R30 HF

Status
Not open for further replies.

bearcatrp

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Apr 11, 2005
Messages
2,494
Location
Land of 10,000 taxes
Can anyone with a R30 tell me if HF is working good on this receiver? Besides air band, HF is my other interest. Thanks.
 

Hit_Factor

Member
Joined
Mar 6, 2010
Messages
2,435
Location
Saint Joseph, MI
Can anyone with a R30 tell me if HF is working good on this receiver? Besides air band, HF is my other interest. Thanks.
I have used a roll up wire antenna with it and had OK results.

Never hooked it up to my 135 foot OCF antenna because my IC-7300 is attached to it .

It's going to depend entirely on what you can do for an antenna.

73, K8HIT
Icom: IC-7300 IC-PW1 ID-5100A ID-51A Plus 2 IC-R30 Hytera PD782G Uniden SDS100 DVMega SDRplay RSPduo
 

ka1njl

Member
Joined
Jul 20, 2007
Messages
266
Location
Fairport, ,New York
I concur that it is great. This past summer I was on one of the Finger Lakes in New York, i.e. at the bottom of a valley, and I was receiving a ham in Colorado with the whip antenna. Since then I tried a crane reel antenna, like this CC Shortwave Reel Antenna, and the difference was striking. In my subjective opinion the HF capabilities of the R30 are remarkable.
 

bearcatrp

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Apr 11, 2005
Messages
2,494
Location
Land of 10,000 taxes
You folks getting good service using the antenna that came with it or using something else? I have many antennas from years of handhelds to choose from. I’m about to pull the trigger. Need that last reassurance that it will be everything I want. It’s between this and a Uniden 330.
 

Hit_Factor

Member
Joined
Mar 6, 2010
Messages
2,435
Location
Saint Joseph, MI
Big difference between those two options. Not the least of which is $400.

73, K8HIT
Icom: IC-7300 IC-PW1 ID-5100A ID-51A Plus 2 IC-R30 Hytera PD782G Uniden SDS100 DVMega SDRplay RSPduo
 

kruser

Active Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Nov 25, 2007
Messages
4,987
Location
West St Louis County, MO
I've hooked my R30 up to my outdoor loop with very good results. I can hear about everything I can hear with any of my several other dedicated HF receivers. Changing antennas is somewhat a pain though so I find I use my R30 more for everything above 30 MHz more than anything.
The R30 can make a nice HF receiver though when coupled to a decent HF antenna.

One feature I'd like to see in the future for radios that can tune such wide ranges would be the ability to get a signal out of the radio via the USB port maybe that could switch an external antenna switch box so you could have more than one antenna hooked up.
It would probably not work well for true portable use but I could see it being handy for those that use these portables more as base units at home.
I tend to shy away from portable type wideband comms receivers for the antenna issue alone but the R30 was one I did make an exception for.

But yes, the R30 can make a very fine HF receiver if needed. It seems to have very good sensitivity and selectivity for the HF bands plus it can utilize a very small tuning step for SSB reception and fine tuning. Filtering may not be the best for HF but for the casual listener, the included filtering is adequate most of the time.
 

palmerjrusa

Member
Joined
Oct 22, 2005
Messages
1,171
Location
Frederick
Be careful when you clip wire to that antenna - any little static charge might zap the HF section into the dead zone. The little project here can help with that - and add a little RF gain to boot...

https://forums.radioreference.com/threads/a-great-first-timer-project.295299/

Mike

Concur, it's very easy for static to build up on an external antenna (simply from wind etc.). Always ground the antenna to allow for any static build-up before connecting it to a receiver.
 

palmerjrusa

Member
Joined
Oct 22, 2005
Messages
1,171
Location
Frederick
You folks getting good service using the antenna that came with it or using something else? I have many antennas from years of handhelds to choose from. I’m about to pull the trigger. Need that last reassurance that it will be everything I want. It’s between this and a Uniden 330.

I don't own the Uniden 330, that scanner is an old model and hasn't been in production for a number of years (to my knowledge, the only Uniden scanner that covers HF ) but did a quick search and in the following link to an old Monitoring Times issue it's HF performance is rated as "horrible" and "not worth the purchase if you are looking for good HF listening":

http://www.monitoringtimes.com/mthelpdeskfeb07.pdf

There's a link in the above link to a review of the Uniden 330.
The Icom ic-r30 on the other hand has received very good reviews. My copy of the 2019 WRTH arrived yesterday, in the receiver section, the ic-r30 was reviewed very favorably.

If it's the HF region you're interested in you may want to take the above information into consideration before making your purchase.
 

KM4OBL

Authorized Personnel
Joined
Dec 6, 2016
Messages
112
Location
Palookaville, USA
I have only done preliminary listening on HF, but I can report that I was pleasantly surprised by the sensitivity and selectivity in my limited experience using this receiver on HF. I was using the stock telescoping antenna and found it performed far better than I anticipated.
 

N3CI

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Apr 20, 2012
Messages
44
Location
Oklahoma City, OK
I use my R30 a great deal on HF. With the supplied telescopic whip, HF is quite similar to the performance on my Crane Skywave SSB i.e. quite good. I use it to monitor frequencies of interest when I am moving about and find it is usually able to give me either good copy or at least notice the frequency is active. I seldom connect it to my outside antennas. If I am in the room with the antenna feedline, the 8600 is there as well.
 

bearcatrp

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Apr 11, 2005
Messages
2,494
Location
Land of 10,000 taxes
Would love to own that 8600. May get it down the road. Just tried a longer antenna to see if HF signals were a bit better. It helped. Still considering a loop with a rotor in the spring though. Seems to be the best for HF from what I have read. What antennas are you using for your 8600?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top