Cruiseomatic
Member
Found it in a junk car I was cleaning out before crushing and brought it home to see what I had. Covers and face were sticky and filthy dirty. Pulled the hoods and knobs off and deep cleaned them. Started looking to see how dirty, bad, and molested it was inside and surprised it wasn't. Still factory clean and virgin. Got it tuned, opened, and clarifier tracking both TX and RX.
Notice some strange things after trying to use it.
Meter doesn't show SSB modulation only AM and even then, opened to 80% mod the needle swings just past 100 and back. ANL/NB doesn't work on SSB either, Just AM. Clarifier tracks about 2 wide Kc's up but maybe 1 down at best with onboard freq counter making it almost useless. One time the freq counter didn't work but slapping the top brought it back, Then later, it couldn't lock on freq for a minute. (Thinking loose wire on that). It currently has 4 watts output on low power and about 13 on high. Thinking of turning the low down to 2 instead.
Don't want it or any of my other radios to do every last little mW they can or cranked up to 120% modulation..... Its not watts that get you heard, It's audio power and if your signal is weak but carries loud clean audio, you'll be heard.
What could be wrong with this thing? I've already looked at the factory specs for wide clarifier and it has the correct resistor installed. Wiring appears right on J3 and J9.
Also, Clarifier is acting the same now as it did before tracking RX/TX. Wide and very unbalanced regardless of mode.
Lastly, And this might be antenna related, but when checking SWRs on a new antenna install, the meter would randomly twitch like it lost TX power briefly. I "rocked" the antenna and rechecked while still swinging. There's no spring either. While the untuned SWRs were slightly changing by .1 to and from, it didn't twitch. External meter has never done that before and is accurate. Before tuning it said I was at 1.8 across 1-40 while built in "meter" shows 1.1 - 1.2 and somehow automatically calibrates?
Notice some strange things after trying to use it.
Meter doesn't show SSB modulation only AM and even then, opened to 80% mod the needle swings just past 100 and back. ANL/NB doesn't work on SSB either, Just AM. Clarifier tracks about 2 wide Kc's up but maybe 1 down at best with onboard freq counter making it almost useless. One time the freq counter didn't work but slapping the top brought it back, Then later, it couldn't lock on freq for a minute. (Thinking loose wire on that). It currently has 4 watts output on low power and about 13 on high. Thinking of turning the low down to 2 instead.
Don't want it or any of my other radios to do every last little mW they can or cranked up to 120% modulation..... Its not watts that get you heard, It's audio power and if your signal is weak but carries loud clean audio, you'll be heard.
What could be wrong with this thing? I've already looked at the factory specs for wide clarifier and it has the correct resistor installed. Wiring appears right on J3 and J9.
Also, Clarifier is acting the same now as it did before tracking RX/TX. Wide and very unbalanced regardless of mode.
Lastly, And this might be antenna related, but when checking SWRs on a new antenna install, the meter would randomly twitch like it lost TX power briefly. I "rocked" the antenna and rechecked while still swinging. There's no spring either. While the untuned SWRs were slightly changing by .1 to and from, it didn't twitch. External meter has never done that before and is accurate. Before tuning it said I was at 1.8 across 1-40 while built in "meter" shows 1.1 - 1.2 and somehow automatically calibrates?
Last edited: