CQ Op

the single yagi EME thing is real but you gotta be honest with yourself about what you're getting into. with 4 yagis and legal limit on 2m you can work stations that have big arrays on the other end, but you're not going to be working other small pistols very often. the JT65 mode changed everything though, back in the analog days you basically needed a massive antenna farm and i remember guys spending stupid money just to get a handful of contacts a year
the preamp thing is absolutely not marginal, it's probably the single most important thing you can do after antenna gain. system noise figure on EME basically needs to be under 1dB to be competitive, ideally like 0.5-0.7dB range. that masthead preamp youre running is probably garbage for this, you want something like a low noise amplifier specifically designed for 2m EME, SSB Electronic or DB6NT stuff is what most people run. the feedline loss between the antenna and the preamp matters enormously, even like 0.5dB of coax before the LNA wrecks your noise figure. mount it right at the feed or as close as you physically can
start with 2m, get 4 yagis crossed polarized if you can, and just get on during the big EME contests and see what you can hear. WSJT-X and JT65B is the mode, moonbounce.info has the skeds. you'll be surprised what you can do once the system is optimized

okay so ive been licensed about 8 months now and i keep hearing people talk about chasing DX and getting awards and i finally started looking into it properly this week. DXCC, WAS, WAZ — theres so many of them and i honestly dont fully understand how they work or which one makes sense to go after first as a general class op with a pretty basic station (IC-7300, end-fed halfwave in the backyard).
from what i can tell DXCC is like the big one where you need contacts with 100 different countries or entities or whatever they call them, and WAS is all 50 states which honestly sounds more doable for me right now. WAZ i looked up and its the 40 CQ zones which seems like it could overlap with the other two a lot. do the contacts count for multiple awards or do you have to make separate QSOs for each program? and is Logbook of the World the only way to submit these days or can you still mail QSL cards?
sorry if this is a really basic question, i just dont want to start logging contacts randomly without understanding what actually counts toward what

oh man i remember feeling exactly like this. honestly just go for it — net control has heard every possible variation of a check-in and they genuinely want new people to participate, thats kind of the whole point. when they ask for check-ins you just key up and say your callsign phonetically, so like kilo alpha one whatever. some nets want your name and location too but you'll hear other people do it first so just follow along. if you mess up the phrasing nobody cares, net control will just come back to you and confirm. the first time is the hardest and after that its just automatic.
as for the special event station thing — during the net someone might announce a contact opportunity or the station might actually be active on a nearby frequency. you'd just make a normal contact and log it like anything else. some of them give out certificates or QSL cards which is kinda fun. dont overthink it, just jump in tuesday

the room acoustics thing is real and most people completely ignore it. hardwood floors and bare walls will absolutely kill your audio — youre basically broadcasting in a bathroom. even throwing a rug down or having some bookshelves with stuff on them makes a noticeable difference. the PR-40 is a good mic but its a large diaphragm condenser and it picks up everything, so a reflective room is gonna be very obvious with that mic.
on the 7300 specifically, dig into the menu and look at the TX tone settings. theres a parametric EQ in there and the defaults are honestly fine for some people but not for everyone depending on your voice. i ended up boosting around 2-3kHz slightly and rolling off some of the low end because my voice is naturally pretty bassy and it was getting muddy. also make sure your TX bandwidth isnt set too narrow — some people accidentally have it set to like 1.8kHz or something which just sounds awful. i run mine at 2.4kHz for general ragchewing and bump it up to 2.8 when the band is quiet and i want it to sound nicer.
the ALC barely moving thing is right, dont chase high ALC. and yeah leave the speech processor off until you actually understand what its doing to your signal, its easy to overdo it and sound crunchy.

I went through the exact same thing with my Tacoma a couple years back. ended up getting a mount that clamps onto the trailer hitch receiver and running a NMO mount off of that with a dual band antenna. its not quite as clean as a roof mount for pattern but honestly for hitting local repeaters it makes zero difference and i dont have to worry about paint or drilling anything. the cable routing is a little awkward through the bed but once i figured it out its been solid for two years now with zero issues. worth looking into if you have a receiver hitch already.

so i've been putting this off for like 6 months but i finally got my FT-7900R mounted in the cab of my F-150. ran the power cable directly to the battery with an inline fuse, antenna is a NMO mag mount for now sitting on the roof. overall pretty happy with how it came out but im getting a little bit of ignition noise on receive, like a whine that changes with RPM. i've seen people mention ferrite chokes and bonding straps but im not sure where to start with that. do i put the choke on the antenna feedline, the power leads, or both? also the mag mount is probably not a permanent solution so i'm looking at maybe drilling for a proper NMO mount eventually but my wife would kill me if i scratch the truck doing it, lol anyway. mostly just curious what other folks have done for noise on newer vehicles, seems like modern trucks are a nightmare for this stuff.

yeah that tuesday opening was real, i caught the tail end of it around 1800 UTC and still managed to log a couple italians and what i think was a greek station though the QSB was pretty brutal. i run an older TS-590 and honestly it held up fine, didnt feel like i needed anything fancier. the IC-7760 looks nice on paper but i keep reminding myself that the antenna matters way more than the radio at the end of the day. im running a pretty modest dipole and i was still getting through.
solar cycle 25 is really delivering now, feels weird after years of being bummed out about 10m being basically a parking lot. my old elmers used to tell me stories about working 100 countries on 10m with a wire antenna and i always kind of rolled my eyes but i get it now