Bearcat 880 in '16 Cascadia

Dunno about stock. take it to a reputable tech who will be willing to just align and peak the receive, set the audio limiter to 95-100% and make sure it's doing 4:1 on transmit.

If that causes the final to go up in smoke then the radio is junk.

 

Normally, I would agree with you on this volvo, but not on this particular radio.
No alignment needed, It should be spot on out of the box..if its not, send it back...

And its not junk, from what I understand, the radio was purposely made to be "tamper proof", to get the fcc off Unidens back.
The final used in this radio is a 16w device, and they do get warm at just the factory power setting. Some even recommend turning the power down, if you are long winded.
Peaking the radio will only yield a few watts anyway, not enough to be noticed on the other end.
Imo, best left alone..

 

I agree. The 980 is best left alone. The 880, the PC 787 and the new PC 78 LTD are all SMT radios as well but come stock with 520 mosfet and can be tweaked a little, but are probably best if left alone. My 78 LTD works great OOTB, and the 880 I have does have a AMC adjustment that was usefull to get modulation to 100%.

 

Hey skellr have you bought the wireless mic yet that works with the 880 and 980? If you have how well does it work? If you havent Petro/TA have a combo special for $ 99.99 includes the 680 radio, wireless mic and external speaker, pretty good deal, the mic alone retails for about 100 bucks.

 

Yeah, I picked up one of those combos just for the mic, it is a good deal. The external speaker is nice to have also.

I think the mic is just, OK. The battery, internal rechargeable, doesn't last very long and you have to hold it just so to avoid the typical stock mic muffeled sound. The stock corded mic doesn't have that sound issue. But it's great for when it's needed outside the truck.

Maybe I can but the Bluetooth guts into an Astatic or sth.

 

Flat blade screwdriver for the screws that hold radio to mounting bracket and torx screwdriver to get the screws that hold plastic cover that surrounds the radio in the overhead compartment

 

Velcro holds it down in the spot fairly well

 

I've seen several techs' videos on these...the receive tends to be noisy and detuned from the factory, and modulation is almost always around 80%. Both of these are done by the factory to keep range down because that's what the FCC wants.

So, run 'em stock if you want...but realize they can still be better.

 

The receive on my 880 has alot of static and modulation was only about 60% stock, however the receive on my 980 is excellent and modulation is above 90% but I have mentioned this on another thread, I bought my 980 from amazon and cb equipment is supplied to them from Cb shops and I have a feeling the 980 I have might of been aligned before it was shipped to amazon, because before I purchased it I had read the reviews where they were only set at 3.0 watts or less stock and audio was low, but out of box mine was set at 4 watts and ssb was at 12 watts where some reviews were stating around 10 watts on ssb, so maybe getting a quality alignment ( not a peak and tweak ) may not be such a bad thing.