I bought a new Bearcat 980 the other day, and I unpacked it this morning and ran it on the bench. Big disappointment here. Out of box dead-key was 2.5 watts, with peak envelope swing of 8 watts. SSB peaked at 6 watts. I tried to tweak the am power pot and got 3.5 watts, and amc tweak got me from 40% modulation to about 60%. I tweaked the ALC control and got the SSB up to 10 watts peak. Im not a tech, so this is as far as I went with it. This radio does have a very good receiver. After tweaking, this radio could use a nice little 250 watt amp and it would sound great. A good tech might be able to get a bit more out of it, but it is not a big performer.
Bearcat 980 SSB Big Disappointment :(
Discussion in 'CB Radio Forum' started by delta5, Oct 1, 2014.
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Interesting. I know where there's one for $100 I thought of picking up. But yeah it sounds like it's a prime radio to run on an amp. Reading another post, they said the stock mic can't give it 100% modulation, but I wonder if running my Astatic 575-M6 power mic would fix all of that?
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The general sentiment is that the 880/980 makes a great driver for an outboard amp. All it needs is a good microphone; a noise cancelling power mike will do wonders for it.
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Does RadioShack even sell radios anymore? Last I saw, they sold cell phones.
The problem with an Icom or Yaesu CB would be that it would cost $500, and the front end would be so well filtered that you couldn't understand those who've had their radios "tweaked and peaked". That's what I found when I tuned my FT-100 to channel 19.ladyfire Thanks this. -
I'm not even sure they are still in business Jamie.....last time I checked the stock was below a buck and fixing to be delisted. Shame too....it was the place to be back when we had time to build things on the bench.....
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I recently had a new 980 on my bench (gift to my brother, a pilot), I also found the performance somewhat lackluster. A.M. power was easily brought up to 4 watts. I set the a.m. modulation via a tone injected into the mic jack. SSB was also pretty low, but with the two-tone injection (instead of yelling or whistling into the mic), I had right at 16 watts p.e.p. All tests were done into the dummy load in my service monitor/spectrum analyzer. Receive, out of the box, was better than most CBs I see, and more sensitive than lots of aircraft (VHF a.m.) radios. But I couldn't coax rated power out with a stock mic; needs a power mic, in my humble opinion.
73chalupa and RedForeman Thank this. -
I could get an older hf rig, get it to be open tx on 11 meters. Then I could transmit at 100 watts barefoot. On the other hand I would want to relocate my ANTs to above my head to prevent the RF exposure.
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