Hi Dean and all other readers in the group !
Some comments from the other side of the pond...

I own an IC-703 about 5 months, never owned a FT-817.
However i had the opportunity to play with a FT-817 twice during fieldday. I
liked the receiver of the FT-817 but do not care for the small diplay, the
menus and handling of the unit. I know one OM who ran into trouble with the
finals of the FT-817 due to unstable power supply and the service of Yaesu
here in Europe has some bad reputation.
Those were the reasons to wait for the IC-703 instead getting a FT-817 for
QRP operation. I got the IC-703 about five months ago and i am very pleased
with it. The receiver is nice, i like it better than the IC-706MkIIG i have
here in my shack as well. I use the IC-703 with the MP-1 portable antenna
or with a GP (Fritzel GPA-50) when in the shack at home. I got some
unsoliticed comments about the nice modulation when operating SSB with the
stock mike of the IC-703, however i mostly do CW with the radio, the
optional, narrow filter FL-53A is great in this mode, especially on 40m.
The menues/handling are almost similar to the IC-706, the large display
helps a lot. The IC-703 has many options to configure it to low power
consumption, that helps a lot while being portable. Doing QRPP is fun as
well, the power output is adjustable in 0,1 watts steps down to 0,1 watts
minimum output.
The ATU does fine with the 1:3 SWR of my 40m dipole at home, when being
portable i "tune" the MP-1 antenna, so i do not use the ATU there.
I removed the tension latch of the VFO knob, gives a much smoother feeling,
with the latch the knob always feels a little "scratchy".

I had to claim warranty, since the keyer played crazy at 30m due to the
radio being much too sensitive about stray HF. More about this in message
and details about the solution of
the problem in , ICOM (Europe) fixed
the problem and it never occured again.
There were no other problems with the IC-703 yet, i really enjoy the radio
doing QRP portable/mobile and at home.

73s, thomas [DF1HX]
--
Thomas Krull [DF1HX]
gpg (GnuPG) 1.2 0x01EC2546