Sidebar Sidebar
  • You can now help support WorldwideDX when you shop on Amazon at no additional cost to you! Simply follow this Shop on Amazon link first and a portion of any purchase is sent to WorldwideDX to help with site costs.

New User Introduction. Few CB questions.

D

doffo

Well-Known Member
Oct 14, 2012
235
162
53
Hello! :)

Been surfing this forum for a few months now and figured it's time that I joined up. I have been interested in radios since I was a kid, and kept them with me to this day. I first started on my father's CB radio he had, and it's been grown ever since. Already have my ham radio license as well to get access to all the HF stuff, but from time to time I jump back to CB so me and some friends can just ragchew and mess with them.

At the moment, I bought a Grant XL and a Cobra 148 (older 90s models) of the radio since after doing some reading it sounds like they are built pretty good.

My question is, I wanted to lower the deadkey on them to about 1.5 watts and maybe get 12ish watts swing. I don't want to drive the mosfet too hard, but how hard is it to sit there and tune the radio. Any tutorial on how to adjust the radio's deadkey?

Thanks. Hoping to be around the forums as long as I got my CBs.
 

I believe they have the C1969 Mitsubishi mosfets. I just wanted to see if it were possible to adjust some stuff about the radio. :) Not going to change anything if it's too impossible.
 
Yup your radio's have the old school 1969 final which is not a mosfet. That's just fine, I actually prefer the older finals. Below is a link for the adjustments for your radio's. That said unless you have the right equipment and know how I would leave things alone. You can really jack a radio all up if you turn things the wrong way.

Cobra 148GTL
 
Thanks! I stand corrected ;) I looked up the radio again, and yea it wasnt a mosfet based radio. But either way, so far just happy with the radio. Lots of DXing on channel 39 LSB.
 
Those schematics and manuals would be a great start point, but after googling for awhile, I wasn't able to find some straightforward steps. I know some have their own methods, but I just wanted to lower my deadkey to 1.5 watts, and try to adjust the radio to get about 12 watts swing on both SSB and AM if it's even possible.

Thanks again, looking to learn more about the Cobra 148 / Grant XL.
 
The Grant xl and Cobra 148 are outstanding radio's, and they are low powered radio's. VR10 I think is AM carrier and VR11 is SSB power. You can run the SSB power up to whatever it will do which might be 16-18 watts. Just don't mess with other things in there, you can really mess things up.
 
Lol, thanks for the more replys. For sure I will not go in and change much about it. Radio does work good. Just curious if I could just pump up the AM to about 12 watts swing, but wanted a 1 1/2 deadkey. I could back down the deadkey, but would it still just output 4 watts since thats what it's designed to do?
 
The 4 watt thing is dead key power, right out of the box a Grant xl will swing 6-8 watts. After a tune and alignment 12-14 watts on AM is the norm. I would leave that to a qualified tech to do though.

To be honest though you won't be kicking any butt with 4 extra watts. Each time you double your peak power you gain 1/2 of an "S" unit on the person you are talking to's receive meter.

Your best bet with your radio's would be to get a KL-203 from RM Italy. If your going to have your radio's tuned by a good tech then have extra channels added as well.
 
Funny that you mention the RM Italy 203... I was looking at that same exact amp! :)

Though I can't find any for sale at the moment, the guy over at Amazon is selling the KM 200 version. Has the blue case, but looks exactly like the 203...

What's the differences?

:D
 

dxChat
Help Users
  • No one is chatting at the moment.


      Top Bottom
      Back