You just end up with an extra cable that you connect the tuner to. Don't worry, you can still use an external tuner. The board is extremely well designed and built, and very cleverly ports the RF 'tap' out through the radio's external tuner port. It literally took me more time to get all the screws out of the IC-7300 case than it did to install the PTRX-7300. I had read reports and watched YouTube videos that talked about how easy the installation is.
When you transmit on the 7300 the RX circuit is shut down, so the PTRX-7300 is protected.Ībout a week ago I found the time to open up my IC-7300 and do the install. Even better, the incoming RF line that the PTRX-7300 'sniffs' is tied to the radio's RX/TX circuit. With the SDR radio connected to a computer and running SDR software you now have a panadapter display that is shows not just the small slice of the amateur radio band visible on the IC-7300's front panel, you get to see the entire band in one view. The PTRX-7300 outputs that RX signal tap to an external software defined receiver (SDR) of your choice. The board is installed in the 7300 (no soldering required!) and it 'sniffs' the incoming RF without otherwise burdening the radio (the 7300 doesn't even know it's there).
The PTRX-7300 is manufactured in Europe by a company called RadioAnalog. A few months ago I purchased the PTRX-7300 panadapter interface board for the Icom IC-7300 from DXEngineering.
