Dragon 10m radio.....

[WX2MIG]

While at my buddy's electronics shop today, I happened to notice a new in the box 10m radio in the display cabinet. Asked about it and his brother told me he ordered it for a customer 3 years ago, and the guy decided he didn't want it.

It's called a "Dragon", and it was made in the Phillipines, it has USB, LSB, AM, and FM. Memories, scan, VFO with adjustable frequency shift, clarifier, RF gain, Mic gain, digital readout.....in other words this isn't one of those "export" CB's, it's very much like the old President HR2510 I used to have, but this one has FM.

Tomorrow if the weather isn't too crappy I'll build an antenna for it, and see what it'll do.....

BTW.....they let me have it for $100.00.....it was a little hard to walk away from it at that price when they sell for $400.00 new.....

 

[fnkycoldmedina]

post a picture.i know i,d like to see it .

 

[Wire Weasel]

Hope you like it Tony, it does sound like a 2510 clone and they're decent little radios.

I would add that the 2510's had FM also and they were an export CB, just a little harder to modify. If they were 10 only, then they would not have been modifyable to get 11 meters.

One of the Radio Shack mobile, I think the HTX 100 or HTX 10, whatever it was called, it could not be modified so it was truly a 10 meter only mobile.

good luck!

 

[WX2MIG]

WW.....

That's right the 2510 did have FM now that I think about it, the confusion on my part was the fact that at the time I couldn't use the FM portion of the band.
The 2510 also had a CW key jack if I remember right, the Dragon SS-497 does not.
I also failed to mention this is a QRP radio, only 4 watts on AM & FM, 12 watts SSB. I think the 2510 had a little more output power than that.....
This radio isn't channeled, it has a full functioning VFO, and I get the impression it was built as a 10m only rig, but I could be wrong about that.

Got my hands full here between messing with this 10m rig, and trying to get the Kenwood running, but I'll try and get a decent photo up sometime tomorrow.......

I spend my evening building a 10m dipole, if this weather lets up a little tomorrow I'll try and jack it up into one of the trees. Got a moderate snow falling right now, and it's supposed to turn to sleet & ice during the night, so it's anybody's guess what I'll find out there in the morning.....

 

[Highlander_821]

Does the Dragon look anything like the Magnum 257?

 

[WX2MIG]

Does the Dragon look anything like the Magnum 257?

Don't know what that one looks like Highlander, but I'll be snapping a photo here shortly, and post it up in a few......

Got my 10m dipole up in a tree this morning, got a 1.2:1 SWR match on it, reception improved 10 fold over the VHF Marine antenna I plugged into it yesterday, heard a couple of guys rag chewing on 28.400 USB, but couldn't raise either one. Power meter seems to work, SWR meter works, but when I set it to Modulation I can't seem to raise the needle no matter where I set the mic gain. The radio indicates Tx when I key down, but I'm not sure it's actually Tx'ing.
Later today I'll have a couple of friends in the area give me a check, so I'll know by then if it's working or not......

BTW.....10 meters sure is quiet these days......

 

[WX2MIG]

Here they are fellas......Dragon SS-497+ photo's......tell me what I got....

Close up......

 

[fnkycoldmedina]

oh ,its a base unit .nice score.can it be converted to cb channels?or does it do that already.?
at first glance it looks like the cherokee base station.nice looking radio.

 

[cbradiomagazine.com]

What you have there is a export 10 meter radio - also the same as the Eagle Tomahawk and Comanche Warrior.

The same radio body is used on the Cherokee CBS-1000 CB radio as well.

Not really a "true" 10 meter ham radio - most often they are converted for extra frequenices and used on the CB band.

They have some nice features like the memory buttons and stuff and $100 isn't bad for a AM/FM/SSB radio, but it's not going to impress any of the other 10 meter operators in terms of transmit quality.

Radio Review

 

[Moleculo]

The radio is sorta like a base version of a Titan Roadpro (if anyone remembers that radio). It came in a few different brand names, as was already mentioned.

Here's a document with the alignment procedures, as well as a few mods.

 

[949Jake]

I had an Eagle Tomahawk that I ran for about 6 months. I liked it, but no one else really did. My Tomahawk had very low audio, which was remedied by using a D104. I bet a Turner +3 would do the trick too, but I did not have one at that time. I liked it because of the memory functions and I seem to remember that it had the weather channel but maybe I'm mistaken. It eventually quit working all together on me and I sold it for parts. They are very cheaply made and pretty much nobody liked the sound of it, but I did enjoy the radio when I had it.

 

[Captain Kilowatt]

What you have there is a export 10 meter radio - also the same as the Eagle Tomahawk and Comanche Warrior.

The same radio body is used on the Cherokee CBS-1000 CB radio as well.

Not really a "true" 10 meter ham radio - most often they are converted for extra frequenices and used on the CB band.

They have some nice features like the memory buttons and stuff and $100 isn't bad for a AM/FM/SSB radio, but it's not going to impress any of the other 10 meter operators in terms of transmit quality.

Radio Review

You beat me to it. I was going to say that a friend of mine has a Dragon SS-497 and it is actually a Cherokee CBS-1000 under a differant name. I believe the Dragons were made by a German company.They will cover quite a range below and above the regular CB band as well as into 10m.

 

[Robb]

Nice radio N2ITH!
Now yu can wire up that D104 and make that radio start to talk.

 

[WX2MIG]

Thanks for the input guys, I never thought I had anything super special here, but whatever I have came cheap, so I ran with it.

Spent some time today trying to make some local contacts from a dipole antenna, but with only 12 watts on USB I wasn't doing much. If I'm going to get anything out of this rig I'll need a vertical with a couple db of gain because the radio isn't going to throw much heat....

The instructions were deffinitely written someone Asian, and their english translation leaves a lot to be desired, and I also got the impression from these poorly worded instructions that this radio is an export CB of marginal quality.

They tell you to run the mic gain all the way up, and the repeater shift is set for 600Khz, the only two 10m FM repeaters around here have a 100Khz shift, and I can't figure out how to change it on here beyond programing both frequencies into memory, and flipping back and forth......

The mic has up & down buttons so the plug is a 6 pin, if I wire the D-104 I'll have to get another plug, but right now it's nice to sit back and flick through the band using the mic.....

 

[Robb]

So tells us about your dipole. It doesn't perform well? How high up is it? Is the only way to channel up/down found only on the mic?

If the radio adjusts the freq as well (as it should), then I would definitely hook up that fine D104 and get some real modulation from that radio. Sure would help it out a bunch. I bet that the shop that sold you that radio would help you wire it up to that radio - no problemmo! Or they can just tell you which mic wire/color goes to what radio plug/pinout - that's enough too.

If the dipole is horizontal; maybe putting it up vertical may be the best and cheapest mod that you could do w/o spending another dime until you get your real antenna. Unless you don't have enough coax.
As far as half-waves go; it is the one antenna that doesn't require a counterpoise/ground plane to operate efficiently - if I'm not mistaken.

The rule that I remember from the first days on the band were:
1) The best antenna/radiator you can afford
2) Antenna as high as you could safely get it and sustain it
3) Good coax
4) The best mic you can afford
5) A fair radio
The radio isn't as high on the priority list as the antenna, height, and coax is. You've already got the best mic and a decent radio.
BTW- I understand that the radio you have is capable of 450 channels - not including SSB. That is pretty awesome all on its own. I'll bet that you can make that 4-15 watt schwiiinng by turning that horizontal dipole vertical if you can get it up to sixty feet from tip to ground!
Bet ya!