That's a great tip Needle Bender, Thanks, I have a PDC 3 meter meter and the watt meter does jump around too much I'm going to give that a try
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Cobra 148GTL VS. Galaxy DX-949
- Thread starter CTStallion
- Start date
I don't know what capacitance will be needed for your watt meter, but a 470 microfarad inside the radio on the back of it's own meter is about right.
If you put it on a switch you can put it back to fast for AM.
If you put it on a switch you can put it back to fast for AM.
I have a few different value ones here I'll give them all a try to see which one I like the best
The higher the capacitance the slower it will move & recover. Perhaps a 3 position switch for fast, med, slow because sometimes slow is too slow when someone strong is talking with someone weak and the recovery time is too long to hear the weak station after the stronger one un-keys. On the medium position you could have a variable resistor across the cap so you can set it to help bleed off the voltage in the cap and recover faster.
Old but still very relevant since these radios are still available from Galaxy. Truth be told you would have to give me a modern SSB CB or Galaxy beit type accepted or not. No radio that has SSB and drifts as badly as they do is acceptable in my book. It is like a combat rifle that does not go bang when you squeeze the trigger. No one seems able to make the Galaxy Radio's stabil on SSB which to me makes them the most expensive junk or boat anchors you can buy in a box. You could also call them 2 Way Radio Like Objects when discussing SSB.
It boggles my mind that they could have this problem for over 15 years easily maybe longer and still not have addressed the issue. I understand all the old Tech's and Truck stop butcher's like the fact that the boards are not surface mount so they can still work on them but come on????
I have no issues with their AM only products since I would never buy them and they do not drift from what I understand.
What really boggles my mind is that they can sell this junk buy tossing gimmicky junk like talk back, echo, 400+ watts at this tired badly flawed board with out actually fixing it's short comings!!! Again on AM only models it is a nice board with nice audio and good recieve that is easy to work on and modify I get that!
I talk on SSB a lot almost 100% like 98% SSB and nothing is worse then when someone with a modern SSB rig shows up wandering all over the place because their unit has more drift then a kit in spring time! It is 99.999% of the time a Galaxy,Connex or RCI non-RCI-2950/2970 radio. Normally butchered to the point of being a splatter box as well.
As much money as RCI has made off the Galaxy line they can afford to design them to be less prone to drifting badly on SSB. They could also put big lables on the radio inside saying " Do not cut this part out or you will have a splatter box" etc......LOL
I do not have a problem with people owning illegal radio's or too much power etc.......I do though expect radio's to operate properly. When a design is so flawed that even from the factory it is out of spec. routinely something is wrong!
So in the above the Uniden Grant XL would have won in my book. I owned one and modified about 300-500 of them and their Cobra counter part over a 2-3 year period. They where 10X the radio from a type rated FCC SSB radio functioning out of the box stand point!
1) First with the glut of transistorized and tube amps on the market who cares about 1 final versus the ability to easily do a 2 final mod? A properly working 2SC1969 should be able to do a lot better then 20 watt's cleanly on SSB plus even if you doubled the power output from say 20-32 watt's to 40 or so watt's who care's? It is not significant from a db or S-unit stand point.
2) You can easily get 3 times the legal limit on AM for a FCC type rated radio with the single final 2SC1969 and it does not make much of a difference. Better to turn the unit down and buy a 667 or the like then mess around playing around with money and time for meger watts out of the radio itself.
3) Either unit can be expanded for added Freq. or Super Swing or more power but when comparing Type rated FCC CB radio's them doing what they are designed to do out of the box should come first! The Galaxy radios borrowed their designs from the Cybernet Export designs with regard to the AM modulation audio design as did the Cobra 148/Uniden Grant XL so no big surprise they both sound great on AM they copied a good Am audio design to begin with.
By the time you buy all the upgrade/mod parts and then pay someone to install them you could have bought a RCI 2970DX or the like and had more power, great audio, rock steady SSB, more coverage ie bandwidth and not had to even take the cover off the radio! If you did not need 100+ watts you could get the RCI-2950DX at $248 which is a bargain......It had great AM audio, great SSB audio and stability, as much power or more as a dual final modified Galaxy 949 and has far more band width again what a bargain price!
Oh and yes I know a lot of us do a lot of our own work. If you get a Less Comm expansion model you are looking at $55-$89 depending on the model, $129 for a 949 factor in $15 for another final and another $50 for all the wire and caps and resistors and shipping on those parts assuming you do not keep such things on hand because you do not repair radios for a living the RCI-2950 is an even better deal! Shipping is a killer when looking at the cost of a mod done at home.
