FPR1981
Active Member
- Joined
- Feb 1, 2021
- Messages
- 597
Last night, an historical relic of the CB radio era re-emerged from the ashes, after decades out of service. The newest member of my collection of white-faced Midland CB radios was powered up and back on the air after about 25 minutes on the bench.
Perhaps not widely known, Midland was always trying to be on the cutting edge, with space-age looking designs and innovations. There are few better examples of this than their series of white-faced mobiles and base stations with hard outer plastic shells that looked very little like anything else on the market at the time.
The Midland 13-884 boasted the usual white plastic exterior, but unlike the others, it was made to look like a car phone. Although manufacturers like Johnson Messenger and Sears Roadtalker released similar designs, Midland made a few mobiles and bases with telephone receivers as their microphone/speaker combo.
Mine rolled off the assembly line in August 1976, just less than a year before the approval of the 17 new CB channels that began the 40-channel revolution. As evidenced by the model number beginning in “13” this radio was only 23 channels.
Following the approval of 40 channel radios in 1977, later models were retrofitted with new tuners and channel dials and the model numbers changed to “77,” and in some cases “76.”
I own a few 13-858 base stations, which came as 23 channel. Cosmetically identical is the 77-858, which is the exact same radio, with a 40-channel dial. I own a few of those as well.
The 13-884 is my first of the radio telephone series. For a meager $15, I was given the chance to resurrect this odd piece of history. After the unboxing, though, I had work to do to make it air worthy.
Did it even work? I didn’t know. But I was determined to find out.
Upon turning it around, I realized my first obstacle was the power jack. Rather than the standard 3-prong mobile power jack, or even two wires coming out the back, it had a push-in 3-pin connector that would put you in the mind of a 5-pin DIN microphone. I’ve never seen one like this, and didn’t figure anyone had one lying around.
Thinking resourcefully, I decided that the easiest option was to open the radio, remove the jack and run a power and ground wire. To clean it up, I’d buy a few rubber grommets from the local hardware store.
Once apart, I realized it was going to be easy. I de-soldered the wires from the jack, cut a red and a black wire and soldered them to the wires inside. I used hot glue and electrical tape to seal the solder joints. It was a bit tricky getting them through the hole once the case was put back on, but a pair of tweezers solved that.
After pulling them through, I walked it over to my 30-amp, 13.8-volt power supply. Attached the wires, and boom. She came to life.
Although the dip switches, tuner and most of the knobs are experiencing intermittent loss of function due to dirt, it’s nothing some tuner cleaner and manual working can’t fix.
I re-connected the 5-pin Uniden/Cobra/SBE SSB-style mic/phone receiver to the radio and on came the audio.
The features by way of knobs include VOLUME, SQUELCH, RF GAIN, and SWR & CAL.
Dip switches, from left to right, are:
SWR, CAL and S-RF
PA, EXT CB and OFF
HAND and SP
TONE: HI and LOW
ANL and OFF
Upon power on, the meter lit brightly. For kicks, I decided to check my SWR with the built-in meter. To my shock and awe, it was on par with my external SWR meter!
Some of the dip switches make intermittent contact due to being dirty. The push to talk on the mic has a similar anomaly.
The channel dial required quite a bit of back-and-forth work to get it to tune clearly. I hopped on channel 15, where some folks a county or two over were talking. I hollered for a radio check and was informed by a man who lives a good 30 minutes away distance-wise that the radio sounded good. The modulation, he said, could come up a bit but by no means did it sound bad.
The majority of white-faced Midlands come set at roughly 50 to 60-percent modulation from the factory. They’re very conservative talkers, but with a turn of the screwdriver, they sound great at 80 to 90 percent. That’ll get done when I open it up to clean all the switches and pots.
People got a kick out of what I was talking on when I told them. I had fun messing with it. Although I won’t use it often, my power supply has three taps, and I’ll keep it closeby for occasional use.
Perhaps not widely known, Midland was always trying to be on the cutting edge, with space-age looking designs and innovations. There are few better examples of this than their series of white-faced mobiles and base stations with hard outer plastic shells that looked very little like anything else on the market at the time.
The Midland 13-884 boasted the usual white plastic exterior, but unlike the others, it was made to look like a car phone. Although manufacturers like Johnson Messenger and Sears Roadtalker released similar designs, Midland made a few mobiles and bases with telephone receivers as their microphone/speaker combo.
Mine rolled off the assembly line in August 1976, just less than a year before the approval of the 17 new CB channels that began the 40-channel revolution. As evidenced by the model number beginning in “13” this radio was only 23 channels.
Following the approval of 40 channel radios in 1977, later models were retrofitted with new tuners and channel dials and the model numbers changed to “77,” and in some cases “76.”
I own a few 13-858 base stations, which came as 23 channel. Cosmetically identical is the 77-858, which is the exact same radio, with a 40-channel dial. I own a few of those as well.
The 13-884 is my first of the radio telephone series. For a meager $15, I was given the chance to resurrect this odd piece of history. After the unboxing, though, I had work to do to make it air worthy.
Did it even work? I didn’t know. But I was determined to find out.
Upon turning it around, I realized my first obstacle was the power jack. Rather than the standard 3-prong mobile power jack, or even two wires coming out the back, it had a push-in 3-pin connector that would put you in the mind of a 5-pin DIN microphone. I’ve never seen one like this, and didn’t figure anyone had one lying around.
Thinking resourcefully, I decided that the easiest option was to open the radio, remove the jack and run a power and ground wire. To clean it up, I’d buy a few rubber grommets from the local hardware store.
Once apart, I realized it was going to be easy. I de-soldered the wires from the jack, cut a red and a black wire and soldered them to the wires inside. I used hot glue and electrical tape to seal the solder joints. It was a bit tricky getting them through the hole once the case was put back on, but a pair of tweezers solved that.
After pulling them through, I walked it over to my 30-amp, 13.8-volt power supply. Attached the wires, and boom. She came to life.
Although the dip switches, tuner and most of the knobs are experiencing intermittent loss of function due to dirt, it’s nothing some tuner cleaner and manual working can’t fix.
I re-connected the 5-pin Uniden/Cobra/SBE SSB-style mic/phone receiver to the radio and on came the audio.
The features by way of knobs include VOLUME, SQUELCH, RF GAIN, and SWR & CAL.
Dip switches, from left to right, are:
SWR, CAL and S-RF
PA, EXT CB and OFF
HAND and SP
TONE: HI and LOW
ANL and OFF
Upon power on, the meter lit brightly. For kicks, I decided to check my SWR with the built-in meter. To my shock and awe, it was on par with my external SWR meter!
Some of the dip switches make intermittent contact due to being dirty. The push to talk on the mic has a similar anomaly.
The channel dial required quite a bit of back-and-forth work to get it to tune clearly. I hopped on channel 15, where some folks a county or two over were talking. I hollered for a radio check and was informed by a man who lives a good 30 minutes away distance-wise that the radio sounded good. The modulation, he said, could come up a bit but by no means did it sound bad.
The majority of white-faced Midlands come set at roughly 50 to 60-percent modulation from the factory. They’re very conservative talkers, but with a turn of the screwdriver, they sound great at 80 to 90 percent. That’ll get done when I open it up to clean all the switches and pots.
People got a kick out of what I was talking on when I told them. I had fun messing with it. Although I won’t use it often, my power supply has three taps, and I’ll keep it closeby for occasional use.