Revolutionary: the real HF fun starts here!

Yes, the IC-7300. There is no better radio for a novice amateur than a brand spanking new IC-7300.

And not just a novice – but actually anyone looking for a small footprint radio packed with features.

I don’t have ICOM production and sales data, but the 7300 simply has to be the most sold radio of the 2020s.

“Does the IC-7300 come with a built-in antenna tuner? What else is in the box?”

Yes, it does. The high-speed automatic antenna tuner is built-in, and an integral part of your radio.

In the box you will find the IC-7300 transceiver, an HM-219 hand microphone, a fused DC power cable, three spare fuses and three plugs along with a warranty card and manual.

You literally need just a coax and an antenna to get on air, making contacts.

But – and this is a big one – no built-in antenna tuner can tune any random piece of wire or a non resonant antenna over the entire HF spectrum. There is no such thing as a free lunch.

In very plain English: the higher the SWR, the harder the antenna tuner ‘has to work’. Meaning: in order to compensate for mismatch, the output power has to be reduced.

Here is a practical example: a vertical antenna resonant on 28.1 with SWR of 1.5:1 could be easily tuned to SWR 1:1, therefore the output power would remain very close to 100 Watts. However, at 24.9MHz that same antenna is out of resonance with SWR 3:1. While the antenna tuner would be able to ‘reduce’ the mismatch, the maximum output power produced by the transmitter will be reduced to 25 Watts.

The situation is somehow better if an external tuner is introduced close to the antenna’s feed point, but even then, this would be only a slight improvement, or a compromise, at best.

The only thing that beats a well resonant, directional antenna up in the sky is a stack of well resonant, directional antennas up in the sky.