Peak and Tuned and Align

[WN9HJW]

Post Deleted

[KC2UGV]

Yep. Usually, it's a code word for opening up 10, clipping something to ruin the sound quality, and pushing it past it's design limits.

Sometimes, it's not that the radio needs a service out of the box, but, as they say about a fool and his money... Othertimes, radios out of the box could use some adjustments to make it a smidge better (Like the HTX-10 needing the deviation tweaked).

[N2CHX]

In a CB shop it means turning every trim pot as far clockwise as necessary to maintain distortion.

[WØTKX]

Stay away from a radio that is advertised as having it done... unless it's a trusted source, and you can test it. With a money back garumtee.

Never mind the legality premise, a line to cross that isn't worth it. No matter what, it's still just an 11 meter radio.

[KC2UGV]

Stay away from a radio that is advertised as having it done...

Well, let's not get too general. There are some shops still that really do a peak, tune, and alignment. Albeit, these shops are few and far between :)

[WN9HJW]

Post Deleted

[WØTKX]

Well yea... I meant individuals selling radios.

A larger commercial outfit like the link above would tend to keep their noses clean.

[N8YX]

The difference between 4w AM and 8w AM...is less than a needle's width on the receiving set's S-meter, and often places the active devices dangerously close to the point of self-destruction in a situation with a high VSWR.

There is no reason whatsoever to run more than the legal power level in the Class D CB service, and no more than 85-90% modulation.

If you can't cut the mustard with those parameters it's time to look into more antenna.

[N8YX]

A larger commercial outfit like the link above would tend to keep their noses clean.
IIRC, Walcott's has been cited for selling "export" radios. As have The Quack Shack and a few others.

Prospective buyers should make it clear to a seller that they want a stock (unmodified) radio, that it will be placed on a spectrum analyzer/power meter and a 'scope...and if any evidence of "peaking and tweaking" is found, said radio will be returned for a full refund of the purchase price.

[KG4CGC]

Not to mention any calls, there is a deputy out of Texas who uses one of them thar peaked, tweaked, tuned and pruned radidios everytime 10m is open.
IT SOUNDS LIKE TOTAL CRAP IT IS SO FRIGGIN' DISTORTED! Yet, people want to talk to him and tell him what good job he's doing.

[N8YX]

Not to mention any calls, there is a deputy out of Texas who uses one of them thar peaked, tweaked, tuned and pruned radidios everytime 10m is open.
IT SOUNDS LIKE TOTAL CRAP IT IS SO FRIGGIN' DISTORTED! Yet, people want to talk to him and tell him what good job he's doing.
I got hold of an RCI-2950 which was at some point in its life worked on by one of our area's "wizards".

Yesterday I spent some time un-fscking the thing after it had sat around for years.

Looks good on a 'scope with 20-25w PEP SSB output, instead of the 35+ most folks aim for.

No problems with spurs or 3rd-order products - as is usually the case with these radios.

Of course, the S-meter on the other end really isn't going to be able to tell the difference in power levels.

[WØTKX]

It's not a toob guitar amp, distortion does not sound cool!

[KG4CGC]

It's not a toob guitar amp, distortion does not sound cool!
No but, such a set up in line in your audio chain, Holy Molly Ringwald!
Well, on AM anyway.

[WØTKX]

Almost got the RF problems licked in the audio toys I'm putting together. Can you say Heil Wire?

Next trick is the "line in" with a Jensen audio transformer stuffed inside the DSP 100... bypasses the mic preamp in the TS-850. The compressor/limiter really sounds good. ShamWow.

[KG4CGC]

Almost got the RF problems licked in the audio toys I'm putting together. Can you say Heil Wire?

Next trick is the "line in" with a Jensen audio transformer stuffed inside the DSP 100... bypasses the mic preamp in the TS-850. The compressor/limiter really sounds good. ShamWow.
Shamwow! Is double dirty dog right!
Remember those old Mind Blower speakers with the honkin' transformers on each speaker!

[WØTKX]

What, you mean the 70v pa speakers? Installed a few hundred.

http://www.free-press-release.com/members/members_pic/200910/img/1255471574.jpg

[KG4CGC]

Mind Blower brand of car audio first popularized in the 70's. Actually back then, the word "audio" had not yet been invented and they were just called "car speakers."

