Have Cobra CBs cheapened out? What CB to buy?

Cobras quality control department isn’t the best anymore. You would probably be happy with a Uniden 68xl (its like the cobra 25), or the 520xl. Road King seems to have good reviews, they are like the cobra 29’s, and they are made by Uniden too. Actually Uniden made cb radios for Cobra up till 1994.

 

Buy yourself a used cobra 29 that says made in Taiwan. Those are the best cobras ever made. They were made there in the late 79s. Or buy one off a driver that's had it peaked and tuned. Or an older custom made cb.

 

They quit building radios with bipolar transistors 10 to 15 years ago.
Now more than ever understanding the importance of your antenna system has become more critical than it used to be since mosfet transistors aren't nearly as tolerant of an imperfect antenna system as the bipolar transistors used to be so these new radios like to spontaneously self destruct when connected to an imperfect antenna system.
Fortunately Palomar Electronics has recently come out with some mosfet transistors that seem to be indestructible but the manufacturers are not installing those transistors at the factory.

 

I remember when the LX version of the 29 rolled out, I couldn’t wait to grab one. Now it looks more like a dated pile of poo. Cobra has fallen from their game and only stays in the market due to name and bling factor. Accessibility makes them look better too. (Driver burns up his radio and needs a replacement quick, a Cobra 29 is usually the first thing he sees)

It was said before, make sure your antenna system is 100% straight, new radios won’t play well very long at all with a flawed system.

My own recommendations for mobile?

A properly tuned Stryker SR-447HPC2 or AnyTone AT-6666 is hard to beat for their size. Nice audio and a small footprint. Match well with a SRA-198 mic.

The old Taiwan Cobras are good, however finding one that hasn’t had every screwdriver in it from coast to coast is like finding a needle in a million acres of hayfields. Even worse, the newer cobras are the same way, impossible to find clean. If I were to run another, I prefer any Cobra 29 before they made changes to audio section, I believe it was around 2010. (Someone else can confirm the actual year?)

 

I bought a Connex 3400 back in 2010 for $125 dollars from a Redline driver. It worked good was peaked to 60 watts max output. I could reach 20 miles some times with twin coil antennas, swr was 1.5 i think. But than the power switch went bad. Turns out that driver died a few years after. And he was a smaller guy not fluffy. Guess a heat attack can happen to anyone.

 

Why the spring???????

 

My question is, what’s the install going in?