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write your own review of the Palstar R30.
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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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TBAATAR
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Rating: 5/5
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May 30, 2007 17:21
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way to go!
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Time owned: 0 to 3 months
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well I don't pretend to be a pro, but Im told I've owned some of the finest radios ever made, a hallicrafters "super skyrider" a collins R-390, 2 hammarlund super pros, 2 frg-7's {one extremely modified} and a real nice icom R71a with extra filters and CR-64 High Stability crystal,
this said I can tell you this little radio meets or edges out all the competition in expectations!
I bought it used on ebay as an R30c, had it shipped back to PALSTAR for upgrades including a new IF filter and very nice new "weighted" knob and realignment,plus repair to a tiny light bulb that had broken inside at the antenna base, when I called the company for instructions, I was treated to an unexpected conversation with palstar president and radio guru MR.H himself!!
kids if your reading this, the R30 is simply the work of the finest minds and craftsmenship that is availible today, its clear sound and outstanding ability to pull in signals is tops! but... then all other reviews will tell you this,
hats off to the palstar team for a modern work of radio art!
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KI6SZ
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Rating: 5/5
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Nov 22, 2006 10:51
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Wonderful!!
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Time owned: more than 12 months
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Plain and simple -- This receiver is a pleasure to use. I use it with the companion Palstar speaker and the sound quality is incredible! There are some very strong broadcast band signals at my QTH (one station is >S9+60dB, 4 others >S9+40dB), but there is never any BCB breakthrough, even when listening to broadcast band DX. In this same shack I also have an Icom 756-ProII, an Icom 756-PROIII and an Icom 706-MKIIG. I do sometimes have BCB breakthrough with the Icom rigs... Doing side-by-side comparisons against these rigs, the R30 performance is darn near onpar with the PROII and PROIII and I think sometimes a little better than the 706. If I must say something negative about this fine receiver, it would be that the tuning steps in SSB could be smaller and for broadcast AM listening, it would be nice if the user could set the tuning stepsize to 10 kHz. That said, I never have any problem tuning in a SSB QSO.
In the shack, I power the R30 from the included wall-wart, but during storm power outages I switch off the R30's lights and operate it from its internal batteries -- it also makes a great backup/emergency receiver.
I highly recommend the R30 to anyone who wants a solidly built (in America!) and great performing RX.
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KI4HBX
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Rating: 5/5
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Jul 4, 2006 19:41
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Super
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Time owned: 3 to 6 months
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This is a grat reciever maybey the best out there at this time sounds awsome.
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KD8ADH
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Rating: 5/5
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Sep 19, 2005 22:54
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GREAT RADIO!
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Time owned: 6 to 12 months
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The R30 is nothing short of REMARKABLE, Small, easy to use, and a big easy to read display, and as the Palstar description says "Performs like nothing you’ve heard"... Pretty hard to believe that something this great is manufactured in my hometown. I have had my R30 for close to a year and will never switch to another radio for MW DXing... I have it connected to a 50ft longwire in my backyard and it works wonders, not to mention how clean the audio is with the SP30 speaker. Do yourself a favor and get yourself an R30, NO other radio comes close! NOT TO MENTION... Each radio is hand built, not slapped together carelessly in a mass production assembly line! THIS RADIO IS REAL AMERICAN QUALITY!
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KC7NYI
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Rating: 5/5
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Jun 23, 2005 18:47
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GREAT
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Time owned: 0 to 3 months
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RECEIVED TODAY,6 23 05. HAVING OWNED THE FOLLOWING: DRAKE 8 AND B, TENTEC, KENWOODS AND YAESUS,PLUS ICOM 746 PRO,756 PRO, 6 Y847S 3 KENWOODS 2000.I THINK THE PALSTAR IS ONE OF THE BEST RECEIVERSTHAT I HAVE TRIED.USING THE SAME TWO ANTENNAS. THE CO. IS ALSO GREAT TO DO BUSINESS WITH. SINCE MY SIGHT IS NOT GOOD THE RADIO IS VERY EASY OPERATE, IT IS A KEEPER. GREAT !!!!
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