Been a while since I have been on the RadioMods forums, so long in fact I had to re register due to forgetting my user name and password, bit sad to see that the last posting on here was in January this year! I have been away for a while due to a couple of qth moves and passing my foundation license as an entry into ham radio so have been spending my time and money (too much money) on vhf and hf radios.
Now that the UK big wigs have finally pulled their heads out of their backsides and legalised AM and SSB CB radio I have nearly returned to being active on CB, not going to spend any more money just to keep the better half happy I will be using a given early 80s CB for a job I did for a local taxi driver namely a replacement blown final and a swr tune job on his antenna so he doesnt need his finals fixed again, I asked him what his swr was and he said "I dont think Ive got one what do they look like!) he is now a little wiser and owns a basic meter.
He gave me an old Major M588 of which I have had 4 now, 2 of the other 120 channel model and this is the second M588 80 channel model, he did not use it as he could not hear or talk to the other taxi drivers on it, well I now know why, it had been converted to 10m (just above 29 Mhz) via a pll jump mod and it had a badly fitted 10kc jump switch (alphas) and not done with resistors and a transistor like it should be, not only that the switch was duff and wired wrongly, the clarifier was open to track on tx and the rx was offset tuned by extra capacitance on the crystal tuning so it could if it was set up right get on to the UK 27-81 FM channels, why anybody would do this to one of these with the nasty FM modulation is beyond me?
The messy mods have been removed and repairs made to the butchered foil traces, the PLL and VCO have been re aligned and the clarifer is tracking rx only nicely centered and even, usb and lsb rx is really nice even AM sounds good, had a laugh today listening to the USA on 6 mid band, its like one big power party on there seeing who can talk over who but at least they dont over do it with the echo like a certain country I wont mention, Im sure you know who I mean.
Well the M588 just needs the TX back on the FCC .005 khz ending frequency instead of the silly .001.25 khz UK 27-81 FM ending (if anybody has any ideas about how this silly TX mod was done back in the days please look at my post in the repairs and troubleshooting section) and that will be it done apart from getting the gain master up a height after we move house yet again!
Cant wait to get back on AM and SSB CB radio again "nearly" legal apart from the old radio but who is going to check?
73
Phil 26ct867 m6mrp