So I do not get it why by an old outdated board with known flaws, that is under powered for your needs because it is FCC type accepted CB and lacking in bandwidth??? This is before we ever get to the SSB drift issue which to date has no real solution even putting a wheat lamp on the SSB crystal filter does not fix the problem! You would be better off to by a radio with out those flaws that is closer to what you need from the factory!
None of my FCC type accepted or rated CB radio's has been modified other then to give them a proper alignment and some have no ever had their cover's off at all. If I need more power I can buy an amp and if I need more band width I can buy a radio with that band width far cheaper then paying someone to modify a radio and buying mod parts for it.
I do understand no one builds a good SSB CB that is durable, steady on freq., solid AM and SSB audio and easy to mod for more band width! Uniden has their latest toy but really if it not a significant improvement over the Uniden Grant why bother might as well not even bring it to market! Not heard enough about it to know if it is a good thing or not yet??
Nothing personal either but I am a hard critic when it comes to type accepted SSB radios which is why I do not own a modern one currently mine are all vintage. I own 3 vintage 40 channel SSB radio's once had 4 but someone stole my Grant out of the Tractor Trailer. So I take SSB rigs seriously since that is where I do 99% of my talking. Their are plenty of good AM rigs not a lot of SSB rigs!
It boggles my mind that they could have this problem for over 15 years easily maybe longer and still not have addressed the issue. I understand all the old Tech's and Truck stop butcher's like the fact that the boards are not surface mount so they can still work on them but come on????
I have no issues with their AM only products since I would never buy them and they do not drift from what I understand.
What really boggles my mind is that they can sell this junk buy tossing gimmicky junk like talk back, echo, 400+ watts at this tired badly flawed board with out actually fixing it's short comings!!! Again on AM only models it is a nice board with nice audio and good recieve that is easy to work on and modify I get that!
I talk on SSB a lot almost 100% like 98% SSB and nothing is worse then when someone with a modern SSB rig shows up wandering all over the place because their unit has more drift then a kit in spring time! It is 99.999% of the time a Galaxy,Connex or RCI non-RCI-2950/2970 radio. Normally butchered to the point of being a splatter box as well.
As much money as RCI has made off the Galaxy line they can afford to design them to be less prone to drifting badly on SSB. They could also put big lables on the radio inside saying " Do not cut this part out or you will have a splatter box" etc......LOL
I do not have a problem with people owning illegal radio's or too much power etc.......I do though expect radio's to operate properly. When a design is so flawed that even from the factory it is out of spec. routinely something is wrong!
So in the above the Uniden Grant XL would have won in my book. I owned one and modified about 300-500 of them and their Cobra counter part over a 2-3 year period. They where 10X the radio from a type rated FCC SSB radio functioning out of the box stand point!
1) First with the glut of transistorized and tube amps on the market who cares about 1 final versus the ability to easily do a 2 final mod? A properly working 2SC1969 should be able to do a lot better then 20 watt's cleanly on SSB plus even if you doubled the power output from say 20-32 watt's to 40 or so watt's who care's? It is not significant from a db or S-unit stand point.
2) You can easily get 3 times the legal limit on AM for a FCC type rated radio with the single final 2SC1969 and it does not make much of a difference. Better to turn the unit down and buy a 667 or the like then mess around playing around with money and time for meger watts out of the radio itself.
3) Either unit can be expanded for added Freq. or Super Swing or more power but when comparing Type rated FCC CB radio's them doing what they are designed to do out of the box should come first! The Galaxy radios borrowed their designs from the Cybernet Export designs with regard to the AM modulation audio design as did the Cobra 148/Uniden Grant XL so no big surprise they both sound great on AM they copied a good Am audio design to begin with.
By the time you buy all the upgrade/mod parts and then pay someone to install them you could have bought a RCI 2970DX or the like and had more power, great audio, rock steady SSB, more coverage ie bandwidth and not had to even take the cover off the radio! If you did not need 100+ watts you could get the RCI-2950DX at $248 which is a bargain......It had great AM audio, great SSB audio and stability, as much power or more as a dual final modified Galaxy 949 and has far more band width again what a bargain price!
Oh and yes I know a lot of us do a lot of our own work. If you get a Less Comm expansion model you are looking at $55-$89 depending on the model, $129 for a 949 factor in $15 for another final and another $50 for all the wire and caps and resistors and shipping on those parts assuming you do not keep such things on hand because you do not repair radios for a living the RCI-2950 is an even better deal! Shipping is a killer when looking at the cost of a mod done at home.
