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CB with E&M

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Project25_MASTR

Millennial Graying OBT Guy
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Looking to see if there is a current production CB (non-import) with E&M I/O's on it. 4 bit channel steering capabilities would be another great feature if I could find it (but I think that one may be a little more non-existent).
 

RFI-EMI-GUY

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Looking to see if there is a current production CB (non-import) with E&M I/O's on it. 4 bit channel steering capabilities would be another great feature if I could find it (but I think that one may be a little more non-existent).

I think you will be out of luck finding the I/O's built in. You will have to dig in and hardwire PTT and extract COR/COS or whatever from the squelch. AM radio squelch circuits are crappy, so an aftermarket voice operated squelch, a good one that detects activity in the voice bands at a certain rate would be the best solution. There used to be a firm in Tampa called Naval - something who made one. I have seen kits on e-bay for others, but no idea how good they are. If you are wiring to a Raytheon/JPS ACU 1K or 2K matrix the VOX squelch internal to that might suffice.

Channel selection via I/O on modern radios is going to be a POA. Most new radios have channel selection built into the PLL chip and work with
Up/Down buttons or a cheap rotary encoder that replicates up and down. So you will never know exactly what channel is set unless you outboard a small CPU to read the display logic.

If you can find an older radio with a BCD encoder you will be better off. There are some quirks in the BCD to PLL logic to accommodate certain channels which have frequencies out of order while displaying the channels in order. There is a CB PLL Cookbook by Franklin that tells all you need about those older radios.

I was looking into this contemplating a frequency hopping CB idea. But for an AM CB it would be a waste.
 

Project25_MASTR

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My application was actually for consoles at DCs. Wouldn't need COR and don't have to have to have channel steering but it would be nice to not have to dig around in the radio for some of those things.
 

RFI-EMI-GUY

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My application was actually for consoles at DCs. Wouldn't need COR and don't have to have to have channel steering but it would be nice to not have to dig around in the radio for some of those things.
If it just going to be parked on channel 9, you can put it in a rack with a tone panel and get what you need to TX from the mike jack. The speaker in newer radios probably will be floating so you will need an isolation transformer to prevent a DC short. Hopefully the console has voice operated squelch or you will need to set the radio squelch rather high to keep out noise.

Maybe somebody will see a need to mass produce a solution but I doubt it.

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mmckenna

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Never seen one, but many years ago one of the local dispatch centers still had a CB installed in the console of one of the positions.

Seems like it could be done, but any serious modifications would void the type certification. If you are going to void the type certification anyway, there might be better ways to do this, like a commercial HF transceiver.

How many channels would you need?
 

Project25_MASTR

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Never seen one, but many years ago one of the local dispatch centers still had a CB installed in the console of one of the positions.

Seems like it could be done, but any serious modifications would void the type certification. If you are going to void the type certification anyway, there might be better ways to do this, like a commercial HF transceiver.

How many channels would you need?

Reality is just one but having the option for multiples could benefit some of the quarry customers.


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mmckenna

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Used to be some CB's with channel up/down buttons on the mic. Might be able to do that, but making sure the channels stayed in sync between what the radio was really on and what the console thought it was on would take some work.
Pulling audio off the back, interfacing to the mic would be pretty easy.

Seems like remote-ing one channel would be as easy as extending the audio and PTT lines on the right radio.

Some of the motorcycle CB's were essentially remote control CB radios. Finding one of those and reverse engineering the interface would probably be pretty easy.
Expensive, but you get the idea: Honda Goldwing Gl1800a 04 CB Radio Module 08E95-MCA-1010 | eBay
 

TampaTyron

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I have seen a similar setup to this in at least one industrial environment. Kenwood dealer installed an NXDN system and then needed to interface to CB radios for tractor trailers arriving at the facility. I am pretty sure they tied a TK90 commercial HF radio (programmed to low power on the frequency of the CB channel) back-to-back to a NXDN trunking radio. I recall that the specific trunking radio did not have COR output, so they had to pull COR off of the RX LED to drive the PTT on the CB radio. I do not think they used any sort of channel steering, but you may be able to accomplish interesting things with a TELEX IP223/224 and the associated contact closures. Good luck and let us know how it works out! TT
 

Project25_MASTR

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Yea, I'd be interfacing to a console (Telex or Avtec typically) and COR isn't really a big concern.
 

TampaTyron

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If this is for a commercial customer, then a $1k commercial hf radio is small potatoes vs. having to do surgery on a export radio. Unsure the mechanism to trigger channel changes on the TK90, but it seems like a good start. About a decade ago, I set up a large telex voip console system linking a ton of vhf, uhf, LTR, tone base stations, etc using dozens of ip223s...... The good old days. FB
 
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