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write your own review of the Drake R4-A.
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HFRF
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Rating: 3/5
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Oct 19, 2009 17:14
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Mediocre
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Time owned: more than 12 months
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Not a bad receiver but side by side with a 75S3B, the Drake had inferior selectivity compared to the Collins mechanical filters. VFO stability wasn't the greatest either. If I were to buy another one of these receivers for a spare or an occasional use receiver I sure wouldn't pay much for it. There are a lot better receivers out there in a transceiver package.
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K6LO
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Rating: 5/5
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Oct 19, 2009 13:59
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Refreshing
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Time owned: 0 to 3 months
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I purchased a really nice example of an R4A recently from eBay. The ceramic filters do not offer great skirt selectivity, but it handles strong signals with ease, has marvelous audio, and our cat likes to snooze on it. I use it as a spotting receiver in my shack. I was comparing it to my FT-102 and TS-940S last night. It heard everything they did, and it was more pleasant to listen to. It has that cozy tube sound. I think I'll go find a companion transmitter for it.
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W4ET
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Rating: 5/5
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Oct 25, 2008 09:13
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Good rig
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Time owned: 0 to 3 months
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I recently picked up a Drake R4A from ebay along with a T4X transmitter. The receiver works great. It is in excellent condition and I am very satisfied with it. I have owned the R4B in the past, and, in my opinion, the R4A is just as good. This one is the 13 tube version, serial number 2816. For a 40+ year old rig, it holds it's own with modern gear. If you have the opportunity to pick one up a a decent price, I would recommend it. Now if I could just find a good AC-4 power supply, I could put my Drake Twins on the air. 73.
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G4AON
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Rating: 5/5
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Sep 23, 2007 04:09
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Good vintage receiver
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Time owned: more than 12 months
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Maybe I really should give the receiver a 4, but considering it is over 40 years old and is still fully working without needing any modifications, it deserves better than "good". Mine came from eBay and is in remarkable condition with no chassis corrosion, no modifications and no sign of having been repaired. It even has the original mains lead (I added a safety electrical earth as the original mains lead is only two core).
On SSB the audio quality is superb. On CW the performance isn't quite as good as SSB, but I'm being very critical here. The LC filtering is pretty good and gives bandwidths of 4.8, 2.4, 1.2 and 0.4 KHz without the need to buy extra filters. There is a crystal calibrator and noise blanker fitted as standard.
Image performance is not as good as a modern "up conversion" receiver, on 40m at night there are times when artefacts appear around 7.0 MHz. For all practical purposes this is not a problem.
I believe my receiver dates from 1965, it is one of the earlier 13 valve units. I've added crystals for 160m and the WARC bands, QuartSlab in the UK sell crystals for the Drake receivers (http://www.quartslab.com/). One of the big advantages of the Drake 4 series receivers is the ability to add up to 10 auxiliary bands.
Sometimes I use my R4A in conjunction with the transmit side of my Elecraft K2, details of how to interface the two are at: http://www.astromag.co.uk/k2/K2externalRX.pdf
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N6CIC
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Rating: 4/5
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Sep 3, 2006 22:15
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Excellent receiver for its time
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Time owned: more than 12 months
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I have owned two of these fine receivers, as well as an R-4, and an R4-B. There are two versions of the R-4A, an earlier 13-tube version, and a later version with 11 tubes. I find it hard to tell the difference in performance, and the R4-A seems to perform as well as the later R4-B.
The audio is excellent, the selectivity for SSB and CW is good, and this vintage receiver even has notch filtering and passband tuning! The only reason I do not give it a 5 rating is its propensity to suffer from corrosion on the tube, switch, and crystal contacts and on the copper chassis. If you clean up the corrosion with some contacts cleaner, the receiver will perform like a champ.
If you can find a used one in good condition-go for it.
73s,
N6CIC
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