[rot]

From the "Who gives a funk archive."
Using the the old Perkin-Elmer grating Atomic Aborption workhorse (one of the finest measurement devices ever made[all optics chain driven]).
"Peak and Tune" refers to maximizing the source lamp response on detector per stable flame composition
and
"Alignment" refers to the horizontalness(??) of the burner slit relative to the source beam in this configuration.
These were all tactile knob interactions...YMMV.
Daysgoneby,NC
rot

[KG4CGC]

tactile knob interactions
That's a keeper.

[NQ6U]

That's a keeper.

It's also illegal in most states.

[KA5PIU]

Hello.

There, now you done it!
You just Had to bring a knob into it, didn't you!
Damn, you beat me to it! ;)

[KA9MOT]

I've been looking at www.walcottcb.com

Walcott is local to me. When I was trucking I pulled in there because the guy that owned the truck wanted the CB antennas replaced. I walked in and while I was waiting I noticed a Kenwood TM-V7A on the shelf above the counter. I commented that it was a nice radio and the blond lady behind the desk said, "That's not for sale, The owner is a Ham and it is his." I told her I was a Ham and had an FT-857D out in the truck. After that she didn't have much to say.

[n2ize]

In the old days they called it "peaked and modified". "Peaked" meant pushing the solid state finals to their max, to get every last fraction of a watt out of them that they can deliver. It allso usually meant blown finals after a few weeks which meant more money for the radio repair shop. "Modified" usually meant "muddified". It meant opening up the radio and expanding it beyond the allocated frequency range... and often into frequency space allocated to other radio services. It also meant cutting out the audio limiter circuit so the user could overmodulated it and get lots of negative peak distortion so that on the air the person using it sounded clipped, distorted and basically sounding like crap.

[kb2vxa]

In the old days it was all TUBES and you were lucky to have 5 crystals in the transmit bank! (;->) Peaked meant transmit and receive aligned for peak performance (So THAT'S where the name came from!) which is how it should have come from the factory in the first place. Back then rig audio was as good as it gets, replacing the "stock mic" was a decent improvement and there were no "power mics" to hyellowfy or if you prefer mudify the yawdio.

While there were always freebanders, when it came up to IZE's good old days, that is solid state, early 40 channel PLL controlled rigs the fun began. The infamous PL-9 chip gave the FCC fits because it was so easy to monkey with and eventually it was banned but I digress. The channel selector switch connected to the first few pins gave it 10KHz steps each side of center frequency which happened to be channel 14 while the remainder were fixed permanently on board to +5V or ground to set its limits. It didn't take rocket science to figure out that by appropriately setting +5V or ground the actual limits of the chip could be achieved, one actually set frequency steps to 10KHz or 5Khz so it could produce 1000 channels each side of center, a total of 2000 channels! Soon channel selectors were replaced with a bank of thumb switches and a chart supplied to provide numeric keys corresponding to channels, the freeband ones having the weirdest channel numbers that came to mind. I had free access to the far superior lever switches and I was on my way to riches, just name your price and CBers will fork it over without question, not so much as a cocked eyebrow.

I used to get $20 for every de-pinged Browning Eagle too. Nothing like making a 10 minute quick buck clipping a 20uF tubular electrolytic out of the receiver conveniently located behind the receiver mute terminals on the back chassis skirt. (;->)

Naturally there was a fly in the ointment, a CB rig was never designed that could cover such a wide frequency spread. Depending on the rig it would be narrower or wider but there's always a rolloff point where pootput and sensitivity go down until the rig is dead in the water. That led to some great on air entertainment as they fired back and forth comments like "My rig is better than your rig, nyeah nyeah na nyeah nyeah!" Now the "10M ham" rigs have taken all the fun out of it with no tuned circuits to get in the way, they're DESIGNED for full performance from 12 through 10M. Well, they provide another form of entertainment when you hear them complaining about "those dang beepers" following them around until they finally get the message; GET THE HELL OFF OUR BAND!!! (;->)

"...on the air the person using it sounded clipped, distorted and basically sounding like crap."
Crap sounds much better considering some of the fuzzboxes I heard sounded like they used cheese graters for microphones. Speaking of crap, have any of you seen the Mythbusters polishing turds? Yes, it CAN be done and they proved that turd balls can take a high polish and come out looking like brown ivory billiard balls! Oh, inspirational methodology was provided by the ancient Japanese art of polishing mud balls. Polishing mud balls? The ancient Japanese must have had a lot of time and a bit of mud on their hands...... Never mind what I did with partially dried slip when I cast ceramic brick-a brack junk for a shop that catered to bored local housewives.

