Cobra 29 & 4 pill amp

No you’re not missing anything. It sounds like he wired the variable power knob directly into the PC board, which is the wrong way to go about it. The only way to know would be to pull the bottom cover off, and take a look inside the radio.

 

I understand, on your cobra 29 with the bottom cover off, on the rear left corner of the radio is the transmit transistor Some guys will just install a capacitor and resistor with some wire running to the potentiometer to adjust the power, and it’s not the best way to do it.
I found this link that will give you a visual of how it should be done.

http://cbtricks.com/radios/cobra/mods_&_info/graphics/Cobra_Uniden_Var_Pwr.pdf

I would drill a small hole in the aluminum heatsink in the back of the radio, and install the TIP 120 transistor with some heat sink compound for heat dissipation. Then run the wire to the RF gain control (since I don’t use the RF gain much anyway), and you get a smooth response from around 0 to 4 Watts. There’s different ways of doing this, some are better than others. To run an amplifier with your radio, an adjustable power knob would be very handy to have. If installed correctly. That’s one thing that’s nice about the galaxy 959 radio, it already has a variable power feature installed.

 

IT does not matter, it is close enough.

 

Could very well be but its just info sittin in my head..Dont even remember where i got it from....All i know it was from something i started to look up on the history of coax..That could lead a fella in many directions..

 

This is what drives me nuts about some techs. They set you up for failure. Why over-drive the amps to exceed factory specs? Bragging rights for the 10 minutes before they overheat and pop?