arudlang
Member
My dad picked up this radio at the pawn shop, wish he would have just told me he was interested in getting a CB since I have about 10 of them around but anyways, I took it home to see if it would work. It does power up but it has really, really poor modulation it seems like. I don't have a scope or any meters that can read modulation but it's just very quiet compared to other test radios on my bench. It receives OK.
Upon opening it up, I noticed that the slotted turn head for the L14 pot looked like it had been macerated by a philips or some other completely inappropriate sized/shaped screwdriver. My shot in the dark guess would be that the former owner thought he could "crank up the power" like people do on a Cobra 29 or similar. Well a Cobra 29 is not the same as a Hy-range II obviously so it didn't work, might have messed with other pots in here too I have no idea what all is potentially out of spec. Gingerly turning the L14 a turn in either direction had no effect so it may just be broken.
So now here sits this radio, it receives okay-ish for the most part, not great audio but its fine. It puts out a carrier around 2 watts but even at close range its just so quiet, you have to yell into the mic and have the receiving radio turned up pretty high on volume and then it kinda works but it won't mesh well with any of our other radios that just require a normal listening volume. Not sure what to do with it.
So, I'm throwing the pics out here in case I'd get lucky and anybody knows which pot(s) are related to modulation and maybe I can tweak it just a bit and get lucky to make it more usable. He just wants to be able to put it on his golf cart and talk to home base when he is wandering around his 40 acres, 2 watts of output would be fine if the thing would just modulate a little better. Uses a mic connector unlike anything else I own so I can't try another mic with it.
I forgot that I even had a homemade dummy load so my tests were done with a mag mount car antenna sitting on the metal lid of my chest freezer. The first time I tried it actually showed a carrier of 10 watts and an SWR of 3, which is what initially made me suspect tampering, but then later on I moved the antenna and re-powered it up and that's when it changed it's tune and showed 2 watts and a 1.5 SWR. Fluke of the cheap meter or something on the first try, I don't know. I don't have the equipment or the knowledge to be messing with this thing but if there was just one pot to adjust to maybe make it one bit better it could be worth keeping. Otherwise I'd say he wasted his $20 when you can buy a brand new radio for $35...
Upon opening it up, I noticed that the slotted turn head for the L14 pot looked like it had been macerated by a philips or some other completely inappropriate sized/shaped screwdriver. My shot in the dark guess would be that the former owner thought he could "crank up the power" like people do on a Cobra 29 or similar. Well a Cobra 29 is not the same as a Hy-range II obviously so it didn't work, might have messed with other pots in here too I have no idea what all is potentially out of spec. Gingerly turning the L14 a turn in either direction had no effect so it may just be broken.
So now here sits this radio, it receives okay-ish for the most part, not great audio but its fine. It puts out a carrier around 2 watts but even at close range its just so quiet, you have to yell into the mic and have the receiving radio turned up pretty high on volume and then it kinda works but it won't mesh well with any of our other radios that just require a normal listening volume. Not sure what to do with it.
So, I'm throwing the pics out here in case I'd get lucky and anybody knows which pot(s) are related to modulation and maybe I can tweak it just a bit and get lucky to make it more usable. He just wants to be able to put it on his golf cart and talk to home base when he is wandering around his 40 acres, 2 watts of output would be fine if the thing would just modulate a little better. Uses a mic connector unlike anything else I own so I can't try another mic with it.
I forgot that I even had a homemade dummy load so my tests were done with a mag mount car antenna sitting on the metal lid of my chest freezer. The first time I tried it actually showed a carrier of 10 watts and an SWR of 3, which is what initially made me suspect tampering, but then later on I moved the antenna and re-powered it up and that's when it changed it's tune and showed 2 watts and a 1.5 SWR. Fluke of the cheap meter or something on the first try, I don't know. I don't have the equipment or the knowledge to be messing with this thing but if there was just one pot to adjust to maybe make it one bit better it could be worth keeping. Otherwise I'd say he wasted his $20 when you can buy a brand new radio for $35...
