Smokin Joe Tuned Connex 4600

This radio is blowing smoke. I just bought it and had it sent to him for the tune and alignment. The receive is better than my Galaxy Saturn, I had the output turned down for specific reasons, and my first contact was about 500 miles testing it out on Channel 20 last Saturday.

Last night, I turned it on channel 28 and heard 154 Dollar Bill in New Mexico. Since getting into cb in 1995, I have never heard New Mexico, but last night I heard him, and put him in the 20db range. What I am impressed with the most is the cleanliness. With the amount of power I can put out, it would show easily in harmonics on certain meters. This radio shows none, and I have some great radios that work well that do show harmonic tendencies on these same meters.

I have less than .005 percent reflect and I know that it is going where it’s supposed to. He will get more of my business in the future. (And I have a great tech that fixes anything I need for free but he doesn’t have a scope and analyzer like Smokin Joe).

 

@Ruthless
If you are still interested in ever buying one of my radios, I’m going to send a couple out that way here soon for him to align. I’ve got one you might like, budget dependent of course.

 

I’ll holler at you sometime soon about what all I got, and what you are looking for. Family’s coming in town in about an hour, and we gotta do some cleaning up.

 

Update: I have several base stations I talk to locally, some as far as 70 miles as the crow flies. One station in particular, an IMAX 2000 at 90 feet barely puts a signal I can pick up barefoot, when he runs power he’s a 3-5 dB about 20 miles away. Yesterday on my Smokin Joe 4600 he was 3 dB and easy to understand, compared to my Galaxy Saturn, RCI 6300 and General HP40 on the same antenna.

Talking locally up to 70 miles was my main concern, so this has been a good upgrade especially when limited by HOA restrictions. I’m going up about ten feet higher and putting the GPK on the Imax 2000 and see how much it helps if any.

 

Oh I agree. I’m not saying the Smokin Joe tune has anything to do with talking skip, I’ve talked Skip with this same base antenna and several different radios. What is impressive is to me is the lack of harmonics showing when modulating through a meter with respect to other radios I have run both mobile and here at home. Everything else is the same, but since the tune on those other radios haven’t been done on an analyzer, it really shows.

This Connex is the first radio that I have used where you could tell harmonics weren’t affecting the meter no matter how much power I am putting out because it’s being transmitted all on frequency. And the 1.5 S Unit gain on RX is also nice.