so ive been running a KX3 for about 4 years now mostly doing portable ops and the occasional shack session with it on a little desk stand. loved it honestly but i kept feeling like i was leaving stuff on the table especially on 40m when the band gets crowded and everyone is running 100w and im sitting there at 10w trying to dig out of the noise.

anyway picked up a used IC-7300 off a guy from the local club, he'd barely put 50 hours on it, came with the original box and everything. got it home, hooked it up to my OCF dipole which has been sitting on the shelf since i built it last winter and hadnt really had a proper radio to drive it, and just... wow. the waterfall alone is worth it. i know everyone says that and its kind of a cliché at this point but coming from a rig with no display at all its genuinely a game changer for understanding what the band is actually doing.

RF gain adjustments feel more intuitive than i expected, and the DSP noise reduction is actually usable unlike some rigs ive tried where you turn it on and the audio sounds like youre underwater. 40m last night i was working stations id never have gotten through with the KX3 at least not from the home setup. im not bagging on QRP, still love it for field day and SOTA stuff, but for the shack i think i waited too long to make this jump.

anyone else run both and have thoughts? also curious if the 7300 plays nice with fldigi i want to get into some digital modes but havent set that up yet

fldigi works fine with it, just use the USB audio interface built into the radio, shows up as a sound card on the computer and you set your audio in/out to that device in fldigi's settings. the only thing that tripped me up was the CI-V address for CAT control, default should be 94 hex but double check it in the radio menu because if someone changed it before you got it the software wont connect and youll spend an hour wondering whats wrong like i did.

also wsjt-x works great with it if you ever want to get into FT8, that combo is probably the most common setup in the hobby right now honestly. congrats on the rig, the 7300 is hard to beat at that price point even new, used is a steal if its in good shape.

ran a 7300 for about two years before i upgraded to a 7610 and honestly the 7300 punches way above its weight. the only real limitation i hit was working split on busy DX pileups where having two VFOs on the same receiver starts to feel a bit cramped compared to a true dual-receive setup but for 95% of operating its completely irrelevant. your OCF dipole should do well with it, what balun are you running at the feedpoint? ive seen those get lossy if someone used a cheapo 1:1 where a 4:1 or 6:1 would have been more appropriate depending on the impedance at that end