10 Ways the ICOM 7300 Has Impacted Ham Radio — 5 Years Out

I'm 61 and have been a ham for 46 years. So I'd say that I definitely qualify as an 'old timer.' Particularly given the light that I have used - and still use - the likes of tube based receiver/transmitter separates. I grew up on that type of gear when I got into the hobby. Funny ... but I don't 'depend' upon a scope for one doggone thing with the exception of getting a general idea of how much activity is on the band. Some of you guys say that 'tuning around' is the only way to find folks, but it's pretty apparent that *nobody* will always find *everybody* on any band. And actually, I've gotten pretty doggone good at being able to see a very minor disturbance (almost imperceptible to my ear) in the waterfall on my rig in order to spot a QRP station that might not be still transmitting when the scope haters happen to sweep by that particular frequency, too. I love some of the arguments against scopes, though. They are very entertaining. Particularly the ones which try to imply that scopes take away one doggone thing from HF hamming. My wife just stopped in the shack because she heard me giggling while I was reading some of the comments here and it's too bad that she doesn't have an interest in hamming which would help make her understand.

I agree completely about the propagation charts; fundamentally useless ... and I would hope that would be apparent to nearly anyone who has looked at one and then gone to a band reputed to be 'dead' or in 'poor' condition. I've never seen one yet which told me about a decent 10 meter opening that popped up in the fall, for example. But I also don't see propagation charts being depending upon by anyone at all. At most, they are sort of a general guidepost as to what you might expect. CQ remains one of the most important aspects to HF operating - but I'm still struggling to make the mental jump as to how having my band scope prevents or even moderately hinders me from doing just that.

I have a K3 and an Icom with a scope. As a pretty competent high speed CW operator, I remember being borderline insulted that out of the box my gently used K3 was displaying the incoming/outgoing Morse characters during a QSO. Who would need such a thing? What has hamming come to? The first time I was distracted for 1/2 a second and then happened to look back at the rig's scrolling display and see 4 or 5 characters I'd missed hearing with my ears, I realized that for all of it's 'laziness' factor, I'd actually found a use - albeit a brief one - for a feature I previously found useless. I never thought I'd have a rig with a panadapter, band scope or a waterfall, either. Having one and allowing myself to be open minded about it has revealed ways I could get more enjoyment out of HF than ever before.

- Matt, AA4MB

 

I've only been a ham for 8 years or so. I have three HF rigs, a Yaesu FT 101, Yaesu 450D and the 7300. Sure, it's fun to run the 101, letting it warm up to stabilize itself, zerobeating it to make sure it's on frequency, until it drifts, and then spinning the dial around while hoping my carpenters hearing (all of those saws and other tools wiped out the high end of my hearing) will pick out the weak signals. Reminds me of being a kid in the '60's and playing around with the shortwaves I had.

Getting the 450 was a massive improvement. Push a button and fire it up, ready to use. It is stable and reliable, except for the junky VFO I had to replace a couple months in. At least it was an easy fix. I still use the 450 as a portable rig and it does fine.

The 7300 is incredible! In particular, the filters. When running the 450 I am constantly frustrated by the lack of those filters and reminded of the way the 7300 can pick weak stations out of the noise. Weak stations that I can SEE on the screen but more often than not can't hear when I'm just spinning the dial. Say what you want about the screen but I'd rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it.

I understand the love of and joy of using old radios. What I don't understand is the subset of hams that seem to be somehow morally offended by technological progress. They're generally the same guys pissing and moaning about non-code hams. This is supposed to be a hobby that pushes boundaries, not one that wallows in the past. If you're a big fan of the old Collins radios then I say use them to your heart's content. Hell, I still fire up the old 101 just for the sport of it. And the tubes keep me warm in the winter shack! But, in my humble opinion, we should welcome any and all improvements in radio technology with open arms, test it and see what works. It keeps the interest up and constantly challenges us to improve our skills.

