so this has been bugging me for about two weeks now and i finally decided to post about it because i cant figure it out on my own. my 7300 started acting weird where if i tune to say 14.200 the signal im hearing is clearly not what everyone else is hearing — like i'll be in a net and people are talking and i can tell im slightly off even though the display says the right frequency. transmit seems okay, people copy me fine, but receive is just... slightly off. maybe 1-2 kHz? hard to tell exactly.

ive already done the TCXO thing (i have the optional unit installed) and i calibrated it a while back so i dont think thats the issue. also tried a factory reset which didnt help. the radio is maybe 3 years old and i run it pretty hard, like 8-10 hours a day sometimes for work from home background listening. anyone seen this before? wondering if its something in the IF chain or maybe a filter issue. really dont want to send it to icom if i can avoid it because the turnaround from the service center near me has been brutal lately.

first thing id check is whether its actually a frequency error or if your reference oscillator drifted again. even with the TCXO they can wander a bit especially with that kind of duty cycle — heat is not friendly to those things. try leaving the radio off for a few hours then power it up cold and see if the offset is the same, more, or less. if it changes with temperature then youre probably looking at the oscillator.

there's a calibration procedure in the service manual (not the user manual, the actual service manual which you can find if you look around) where you can trim the reference against a known good signal like WWV on 10 or 15 MHz. some guys use GPS disciplined references but WWV works well enough for a sanity check. if after that the thing is still off then yeah something else is going on and it might be worth pulling the covers and checking for anything obvious — cold solder joint, maybe something on the RF board near the IF filter section. though honestly on a 7300 thats pretty involved, the board layout is not super friendly for probing around.

had something similar on mine a while back, turned out to be nothing that dramatic — somehow the RIT had gotten bumped and i hadnt noticed. i know that sounds dumb but check it. the RIT knob on that radio is easy to accidentally clip when youre reaching for something nearby. i spent like four days convinced something was wrong with the radio before my wife pointed out the little indicator on the screen.