so ive had the 7300 for about three weeks now and figured id share some impressions since i spent like two months reading threads before buying and some of them were pretty outdated

coming from an old TS-570 which honestly served me well for years but the 7300 is just... a different world. the panadapter alone is worth it if youre doing any kind of band hunting or just trying to figure out whats going on across a chunk of spectrum. i caught a VP8 that i wouldve completely missed on the 570 just because i saw the signal pop up on the scope while i was doing something else

the touch screen took some getting used to and i still accidentally tap the wrong thing sometimes but the receiver quality is genuinely impressive, way better than i expected in the $1000 price range. i did notice some IMD issues when i was near the broadcast band, had a couple big AM stations about 15 miles away and there was some bleed through on 40m but i played with the preamp settings and the RF gain and got it mostly under control

only real gripe so far is the menu system feels a little buried for some things. like why is it so many taps to get to the NR settings. anyway still learning it but overall pretty happy with the purchase, wondering if anyone else made a similar jump from older Kenwood iron and what they noticed

yeah the menu depth is the one thing that bugs me too, been using mine for almost a year and i still hit the wrong submenu sometimes. you get used to it but they couldve designed that part better

the IMD thing you mentioned — try turning the preamp completely off if youre dealing with strong locals, a lot of guys dont realize the default preamp setting can actually hurt you in a busy RF environment. also the attenuator in 6dB steps is your friend on 40 at night when everything is loud. once i started treating the RF gain and preamp as a combo rather than just one or the other it cleaned up a lot

the jump from older Kenwood stuff is significant, the DSP on the 7300 just handles a pileup differently, hard to explain but you can kind of pick signals out of the mud more intuitively with the passband controls. my old 850 was a great radio but there's no going back honestly

nice, ive been eyeing that radio for a while. does the built in tuner handle a decent mismatch or is it pretty limited? my current setup has a random wire out back and im wondering if id need an external LDG or something on top of it