I have had this thing for years!!!!!!! One of my son's friend's father..... used to repair CB radios professionally out of a truck. Did so up until literally they found him in the truck .... gone of a heart attack. He had been working on radios in his yard and his wife and son were gone. I guess it dropped him just like that!!!!! His wife gave Tim a "first chance run" at picking out any of Skip's gear that he wanted....before she sold the truck to a guy Skip knew. This was one of the things in it and Tim gave it to me.
When I first got it I thought "the thing to do" would be go ahead and re-cap it. There aren't but about 5 electrolytic caps in the whole thing so what could it hurt??????
Darned thing hasn't really worked since I did it and I just left it on the shelf.... literally... for years.
I decided to finally face up to it and go find out what was wrong with it. That day... was today!!!!!
It turned out that the main issue was...... some of those pins LOOKED like they were soldered well!!!!! They weren't!!!!!
The thing has 5 different mic sockets on it, 2 - 4 pin and 3 - 5 pin and each individual pin has to be (more or less) bridge soldered through the hole to the foil on the PC board. Turns out that one pin on the Cobra 4 pin and the Midland 4 pin were fractured and I had not caught it. Also on the 5 pin Cobra/President the ground pins were tied together but NOT MAKING ground on the PC board.
Anyway, I reinforced all of the affected pins with a little wire and fresh solder, cleaned all the pins with contact cleaner (just because this thing hasn't been used regularly in a LONG time!!!!). Also found the battery way down at 7.4 volts..... which I really don't think is critical as the LM386-1 is spec'd for a DC supply of anywhere from 4v to 12v. That said... a fresh battery never hurts.
Anyway, it is back up and 100% now. I checked a Cobra and Midland 4 pin, a Cobra 5 pin, and a Realistic 5 pin DIN and they all worked... including the audio. The last socket I could only check out the switching pins with jumpers and they work.... I'm going to gamble that the audio pin will work since it IS soldered well to the board!!!!!
The funny part looking back.........
When I first started checking it out with a test mic I couldn't get audio to come out anywhere. After chasing that all through the schematic I finally got smart..... and gave it "the finger". Yep! The "60Hz ambient signal generator" finger.... touching one of the audio pads.... and got the buzz of my life out of the speaker. At THAT POINT my attention turned to the test mic..... and I found that IT had a DEAD MIC ELEMENT!!!!!!!!!
As Eric Von Zipper used to say in all the beach movies (in the 60s!!!).... "Why me???? Why me all the time????"
Anyway it is back up and useful once again!!!!
Just thought I'd share the fun time.
Bob
When I first got it I thought "the thing to do" would be go ahead and re-cap it. There aren't but about 5 electrolytic caps in the whole thing so what could it hurt??????
Darned thing hasn't really worked since I did it and I just left it on the shelf.... literally... for years.
I decided to finally face up to it and go find out what was wrong with it. That day... was today!!!!!
It turned out that the main issue was...... some of those pins LOOKED like they were soldered well!!!!! They weren't!!!!!
The thing has 5 different mic sockets on it, 2 - 4 pin and 3 - 5 pin and each individual pin has to be (more or less) bridge soldered through the hole to the foil on the PC board. Turns out that one pin on the Cobra 4 pin and the Midland 4 pin were fractured and I had not caught it. Also on the 5 pin Cobra/President the ground pins were tied together but NOT MAKING ground on the PC board.
Anyway, I reinforced all of the affected pins with a little wire and fresh solder, cleaned all the pins with contact cleaner (just because this thing hasn't been used regularly in a LONG time!!!!). Also found the battery way down at 7.4 volts..... which I really don't think is critical as the LM386-1 is spec'd for a DC supply of anywhere from 4v to 12v. That said... a fresh battery never hurts.
Anyway, it is back up and 100% now. I checked a Cobra and Midland 4 pin, a Cobra 5 pin, and a Realistic 5 pin DIN and they all worked... including the audio. The last socket I could only check out the switching pins with jumpers and they work.... I'm going to gamble that the audio pin will work since it IS soldered well to the board!!!!!
The funny part looking back.........
When I first started checking it out with a test mic I couldn't get audio to come out anywhere. After chasing that all through the schematic I finally got smart..... and gave it "the finger". Yep! The "60Hz ambient signal generator" finger.... touching one of the audio pads.... and got the buzz of my life out of the speaker. At THAT POINT my attention turned to the test mic..... and I found that IT had a DEAD MIC ELEMENT!!!!!!!!!
As Eric Von Zipper used to say in all the beach movies (in the 60s!!!).... "Why me???? Why me all the time????"
Anyway it is back up and useful once again!!!!
Just thought I'd share the fun time.
Bob
