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Stryker 955 carrier on SSB

5

543_Dallas

Sr. Member
Jul 25, 2011
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I couldn't find any info on this issue so I thought I'd share what I found. To make long story short the radio had a carrier on SSB when the RF power on the faceplate was turned up past 10:00 or so. When you remove the bottom cover all was well. If you even hovered the cover over the bottom of the rig you got a carrier. I finally used a smaller cover from a cobra 25 and narrowed down the location. I found one of the enclosures on the board not soldered to ground. First I added the ground strap you see in the pic below and the issue improved. I ended up having to solder the little pads by making an extension for my soldering iron with some spare solid copper wire. Once the pads were soldered to the boxes it works fine. The issue still pops up if I drop way down to 25mhz where the swr is well over 5:1 but no issue on a dummy load.


 

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Needs an alignment. No carrier is supposed to be present in the sideband mode. Get the alignment procedure and get it tuned properly. It sounds like a "Technician" got in there and if the signal went up they maxed it out.
The procedure is on CBTRICKS.COM. If you don't have the tools to do the alignment send it out for repair and alignment.
 
Tallman said:
Needs an alignment. No carrier is supposed to be present in the sideband mode. Get the alignment procedure and get it tuned properly. It sounds like a "Technician" got in there and if the signal went up they maxed it out.
The procedure is on CBTRICKS.COM. If you don't have the tools to do the alignment send it out for repair and alignment.
Click to expand...

Did you actually read my post or just the title? It doesn't need an alignment. No one has tampered with the radio besides me. How would an alignment help if it all goes to crap when you but the lid back on? The carrier it was producing was about 1mhz down. You could actually talk on it this way and the person you were talking to would never see the carrier. The waveform on SSB and AM was distorted because of poor shielding. I don't know if this is a common problem or this one got rushed through but the radio works great now.

If it hadn't been for this issue all the radio would have needed out of the box is the conversion. A peak & tune or alignment is a waste of money even if I had that done by a shop this could have very well been missed if they didn't re-test it with the bottom cover on. I was a little skeptical at first because the thing looks like something a trucker would buy at the chrome shop. I am impressed with the stability and audio quality. The knobs are a little flimsy and the controls take some getting used to, but overall it seems to be a decent rig...for an export
 
Agreed on the oscillation. An alignment could fix that. Being One Megahertz off frequency and a sensitivity to RF or microphone position definitely sounds like a parasitic oscillation.
I bought a Magnum S-44hp for $50.00 because the owner had an oscillation due to audio feedback. Talk back and echo turned up full blast caused it. Not a problem since.
 
Last edited:
I knew it was a ground issue as soon as I read the first few lines about the cover. Glad you got it figured out. So now that you have it fixed how do you like that rig? I've gotten bit by the the "Want a New Toy Bug" so far the 955 is scratchin my itch.
 
Dipole said:
I knew it was a ground issue as soon as I read the first few lines about the cover. Glad you got it figured out. So now that you have it fixed how do you like that rig? I've gotten bit by the the "Want a New Toy Bug" so far the 955 is scratchin my itch.
Click to expand...

So far so good. Everything I read in the cbradio magazine review seems to be accurate. All power levels are set to spec except the AM high power. I set the max deadkey to 10 watts instead of the specified 15. A little more headroom makes the waveform look nicer. I had a long QSO with a local SSB operator and it is very stable. I just talked to some guys on FM and one of them says the audio is too quiet but he's one of those D104 cranked to 10 guys. I tried a few other FM rigs and he said they were all too quiet...I'm pretty sure they're all OK.

I like the clarifiers because I can adjust the sensitivity of them. The frequency counter does not respond to the fine clarifier. That's not a big deal because you can lock or unlock it in the function menu The fine can be set to track receive, transmit or both. The coarse clarifier tracks TX & RX and has no stops, you can keep turning it and slide all over the bands. It's not the radio for the guys that like to moan about others not being dead on freq.
 
Thanks for the review. I saw the CRM video and a few others but for the most part I put as much stock in them as I do 1600 PA ave telling the truth. A few more pokes from the Stryker Stick and I'll give it up like Little MJRC after 2 beers at a Rodeo Dance. I'll need to get another 20 amp PS first though to handle everything in the shack.
 
Sorry dumb question, when some mentioned no carrier is supposed to be heard on ssb what does that mean?

I had mine on Am ssb usb or lsb forgot which, and found it strange that i could hear a guy on the regular cb channel voice. I asked him if he had ssb and he said no, just a cobra 29.
 
Limeybastard said:
Sorry dumb question, when some mentioned no carrier is supposed to be heard on ssb what does that mean?

I had mine on Am ssb usb or lsb forgot which, and found it strange that i could hear a guy on the regular cb channel voice. I asked him if he had ssb and he said no, just a cobra 29.
Click to expand...

You could hear him because you were still on the same frequency (channel), just a different mode. In the AM mode you transmit an upper side band and a lower side band with a carrier (deadkey) between them.

When you key your mic on AM you transmit 4 watts of carrier cbers refer to it as deadkey. When you key your mic on side band there is no power output until you speak into the microphone because there is no carrier. A ssb signal is an am signal without a carrier and only a single sideband.

https://goo.gl/images/rhOIc6
Here is a link to a visual reference. https://goo.gl/images/rhOIc6
 
543_Dallas said:
You could hear him because you were still on the same frequency (channel), just a different mode. In the AM mode you transmit an upper side band and a lower side band with a carrier (deadkey) between them.

When you key your mic on AM you transmit 4 watts of carrier cbers refer to it as deadkey. When you key your mic on side band there is no power output until you speak into the microphone because there is no carrier. A ssb signal is an am signal without a carrier and only a single sideband.

Here is a link to a visual reference. https://goo.gl/images/rhOIc6
Click to expand...


Cheers, so the dial knob has AM in center, lets say im on channel 38 on AM setting on CB 27.385Mhz it shows on counter. If i then turn the AM dial to lsb or usb the same frequency shows and i think the person local with strong signal is also heard. Correct?
 
I just re-read your post and also looked at the image. So by viewing that image going straight to ssb mode will still show and hear current channel frequency unless one clarifies upmor down. Meaning that behaviour i heard was normal when switching straight to usb or lsb without making frequency adjustments via the CLA dial knob.
 

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