This has taken me way to long to figure out how to do. So, without further delay (hopefully), I wish to thank LooseCannon for everything he has done to my radio!
Last year I asked who should I send my radio to to get work done. I asked about snake custom radios & was quickly told to skip that one for reasons already known. LooseCannon hit me up, told me to check out his posts & consider sending my radio to him for the work I wished to have done. I spent a bit of time checking out his posts, & found that he was a respected member of this forum, & highly knowledgeable. From what I saw, he would be one of the top guys to do the work for me.
He wanted to know what all I was wanting done. A full recap, alignment, extra channels with stock look ( no extra knobs or switches). He agreed, & suggested that I read a thread about higher modulation, for next to nothing.
Price was agreed upon, radio & payment sent off. I had a second Grant Xl that I was using at the time so I wasn't without a radio. Work was done, beautifully I might add. No hack work here! When I got the radio back, I put it in the truck checked the match, & got a buddy to give me a radio check. He wanted to wait until he made it to his base station. While he was headed to his radio shack I swapped the radios out. I wanted a true, unbiased opinion. He gave me a check on the one he had been hearing me on for a while, & said it sounded great, just like all the radios I have had in the past. I told him to give me a few so I could swap the other radio in & he could tell me how that one sounded. When I keyed up again, he told me that the second radio was MUCH louder. The signal was the same, the audio was just so much more. He said I needed to keep that radio, & send the first one back to get fixed, he still thought that the first was the one LooseCannon worked on. He called me a dog for swapping out radios on him after he learned that the second radio was the one all the work had been done to.
Since then, I have had quite a few dx contacts & almost all have told me that the audio is quite loud. I think the best one was a guy in Arizona who told me I needed to get my radio tuned. He was watching his waterfall display & kept telling me that my radio was not as clean as it should be. I finally asked him what radio he thought I was using. He said I was on some export, or an icom that needed work. He fell all over himself taking back what he said after he found out it was an old Grant Xl with a little Texas Star behind it.
So far my best contacts have been all back east, two from Windsor, Ontario, Canada, two from Florida, & so far my best one to date has been 689 in Belize!
Not too bad for an old Grant Xl with a little Texas Star behind it.
The work done was a full recap, full alignment, unlock the clarifier, & PPE (?) Mod resulting in up to 200% positive peak modulation. The hard to deal with green led was removed, & a nicely chosen white led replaced it. That white led is bright enough to see everything in the day, yet not too bright in the middle of the night. That one detail has repeatedly amazed me every long drive I make at night.
I don't have a very good watt meter, it only goes up to 100 watts, so I really can't measure more than the two lowest power levels on the TS. Those are about 50 & 75-85 watts respectively.
LooseCannon, again thank you for the amazing work! I will be sending you another Grant Xl when I have the funds & you have an empty bench.
Last year I asked who should I send my radio to to get work done. I asked about snake custom radios & was quickly told to skip that one for reasons already known. LooseCannon hit me up, told me to check out his posts & consider sending my radio to him for the work I wished to have done. I spent a bit of time checking out his posts, & found that he was a respected member of this forum, & highly knowledgeable. From what I saw, he would be one of the top guys to do the work for me.
He wanted to know what all I was wanting done. A full recap, alignment, extra channels with stock look ( no extra knobs or switches). He agreed, & suggested that I read a thread about higher modulation, for next to nothing.
Price was agreed upon, radio & payment sent off. I had a second Grant Xl that I was using at the time so I wasn't without a radio. Work was done, beautifully I might add. No hack work here! When I got the radio back, I put it in the truck checked the match, & got a buddy to give me a radio check. He wanted to wait until he made it to his base station. While he was headed to his radio shack I swapped the radios out. I wanted a true, unbiased opinion. He gave me a check on the one he had been hearing me on for a while, & said it sounded great, just like all the radios I have had in the past. I told him to give me a few so I could swap the other radio in & he could tell me how that one sounded. When I keyed up again, he told me that the second radio was MUCH louder. The signal was the same, the audio was just so much more. He said I needed to keep that radio, & send the first one back to get fixed, he still thought that the first was the one LooseCannon worked on. He called me a dog for swapping out radios on him after he learned that the second radio was the one all the work had been done to.
Since then, I have had quite a few dx contacts & almost all have told me that the audio is quite loud. I think the best one was a guy in Arizona who told me I needed to get my radio tuned. He was watching his waterfall display & kept telling me that my radio was not as clean as it should be. I finally asked him what radio he thought I was using. He said I was on some export, or an icom that needed work. He fell all over himself taking back what he said after he found out it was an old Grant Xl with a little Texas Star behind it.
So far my best contacts have been all back east, two from Windsor, Ontario, Canada, two from Florida, & so far my best one to date has been 689 in Belize!
Not too bad for an old Grant Xl with a little Texas Star behind it.
The work done was a full recap, full alignment, unlock the clarifier, & PPE (?) Mod resulting in up to 200% positive peak modulation. The hard to deal with green led was removed, & a nicely chosen white led replaced it. That white led is bright enough to see everything in the day, yet not too bright in the middle of the night. That one detail has repeatedly amazed me every long drive I make at night.
I don't have a very good watt meter, it only goes up to 100 watts, so I really can't measure more than the two lowest power levels on the TS. Those are about 50 & 75-85 watts respectively.
LooseCannon, again thank you for the amazing work! I will be sending you another Grant Xl when I have the funds & you have an empty bench.
