Did a lot of side by side comparisons with my Sony SW77 portable. With Sony
AN-1 and AN-LP1 antennas it turned out that the Palstar R30CC was inferior
in both SW and MW DX. This was the case with both antennas in a noisy city
environment. In a quiet country setting it was a more even match but the
Palstar never beat the Sony. OTOH, the SW77 pulled in numerous stations that
were not listenable with the Palstar. I'm especially surprised about the MW
results because the Palstar is supposed to be a hot rig for that and the
SW77 is not. I really liked the Palstar on its own, but now I realize that
the receiver has serious shortcomings. For starters it really needs a sync
detector to be competitive at its price. Simplicity is not always an asset.

Now I wonder if the Palstar would even be worthy of a Sherwood SE-3 or
should I just ebay it right away. I guess I could always keep the SE-3 for
my other radios even if the Palstar failed with it.

Any opinions would be appreciated.

Cheers,

Margaret


PS. The SW77 is a darn good radio and the Passport is clueless!

"Margaret von Busenhalter-Butt" wrote in message ...
Did a lot of side by side comparisons with my Sony SW77 portable. With Sony
AN-1 and AN-LP1 antennas it turned out that the Palstar R30CC was inferior
in both SW and MW DX. This was the case with both antennas in a noisy city
environment. In a quiet country setting it was a more even match but the
Palstar never beat the Sony. OTOH, the SW77 pulled in numerous stations that
were not listenable with the Palstar. I'm especially surprised about the MW
results because the Palstar is supposed to be a hot rig for that and the
SW77 is not. I really liked the Palstar on its own, but now I realize that
the receiver has serious shortcomings. For starters it really needs a sync
detector to be competitive at its price. Simplicity is not always an asset.

Now I wonder if the Palstar would even be worthy of a Sherwood SE-3 or
should I just ebay it right away. I guess I could always keep the SE-3 for
my other radios even if the Palstar failed with it.

Any opinions would be appreciated.

Cheers,

Margaret


PS. The SW77 is a darn good radio and the Passport is clueless!

I also did a lot of comparisons using my R30cc against jrc 535D, R8,
and a Sattellit 800, and was very dissapointed, the only way it was
comparable was using a SE-3 and a kiwa shortwave preamp, the only
advantage is its portability
Miles

E-bay it. If you're a sync freak now, then you'll be a sync freak six months
down the road. If you leave the radio on all the time and align the radio, you
might or might not be able to make do with ECSS. I know that I use ECSS a lot
less than I would have used a sync detector, given the 20-Hz tuning steps on
the Palstar. I use it only when the fades are deep enough to make things
relatively unintelligible.

As for reception issues, grounding would be a cheap way to see if you want to
keep the radio. The AC adaptor provides a fair deal of ground but not as much
as you might want. Pound either a) one 10-foot ground rod or b) two hollow
10-foot copper pipes into the ground, wire the ground rod(s) to the ground post
on the Palstar, and see if that makes a difference. If it doesn't work, hey,
you can still use that ground to ground your home stereo, or you can ground the
Superadio III that you might also consider for MW DX.

I've had little luck getting good MW DX from the low-impedance antenna jack on
the Palstar, at least not the right way. On most dipoles of sane length--I'm
talking from 126 feet down to the 30 feet that mine is at present, with lots of
stops in between--the Palstar sucks on MW unless I put only the center pin into
the connector. My best results have been with a) very long wires hooked up to
the high-impedance antenna jack, b) a Select-A-Tenna Hardwire Edition (to the
same jack), and c) about fifty feet of wire wrapped through a hula hoop (again,
to the same jack). All but b) require a good ground.

As for SW, I use the dipoles that I've always used, and they work much better
than for my other radios. However, I did get to run it at a relative's ham
shack, with a long dipole, a vertical, a short dipole, and a Windom at my
disposal; and the Palstar kept up with the rigs in his shack without problem.
I came home and felt that at least some of my setup was lacking, as usual.
That's what happens when a 11-year SWL goes and plays in a veteran ham
environment.

Michael (in central Florida)

Did a lot of side by side comparisons with my Sony SW77 portable. With Sony
AN-1 and AN-LP1 antennas it turned out that the Palstar R30CC was inferior
in both SW and MW DX. This was the case with both antennas in a noisy city
environment. In a quiet country setting it was a more even match but the
Palstar never beat the Sony. OTOH, the SW77 pulled in numerous stations that
were not listenable with the Palstar. I'm especially surprised about the MW
results because the Palstar is supposed to be a hot rig for that and the
SW77 is not. I really liked the Palstar on its own, but now I realize that
the receiver has serious shortcomings. For starters it really needs a sync
detector to be competitive at its price. Simplicity is not always an asset.

Now I wonder if the Palstar would even be worthy of a Sherwood SE-3 or
should I just ebay it right away. I guess I could always keep the SE-3 for
my other radios even if the Palstar failed with it.

Any opinions would be appreciated.

Cheers,

Margaret


PS. The SW77 is a darn good radio and the Passport is clueless!

Margaret von Busenhalter-Butt wrote:

Did a lot of side by side comparisons with my Sony SW77 portable. With Sony

Things slow in the trolling world?


mike

I don't have any experience with the Palstar, nor the SW77 (but I do have a
collection of other Sony portables).

Generally speaking though, my experience is that when you get your first
"decent" radio, it actually takes a few weeks to fully realise the
capabilities, and limitations, of that radio. I may be wrong, but it appears
from your post that your Palstar is a recent acquisition, which was
subjected to a side-by-side test with the Sony.

You may not be suitably qualified to conduct a reasonable test until you
have some experience with the Palstar also.

The first radio I got that had a noise blanker and a notch filter for
example, I was left thinking "What do these things actually do anyway?" I
understood what they were supposed to do, but they didn't seem to have any
effect. Only when you slow down, experiment with these features under
varying conditions do you truly realise their potential in making something
of an otherwise unintelligble signal.

My lesson was that, yes, the Sony radios will receive everything that
anything else will. A great radio won't invent a signal for you, and its not
often that the Sony will be deaf to a signal. But the better radio will
actually let you hear what is being said and even identify the signal.

I'm mostly referring to SSB utilities here, which is the bulk of my
listening.

Mark.


"Margaret von Busenhalter-Butt" wrote in message
...
Did a lot of side by side comparisons with my Sony SW77 portable. With
Sony
AN-1 and AN-LP1 antennas it turned out that the Palstar R30CC was
inferior
in both SW and MW DX. This was the case with both antennas in a noisy city
environment. In a quiet country setting it was a more even match but the
Palstar never beat the Sony. OTOH, the SW77 pulled in numerous stations
that
were not listenable with the Palstar. I'm especially surprised about the
MW
results because the Palstar is supposed to be a hot rig for that and the
SW77 is not. I really liked the Palstar on its own, but now I realize that
the receiver has serious shortcomings. For starters it really needs a sync
detector to be competitive at its price. Simplicity is not always an
asset.

Now I wonder if the Palstar would even be worthy of a Sherwood SE-3 or
should I just ebay it right away. I guess I could always keep the SE-3 for
my other radios even if the Palstar failed with it.

Any opinions would be appreciated.

Cheers,

Margaret


PS. The SW77 is a darn good radio and the Passport is clueless!