Station Consoles For CB

[Dawn]

I never remember too many of these in my years working with CB. By the 70's, most luxury bases had just about every station accessory one would need anyways, but hardly worth the then $300 price differential between an empty box with a clock and swr meter vs the same unit as a mobile.

I always figured there would have been a market for them, if anything for the coolness factor.

Yet, I only recall WaWassee and Hygain making anything in later years of Solid State. Maybe there were a few Indies that made something, but besides a rare few during the tube days. I was unaware of any others. Nowdays the closest thing that's out there is the freq. counter/wattmeter Dosy types and they seem to sell well for the same reasons.

Even "plug and jerk" type base station conversions were very rare, I only can remember two and they weren't to impressive.

 

[Blackswan73]

Robyn SX 10, and SX 22. Still can find them on Ebay. BTW Dosy meters are just about the worst possible meter to buy. They are very iinaccurate, cheaply made, and highly overpriced. If you want a decent, multifunction meter pick up a Paradynamics PDC 600

 

[Dawn]

I do remember Robyn making two base station jerk and run units. They were both the same except one had a clock, otherwise nothing more then a speaker and power supply. I believe midland and spark-o-matic or one of the auto parts dealer distributed ones did too. None of these offered much in the way of anything else such as a SWR/modulation meter or anything else.

I only mentioned Dosy as it's currently the closest thing to a meter/counter/on the air light multifunction accessory. I severely doubt that anything that was included in a big box base such a directional coupler and modulation monitor was nothing less then a cheaply, etched board and diode detection for the modulation. Good enough for what it's intended for.

Now if Dosy were to take the counter one step forward and design around a PIC or other processor, a clock with recurring alert, and maybe even alarm functions could be added as a secondary display function. Multiple antenna switch, basic line flattening tuner, heck even a phone patch....assuming POTs lines are still available. Has anyone looked on Ebay and seen any of the digital scope basic modules? Hetrodyne down to the usable bandwidth for a LCD display that could be added for wave form monitoring. Most CB'ers wouldn't understand it, but like Wawasse found out, it sold them like hotcakes for the cool factor. How about even adding a remote directional coupler? No more cables dragging your box off the desk. Radio Shack did that nicely for little bux as did others.

 

[BrettL]

I have a PDC 600 and it's stingy. Compared to a bird 43 it is relatively close in the 1-10w range. Not after that but still more stingy than the Dosy. I have had several Dosy meters. They are too pricey and cheap made. People on CB love to watch that meter get excited from all the distortion and harmonics. It makes your CB look like it's on steroids. Just plain crazy. Read the data sheets people. Your stock final is not doing 46 watts in your Cobra 25.

BTW, Dawn I don't think my oscilloscope is working correctly.

 

[Blackswan73]

I had a SX-22 with the clock. I swapped out the power board with a board from a 7a Pyramid, and ran a 2950 in it with an Astatic 10DA Silver Sidebander desk mic. Poor man's Saturn lol

 

[BrettL]

Are we talking about one of these ? Or we talking about the radios with a clock and such?

 

[Blackswan73]

More like this

 

[BrettL]

I robbed a power supply from one of those station consoles once. I liked the way you could vary the voltage from 12v to 16v. I ran a mobile radio with it turned up to 15v just to see more watts. Was it worth it? No. It would have been fine until long winded transmissions. I think most of the cb's have 16v rated caps and other components so it was pushing my limits. I had a courier centron pll, pace, and a realistic station console. The clocks and alarms worked on all of them and were in great shape. I sold them cheap. I like the looks of station consoles. I think they are neat but the ones I had did not perform to my standards on AM. On SSB they were ok.

 

[Blackswan73]

I had a Robyn SX-101 in mine, then when they went to 40 channels, I swapped it for a 402D. Then as I described above, I modded it, and put a Ranger 2950 in it. Worked great! As I said in another thread, all a solid state base radio is, is a mobile and power supply in a fancy cabinet. I used my Robyn until I finally swapped it out about four years later for an ICOM 751A. I still have a module new in the box I picked up a few years ago for $25.