so i've been running an old TS-430S for probably longer than i should have, great radio honestly but the age was starting to show and i was tired of fighting with the IF filters and just the general lack of a decent panadapter situation. anyway finally broke down and got an IC-7300 and i've had it on the bench for about three weeks now.

first impressions — the waterfall display is just ridiculously useful, i know everyone says this but until you've actually used one for real you don't really get it. tuning around 40m in the evening and being able to just see the whole band laid out like that, spot a signal, click on it, that workflow change alone probably made it worth it for me. the built in ATU handles my end-fed pretty well though i do have a separate LDG out there too for when things get weird.

one thing that kind of bugs me is the menu system takes some getting used to. not terrible but not intuitive either, i've been keeping the manual open on the tablet next to the rig which i havent had to do since i was a tech studying for general. receiver seems excellent, did some comparisons against my buddys IC-7610 on a shared antenna and yeah the 7610 is better but not by a huge margin for the price difference. overall really happy with it, just curious if anyone else made a similar jump from an older conventional rig and what the adjustment was like

yeah the menu thing on the 7300 is real, spent like two evenings just going through every submenu trying to figure out where icom hid the NR settings. once you've mapped it out mentally it's fine but that first week is a little rough. the waterfall though — same experience here, completely changes how you approach a band, especially on 17 and 12 where activity can be kind of sparse and you'd otherwise just be spinning the dial hoping.

i came from a Kenwood TS-590SG which is also a really solid radio and honestly the receiver on the 590 holds up surprisingly well against the 7300, some guys swear the 590 still edges it out in certain conditions but for general use i think the 7300 wins just because of the SDR front end and the display. the analog meters on older rigs are kind of satisfying in a way you lose with the touchscreen stuff but i dont miss them enough to go back. how's your audio sounding on transmit? mine needed a bit of tweaking with the mic gain and compression before it sounded decent on SSB.

i run a 7300 and a older Yaesu FT-857D and the difference is night and day tbh, not really a fair comparision since theyre different classes of radio but the SDR waterfall spoils you fast. one thing with the end fed — are you using the internal tuner a lot or mostly the LDG? i ask because ive heard a few guys say the internal tuner on the 7300 is a bit finnicky with higher SWR loads and they had better luck bypassing it and using an external. havent had that issue personally but my antenna situation is pretty well matched already so maybe i just never pushed it