@chpalmer
Hi everyone, thanks so much for all the thinking and suggestions. I am not sure why, but reading this triggered my brain to say "I have contol of both networks, why not just setup a VPN and see what happens?"
One IPsec VPN tunnel later and all is well in VOIP land here. I don't know what the problem was, but the issue is resolved. It has only been an hour, but so far working reliably.
To answer questions: the Netgate WAN IPv4 address starts: 98.97..
I am prety sure it is publically routable. No trouble setting up the VPN or other inbound connections, though other than this all inbound is just testing/incidental. I may switch the tunnel to not rely on the IP if it changes a lot. Time will tell.
I did not want to put the device outside the Netgate; I could be wrong but I think to do that I would have to take Starlink out of Bypass and end up with a NAT address on the WAN of the pfSense. And I did not see much good in the Starlink router. I am not a huge fan in general for speed, cost or reliability reasons. but any sort of cable/fiber connection due to location is over 100K installation. So . . .
Again, thanks for the help. I still feel like it should have "just worked" out of the box, but alls well that ends well.
Bob