5 watt limit question

Under Part 19 in 1958.

They later allowed 4 watts OUT because it was easer the measure that final input. One of the great myths is old radios are better most early radios ran 5 watts INPUT and were lucky to get 3.5 out.

 

There have been several " RULE CHANGES " since 1958 In the mid 60's Part 95 took over from the old PART 19 and any remaining 465 mhz Class A&B Cb became ILLEGAL Today it is know as GMRS/FRS.

In 1976 the Band changed from 23 to 40 ch which is is today.

In the early 80's the requirements for license both to use and work on CB sets was droped Before that you had to have a license to use a CB set and WORK ON THEM the tech had to sign off on the radio .... TODAY the owner/user is held .....It's your fine ......

A 1980's radio would fall under current rules.

 

Performance of the old and new model should be roughly the same in stock form.

 

yeah the wattage police are always such a problem going down the road lol...

Who the hell cares

 

I would think that the build quality might be better with a radio from the 80's,...Hell it might even be American made!!,......

 

VERY UNLIKELY

Few CB sets were American made even in the 70's

As for the Power Police very unlikely they will chase you around if your on Ch19 However ......If you stray on to 10 meters all bets are off .....

 

The radios like your Cobra 25 from the 1980's were built by Uniden and were most likely built in Taiwan.

Today's Cobra radios are built by I believe Maxon and are built in China.

Yes Cobra has had their radios "farmed out" for years...supposedly when Uniden increased their prices, Cobra decided to find someone else to build their radios.

IMO I believe the older radios such as your Cobra were better built than the ones built today.

I've owned a China built Uniden PC68LTW which was a 2005 built model, and I also have a Cobra 21, which was the predecessor of the Cobra 25, that was built back in 1979. I personally think the Cobra 21 sounds better than the Uniden 68 I had in the receive and I've gotten some good comments with the Cobra 21.

I also used to have a 1984 model Uniden PC66 that I got some good reviews on. The PC66 was the same as a Cobra 25.

Most any CB tech will tell you to keep your current Cobra 25 over buying a new one. Just don't run into a truck stop CB shop and start having them crank on the pots at such an old age. If she works, plug her in and let her go.

As far as the "5 watts output"....believe it or not, some CB manufacturers used to put the speaker output wattage on the outside of the box to dupe someone into thinking they were buying a 5 watt CB when it was really less than that....so i dunno if that's the case here, but I've seen it done before.