so ive had this thing for maybe three weeks now and figured id write up some impressions since i spent a lot of time reading threads like this before i bought it. came from an old TS-430S that i inherited from a silent key uncle so this is kind of a big jump for me in terms of how modern rigs work.

first thing that hit me was just how good the waterfall is for actually finding signals. i know everyone says this but seriously it changes how you operate. i spent the first two nights just watching the 40m band breathe, which sounds dumb but i never really visualized propagation like that before. found a couple stations calling CQ that i never wouldve tuned across manually.

the touch screen is fine, not amazing. sometimes i have to tap something twice especially if my hands are a little cold in the shack which gets drafty in the fall. not a dealbreaker. the twin PBT on SSB is really nice once you figure out the interaction between the two controls — took me an embarrassingly long time to understand what i was actually adjusting.

one thing that bugged me out of the box was the default noise reduction settings felt a bit aggressive and made voice sound kind of robotic. turned NR down to like 3-4 and that helped a lot. also hadnt touched the RF gain in years since my old rig kind of did its own thing, but on this one i actually need to ride it sometimes on crowded band conditions.

anyway not a review just some thoughts. happy to answer stuff if anyone else is on the fence about picking one up.

the NR thing is super common, pretty much everyone who gets a 7300 cranks the NR down within the first week. icom ships it a bit hot from factory i think. also if you havent dug into the AGC settings yet thats worth an evening — the fast/mid/slow options make a bigger difference than you'd expect on SSB pile-ups. the mid setting is where i landed for most HF work.

the RF gain thing took me a while too coming from older gear where you just kind of set it and forget it. once you get used to actually using it as a real control it becomes second nature. welcome to the dark side, the 7300 is genuinely a great rig for the price point.

been using mine for about two years and still find stuff in the menus i didnt know was there. the scope amplitude and reference settings are worth tweaking if you havent — out of the box the waterfall can wash out weak signals depending on your antenna situation. i run a pretty modest dipole and had to adjust the reference level down maybe 10dB from default to make weak DX actually visible on the panadapter instead of just noise floor.