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write your own review of the Palstar R30.
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LEATHER
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Rating: 4/5
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Sep 29, 2009 13:06
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Very Satisfied
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Time owned: 0 to 3 months
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I've had my R30 A for about 3 months and I'm happy with it. At first I found it a little awkward to use because it had no keypad for direct frequency entry and no predefined bands. But once you get used to it, it's like operating a radio used to be. What it does, it does superbly well.
Mechanically, it's built like a tank. It's rugged. The audio is very good. MW reception is exceptional. The frequency stability makes it a joy to use for SSB reception.
I bought it to replace my old Radio Shack DX 394. The contrast beteen the two is astounding. Sure, the DX 394 has all the convenience features and is maybe a better looking rig, but the R30 A can pull signals out of the mud where there isn't a sound of one on the other radio.
I plan to give the new radio its first big test on Novemebr 14, this year. That's the day of the annual Radio St Helena Broadcast. I'm planning to load it up with fresh batteries and head out to a remote conservation area far away from the city and man made noise. I'll run about 100 ft of wire through the trees for an antenna. Even if I don't succeed in catching Radio St Helena, it will still be an opportunity the try out the radio's DX performance.
I bought the R30 A as a retirement gift to myself, thinking it would be the last radio I ever need to buy. I think I will be happy with this radio for the rest of my days.
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JRT3
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Rating: 5/5
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Sep 24, 2009 06:18
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Great little US-made radio!
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Time owned: 6 to 12 months
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Well, I guess my luck was better. As I said in a Lowe HF-150 review 1/09, I was going to get an R30A. I ordered one in 2/09 - and was told of a 1 month plus wait. They had one to me in a week! Great looking - actually bigger than I thought. Certainly, larger than a Lowe HF-150, smaller than a Drake R8. First, the nitpicks:
I have become, after >7 months of use, nearly accustomed to the near flush-mounted tuning knob - nearly! The internally mounted battery pack is a joke. A better choice... get one of those 12V gel cells and use it externally. Next, the high points:
It is as sensitive as my HF-150/PR-150 combo. The audio is quite good - not up to the HF-150's - or the R8's - levels, but they have synch AM detection. As a basic AM detector receiver, it is super. Of course, a good external speaker, or good 'phones, is required. The selectivity is excellent - you can't beat Collins Mechanical filters - and the torsional units are every bit as good. Circuit layout/design is first rate - ultimate selectivity is great, IM is nil. I did have some feed through of 49 & 31 mb SW signals noted when an AM loop was used. Changed the UHF/UHF cable - same fault. Both cables were cheapie crimped connector/no-name RG-58 pre-made cables - went to a similar 3 ft Belden RG-58 cable with UHF PL-259 & adaptor plugs I soldered eons ago, signals gone - AM via loop was fine. Don't use cheesy coax jumpers.
Another thing - no noise blanker, so unplug your switching-type wall warts - horrible noise producers, especially the DSL Modem supply and the Digital/Analog TV converter's such packs. I lost power (whole subdivision) - running on a gel-cell was unreal - clean signals. The R30A is a deal. Mine has been totally trouble free. One day I'll get either my URM-25D or SG-25D (Both were great 'hamfest' finds!) down and 'test' the R30A, but - in comparison to the R8 & NRD525, well, they aren't on the desk anymore. Quiet but sensitive.
In a return to my early 'Q5-er' days, I connected my HF-150, with it's excellent detector selection, to the R30A's 455 kHz IF output - very handy - great front end & IF filters - super detector capability - shades of a BC-453 hooked to my old Lafayette HE-10...
The Palstar 30A is a great value.
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ROGERT
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Rating: 2/5
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Sep 16, 2009 20:35
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Started as a Dud .... still not right
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Time owned: 3 to 6 months
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From the box something was wrong ... no power plugpak .. its a bummer to have to go and buy one before you try a new toy! (later Paul said they dont ship with ppak overseas)
Next there was very little signal .. found the ae plug was not on the circuit board. Now some signal but against local stations, wwv and military stations was showing some 320 cycles low. Detail avail on this allowed me to adjust to read correct after about 30 min warmup. Next I found the 455kc out had no signal ... the lead when soldered to the plug had melted the center insulation in the coax and was shorting to the outer braid.
Was that all??? of course not .. every 4mhz and to a lesser extent every 2mhz (approx as it varies on warmup) there is an internally generated band of signals which can push the s meter to about 3 and is more or less a constant 5 below 250khz. The frequency of the interference shifts with change of AGC setting and also by touching the case of the set to some extent.
Testing agaist older sets with less sesitivity rating and a Drake R8 it clearly was not as sensitive as on the other sets I could read a signal that was not apparent on the Palstar, though once the threshold is reached it performs well. The spurious noise is immediatly apparent in other sets around the shak as soon as the Palstar is turned on!
Spoke to Paul about he problems and he said he had only once long ago had internal sig generation and that was the main IC ..but he said to him it sounded as though it was operating "normally"! and that the "off frequency" could not hve been correct as he has equipment reading to 1 cycle and he personally aligns all the sets...
