[Premium-Rx] Cubic 3030 Rx

[Albert P. Belle Isle]

At 02:56 PM 9/12/2003 +0000, you wrote:
>Hello all.
>
>I have fallen in love with the Cubic 3030 dual receiver. I am located in 
>the UK
>- anyone any idea where I might get a good one at a sensible price? Prefer to
>purchase from Premium RX group member. Thanks for your help. Richard
>***************************************************************
>Richard Reich
>Principal Engineer Hardware
>SAAT Technology Ltd
>Web: http://www.saatt.co.uk

Richard,

Others more knowledgable than I have provided/will provide in-depth 
comments on the various idiosyncracies of the 3030s. However, if your 
useage intentions are relatively insensitive to such quirks (as are mine) 
you will still love it "the morning after" your acquisition.

I use mine in a mode not dissimilar to the original intent - surveillance 
(as opposed to weak signal hunting by hand). I leave each channel feeding 
one of the stereo channels of a soundcard on a PC that hosts Hoka's 
Code300-32 integrated suite of decoders.

Since it's a 3030A ("CIA") variant, it has 500Hz and 1000Hz filters, which 
nicely accommodate all the FSK signal-types in which I'm interested. The 
500Hz is excellent for weak 400Hz-shift ARQ-E3 signals on French military 
circuits, yet sufficiently narrow to do a good job on 170Hz FEC. (My Harris 
R-2368's 300Hz filter does FEC quite well, but on ARQ-E3 it requires me to 
use the 1kHz filter with commensurate excess noise bandwidth.)

There's no question that my Ten-Tec RX340s will run circles around all my 
other receivers for tuning around by hand - in any mode. However, once 
discovered, an interesting signal can be parked upon by the 3030A for the 
hours required for many circuits to yield traffic. Just dial it in, and 
there it sits - stable and selective. Overnight I leave one side on 518kHz 
feeding a NAVTEX decoder window, and the other side on 8414.5kHz feeding a 
GMDSS/DSC decoder window to listen for distress signals.

I realize that like you, I'm also in love with my 3030A for it's inherent 
"coolness" factor. There's no question that the Harris is a good receiver 
with better ergonomics for hand-tuning, but the Cubic's modular design is 
_real_ MIL-SPEC stuff.

By all means listen to the disclosures about each of the machine's quirks, 
and take them into consideration. However, you may find as I did, that it 
can fit your operating expectations sufficiently to make buying one more 
than an act of passion.


Good listening,
Al
=================================================
Location:        42N39, 71W09 (Near Boston, MA)
HF Antennas: 65ft TFD, 45ft T2FD, 28ft vertical, 65ft doublet
HF Receivers: Ten-Tec RX340, RX320, Harris R2368, Cubic R3030A
Decoders:       Code300-32, Universal M-8000, PK-232MBX/DSP
=================================================


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