so ive been running my 7300 for about two years now and the stability on weak signal stuff was always bugging me a little, not terrible but you could see it wandering a bit on FT8 especially when the shack gets warm in the summer. finally pulled the trigger on the TCXO-2 upgrade last weekend and honestly the difference is more noticeable than i expected. dial stability is just rock solid now, like even after the rig warms up fully i'm not chasing drift anymore.

whole install took maybe 45 minutes, the hardest part was just not stripping the tiny screws getting the top cover off. if you've done any light soldering and aren't scared of cracking open a rig it's totally doable. icom's instructions are actually pretty clear on this one. just be careful with the ribbon cable near the front panel, mine was a little stiffer than i expected and i got a bit nervous bending it back.

anyway wondering if anyone else has done this and if you noticed any other improvements, someone told me it helps with the phase noise on receive too but i havent done any real A/B testing on that. also has anyone done the port expansion mod on these? ive been reading about unlocking the CI-V stuff more but cant find a clear write-up that isn't three years old.

yeah i did the same mod on mine about six months ago, same reason honestly, the summer drift was getting annoying on JS8Call. totally agree on the ribbon cable, that thing made me sweat a little. the phase noise thing i cant really confirm either way, i dont have anything sensitive enough to really measure it properly but i feel like band noise on 40 late at night seems a bit cleaner? could be placebo, who knows.

the CI-V expansion stuff, are you talking about the thing where you can get the transceiver to report band data to an external amp controller? because i did mess around with that and it works fine through the standard CI-V port with the right baud rate settings, i dont think you actually need any hardware mod for that part. what exactly are you trying to do with it, might be able to point you in the right direction depending on what youre trying to connect.

TCXO is one of those mods where people either swear by it or say they cant tell the difference, i think it really depends how drafty or temperature-variable your shack is. mine stays pretty climate controlled year round so i never bothered but i could see it mattering a lot in a garage setup or something like that. good to hear the install wasnt a nightmare, icom docs for the 7300 are generally decent from what ive seen.