I said it looked like a "Friday lunchtime" set to me and we did not agree too well after that. Although he did say that if I sent my name and address he would send a small shield to fit the IC - needless to say I heard no more, so have made a rough shield myself which partially helps. Also removed the paint from contact areas on inside of top casing so it now makes solid electrical contact with the main frame. Palstar will not release the service detail or circuit so doing anything further is not easy.
Warranty you say? well from here it will cost some $250 for the return post and if it is "normal" there will likely be a $60 or more service charge as well. Clearly its not going back and it is worth considering this for buyers outside the USA.
As here an R30a costs more than an Icom R 75 it was not a good purchase.
Otherwise is a nice stable set; but anyhow I purchased another brand as I am dissapointed with the R30a
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AUSSIE
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Rating: 5/5
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Sep 11, 2009 13:13
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Excellent Receiver
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Time owned: 0 to 3 months
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I picked my Palstar-R30A hf receiver 11/9/09 and i notice its a stable receiver sound that comes out from the internal speaker is nice & clear i will be using a Wellbrook ALA1530 Active Loop Antenna also be picking up an Icom-R75 in a few weeks.
Regards Lino.
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W4JAH
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Rating: 5/5
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Jul 25, 2009 01:53
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A best buy and great value
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Time owned: 0 to 3 months
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After reading all the reviews and not wanting to tie up a transceiver for a bed side radio I orderd my new R30A. I have owned a lot of drake sw recievers and they were all nice. I still have a Sony 2010 and it is great, but this little guy is really sweet. Great sound and picks up the world. Nice job Paul and his crew. I will save up and get another one for a different location.
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N2DY
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Rating: 5/5
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Oct 28, 2008 13:04
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Particularly good on Medium Wave
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Time owned: more than 12 months
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I have many receivers and Amateur rigs and the Palstar is up there with the best of them as far as sensitivity and selectivity go. As others have noted, it is very basic without a lot of bells and whistles. The radio is particularly good on medium wave. It is close to my Drake R-8B in that regard, although the Drake has some additional bells and whistles that make it a little easier to pull out the weak ones. Of course, the Drake cost more than twice as much. I like the fact that I can put some batteries in the R30 and take it into the field. That makes it about the best portable you can use for medium wave dxing. The R30 works quite well everywhere else in its receive range with good LW and SW coverage. The sensitivity on mine seems to drop off a tad at the high end near 10 meters, taking it from excellent to just very good in that range. Overall it is a very unique and cool receiver. I plan to keep mine for a long time.
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10538RADIO
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Rating: 5/5
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Oct 27, 2008 15:00
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Great radio. Super performer
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Time owned: 0 to 3 months
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I recently purchased a new Palstar R30A receiver. Having owned many great receivers through the years, I have to say this is probably the best all around receiver that I have used. It is simple to use, does not have a bunch of bells and whistles that most of us don't really use anyhow. I have compared this radio to my Grundig Satellit 800 and my Eton E1. Simply put this radio can just hear things that the others can't. The audio is excellent through the built in speaker and even better through an external speaker. (I purchased the Palstar SP30 speaker )Having no sync detector doesnt seem to be a problem for this radio either. All in all it is a great receiver that is simple to use and it can run on batteries as well. I highly recomend the Palstar R30A and dealing with Paul and his staff is a pleasure as they really care about their products and their customers.
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DXTUNER
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Rating: 4/5
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Oct 19, 2008 23:45
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Simple but strong. In a category all its own.
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Time owned: 0 to 3 months
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I recently purchased a used a Palstar R30C, in excellent condition, with the hopes it would be as good as (or better than) my former FRG-100 and IC-R75. My main interest is SSB utility monitoring. Well, its difficult to compare it with those 2 receivers because the Palstar R30C has a totally different personality & feel. First off, I’ll mention the Palstar’s clear advantage.
Its incredible MW reception & sound is obvious right off the bat. I think most of us are used to HF receivers being purposefully desensitized from 100 kHz-2000 kHz. Well the R30C isn’t desensitized here at all — and let me tell you this is a pleasure! On those odd nights when USB utes aren’t coming through the airwaves all that great, I surf MW & enjoy AM talk shows/ news from all over North America (even Cuba). I’d like to add that the R30C has an incredibly strong front end; I get absolutely no overload, no images or bleed-over from the strongest local AM stations.
The R30C is also a mighty fine SSB utility receiver on HF. The 2.5 kHz Collins filter and radio’s powerful audio stage make utility transmissions sound professional; very muscular. But the R30C isn’t quite as sensitive as other HF receivers here. True, it does have an ultra-low noise floor, but still the IC-R75 can pull in distant weaklings better than the Palstar can.
Obviously the R30C was designed to be a minimalist, bare bones receiver and many people seem to appreciate the no-frills interface. Me, well, I like just a few more bells & whistles. And not being able to ‘see’ fine tuning of <100 Hz on the display is pretty frustrating. Again, this might not bother too many other folks.
In summary the Palstar R30C is a cool little high-performance receiver with a strong suit in MW reception. A couple more techy features would’ve been great for HF.
