do is run a continuous ping from the operating location to the remote box and watch the jitter, not just the average latency. if youre seeing spikes even occasionally that'll wreck the audio regardless of buffer settings. cable modems can be really bad for this especially if there's any upload congestion on that 50/10 line even briefly.
on the RCForb side there's a setting for audio compression mode, if youre on opus try bumping the frame size down to 10ms and see if that tightens things up. i was running similar latency on my remote 7610 setup and getting it under 200ms made SSB actually workable though i wont pretend it ever feels totally natural.
the Allstar idea is... interesting but yeah the latency stacking is real. ive seen guys do it but you basically end up with a node that has this weird lag that confuses everyone on the repeater. not impossible just annoying to manage.

yeah JT65B really did change the game, youre right about that. back in the analog days you basically needed a massive array to work anyone, now guys are making contacts with 4 yagis and a kilowatt which would have seemed impossible in the CW-only era. ive even heard of contacts made with 2 yagis on both ends but thats pretty marginal and you need really good conditions and patient operators on both sides.
for a starter setup id honestly say 4 long yagis is the practical minimum if you want to work more than just the big guns. your M2 5-wavelength yagis are decent antennas but two of them isnt going to cut it unless youre just trying to work stations running 4x20 element arrays or something. the stacking and phasing harness is its own rabbit hole, you want to keep the feed line losses as low as possible obviously, a lot of guys use hardline even on the short runs between array and shack.
for the preamp, honestly just get a good PHEMT unit, the SSB Electronic stuff has been reliable for years, SP-2000 or similar. noise figure around 0.3-0.4 dB is what you're shooting for and mount it right at the antenna, like right there at the feedpoint junction, every foot of coax before the preamp costs you. the sequencing relay setup to protect the preamp during transmit is something a lot of new guys forget about and thats how you let the magic smoke out on your first attempt.

the noise floor thing on 40 is real but i dont think its the radio. when i first set mine up i was convinced there was something wrong with the preamp or the AGC settings or whatever and spent like two weeks messing with the RF gain and the NR and NB settings. turned out my neighbor had put in one of those EV chargers in october and it just destroys 40 in the evenings when hes plugged in. nothing i could do about it, i just work 40 earlier in the afternoon now.
your OCF setup sounds reasonable though, 35 feet is fine. id check whether the noise tracks with time of day or day of week before blaming the rig. the 7300 rx is genuinely good, not quite at the level of some of the higher end stuff but more than capable for most ops.

yeah the full list is overwhelming, dont even worry about memorizing all of it. in day to day operating you really only bump into maybe a dozen or so regularly. QSL means confirmed or acknowledged, QRZ is who is calling me, QTH is location, QRM is interference from other stations, QSB is fading signal, QRN is static/natural noise, QSY means change frequency, QRP is low power, and QRO is high power. thats honestly most of what youll hear on a typical HF contact.
73 just means best regards, been that way since the telegraph days. 88 is hugs and kisses, mostly used between close friends on the air. some guys also say things like FB which stands for fine business meaning like great or well done, and OM which is old man — just a friendly term for any male ham regardless of age. it sounds weird at first but you get used to it fast. just listen for a few weeks and itll all click naturally, i promise you wont need to drill flashcards or anything like that

im in basically the same boat as you, started chasing DXCC last year around 80 confirmed now on LoTW. one thing that helped me was just going through my old paper log and uploading everything to LoTW even for entities where i wasnt sure the other station would be on there — you'd be surprised how many old contacts match up. got like 8 or 9 extra confirmations just from doing that.
the card checking thing is what the previous reply said, find a checker at a hamfest. i did mine at dayton last year took maybe 20 minutes and the guy was super helpful walked me through the whole application form.