so ive had this thing for about three weeks now and figured id share some impressions since i spent forever reading threads like this before buying. came from an old TS-590SG which honestly i still miss a little, the 590 just had this feel to it that was hard to explain, really solid rx on crowded bands.

anyway the 7300 is impressive in ways i didnt fully expect. the waterfall is obviously the big thing everyone talks about and yeah it changes how you operate, i find myself just watching it and spotting stuff i wouldve totally scrolled past on the 590. but the thing nobody really warned me about is how addictive the touch screen gets and then how annoying it is when your fingers are cold or you're wearing gloves out in the field.

one thing thats been bugging me a bit is the noise floor seems a touch higher than the 590 on 40m in the evenings, could be my setup, i ran a new piece of coax last weekend thinking maybe the old RG-8X had a bad connector somewhere but didnt really change much. running an 80m OCF dipole about 35 feet up, feed point kind of off center toward the garage.

not really a complaint just an observation. overall im happy with it. anyone else notice 40m being a bit noisy with this rig specifically or am i chasing a ghost here

the noise floor thing on 40 is real but i dont think its the radio. when i first set mine up i was convinced there was something wrong with the preamp or the AGC settings or whatever and spent like two weeks messing with the RF gain and the NR and NB settings. turned out my neighbor had put in one of those EV chargers in october and it just destroys 40 in the evenings when hes plugged in. nothing i could do about it, i just work 40 earlier in the afternoon now.

your OCF setup sounds reasonable though, 35 feet is fine. id check whether the noise tracks with time of day or day of week before blaming the rig. the 7300 rx is genuinely good, not quite at the level of some of the higher end stuff but more than capable for most ops.

yeah i made the same jump from a 590 and had similar feelings honestly. you kind of grieve the old rig a little which sounds dumb but its true. the 7300 waterfall spoils you fast though, after a month on it i borrowed a friends older rig for a field day type thing and felt totally blind without it.

cant say much about your 40m noise specifically, my QTH is pretty rural so i dont fight a lot of that. but the touch screen gloves thing is a real issue, i actually velcro'd a cheap stylus to the side of the rig for winter portable ops, works okay