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The Cobra 148GTL was the best CB ever made, but that was 43 years ago! Now what?

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Astrogoth13

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Feb 22, 2008
Messages
151
Location
City of Angels, CA.
Has anyone made a radio that is all around great like the 148? I sure have not seen it if they do. All the ones I have seen are cheap junk in a pretty case with colored lights. Piss poor ears. Huge finals in a circuit so badly designed that it takes a crap in a few months. Knobs fall off. Case made of thin metal. I could go on but you get the picture.

China could make a fantastic CB with more features in a bomb proof case, if they wanted to.

Opinions?
 

prcguy

Member
Joined
Jun 30, 2006
Messages
15,228
Location
So Cal - Richardson, TX - Tewksbury, MA
The Cobra 148GTL was a good radio in its day (late 1970s) but far from the best. The first generations had the best workmanship but being 30 to 40 yrs old now they would need some work to put them in new operating condition.
prcguy

Has anyone made a radio that is all around great like the 148? I sure have not seen it if they do. All the ones I have seen are cheap junk in a pretty case with colored lights. Piss poor ears. Huge finals in a circuit so badly designed that it takes a crap in a few months. Knobs fall off. Case made of thin metal. I could go on but you get the picture.

China could make a fantastic CB with more features in a bomb proof case, if they wanted to.

Opinions?
 

lmrtek

Active Member
Joined
Feb 11, 2009
Messages
534
Yep, CB radios hit their peak in the late 70s and it's been down hill ever since.
...
The Japanese radios were high quality and well designed.
.....
There is actually a huge demand for those vintage CBs so there are
repair shops devoted to completely rebuilding them.
.....
Ham radios and police and fire radios and scanners are junk today as well.
.....
All are using cheap surface mount crap and they all lack the front end filtering radios had back in the 80s.
.....
Today it's all about selling poorly made Chinese junk for huge profit
and as long as the lemmings keep buying em, they will never get any better.
 

iMONITOR

Silent Key
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Sep 20, 2006
Messages
11,156
Location
S.E. Michigan
Today it's all about selling poorly made Chinese junk for huge profit and as long as the lemmings keep buying em, they will never get any better.

Until better alternatives are available, we don't have much of a choice. It's also a double edge sword. I think it's crazy people pay $1,000 for an iPhone. What will that iPhone cost when and if they begin manufacturing them here in the U.S.? Take the Icom IC-R9500 list for $16,000.00! Street price is around $13.000.00! What that might that cost to produce in the U.S.?

Are we still even capable of producing such a device? Our country got rid of so many good people. We allowed other countries to steel our ideas, inventions, patents, and skilled people. Our schools are turning out hordes of smart-phone-zombies.

It's going to take a long time to make America great again. Surely not what's left of my lifetime.
 

K7MFC

WRAA720
Joined
Nov 18, 2017
Messages
863
Location
Phx, AZ
I'm not a CB guy and "best" is probably subjective, but the Uniden BearTracker 885 looks pretty f'n rad:

ZhUzw57.png


BearTracker 885 Hybrid CB Radio/Digital Scanner

I've never seen or used this radio and can't really comment on anything other than the idea of a digital scanner + CB seems pretty neat. I don't think there's any 30+ year old radios that came packed with as many features.
 

iMONITOR

Silent Key
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Sep 20, 2006
Messages
11,156
Location
S.E. Michigan
I'm not a CB guy and "best" is probably subjective, but the Uniden BearTracker 885 looks pretty f'n rad:

ZhUzw57.png


BearTracker 885 Hybrid CB Radio/Digital Scanner

I've never seen or used this radio and can't really comment on anything other than the idea of a digital scanner + CB seems pretty neat. I don't think there's any 30+ year old radios that came packed with as many features.

If only it had SSB!
 

XTS3000

Member
Joined
Nov 4, 2005
Messages
1,098
As a previous owner of a CB repair shop for the last 20 year, I've seen the decline in the quality of almost all CB's during that time. The 148 used to be one of the best radios for transmit, but especially receive. Now they are pure junk. The RF final now used in the current Cobra 148 is a AF (audio frequency) transistor! Not a RF transistor. If you whistle or input a 1Khz tone into a current 148, the final will blow almost instantly. The receive is horrible in the 148 and all the Cobras and Unidens now, they used to have decent SINAD at -110dBM to -115dBM. Now days decent SINAD is around -100dBm! That's a horrible receiver!

I've been out of the CB loop for the past few years, but before moving on to bigger and better things, the best CB for receive and transmit was the Galaxy 949 or Galaxy 959 by a long shot - both legal USA radios. Uniden and Cobra have been spending all the cost of their radios into making them look "pretty" with color LCD's and other non essential things, rather than making quality receivers/transmitters.
 

davidrfeeney

Member
Joined
Jan 18, 2018
Messages
52
Location
Bucks County, PA
My CB Radio Base Station

https://imgur.com/a/fgp1M

UNIDEN 980SSB Radio & Mic;

MegaWatt S-400-12 36 Amp Power Supply;

Driver's Product DPSWR2 External SWR Meter;

Midland 21-406 External Speaker;

RADIOWAVZ CB Double Bazooka Dipole Antenna

Homemade PVC Pipe Antenna Mount; Outside 3rd Floor Window, Vertical Orientation, SWR 1.0 to 1.3 Hooray!
 

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rbomba

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Oct 10, 2010
Messages
34
Stryker makes good radios nowadays. As does President. The President Lincoln II is a good radio, as is the Stryker 955. Uniden 980 isn't bad either.
 
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