I thought I should share this with the group.??

A couple of years ago I switched from an older Kenwood HF to a new Icom 7300 which has many more bells, whistles and functions that I don't understand. I'm not very active and the past couple of months when I turned on the rig I have had trouble with SWR and effective HF operations. I assumed that I had external tuner? component corrosion or an antenna problem. I use a G5RW dipole which is a hearty multiband antenna that takes up 103 feet between end mounts and is good for 6 to 80 meters with a good antenna tuner. My "go to" external antenna tuner is an MFJ 948 which allowed me to load all bands on the G5RV with low SWR. When I bought the 7300, I also bought an ADG AT 100 auto tuner for a try.? The MFJ 948 manual tuner still significantly outperformed the ADG auto tuner, so the ADG is sitting on a shelf.

The last couple of weeks I spent some of time checking? my antenna and feedlines so that I could get on 10 meters for your popup net, but the best forward power I could get was 10 watts out.? I could get up to 50 watts out on a couple of other bands, but I have a 100-watt radio, and I knew I that had a problem.?

I went over my G5RV section by section, redid connectors and finally cleaned all the conductors and capacitors in the MFJ tuner. I still had low RF output and high SWR.? Finally I started looking at Utube videos about Icom IC 7300's. I have only had the radio a couple of years, don't operate often and am not very familiar with all the quirks, so thank goodness for Utube. After a couple of videos I decided that I had bad final transistors that should be replaced. Apparently the Icom 7300 has a problem with failing finals.??

Before I ordered 2 new transistors at $40 each or boxed up the radio to send to Icom for service, I thought it prudent to read the manual.? Low and behold, it had a brief paragraph instructing users to make sure that the internal antenna tuner (a feature on a 7300)? is turned off before using an external antenna tuner.? Yup, my internal antenna tuner icon in the upper left corner of the display was "on" (apparently a default setting).? According to the manual, If the internal tuner is on and an external antenna tuner is applied, they fight with each other.?

I turned the internal tuner off, went through all the bands tuning with the MFJ? 948 from 75 meters to 6 meters, and have 100 watts forward and SWR's of 1.1/1 on all bands.? I had a couple of nice contacts on 10 meters yesterday with good signal reports.?

Lessons that I learned:

-Read the manual first?

-The more I use a G5RV antenna with a tuner, the better I like it.?

-Having a local group of younger hams getting excited about ham radio can motivate an old guy to dust the cobwebs off the radio.? Thank you!

I hope to check in Thursday with 100 watts.? Jim WA7MKN