question for cobra 148 owners

[Crankshaft]

bump the post

[Crankshaft]

Ok mystery solved. Took a trip to the local cb shack, and found out the deal. Someone added the talkback, and had their grubby hands in the box. Had a wrong wire giving power to the final, etc. Shoulda took out the talkback, really annoys me, but forgot to ask him to. Oh well, lesson learned. Dont buy radios from pilots

[weasel]

I bet someone had it and returned it!

[TruckerLlew]

I don't know much about the talkback issue. Built in SWR meter in most radio's are not very accurate. The needles are hard to properly calibrate. It's always best to either buy an external SWR meter and check the SWR at install time or have a radio guy come out and use his for $5 or something. A GOOD SWR meter will run a bit of $$$ The one's sold in the truckstops are usually crap. Check Froogle or ebay or something to get a good deal on an external meter. A good quality one should cost about $40 to $100. Look for Diawa, MFJ, Bird, Workman.

If the SWR is still high on an external meter, then you may have a problem. Check the antenna for breaks or splits, bends, kinks. Check the coax for tears, water damage, crushing or wear, age..etc. check the ground to your antenna. Run a wire from the mount to a known good ground in the cab. Check the ground to your radio. Sometimes radio chassis need to be grounded as the positive/negative wire doesn't provide enough grounding to the radio.

Hope this helps. Sorry to hear about the grubby fingers already being in the radio. I'd return it for a virgin one if I could

[roadkill439342]

Originally Posted by Crankshaft

Ok I finally went and got one. Of course I eagerely hooked it right up to check it out. First thing I noticed, upon calibrating the swr, its reading a lil over 2 units, almost 2.5, compared to barely 1 on my cobra 200. Next thing is, this one has talk back enabled already. It was new in box

I have a Cobra 148GTL as well as a Uniden PC76 (I believe they are the same radio)
Lately, I have seen (in Petro and an independant fuel stop in Rocky Mount, VA) the Cobra 150GTL and 200GTL. According to the box, these are full channel "10 meter" radios (simular to the old 'export radios' with the Brand Names: Connex and Galaxy??) The difference between the models (other than the price) seems to be the 200GTL has a built-in Freq Counter, they both claim 15w output.
Question is, are these radios worth the cost? How well do they hold up?

If I remember, my old Galaxy cost almost $400 and lasted about a year. I had my Connex about 2 years before it was stolen.

The Cobra 150GTL was priced at Petro at $179 and the Cobra 200GTL was priced at about $299.