Linears: Tell me what I need to know before I buy

I meant your address so I can hunt you down and kill you for putting the thought of buying another linear in my head...... a friend like you would leave a cb nutt broke and homeless .

 

I'm hoping to get an antenna up this spring and give that Drake LB4 a try that Russ made me buy. Half afraid the neighbors may not like it though.

 

Why?

Is it hacked up?

 

I don't know. It doesn't appear to be. I never have hooked it up. It was bought from an old friend of Russ' who bought it at an estate sale. It powers up.

 

A linear amp has a 40 % efficiency rating, so your 100 watt amp will actually have 40 watts output if your SWR is 1.5 or less. I recommend a 10 meter ham radio. They can be easily modified to send/receive on CB.
Although illegal, I know some one that had a transceiver that was putting out 200 watts. The only draw back is that the channels are not listed, instead you have a frequency display. I would never use an illegal transmitter! You all believe me don't you?

 

I would have done it a bit differently, I would have bought the power up slowly, we are talking about a 40 to nearly 50 year old amp at best so those caps could take out the power supply. ALSO the tubes may not be in the best shape, so a slow powering up on that end may help too.

Hope you didn't pay much for it. I mean just because it came from an estate sale doesn't mean anything. I do to these estate sales where the equipment is priced at ebay prices (that means highest you could ever imagine) and it is as I tell the sellers - a crap shoot - because they don't know anything about radios, they don't have any means to test it and to have them say to me as is, means that it should be sold as a parts item, not as a working item. About 40% of the time when I explain this to them, I get it for what it really is worth, close to nothing.

10 meter radios are the worst junk out there.

I do agree with you on the efficiency but not the numbers.

 

Yeah me either never ever never....hmmmmmmm ????

 

That's because your old school it's to each his own with a 10 meter radio........

 

What's funny is the dual final radios usually always sound better than the higher watt radios like a galaxy 98 v. Because the ding dong techs turn them up too high and they over modulate and distort the friggin thing.... it's a 225 watt radio but they managed to get doing 275watts yeah right.... gotta give credit to mark on that he doesn't play that crap at all ... !!!!!!

 

Yep old school.

once you get behind the curtain and see what the wizard is really doing, you would be old school too.