so ive had the 7300 for about three weeks now and figured id write up some thoughts since i spent forever reading threads like this before buying. background: i was running an old FT-450D for like 6 years and it did the job but the panadapter situation was always annoying with the external stuff i had bolted on.

first thing — the waterfall on the 7300 is just stupid good for the price point. i know everyone says this but until you actually sit there at 0200 watching signals pop up on 40m you dont really appreciate it. tuning is so much faster now, i can actually see what bands are doing without just spinning the dial hoping.

the built in ATU is decent, handles my end-fed reasonably well on most bands though it does struggle a bit on 160 which i knew going in. audio quality on receive is noticeably better than the 450D too, less listening fatigue on long sessions.

one thing that caught me off guard is how much i ended up digging into the menus. theres a lot in there and the defaults arent always what you want. spent a whole evening just on the AGC settings and filter configs. not complaining really, just wasnt expecting that kind of depth.

anybody else running one of these as their main HF rig? curious what your go-to filter settings are for SSB, im still not totally happy with where i landed

congrats on the upgrade, the 7300 is a solid radio. i ran mine for about two years before moving to the 7610 and honestly the jump wasnt as big as i expected for everyday use, the 7300 really is that good at its price.

for SSB filters i usually run the passband around 2400hz and have the twin PBT set slightly to roll off the low end a bit, helps cut some of the rumble on crowded band conditions. the manual is actually worth reading for the RF gain vs squelch interaction stuff, took me a while to figure out i was fighting myself on that. if youre doing any contesting the CW filters are worth messing with separately but for normal SSB ragchewing i found moderate settings worked best and stopped tweaking after a while. the urge to constantly adjust stuff does fade eventually haha

yeah the menu depth got me too when i first got mine. i think i had it for like two weeks before i felt like i actually knew what i was doing. the scope is the thing that changed how i operate more than anything else tbh, same experience as you with watching 40m at night. its almost too easy to find activity now compared to how i used to do it