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Seminal Must Have CB Repair Publications

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Dawn

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Joined
Apr 5, 2003
Messages
284
Location
Pinecrest,Fl
This isn't really an issue for me as this is my career. But for those that want to get into repair, there really hasn't been many publications since the boom during the late 70's and early 80's.

My manual library has many SAMS that for the most part ended around '76 along with Raytheon,RS, Johnson, and Pearce Simpson from the channelized and 23 channel days. I have only a handfull for SAMs covering 40 ch. 5104 Hitachi Penny's, RS, and Sears that I always considered to be the ultimate build engineering. Some early '858 uniden chassis of the early RS, Courier sets, and then the MB/Cobra 148gtl chassis and clones that were favorites of the amateur conversions due to their broadbandness and expandability, but poor performers by comparison.

I've had a set of secret CB thanks to the net and original copies of the Roger/CPO Sideband and Engineering publications by a former CPI engineer that tried to standardize a chip database that ultimately was done by Lou Franklin which I have a set of his docs.

Beyond that, I have a SAMS publicatiions such as Edwad Knoll's Test Equipment and Measurements and Joh D Lenks Handbook of Practical CB Service. Besides Franklin's docs, the Sencore and B&K service docs probably have been the best source of service and evaluation docs. Hickok may have produced a treasure trove of vocational docs for their training and instruction, but they have never made into the public domain or copied.

Just wondering what you folks have or had and what important docs should be in most people's service library.
 

JayMojave

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Joined
Dec 13, 2007
Messages
722
Location
Mojave Ca
Hello Dawn: Yeah ok I hear ya, but the trouble shooting books even in the hay day of CBs are kind of limited in my view.

One great chapter in the ARRL yearly handbook is a chapter on trouble shooting electronic equipment.

A few months ago I had to trouble shoot and repair a old Tram 201D its uses tubes, transistors, and IC's. Not being a bench tech I took longer than a experienced bench repair Tech. I got out the old signal traced, scope, and my trusty old HP Signal Generator and modified Heathkit Freq Counter. Wow I R A Tech. Having the radios schematic diagram was a big help.

I found a broken wire, many resistors that had wonder out of their design values, and a nasty one with a 180 pF mica cap shorted, and of course the power supply filter caps had to be replaced. And a alignment for the transmitter and receiver brought up the receiver by a bunch of dB's.

As I took several weeks to find all the problems, I noticed that while thinking about the trouble shooting and repair, I came up with different ideas to verify the different circuits. Sharpening my trouble shooting skills from experience. This experience of learning is difficult to write down and show to others I believe. The Academic world is short with common sense and hands on experience.

Many years ago I worked for old engineer that had us in his crew buy certain books that were pretty expensive 100 Dollars plus in some cases. Dear old Dave loved to go thru these books and red line out the "Academic gobble-dy-gook" put there by Professors to fill the book up, to sell for a profit. Bless you Dave where ever you are!

The knowledge gained and learned in these type of trouble shooting and repairs seems to be a inside self taught thing.

Many years ago a good friend of mine a famous Tech named Bill Good use to throw a get to gather or BBQ Pot Luck party and many Distinguished Radio Enthusiasts and a few not so distinguished types, we all had a great time. I use to watch Bill fix radios in sometimes minuets as he didn't need a schematic diagram or alignment procedure, he had it all upstairs in his head, very impressive!

I really wish Bill had left a trouble shooting book before he passed many years ago.

A Trouble Shooting Book or reference would need would need to based on minimum bench test equipment, and a lot of hands on experience. Color photos and some documentation blasting the over stuffed academic word.

Jay in the Mojave
 
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