Left up to some, we'd all still be sitting in our shacks with our spark gap equipment, tapping out the code with our stubby index fingers and cursing the day the transistor was invented.

 

a scope would be nice to have, sometimes one glance can save previous minutes wasted otherwise on thorough manual search for a dx signal. I often came too late to scoop a dx at the end of their time there or the propagation died on me. on the other hand, the touchscreen annoys me...

 

Nice rig at an affordable price. I own one but primarily use it as a mobile/camp rig. I could care less about the scope. To me this is just eye candy to sell radios. Since I am primarily a Dxer I use the spotting network to tell me what bands may be open and propagation. Seems some cant live without the eye candy . I can . The 7300 has a great receiver and its easy to setup and use. For real DX pileups I like my FTDX5k better but again for an entry level rig the 7300 is perfect.
de N8DC DXCC Honor Roll mixed and DXCC most everywhere else.

 

I use an older radio Kenwood 930 and 450 . I look at an SDR to see the band scope to see what is going on the band. Just saying...

 

Wild! How does/did that work? What were you looking for?

 

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I too have an FTdx-3000 and I am thinking about the IC-7300 instead. The band scope of the FT is indeed a joke, S5 signals go unnnoticed in an S3-4 noisy environment and it's too slow.

Having the band scope on screen also slows down the other indicators like the filter graphics, the S-meter and the VFO-B frequency/RIT indication.

The good thing about a faster and more detailed bandscope is that your eyes can spot a signal earlier. Playing with the reference level also helps (impossible on the FTdx-3000).

As for the knobs and buttons: Sure the FTdx-3000 has more knobs but which ones do you use frequently? The notch and passband mostly. These are present on the IC-7300 too. Switching modes (also used often) is a pain on the FTdx-3000 with just one button to cycle through all the modes. With two touches on the screen on the 7300 you can select the desired mode quickly.

The screen/soft button functions on the 3000 are also a nuisance, requiring to "wander" around using the cursor keys to choose the right "button" and then pressing "select". Touch screen on the 7300 wins again.

So would I miss the "better" receiver of the 3000? Is it really better? I don't know.

As long as the noise levels around my house are at least S2-3, well beyond the noise floor of both rigs, I don't think it would make any difference.

The only thing that frightens me a bit is the overflow indicator on the 7300. On my 9700 it lights up when I have the preamp on and a local repeater 500 m away transmits.

 

Amen!

 

Agreed wholeheartedly, except for one thing: hooking up my IC-9700 to the internet with it Ethernet interface is a bridge too far. We're all about wireless, right?

 

Well, I do have an Openspot and a couple of D-Star radios. I still prefer straight radio but when the bands are bad, well, I plead guilty to going over to the dark side.

 

It was super cool when VHF TV traveled you would see channels coming in from the mid-west, I am in PA. My area never had any VHF so there was nothing there unless the band traveled. All I had was the rabbit ears that came with the TV. Really miss those 6 meter days, it has been fun to catch a few opening on 6 with the 7300. All I have as an antenna for 6 is my 80/40 trap dipole which loads just fine with the internal tuner on the 7300. If 10 and 6 starts to open more I may put up a dedicated antenna for those bands.

 

Well. I didn't get the 3000 with the intention of using the band scope on it. I use the IF out to a computer, so my band scope is 4x and 24 inches across.

I hardly ever use notch and pass band. I use mostly the buttons on the right half of the machine. Press 5, and you've got 20 meters phone. Press it again, and it's 20m for ft8, again for rtty. It's way faster for me that way. (You never touch the mode button.)

My friend and I talk every night, and we always say let's go to a certain frequency and he always says ok... And I'm there. Tell me when you're there. I've been here for ten seconds dude. Definitely better receiver on the 3000. I have qsos that just impossible for my friend.

There's nothing wrong with the 7300. I specifically crossed it off the list because it had a touch screen and I found that annoying, plus I new the band scope on it wouldn't be used anyway in lieu of the nice one.