So I do not get it why by an old outdated board with known flaws, that is under powered for your needs because it is FCC type accepted CB and lacking in bandwidth??? This is before we ever get to the SSB drift issue which to date has no real solution even putting a wheat lamp on the SSB crystal filter does not fix the problem! You would be better off to by a radio with out those flaws that is closer to what you need from the factory!
None of my FCC type accepted or rated CB radio's has been modified other then to give them a proper alignment and some have no ever had their cover's off at all. If I need more power I can buy an amp and if I need more band width I can buy a radio with that band width far cheaper then paying someone to modify a radio and buying mod parts for it.
I do understand no one builds a good SSB CB that is durable, steady on freq., solid AM and SSB audio and easy to mod for more band width! Uniden has their latest toy but really if it not a significant improvement over the Uniden Grant why bother might as well not even bring it to market! Not heard enough about it to know if it is a good thing or not yet??
Nothing personal either but I am a hard critic when it comes to type accepted SSB radios which is why I do not own a modern one currently mine are all vintage. I own 3 vintage 40 channel SSB radio's once had 4 but someone stole my Grant out of the Tractor Trailer. So I take SSB rigs seriously since that is where I do 99% of my talking. Their are plenty of good AM rigs not a lot of SSB rigs!
Got that right ElectronTubesRule. I have a local guy that gives us the real deal about frequency. If I use a Magnum or RCI he says nothing and we just have a nice QSO, anytime I had any of my Galaxy radios he could tell right away because they would all drift quite a bit and the annoying part was it would go like to 3 oclock on the clairfier at first then I would be chasing it the other way to the point the clairfier is at the 9 oclock position, then if I stopped talking I would have to do that all over again, what kind of SSB radio is that? Junk from where I come from.
As much money as Galaxy made off their own line of radios they could afford to pay Ranger to design the board but if they sell and they make money, why change things???
EXACTLY if people keep buying them why change, anybody on the road loves the Galaxy radio for the big meter and kicking audio. Most over the road guys could care less about drifting SSB that's why the Galaxy radios just keep selling. I had a Ranger 6900F, great recieve, great audio but the same with the drifting, if that radio had a CPU controlled channel I would still have it I really liked that radio a lot.
I have a 949 and several side-mic 148GTL radios and can say the 949 isn't a bad rig, filled with gingerbread and has a much larger, more easily readable S-meter, but overall it just "feels" cheap by comparison and has much more high-pitched audio than the 148s, which is what I believe gives them a somewhat louder image, the lack of bass in the audio allowing more mids & highs punch.
Now, surprisingly, this one seems not to drift all that much but it just doesn't seem to be quite the workhorse the 148s are, even though it has a good amount more power output than the 148s,
- 18w vs 30w pep.
I like it, but when it comes down to only taking one radio with me when the excrement flies, it will be the 148 not the 949.
But I don't think they are worlds apart, only a county or two.
Now, surprisingly, this one seems not to drift all that much but it just doesn't seem to be quite the workhorse the 148s are, even though it has a good amount more power output than the 148s,
- 18w vs 30w pep.
I like it, but when it comes down to only taking one radio with me when the excrement flies, it will be the 148 not the 949.
But I don't think they are worlds apart, only a county or two.
Good to see this old thread revived. The fight goes on....
I have owned a Galaxy DX959 and DX2547. Loved the features, hated the drift. And this was using both in the house in Texas. No major temp fluctuations to blame it on, it was the rig(s). Alignments didn't help, because they would change on their own. Once day, turn the rig on, it's receiving at 27.383. Or .384. Or .387. Transmitting might be the same, or on frequency...you just never knew. I operate 99% SSB, so this was no good to me, and both radios were sold.
I don't have a Cobra 148, but do have two Grant XL's with the same board as the Cobra. They are very stable SSB rigs, and I like them a lot. If the Galaxy had the stability of the Grant, I would prefer the Galaxy just because of the big meter. Very easy to see/read from a distance, and is real nice if in a mobile installation.
I agree with what has been said, Galaxy is laughing all the way to the bank. Why fix it if they are selling boat loads of the things?
73,
RT307
I have owned a Galaxy DX959 and DX2547. Loved the features, hated the drift. And this was using both in the house in Texas. No major temp fluctuations to blame it on, it was the rig(s). Alignments didn't help, because they would change on their own. Once day, turn the rig on, it's receiving at 27.383. Or .384. Or .387. Transmitting might be the same, or on frequency...you just never knew. I operate 99% SSB, so this was no good to me, and both radios were sold.
