Stryker Radio

I have a Stryker 955HP also. The swr cutoff should have been factory set for much higher than 1:1.5 If I recall, mine was set to protect (cutoff transmitting) at about 1:3.5 or slightly higher. Anyhow, as you know, it's adjustable thru the settings/software.

Mine is also VERY strong on transmitting, but crappy on receive. I've tried several antennas and run swr lower than 1:1.3, but lose other drivers on receive once they get a short distance away (couple miles most times). I also get a lot of bleedover, but the radio is quiet and mine doesn't really pick up much truck noise/interference. I'm just not happy with the receive on it! Will be trying to solve that, once I get a bit of time.

Are you using the factory mic, or an aftermarket?

 

Shouldve bought a ranger or connex

 

Maybe,, maybe not. Care to expand on that?
My receive problem may or may not be the radio itself (as it comes from Stryker). Prior to receiving it (new), the CB shop/tech I had bought it from did a Peak & Tune on both the transmit & receive. I have suspicions he made the receive worse in the process, but I haven't verified it just yet. I'm confident my transmit power & clarity will blow a ranger or connex out of the water, btw.

 

I hate posts like that.

 

I think KW Cajun nailed it -- the problem seems to be following the "shop" who did the work before you got it.

And Dude mentioned great apparent sensitivity but lots of noise. The noise may very well be coming from several sources in the engine & cab, not all of which even existed 10 years ago. I say "apparent" because when skip is hot on CB and adjacent ham bands, I can hear hundreds or thousands of miles on a random chunk of wire stuffed into the antenna jack. Even my aged Hallicrafters and Hammarlund receivers hear DX on a 5-foot wire. All you need to hear a station is enough of its signal arriving at your antenna (and through the antenna system) to show greater voltage than whatever noise there is at the same time.

The stock (factory-fresh) Strykers and Magnums that have gone over my bench have been good performers. And almost without exception, trying to increase usable receiver sensitivity without sacrificing adjacent channel rejection has been a bust. Most all tuned circuits have a figure known as "gain-bandwidth" and they're inversely proportional, after everything is optimized. All too often, trying to get another 1 or 2 dB of sensitivity has sacrificed adjacent channel rejection, a/k/a receive bleedover.

The proper way to align a receiver involves a frequency stable and calibrated output signal generator. I.F. stages are ideally calibrated with a sweep generator, which varies the signal generator's output over a measurable range so that the stage's output can be observed on an oscilloscope. Since the Stryker 955 is supposed to be able to do FM, it needs to be able to receive a signal whose width is around +/- 7 KHz, although an AM or SSB is *much* narrower, and microprocessor controlled radios adjust the receive bandwidth via software controlled components.

If someone went through and just sorta randomly adjusted everything in sight for max output on an inexpensive (like less than $350) wattmeter without an oscilloscope or spectrum analyzer -- happens way too often -- it's entirely possible to have fouled up the RX alignment as well as turning the transmitter into a wideband noise generator. If it were possible to listen +/- 10 channels when someone with nothing more than a DVM and a cheapie wattmeter were whistling loudly into the mic to make that big, momentum-laden analog wattmeter swing waaaaaay up, the other listener would likely hear a long burst of noise.

I've had a couple of rigs come over the bench with complaints by owners who'd had them at "other shops" (general good business practice, coupled with a desire not to make customers feel foolish with the all too typical question of "Geez, who worked on this before?!?", make it impossible to identify the other places. And frankly it doesn't matter to me. I do the same careful work on a $60 CB as I would on a $4,000 Motorola P25 police radio, and at some point the radios are similar.

But a suggestion to anyone who carries a radio in for service *anyplace* -- ask to see the bench equipment. While not all shops can afford a several-thousand-dollar spectrum analyzer to check for spurs & harmonics, I believe there's no substitute for a decent oscilloscope for setting modulation, a tone generator (or two, for SSB), a lab-quality wattmeter (Bird, Coaxial Dynamics, and Telewave come immediately to mind), and a signal generator with calibrated output level.

Sure, you can "tune for maximum smoke" with a $15 Rat Shack SWR/power meter and an antenna instead of a non-inductive dummy load. Speaking of which, how come "loud and proud", "tweak and peak" or "align and tune" alway go together? Are they different? Or is it like "kit and kaboodle". I've never seen a kaboodle by itself. And once an AM (or God forbid, an SSB) signal is modulated substantially over 100%, that extra loudness that people report on the channel you're using is probably audible several channels away, or up at 54, 81, and maybe 108 MHz (2nd, 3rd, and 4th harmonic) and at random places inbetween (spurs, a/k/a spurious radiation).

But I remember an old axiom: a happy customer will tell four other people, and an unhappy customer will tell 10 other people.

And if any of the foregoing talk in my post here are confusing, like about the equipment for a well stocked service bench, just write down the terms:

Spectrum Analyzer;
Oscilloscope (over 50 MHz to be able to measure power directly via a formula, but nearly any 'scope can monitor modulation);
Service Monitor (alternatively, Calibrated Signal Generator and Modulation Monitor);
Wattmeter that cost over $250 originally (rough estimate);
Dummy Load (may be built into the service monitor or spectrum analyzer).

Ask to see them, and have the tech name each briefly. Any shop should be proud to show off their bench equipment. The gear represents a substantial investment, and unless someone is an independently wealthy but ignorant hack, probably won't have this stuff unless they're qualified to use it and confident enough to make it pay for itself.

So, if you get either a glazed look on the tech's face when you ask, or he/she/it says they don't have them, I'd keep my mitts on the radio and go "shop shopping". If you don't see at least an oscilloscope, don't let someone do anything more complicated on your radio than resolder a broken existing connection, and if it's not in the mic cord, be worried.

Or plan on spending another bench fee a day or two later someplace else to correct whatever misdeeds were done at the snip-and-turn place.

These days I spend more of my time on mountaintops and public safety agencies optimizing repeaters and microwave links than I do on CBs, but even my 40-yr-old tube CB gear works great still. Older stuff may need more routine maintenance than the new gear, but then so do I. As long as your new radio is modulating to 90%, nothing you can have done inside it is going to increase your TX range.

If anyone is still reading at this point, thank you for your patience, and I hope it addressed the OP. And that it didn't come off as just a rant. I try to leave that to the other folks

73

 

I have a stryker 440hp with an astatic mic. I have similar issues. Clear as a bell transmitting but unless the person. I am trying to speak with has a big radio I lose them in very little distance. I also bought mine new and had it peaked and turned out of the box. Still very happy with it after 3 years.

 

Florida,
What was the date of manufacture of your 440? There's a single resistor change (R35, from a jumper to 3300 ohms) that makes a significant change; that was published in 2007. And starting in mid-2008 there were substantial changes to the radio. Depending upon what was done to your brand new radio, that resistor may still be 0 ohms.

73

[Edit: Oops, re-read and saw you got it new 3 years ago. But the resistor wasn't changed to fix the noise problem in all the production runs.]

 

handlebar,
Thanks for that great write up & multi-point info! I also wanted to add, when I turn my rf gain knob (which I run fully, clockwise) even just a hair (say 5° counterclockwise) it GREATLY reduces my RX capabilities. I would think the rf gain should be reduced much more gradually over most of the knob's full travel (say, 270°). This seems to me to maybe be a resulting "symptom" of a misadjusted RX circuitry. Is this meaningful and am I barking up the right tree?

Oh btw, as you earlier said on the Kit & Kaboodle subject... "I've never seen a kaboodle by itself".
Well, I have... and it's not a pretty sight.

Also curious to know if TheDude1969's radio acts the same way on RF gain?