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TUBESAREKING
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Rating: 5/5
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Sep 9, 2008 12:28
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Outstanding
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Time owned: 0 to 3 months
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I've had my new Palstar R30A for one week now - and after using it for a cople hours each night, I'm impressed.
As everyone knows, the Palstar is a minimalist receiver. No bells and whistles. No flashing clocks begging to be reset. No features going largely unused. Just the basics, but with outstanding engineering, design, construction and filters - Collins mechanical filters.
The R30A is a restyle of the R30CC made necessary by the display manufacturer for the R30CC discontinuing the old display. The R30A incorporates a different display, a larger case [still compact] and a near flush tuning knob.
I like the new tuning knob arrangement - it is very DXpedition friendly - makes it easier to pack the Palstar without the encoder getting damaged. I'm sure some folks will not like the new arrangement - especially for ECSS when you are tuning really, really slowly.
The up/down buttons are now 100 KHz steps, rather than 500 KHz. Primarily, I'm a MW DXer [a MW DXer who is also a ham and a SWL, but MW broadcast band DX is my passion] and this change is good news to me, as it allows me to zip around the 530 to 1700 KHz band really quickly. The same would hold true to others who have a favourite band. The pleasant surprise is that by holding say the up button down, I can roam from 100 KHz to 30 MHz amazingly fast. Some of the Palstar's biggests proponents are MW and tropical band DXers, so this change makes good sense.
The bigger buttons are nice. the tuning knob dimple works very well too.
Construction quality is first rate - and one is reminded of this every time you change batteries. This receiver is built to be repaired not tossed when it gets old. It is now 7 screws to change batteries, rather than 5, but each screw threads into a captive nut, so you don't have to worry about wearing out screw holes - another very thoughtfull touch.
Sensitivity is the equal of my Drake R8. Selectivity is tighter bandwidth for bandwidth as one would expect - mechanical filters do have an edge over LC filters in that regard. Sound is clearer with much less hiss and better readability of extremely weak signals. The audio has a real punch.
A good external speaker is a must - I use a Centrios 7 [modern Minimus 7] speaker with most of my receivers - including my R30A. The Palstar has a lot more audio whallop than the Drake R8.
I suspect many people interested in the Palstar will already have an outstanding "battle mode" receiver - Drake R8 family, Icom R71A, Icom R75. I still like my R8 and R71A for these reasons. It is helpful to have a noise blanker, RF gain pot and switchable AGC "off", passband tuning, notch etc. These are useful tools and most serious DXers will use them. But, serious DXers also need tight filters and sound that makes an ID come through the noise. The Palstar is the ideal compliment to the battle mode receiver.
Highly, highly recommended!
Phil VY2PR
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ELJAY
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Rating: 5/5
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Dec 28, 2007 05:45
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Correction...
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Time owned: 3 to 6 months
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(Don't see any way to edit earlier review, so...)
When I popped the top recently to adjust the frequency alignment (a simple procedure), I noticed a muRata filter in the wide position. So I have an R30C, not R30CC. The R30-series has gone through three external cosmetic iterations (gathering data via the Wayback machine), so the appearance of the front panel isn't a reliable indicator of what's inside. My bad.
I used Spectran for a quick 'n' dirty analysis of the characteristics of the muRata wide and Collins narrow filters. The results were interesting and informed my casual impressions gathered from simply listening. I checked the results for AM, LSB and USB, all with wide and narrow filters.
I'll skip the details since my previous review was already too long. To sum up, the muRata ceramic wide filter is actually very slightly narrower in practice for MW and SW AM listening than I'd expected, with a shoulder closer to 5500 Hz. The very gradual rolloff seems to impart a very pleasant characteristic to any reasonable AM mode signal and is narrow enough to reject splatter from powerful adjacent stations 10 kHz apart. A Spanish language numbers station with an S9 +10 signal (AM mode) was on 5898 kHz at the same time WWCR was kicking out its usual strong signal on 5890. Neither interfered with the other, so the muRata filter is adequate for all except stations 5 kHz apart, typical of some parts of the 49 meter band at night.
The Collins narrow filter behaved exactly as described elsewhere, nothing new to add there.
BTW, for trivia nuts: As you might expect from a custom made product made in relatively small runs at a time, it does appear that there are minor, possibly insignificant differences between R30-series radios. The PC board in mine is labeled "Rev J" and "3-11-03." It's already known that the 455 kHz IF Out RCA socket was added after the earlier batch. The tuning step rate was adjusted at some point during the run as well. While I'm not aware of anyone offering modifications to the R30 right now, at some point an enterprising individual might do so and those minor variations may become more interesting.
One final note: the R30 is only as good - or bad - as the antenna. That should be elementary Radio Appreciation 101. Indoors with a random wire antenna it doesn't perform any better than my good portables with their whip antennas. But outdoors, even with only 20' of random wire but away from locally generated noise, it really shines. Even without a synchronous detector or noise blanker it's more pleasant to listen to for hours than my SW radios that have those features.
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