Jessica Miller

yeah the MARS mod on those is dead simple, Yaesu basically made it trivial on purpose i think. glad it went well.
on the ATU question -- ive seen a few people mount an LDG YT-100 basically velcro'd to the bottom of the 857 and use the CAT cable to get semi-auto tuning, its not truly internal but in the field it acts like one unit. not elegant but functional. the real internal solution would be swapping to an 897D which had the tuner option but obviously thats a whole different radio. there was a guy on one of the yahoo groups years ago who actually stuffed a miniature tuner board inside the 857 chassis but i never saw a complete writeup and i suspect it was more trouble than it was worth thermally.
the fan mod is worth it just for sanity reasons alone, agree with you there. mine would kick on and scare me every time during a quiet net.

Koch method is honestly the way to go, stick with it even when it feels like nothing is clicking. the whole idea is you start with just 2 characters but you hear them at full speed right away, like 20wpm, instead of slow beeps that sound nothing like what youll actually hear on the air. your brain learns the sound not the pattern. LCWO is fine for Koch, just set it up properly and give it more than 20 minutes lol — it took me probably 3 weeks before i stopped feeling completely lost
the other thing nobody tells you is that daily practice matters way more than doing a long session once a week. even 10-15 minutes every single day will get you further than an hour on the weekend. i used the Morse Trainer app when i was commuting and that helped a lot just for keeping the characters fresh. for actually copying callsigns and stuff, honestly just start tuning around 40m around the QRP calling frequencies and listen even if you cant copy it yet, your ear starts to adjust after a while

the stock mic on the 7300 is honestly not great, that's your first problem. the HM-219 or whatever they ship with it is pretty mediocre for SSB voice work. but before you go buying anything, try adjusting your TX bandwidth first — a lot of guys leave it at the narrowest setting because they read it helps with interference but it just makes you sound muffled. i run mine at something like 100-2900 Hz and it made a noticeable difference.
also mic positioning matters way more than people think. dont talk directly into it, talk slightly across it or position it off to the side of your mouth a few inches. reduces plosives and thinens out that boxy sound. as for compression, i actually do run a tiny bit of the COMP on the 7300, maybe 5-8 dB, it helps with readability especially on a noisy band without making you sound over-processed. the key is watching the ALC — you want it barely moving, not pegged. if your ALC is slamming on every word youre overdriving somewhere upstream of it.

the offset thing tripped me up too when i first started, felt dumb when i finally understood it lol. one thing i'll add — some repeaters around here are linked into bigger systems like IRLP or AllStar so occasionally when you key up you might be talking to people in completely different states or even other countries without realizing it. not a big deal just something cool to know. i heard a guy in florida answer a local check-in once and everybody was confused for a second

yeah it absolutely gets easier but that feeling never fully goes away and honestly i think thats a good thing. keeps you sharp. my first one was a search and rescue assist back maybe 12 years ago now and i showed up with my go bag and realized i had packed three different coax adapters but forgot a notepad. a literal notepad. had to borrow paper from a firefighter which was a little embarrassing.
the frequency thing you mentioned is a real common one, i've seen experienced operators get caught out by that too especially when the IC decides to go off script. what a lot of our group does now is laminate a small card with the primary and all backup freqs including the national simplex calling freq and just zip tie it to the HT or go bag strap. low tech but it works. also if your group doesnt already do ICS-205 forms for every exercise make sure they do, because having that sheet in front of you during a real event is genuinely useful and not just paperwork busywork.
sounds like you did fine though, the fact that you were paying attention to what went wrong means youll be better next time.

CQ WW is honestly a great one to jump into even as a newcomer, the bands are absolutely packed that weekend and you'll have no trouble finding stations to work. the scoring can look confusing at first but basically each contact gives you points and the DXCC zones count as multipliers so working new zones is where the big score jumps come from. dont stress about optimizing your score the first time, just run search and pounce, meaning tune around and call stations rather than trying to hold a frequency and run people, way less pressure that way.
your 7300 and G5RV combo is totally fine for a first contest effort. 10 and 15 meters tend to be the money bands during CQ WW when propagation cooperates. just make sure you have N1MM or some logging software set up before the weekend because logging on paper gets old fast and the software handles the dupe checking and multiplier tracking automatically.
SOTA is its own separate thing by the way, totally different program, its about activating summits and the contacts you make count toward the SOTA database not toward CQ WW. though some people do SOTA activations during contests just for fun and count the contacts in both systems if the rules allow it

gradual degradation over weeks on the receive audio side, not transmit... that actually points pretty strongly toward a cap issue in the AF chain or possibly the IF filter stage starting to go. the 7300 uses DSP pretty heavily so it could also be firmware related but you'd expect that to be more sudden usually.
before you crack it open i'd try a full factory reset if you havent already, like the proper one from the menu not just resetting individual settings. also check if the noise reduction or NR setting is somehow getting applied, ive seen people accidentally leave NR on a weird setting and it does exactly what you're describing on voice. go to the receive settings and just make sure NR is completely off and the passband is set wide. if none of that fixes it then yeah you're probably looking at the hardware side and honestly the IF filtering caps on these rigs do degrade, seen it a few times on older icom gear.

oh man i had the exact same experience with the logging, first time i did one i was just scrawling callsigns on the back of a receipt i found in my car lol. i use HAMRS now on my tablet, it has a WWFF mode built in and you can set the reference at the start and it just tracks everything. exports fine and the upload process isnt too bad once youve done it once. the wwff website does look a bit old school but it works.

so ive been a tech for about two years now and honestly i mostly just use my HT for local repeaters and the occasional APRS stuff but i keep hearing people talk about HF and working DX and it sounds pretty cool. problem is i looked at the General question pool and it seems like a LOT of material. like there's stuff about propagation and electrical principles and operating practices and i dont even know where to start.
i guess my main question is how long did it take you guys to actually feel ready for the exam and is there a particular study method that worked. i tried hamstudy.org for a bit and it seems good but im not sure if just doing flashcards is enough or if i should actually understand the theory behind everything. also is there stuff on the test that i should just memorize vs actually understand, because some of the electrical formulas look kind of rough and i never took physics in school

ok so ive been licensed for about 6 months now and im starting to think about qsl cards. seems like there's lotw, eqsl, and regular paper cards but im not really sure what the differences are or which one i should use. i see some guys talking about uploading logs to multiple systems but that sounds like alot of work. do i need to do all of them or can i just pick one? also saw something about bureau cards being cheaper but takes forever - is that worth it or should i just do direct mail
mainly interested in getting confirmations for awards like WAS eventually but dont want to spend a fortune on postage if i dont have to