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This is the relatively scarce Barlow Wadley XCR-30 Mark 2 shortwave radio that appears here on Ebay infrequently.  The radio is in above average cosmetic condition.  Many of these XCR-30's often show substantial use and wear as they were a sturdy unit that was carried and banged around.  Often the battery holder will be damaged from leaking battery acid or the plastic will become brittle and break.  The battery holder on this XCR-30 is in wonderful condition.  We do want to mention that the two rear panel screws do not fully secure the panel completely and we had to place masking tape on the thread of one of the screws to get it to hold the panel snug.  Please look closely at our pictures and use them to supplement this written description.  

One of the common issues that we often find with the XCR-30's during our testing is low sensitivity.  The antenna trim function is found to employ dual micro-switches whose contacts can oxidize over time and fail to operate properly.  This is most likely to happen when the radio has not been used for a period of several years.  Virtually all of the XCR-30's that come into our hands suffer with this issue and commonly the sellers fail to mention this to us when we acquire these radios.  Without this working properly, the radio's sensitivity is very poor and even strong signals may not be easily heard.  If you have an XCR-30 and the sensitivity is not very good, it is likely that your radio needs these micro switches to be cleaned and lubricated or replaced.  The micro switches on this radio have been replaced.

The XCR-30 is famed for its excellent use of the Wadley Loop tuning that offers great reception and stability.  Even years later, these portable radios were compared to high end radios and considered to offer excellent sensitivity for DX reception.  Due to the fact that all of these radios were imported from South Africa, and much of this during the time of apartheid involving boycotts, there is a relative scarcity of these XCR-30s in the used market here in the USA.  While we may sell multiples of some radio models in the period of a year, we average only about one of these radios each year as they are much less common.

Using the 30" telescopic antenna is fine for most general use whether in the house or outside working on the garden.  Sensitivity is actually amazing considering the rather short antenna length and we heard signals on the 20 meter band.  However, we attached an external antenna to test the radio and were quite impressed with the extra signal grabbing that approached that of some of the desktop receivers that have passed through our hands.  Specifically, we were able to hear a lot more of amateur radio operators in sideband and this requires excellent sensitivity to grab these weaker signals.  Thus, with this XCR-30, you have a nice portable radio that you can carry around the house, but if you require a good radio for an emergency, you can connect it to an external antenna (or even just wind a piece of wire around the telescopic antenna) for even better sensitivity.  There is a 3.5mm input on the left side of the radio to attach an external antenna.

This XCR-30 requires 6 D cell batteries for operation (not provided) and comes with:

Reception using the XCR-30 ranges from 500 KHz up through 30 MHz covered in 30 bands of 1 MHz.  Keep in mind that with Wadley loop circuit radios, tuning requires a couple of steps as you first need to tune on the MHz dial, peak the antenna trim until you hear band noise rise, and then tune in a signal on the KHz dial.  Once you get a signal, you go back and peak both the MHz and antenna trim.  If tuned properly....the reception is excellent and the radio performs marvelously well.  If you care to see another XCR-30 radio being tuned and in operation, you can watch this YouTube video that we have created about 10 years ago for the purpose of demonstrating its performance.  We hope you'll be fine with watching another XCR-30 as a representative of the operation found on this unit (copy and paste link into your internet browser):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pg46dgUwn6g  

Operation requires 6 D cell batteries.  There is a provision for an AC adapter to be utilized, but we have never seen one accompany the XCR-30 and few people would use one since this radio seems to operate for months as it sips power from alkaline batteries.

We have used these XCR-30 receivers and know how well they deliver signals.  They were produced in the early 70's through the late 70's in South Africa using Dr. Trevor Wadley invention coined the Wadley Loop.  The shortwave receivers of the day were not very stable and typically there was a certain amount of drift when tuned into a station.   You can imagine how annoying or even frustrating this can be to have to re-tune the circuit from time to time, especially on military frequencies or weak signals.   In considering this problem, Dr. Wadley invented a drift cancelling loop that used triple conversion circuitry to achieve its goal of exceptional stability.  This was a leap forward in receiver design and for about 25 years, this was considered state of the art technology.   So advanced was this technology when applied to the XCR-30, that it allowed the user to zero into a frequency within 5 or 10 KHz.  In today's digital readout technology standard, this may not seem like much of an accomplishment, but back then, this was considered outstanding for an analog portable receiver.

You can read a brief bio of Dr. Wadley here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trevor_Wadley  (please copy and paste this link into your browser window)

Or a description in detail of the famed "Wadley Loop" here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20170704162631/http://www.qsl.net/vk3jeg/b_wadley.html  (please copy and paste this link into your browser window)

It is also important to mention that the other receivers known to utilize the Barlow Wadley Loop design...the R*acals, the FRG*7's and the XCR-30's...are all very sensitive receivers.  Today we tend to think in terms of newer is better...certainly in some ways this could be true.  However, the Wadley Loop is a very sensitive circuit and there have been DXing expeditions when the XCR-30 was reported to have received a station when the sophisticated newer receivers only got a heterodyne of the signal.   Another outstanding feature of the XCR-30 is that the battery drain is a very low 25ma to 35ma so that users of this radio will find that replacing the batteries is done infrequently. 

We have tried to give as much info about this XCR-30 and about the Barlow Wadley radio in general as seemed reasonable.  If you have any questions, we would be happy to try to answer them. 

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