so ive had the 7300 for about three weeks now, coming from an old TS-430S that i ran for like 12 years. figured id share some thoughts since i was hunting around for this kind of post before i bought it and couldnt find much that wasnt just a review copy or something.

first thing - the waterfall display is genuinely useful and not just a gimmick. i was skeptical because the 430 had nothing like that obviously and i figured id just ignore it but i find myself using it constantly to spot activity before i even touch the VFO. makes casual band scanning way more fun honestly.

the audio out of the box is pretty decent on SSB but i did end up going into the menu and tweaking the TX equalizer a bit after getting some reports that i sounded a little boxy. nothing dramatic, just bumped the mid presence up a touch and guys on 40m started giving me better audio reports. receive audio is really good through my external speaker, using an old Kenwood SP-23 i had sitting around.

one thing that caught me off guard is how much the RF gain actually matters on this radio compared to what i was used to. i was leaving it wide open and getting a lot of noise on 80m at night and someone on the local net pointed out i should back it off. obvious in retrospect but it took me a while to unlearn old habits.

anyway not a complaint thread, mostly just happy with it. if anyone has tips or settings they like id be curious, especially for 40 and 80m digital stuff since im starting to play with FT8 a bit.

congrats on the 7300, its a solid radio for the price. the RF gain thing trips up a lot of people coming from older rigs, i went through the same thing when i upgraded. for FT8 you'll want to look up the IC-7300 WSJT-X settings specifically because theres a CI-V address thing that can bite you if you dont set it right - took me an embarrassing amount of time to figure out why my radio kept dropping the connection.

also for 80m at night i run a pretty narrow filter, like 1.8kHz on SSB, helps knock down a lot of the adjacent channel garbage. the DSP on that radio is actually pretty capable once you dig into it a bit. enjoy it, its a fun rig to just sit and play with.

i have basically the same setup, 7300 into WSJT-X for FT8. one thing i'd add is watch your ALC on digital modes - if the ALC meter is moving at all during FT8 transmit you're probably overdriving it and your signal will be splattered all over the place. i run mine at like 30-40% power and make sure ALC is sitting dead still. took me a bit to nail down but my decode rates went up noticeably after i sorted that out.