The Drake ESR324

I picked this receiver up for free in the local paper along with a whole bunch of other neat stuff. The guys wife was making him clean it out which is another reason not to get married, huh? Anyways, this is basically a stripped down ESR240 and it's going to be my backup reciever since it will work with my Drakes LNA and downconverter. As mentioned in the 240 page, the Drakes use a matched reciever and amp unit. When I got it it seemed to work fine but of course, it needed calibrated. All you need to do is open the top and adjust the trimmers inside till the channels shows up as indicated. And the polarity seemed to be out of whack too but it needed to be adjusted inside as well.

Until now I considered the R.L. Drake web page to be technically useless but little did I know they had all kinds of information hidden away under 'Technical Support'>'Transponder'. According to them this was once a very popular receiver and it was a favorite for repairmen to take on housecalls for testing or as a loaner. They have a whole page that gives you troubleshooting and repair tips for all the things that can go wrong with it. Neat!

If you can't figure out how to hook up the 324 then you'd better go out and buy a DSS. It's as simple as it gets: 70mhz in, a TV out and polarotor hookups. And the only switch on the back is the 'Invert' but I miss the 'Skip' feature of the 240. Rotor lag is annoying.

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_{Last updated 8/12/98}