so after about two years of running an old TS-480SAT that i got off a silent key estate sale, i finally picked up an IC-7300 last month. been meaning to post about this for a while but life gets in the way. anyway the short version is i love it but there were a couple things that kind of caught me off guard coming from older gear.

the waterfall is obviously the thing everyone talks about and yeah its genuinely useful for finding activity, not just a gimmick like i kind of assumed before i had one. but the thing that actually surprised me more was how much i had to mess with the ALC settings before it stopped looking ugly on my neighbors SDR monitor. i was running a little hot without realizing it for like the first week. nobody told me, which, whatever, i eventually figured it out by checking my own signal with a websdr.

also the built in ATU is fine but its not going to save a really bad antenna situation. i have a pretty compromised attic dipole for 40m and it does what it can but dont expect miracles. the radio itself though, receive is noticeably better than the 480 was especially on 17m for some reason, thats been my favorite band to just sit and listen lately.

anyone else come from older icom or kenwood stuff and have thoughts on the learning curve? feels like theres menus inside of menus inside of menus sometimes.

yeah the menu depth on that thing is real. i think icom assumes you'll just download the CS-7300 software and do all your config from a laptop, which honestly once i started doing that it made a lot more sense. trying to navigate everything from the front panel is kind of a pain for the deeper settings.

the ALC thing you mentioned is super common, i see it come up constantly. the mic gain default is set pretty aggressively from the factory i think, or at least it interacts badly with certain mics. i run mine with an SM-30 desk mic and had to pull the input gain way back from where it shipped. worth spending an hour just transmitting into a dummy load and watching the ALC meter while you adjust things.

on the ATU — totally agree. its fine for trimming up something that's already reasonably close, but if youre more than like 3:1 out it starts getting unhappy. for the attic dipole situation have you considered just cutting it to resonance for 40 and forgetting the tuner on that band entirely? sometimes simpler is better.

i made almost the exact same move last year, TS-570 into a 7300, and the waterfall thing genuinely changed how i operate. like i didnt know how much activity was sitting just off to the side of where i was tuned until i could actually see it. found a whole pileup on 20 last week just by noticing a cluster of signals about 8 kHz up from where i was parked.

the menus do get easier after a while, its mostly just repetition. the ones i use all the time i kind of have memorized now without thinking about it. the ones i dont use often i still have to go hunting for but thats fine.