so ive been a tech for about 3 years doing mostly 2m/70cm stuff and i finally upgraded to General last month and just bought a used IC-7300 off a guy local to me. thing is in great shape, came with the stock mic and power supply. got it on the bench last night and was able to hear a ton of signals which was honestly kind of surreal after only ever doing VHF.

my question is mostly about the panadapter display and how people are actually using it in practice. like i get what it does conceptually but when im sitting there tuning around do most people just watch it and click on signals or do you tune the old fashioned way and ignore it most of the time. also the noise floor on 40m seems pretty high at my QTH, im in a suburban area, and im wondering if thats just normal or if there's something i should be checking on the radio first before i blame the neighborhood RFI. antenna is just a random wire out the window for now, nothing fancy.

anyway excited to finally be on HF, been a long time coming

congrats on the 7300, genuinely one of the best bang for buck rigs out there right now and you'll probably still be using it 10 years from now. on the panadapter question — honestly i mostly use it to spot activity and get a quick feel for band conditions, then i still tune by hand to actually find what i want. clicking on signals in the waterfall works fine but i find you can miss stuff between clicks if you're not paying attention to the audio. once you get used to the span and reference level settings it becomes second nature.

the 40m noise thing in a suburb is almost definitely your environment and not the radio. the 7300 has a pretty solid noise floor on its own. try turning everything off in the house and see if it drops — switching power supplies, LED lighting, all that stuff murders 40m especially. a better antenna will also help a lot more than most people expect, even something like a simple dipole outside would be a big improvement over a random wire indoors.

yeah 40m at night in the suburbs is just rough, nothing you did wrong. i live in a pretty dense area and my S-meter is basically pegged until like 2am sometimes. i use the bandscope mostly for contests when i need to find a run frequency fast, otherwise i kind of forget its there honestly