[N5RLR]

Lest we not forget the Olde Schoole™ trick with crystal-control rigs, of flipping the Transmit and Receive crystals to go 455 KHz lower... :stirpot:

[kb2vxa]

Trouble is they don't track, they go in opposite directions.

[n2ize]

In the old days it was all TUBES and you were lucky to have 5 crystals in the transmit bank! (;->) Peaked meant transmit and receive aligned for peak performance (So THAT'S where the name came from!) which is how it should have come from the factory in the first place. Back then rig audio was as good as it gets, replacing the "stock mic" was a decent improvement and there were no "power mics" to hyellowfy or if you prefer mudify the yawdio.

While there were always freebanders, when it came up to IZE's good old days, that is solid state, early 40 channel PLL controlled rigs the fun began. The infamous PL-9 chip gave the FCC fits because it was so easy to monkey with and eventually it was banned but I digress. The channel selector switch connected to the first few pins gave it 10KHz steps each side of center frequency which happened to be channel 14 while the remainder were fixed permanently on board to +5V or ground to set its limits. It didn't take rocket science to figure out that by appropriately setting +5V or ground the actual limits of the chip could be achieved, one actually set frequency steps to 10KHz or 5Khz so it could produce 1000 channels each side of center, a total of 2000 channels! Soon channel selectors were replaced with a bank of thumb switches and a chart supplied to provide numeric keys corresponding to channels, the freeband ones having the weirdest channel numbers that came to mind. I had free access to the far superior lever switches and I was on my way to riches, just name your price and CBers will fork it over without question, not so much as a cocked eyebrow.

I used to get $20 for every de-pinged Browning Eagle too. Nothing like making a 10 minute quick buck clipping a 20uF tubular electrolytic out of the receiver conveniently located behind the receiver mute terminals on the back chassis skirt. (;->)

Naturally there was a fly in the ointment, a CB rig was never designed that could cover such a wide frequency spread. Depending on the rig it would be narrower or wider but there's always a rolloff point where pootput and sensitivity go down until the rig is dead in the water. That led to some great on air entertainment as they fired back and forth comments like "My rig is better than your rig, nyeah nyeah na nyeah nyeah!" Now the "10M ham" rigs have taken all the fun out of it with no tuned circuits to get in the way, they're DESIGNED for full performance from 12 through 10M. Well, they provide another form of entertainment when you hear them complaining about "those dang beepers" following them around until they finally get the message; GET THE HELL OFF OUR BAND!!! (;->)

"...on the air the person using it sounded clipped, distorted and basically sounding like crap."
Crap sounds much better considering some of the fuzzboxes I heard sounded like they used cheese graters for microphones. Speaking of crap, have any of you seen the Mythbusters polishing turds? Yes, it CAN be done and they proved that turd balls can take a high polish and come out looking like brown ivory billiard balls! Oh, inspirational methodology was provided by the ancient Japanese art of polishing mud balls. Polishing mud balls? The ancient Japanese must have had a lot of time and a bit of mud on their hands...... Never mind what I did with partially dried slip when I cast ceramic brick-a brack junk for a shop that catered to bored local housewives.

Yeah, I remember the tube days of CB stuff well. I had a Comstat 25B, a friend of mine had a Courier 23 Plus and another friend had a Tram D201. Dems was some fun radidios. I could fire up my Hi Fi Viking 2 on 11 meters... it includes 11 meters as a ham band, but the FeCes wouldn't like it if I did that. besides CB is dead these days anyhows.

I used to love monitoring some of the local CB'ers with their "peaked and tuned" radios on my scope. I saw some great examples of distortion and exactly what an AM envelope should not look like. It provided great entertainment for some of my ham and hi-fi friends.

Speaking about the Feces I think I'll pass on the polished turd balls. I like the old billiard balls made of cellulose nitrate... that have been known to occasionally ignite on impact. talk about racking up the table. LOL