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Cb gear

sonofapreacherman said:
Gotta get the swr set first!!! If not you'll have too many watts at dead key and destroy the finals or worse burn it up
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Not even that, you put more than 2 watts through a linear amp, you will burn out the radio.

Most CBs come with about 3.5 of the legal 4 watts.

You will be surprised what you can do with a radio that is properly peaked and a good internal. I have 10 watts dead key that swings 36 and a quality big coil antenna on my truck. On good days I can talk to New York, Mississippi, Illinois, etc.

Without atmosphere "skip" I can do about thirty-50 miles depending on conditions.

I also can hear good set ups over all the background noise. Part of a good tune will include the reception, and it will be greatly improved.
 
Antenna placement and matching to the radio can make as much difference in coverage as the radio. A 3.5 watt radio into a 1.1 to 1.5 SWR is going to be heard and hear better than a 10 watt radio into a mismatched antenna. A poorly placed antenna will kill coverage on even a perfectly matched antenna.
 
Hooking an amp to your radio will NOT burn the radio up. If the amp is a "low drive" amp and you don't have the radio output turned down, it WILL burn up the amp, but the radio will NOT be harmed.

You're not going to see much difference out of that 520 by having some "golden screwdriver" poke around in it and probably charge you as much as the radio cost for his "services".

Just do some googling and figure out if there is an adjustment inside the radio that will allow you to get the it down to a 1 watt dead key. If there is, then turn it down to that and get yourself a KL203P amp. They can be found on ebay for less than $100. You'll be putting out 100 clean and clear watts with no chance of burning ANYTHING up as long as you keep your SWR below 2.0
 
BangBang said:
Hooking an amp to your radio will NOT burn the radio up. If the amp is a "low drive" amp and you don't have the radio output turned down, it WILL burn up the amp, but the radio will NOT be harmed.

You're not going to see much difference out of that 520 by having some "golden screwdriver" poke around in it and probably charge you as much as the radio cost for his "services".

Just do some googling and figure out if there is an adjustment inside the radio that will allow you to get the it down to a 1 watt dead key. If there is, then turn it down to that and get yourself a KL203P amp. They can be found on ebay for less than $100. You'll be putting out 100 clean and clear watts with no chance of burning ANYTHING up as long as you keep your SWR below 2.0
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You will damage the finals of any radio if you try to push too much wattage into an amp, never had an amp get damaged, but I suppose it works both ways.

Why my first suggestion was to seek professional help.
I've been working with CBs for about thirty five years now. I've worked on my own and it cost me to learn, from replacing stuff that I didn't need too because I didn't know what I was doing. I can set up my own and some minor tuning all the way up past 1000 watts now, but I still prefer Wolfman's son to do my work.
I still suggest you talk to someone that does this daily. The ONLY people that touch my stuff are at Wolfman's Electronics. Probably some decent ones out there, but there are so many fly by night characters that will tear up more than they fix that I don't go just anywhere.

Dan was right antenna tuning will make a cheap radio perform better than a high dollar unit with poor antenna tuning. Placement will depend on the vehicle.
 
DanKATL said:
Antenna placement and matching to the radio can make as much difference in coverage as the radio. A 3.5 watt radio into a 1.1 to 1.5 SWR is going to be heard and hear better than a 10 watt radio into a mismatched antenna. A poorly placed antenna will kill coverage on even a perfectly matched antenna.
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No no no, you've got it all wrong. We need to run 10kw to talk over everyone we possibly can so we don't have to worry about things like that.

If anyone is interested, I'd be more than happy to get you involved in ham radio. Running a CB with a huge amp is like trying to spray a target down with as many rounds as you have. Working HF (or other bands) in ham radio is more like taking a precision shot. Both ways ends up making contacts. Just one way is more effective. Matter of fact, if someone gets their tech license, I'll buy them a HT to hit up local repeaters on. Even program it for them.

KM4KRG - General Class
 
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