[IRCA] Palstar MW550P

[mwdxer@xxxxxxxxx (Patrick Martin)]

I recently purchased a Palstar MW550P presellector. A very good unit,
built like a battleship. Palstar makes their own stuff and it is made in
the USA, in Ohio. It is a bit spendy, running $275.00, but a top-notch
unit. Palstar has a complete review on the unit, at about 20 DB down 10
khz away, the sellectivity is really tight. One problem I have is living
next to an electric fence. That is why I use receivers with noise
blankers. You will go nuts listening to "click, click, click every 1
second without a noise blanker. The over all noise level here in rural
Clatsop County is quite low. A bit more noisy than it was 20 years ago,
but still not bad at all. At times, the S Meter will be sitting at zero
on a quiet frequency. With the electric fence, the noise blanker on the
Drake is very good taking out 99% of the noise generally. The only
thing, if you are close to a strong station, then the overall splatter
and all can confuse the noise blanker circuit into thinking it doesn't
need to come on. So, close to a strong signal, you might hear the click.
With using the MW550P with the razor sharp sellectivity, being 10 khz
away, you can be 20DB down. That is the case with 620 Portland, at
S9+20DB when I am peaked right on 620, but move it away down to 610, and
peak the unit there, then go back to 620, I am reading S9 on 620, so
since the signal from the offending strong signal (620), the noise
blanker sees a weaker signal, so no click noise on 610. The only other
way to combat the problem was a turn the RF gain way down. That did not
always work too well. Having the MW550P inline is much better. 
   OK, then this morning I had a pretty decent TP/DU morning. I got up
around 1300 UTC and found the dial with a fair number of DUs. By LSR
quite a few Asians had taken over. 936 khz Anhui China was quite good.
But I noticed that using the MW550P, being close to strong signals, with
the presellection and the extra amp of up to 15 DB, the signals would
pop up out of the noise. I would kick the unit back and forth from
presellect to bypass. On so many frequencies it made all the different
in the World. I like this unit. To me, it is worth every penny. I bought
mine from another DXer for $200, but it is really nice. Palstar by the
way, makes their own varible caps. The one in the unit is huge too. The
sellectivity can be set in wide or narrow. Narrow is at 2 khz. Really
nice. This unit is going to get a lot of use. The amp in the unit is
very quiet too.

73,

Patrick

Patrick Martin
Seaside  OR
KAVT Reception Manager

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