I don't have a Cobra 148, but do have two Grant XL's with the same board as the Cobra. They are very stable SSB rigs, and I like them a lot. If the Galaxy had the stability of the Grant, I would prefer the Galaxy just because of the big meter. Very easy to see/read from a distance, and is real nice if in a mobile installation.
I agree with what has been said, Galaxy is laughing all the way to the bank. Why fix it if they are selling boat loads of the things?
73,
RT307
I was in my favorite radio shop on Friday for a few hours, in comes this real real nice truck driver having issues with his Galaxy 959. The radio tech does some work to it for a recieve issue, working great, then he askes the driver " Do You Use This On Sideband" The driver said no so I guess there was an issue with the Sideband on that one too.
Local tech at Kilgore's tells me the components are not up to snuff in the Galaxy's for stable sideband operation. He keeps talking about them "FM'ing", which I don't know what that stands for (I know it's not frequency modulation), but describes it as what I call warbling. I hear it a lot when guys are talking, especially when they talk louder, and it changes their transmit frequency.
Mike always tells me to hang on to my Grants because they don't make 'em like that anymore.
73,
RT307
Mike always tells me to hang on to my Grants because they don't make 'em like that anymore.
73,
RT307
While it is true that many Galaxy radios have SSB drift; sometimes I think people have made too much of it. On this subject, I am just as guilty of knocking these radios and perhaps taking it a bit too far as well. I still have/use a Galaxy DX 99V in my car to this day and use it on SSB almost 100% of the time over a four-year period.
So long as this radio has enough time to stabilize, it works very well. Mine usually takes between 5-10 minutes to settle down. On AM, this is a non-issue. But their SSB performance depends entirely on your climate and where you live. I live on the West Coast in San Jose; the climate here doesn't change as much as say - Ohio or N.Dakota. So long as the environment is kept even and relatively warm, these Galaxy radios are superb - IMO. But I can see and understand how someone in Idaho or Maine would hate these radios - especially if they cannot use them in their cars or in a too-breezy radio room. While someone using one in San Diego think it is the neatest thing since sliced bread. Both are right.
A bad radio overall?
No; not really.
Temperature dependent performance?
Yup.
So long as this radio has enough time to stabilize, it works very well. Mine usually takes between 5-10 minutes to settle down. On AM, this is a non-issue. But their SSB performance depends entirely on your climate and where you live. I live on the West Coast in San Jose; the climate here doesn't change as much as say - Ohio or N.Dakota. So long as the environment is kept even and relatively warm, these Galaxy radios are superb - IMO. But I can see and understand how someone in Idaho or Maine would hate these radios - especially if they cannot use them in their cars or in a too-breezy radio room. While someone using one in San Diego think it is the neatest thing since sliced bread. Both are right.
A bad radio overall?
No; not really.
Temperature dependent performance?
Yup.
****Length Edited for content ****
Ummm,...Can you please explain how any radio can be better for local or dx?
Are you saying different radios put out a different angle of radiation somehow???
I think it has more to do with the antenna and ground plane provided, than the radio.
Frankenstein
I restored an older 148 that I bought at Dayton a few years back. It took several parts rigs to get it running, stuff like an IF can, slugs for other IF cans, knobs, new caps and some cosmetics like the face....
About old face panel, it was drilled for what reason I do not know?? Here is the kicker, on the inside of the face it said RANGER!!! :blink:
I am sure this 148 was built in the Spring of 1994 as the PLL says 9405, the main board has EPTO14811 on it and the stamp on the rear aluminum panel say MALAYSIA.
Has the huge white heat sink insulators, over size main crystal and everything else looks normal! Now that it is restored it works great!
I gave it a name.... Frankenstein.... as it is made up of many parts from other rigs to bring it back to life! Can hardly see the bolts in his neck! <can not stand it>
73 mechanic
I restored an older 148 that I bought at Dayton a few years back. It took several parts rigs to get it running, stuff like an IF can, slugs for other IF cans, knobs, new caps and some cosmetics like the face....
About old face panel, it was drilled for what reason I do not know?? Here is the kicker, on the inside of the face it said RANGER!!! :blink:
I am sure this 148 was built in the Spring of 1994 as the PLL says 9405, the main board has EPTO14811 on it and the stamp on the rear aluminum panel say MALAYSIA.
Has the huge white heat sink insulators, over size main crystal and everything else looks normal! Now that it is restored it works great!
I gave it a name.... Frankenstein.... as it is made up of many parts from other rigs to bring it back to life! Can hardly see the bolts in his neck! <can not stand it>
73 mechanic
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