Anyone know about Radio Active Radios?

You said it, I've never had a hint of desire to try a radio from them, or Sparky's....Good advice once again

 

Unfortunately AM, which is what most of CB runs off of, is suspect to picking up interference. Just the nature of the beast. Also how well you have the radio and antenna grounded can also dictate this. You should be able to turn your RF gain up but then you'll have to use your squelch to block out the white noise.

As for why you're not getting out 4-5 miles, what are your SWR's at? And what type of coax/antenna are you using? Just a heads up....a high swr can cause you to not be able to communicate far. So can a cheap antenna and cheap coax. In fact, the antenna and coax are 2 places you should never skimp out on in any CB set up.

 

I actually recommend Sparkys.

 

Is this the same place ?

http://www.fcc.gov/eb/FieldNotices/2003/DOC-270807A1.html

 

Too much modulation for me, what works for one, may not work for another. I don't like to shop bash, maybe I should not have posted that...but if someone asks who I go to and who I avoid I will tell them.

 

Too much modulation? Hhhmm that's a first. Unless of course someone went into the radio after Sparky tuned it.

Usually any radio from Sparkys is actually set up right from the start. Sparky is one of the few guys that won't candy coat something just to make a sale. In fact, there's certain things Sparky won't do to radios...i.e. slapping an RFX75 on the back of any radio....because he's done numerous testing and knows what radios perform best with it and which ones don't.

All because he actually values his customers. Which unlike some other CB shops that will do anything to a radio you want as long as you're paying, regardless if it sounds bad or not.

 

I will say, I've not heard near the #### about Sparky's that I have about Radio Active...I just got a Sparky's radio used off ebay. This one is doing much better than the last one I had...

 

You want a good place to get a radio from try rr communications in delaware been dealing with them for 15 years and there prices are very reasonable

 

I stumbled across this thread because I was googling for something else. After reading a couple of pages of this, I felt obliged to sign up and chime in.
I too fell for the good marketing and sales on Mikes website so I called him up. I had just recently bought a new pickup truck and wanted to put a good cb in it. Right off the bat, he pointed me towards the superwhackpack General Lee. So I bought it. I received it, installed it and I was off to the races. I then proceeded to buy an RCI 2995 for a lot of $$$ for skip shooting at my house. This is supposed to be RCI's number one base unit for AM, SSB and LSB. I got the radio which had been superwhackpacked and it didn't work well. If I turned the roger beep on, the radio would turn off then turn back on, like that beep was depleting the radio of all it's power. To make matters worse, I couldnt' do anything on SSB. I could hardly tune people in and trying to transmit was a joke. Wayyyy off frequency. So I called Mike and he said that 99% of his customers don't talk on Side Band. lol, WTF? I paid over $500 for a radio, it better #### well do what it's supposed to. During this time, my General Lee started to act up too! I was getting feedback upon keying the mic and it apparently started to drift off frequency. What the hell, all my RAR stuff was starting to fail on me. Mike said to send the base amp back to him and he'd get it back to me in the next four weeks. Unacceptable!!! He also started to cop a really ###### attititude towards me which I couldn't beleive considering that I had recently spent close to $1,000 in one month. He really started to rub me the wrong way at this point like I was the one who didn't deliver or perform.
So, I wound up bringing both the General Lee and the 2995 to a well known tech (not a golden screw driver rip off artist) who proceeded to DE-WACK my radios. First thing he did was put the General Lee on a spectrum analyzer and he said it was truely the dirtiest radio he had ever had on his bench. (that was until he put my 2995 on his bench) He had cut limiters, volted the radio and soldered in some other little glass diodes that he's known to do. Here are the pics.

***I'll post pics in the Photo Gallery

here you can see the wires used to VOLT the radio which isn't entirely a bad thing but the work was far from neat. You can also see some of the little glass diodes that he's known so well for adding, lol

***I'll post pics in the photo gallery

some more of the glass diodes that were soldered all over the place, lol. They all got taken out
***I'll post pics in the gallery

and here you can see where he hacked the radio. Taking things out of the radio that shouldn't be touched. Not only did he do things that shouldn't be messed with, he didn't even take the time to properly unsolder them, just cut the things out. In the radio world, this is known as HACK WORK.
***I'll post pics in the photo gallery

after all that, the radio finally worked well again and was stable on frequency. I had such a bad taste in my mouth over that, I wound up ebaying it.

The 2995 was royally screwed with glass diodes all over the place and it wasn't as easy to fix because the diodes were globbed on with solder to surface mount boards. Luckily my tech is a good one and after a long time of messing around with it, was able to get it to talk on side band, and it would no longer turn off when transmitting a roger beep. I still have that radio to this day.



***For the record. Since I made these mistakes of buying from Radio Active, I've gone head first in to the hobby of CB and have some pretty serious equipment. I'm not a competitive keyer but I've been to the biggest KeyDowns in the country, namely Jacksonville, NC. I can promise you one thing, in KeyDown comps, there are NO EXPORT RADIOS. ZERO, ZILCH, NADA. They just don't use them. A real C.B. like a Uniden or a Cobra are going to have a MUCH cleaner signal and will put the tranmission where you want it, on frequency. Exports (especially hacked ones) emit spurious signals that cause you to bleed all over the band. When you're keying, you want to have all your power stay on that one channel, not spread seven channels (or worse) in each direction. Dirty in to an amp = dirty out.

 

what is the rfx mod for 29,s and where do i get it done?