This made me mad!

TRUE but again the FCC is at fault they did away with licensing of techs and now anyone can call themselves a CB REPAIRMAN

 

I thought you still had to have a 2nd class radiotelephone liicense to work on cb radios yet..

 

Well GF that might be true...and I won't argue if it is or not...but I look at it this way....let's suppose you want a fast car...and a new one at that....so you buy a brand new Corvette....it's fast in stock form right? Ok so why is it people quickly start swapping mufflers, intakes, ECM chips....?? I mean this is a brand new car....why does it need these parts upgraded?

In reality, it doesn't. But GM has to meet certain criteria when they build these new Corvettes...they can't be any louder than a certain amount of decibels...they can't pollute a certain amount...yet there is a little bit of performance that can be unleased by upgrading some of the stock components.

The same is said for a CB radio. Supposedly the factory builds them to put out less than 4 watts to keep the FCC inspectors happy. I don't know if there's any truth to it but that's the general consensus.

And even so, in both cases, there's probably not a lot of gain to be found, but every little bit counts right?

Just the way I see it.

HOWEVER in the case of snipped and clipped radios, I agree on this one...

 

This is a good discussion; I'm enjoying the exchange without the name-calling and such. The FCC did away with the 1st and 2nd Phone ticket and replaced them both with the GROL, or General Radiotelephone Operator License, but still has the Shipboard Radar and Broadcast endorsements. They stopped requiring annual certification of Land Mobile radios, and made the users responsible for making sure their radios were within specs.
My understanding is that any work on the inside, including adjustments and replacement of any parts except tubes (as if any of those radios are still legal, anyway...) must still be done by a GROL holder. I put my name and license number on all service invoices.
Brand new radios out of the box *should* work correctly, but I find a 4% overall rate of new radios that have a clearly evident problem, not including a little bit off-frequency or slightly low power. I'm talking about noisy controls, intermittent or dead channel displays, loose antenna connectors, option switches that don't work (sometimes cuz they're not soldered).
And over half of the radios are not receiving at the best sensitivity they're capable of. Sometimes they come out of the box needing 2 microvolts to break threshold squelch, or at least that much to get 10 dB S+N/N. Twice I've caught I.F. crystal filters that were apparently installed defective, with over 30 dB loss through them.
Except for those two times, a simple alignment with a proper service monitor can cut that 2 uV to more like 0.5 uV, a four-fold increase in sensitivity. That's the same as if all the stock radios talking to these ones were running "export radio" power. Anytime I can get another S-Unit out of a receiver by tuning, it's a couple of minutes well spent. And it's much of the reason that every radio that goes out of here goes through my bench first, whether it's new or an eBay "treasure" I've picked up to use as a loaner, or to give to the local FD/EMS folks. Even if I don't have to adjust anything, I'm comfortable that the customer is getting the value he/she's paying for in the product.
But it's stuff you can't really do with just a Dosy meter, a microphone, and a diddle stick. Besides, getting 6 watts out of a radio designed to run at 4 won't do anybody any good except the people who sell replacement parts and the labor to install them. Just because a wattmeter can measure the difference doesn't necessarily translate into a discernible change on the air. Pretty much if 4 watts won't make the trip, neither will 6. It just does that same thing as driving everywhere you go with the accelerator pedal pushed to the floor, and driving in a lower gear. Makes more noise, doesn't get you there any faster, and goes through parts like poop through a goose.
There are lots of reputable techs and shops who do work responsibly and don't try to BS their way into big service invoices. Those folks last because they get repeat business and word-of-mouth referrals. The butcher shops can't last long because as communication gets better, like through forums like this one, they'll get identified and routed out.
It's a shame that not all users are technically inclined, because it can be hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys without a program.
-- Handlebar --

 

It's my belief most hack shops are in truck stops because they figure you're most likely an out of state trucker just traveling thru and probably most likely won't be back by anytime soon to confront someone who took your money and gave you back a radio that worked worse than it already did.

 

Turbo -- I love your sig file. Cracks me up.

 

You both are right but you have to also look at it this way. When they tune those performance cars they dont use a cheap meter. A lot of these CB shops dont even have a scope and an alignment will do more for a radio than peaking it and in order to do a good alignment and peak you need to be able to see the wave pattern. This is why them feel good meters show a high reading the wave pattern is all over the place. And it may sound good to the guy next to you but a half mile down the road you cant be heard

 

2UV ? sounds like my TS-2000 on 2 meters and Kenwood says there is no mod and no problem with that radio ....Tell that to my 24 db gain preamp ......

Sounds like some sets were untouched my human hands ......

 

Problem is that EVERY CB shop in existance says exactly what this guy said to you. They are the only ones that know what they are doing, last guy obviously didn't know what they were doing...etc etc.....truth is it is hard to find a good one....really best to go by word of mouth locally where you live.

 

Exactly!! He is right on