CB shop Petro in Atlanta

While it's nice that you found a shop who's polite and is nice to work with, the only way to get a 4-watt stock radio to "swing" to over 40 watts is by destroying the fidelity and "spectral purity" of the channel. Modifying a meter to show what are known as "feel good watts" is easy to do, but no less unscrupulous. Putting your badly misaligned radio on a spectrum analyzer may likely show that most of the power besides the 4 or 5 watts that's actually on the channel you dialed up is spraying up and down the other CB channels, like somewhere between 4 and 10 channels away. If they did a really whiz-bang job on it, it's putting out harmonics on 54 MHz (6 meter amateur band), 81 MHz (beginning of the commercial FM broadcast band), 108 MHz (beginning of the NavAids [Aids to Navigation] used by aircraft in flight), and so on. "Swing" is largely a function of the mechanical momentum on a peak-reading power meter.
For a more accurate power reading, have the tech put in a two-tone signal of known voltage into the microphone input of the radio, and see how much AVERAGE power it puts out. If you count on just peak wattage, you're assuming that the person you're talking with can fill in the blanks between the occasional peak of your volume and the next ones, with the rest of your transmission putting out down around the average power level whilst you speak.

Peak power is just for bragging. Clean average power is for talking.

/soapbox mode OFF

73

 

I've been tempted to have a test bench in my truck. Consisting of 10 awg power wire, low pass and high pass filters. With the coax terminating into a dummy load. A good cross needle meter. Bet these guys about there radios output. the problem would be they wouldn't trust or believe the numbers.

 

Add a Spectrum Analyzer. Show them what there signal looks like.

leon
kc0iv

 

Sir, I am afraid you have been sold a bill of goods. Another bad part, you seem to be satisfied with 5 miles. So sorry.

 

LOL Exactly.... As long as your radio sounds good to you and you feel the shop did quality work then that's all that matters...

 

I'm curios which tech worked on your radio I do a lot of business in there I want to know wich one to keep my radio away from

 

Yep can't remember his name he tried to tell me he could make my uniden grant xl push 30 watts I laughed and said wrong guy I ain't a sucker