Watts Up?

I have the Cobra 19 and it's not a bad little radio with the stock mic.I did have it peaked & tune, what I call a peak & tune is turn modulation up, and align. It is dk 3 and modulating 8 which is not bad at all...when I purchased it was way off, but took it to Clay's in San Antonio and he got it working good...my meter which is a cheap astatic does have a forward swing and real close to a local hams meter that compared the wattage of the radio...it works a lot better now....

 

Cheap watt/swr meters are just that, cheap. But they should at least give you a rough idea what your radios are doing. Most cbs come from the factory running around 3 watts (roughly) and modulation at round 80%. It use to be that people didn't take their radis to a cb tech to tune it up, it was easier to buy a power mic. That's why the factories set the modulation lower. If you say audio into the mic, you should see a little forward swing on the meters needle. To see a lot of swing is using a PEP meter setting, which basically gives you a warm fuzzy feeling about your radios power, it does nothing else for you. You are using cheaper radios and antenna setup for your needs, and it sounds like your basically happy with them. I wouldn't waste any money having them beefed up power wise, but just enjoy them as they are.

 

Ant length can make a diff to but never hurts to fine tune any radio to make it work better..
Depends who you you let do the work..

 

The factory typically sets the deadkey and modulation low so that if the FCC picks one off the shelf, it will be within the limits of the law.

I'm guessing that the McKinley I recently purchased is probably way low. Even with the mic gain and and RF power turned wide open, it sounds very quiet on the receiving end.

If I can get by a reputable shop somewhere, I'll have it aligned and scoped.

 

Ya, I've heard that for years, I wonder if it wasn't just a rumor put out by the FCC. It just doesn't seem like the FCC has ever cared about people running too much power, or using their radios over 100% modulation. You look at the big boys on channel 6 as an example. Lots of people running export radios with 40 to 80 watts, or tech's installing fix-75's on cb radios and the FCC doesn't stop them. But I could be wrong.

 

Well some would say that Uniden is trying to be Fcc compliant when they introduced their new line of SMT radios ( 680,880,980) most , if not all , generally came stock with 3 watt carrier and 10 watt pep and not too many tuning pots to increase those values, however Ive been running stock 980 going on 2 years and it shows 3.5 carrier with 10 to 12 watt pep and does just fine on the airwaves, those numbers are comparable to old school 148's or Grants ( that werent molested) and I believe most are in agreement that both those radios were awesome.

 

Please dont tell me you just got a cheap advertising plug in that post.

 

They aren't going to go after Billy Joe Bob and his 500 watt kicker because there's no money to be had there. But if Uniden was to let a bunch slip out with 5 watts AM... cha-ching!

I have a feeling the FCC is putting pressure on even the independent dealers over the Anytone AT-6666 like I have in my car. Most likely because it's a few button presses to unlock 11 meters and presto, you've got a 60 watt radio. You can't find hardly anyone that sells them, online or otherwise.