Well, MW0UZO's Superstar 360FM was pretty nifty. Who else has some old relic of the CB days of yore sitting around?
Guess I'll kick things off with my old Lafayette Com-Phone 23A. Got it for a whopping $5.00 at an Army Navy store. The funny thing was the guy didn't know what to charge for it. When I quipped, "Well, I've had at least $5.00 worth of fun looking at it," he said, "Sold."
I've got an old Royce something or other sitting in the back of a closet. I look on ebay from time to time and one of these days I'm going to break down and buy a SBE Console II just to have sitting here in the shack.
I am surprised at such a sudden deterioration in a woman whose only ailment was a lazy anus.
Have fully modified Cobras 2000 & 148, & President Grant. All 3 cover 2 meg continuous.
Paid $5 for the 148 and replaced the volt regulator/switch chip. The Grant has an MRF 497 rf amp final.
I had a Binatone Breaker Phone, which I wanted to modify into a nice case and use a standard mic. It went well until it stopped working properly .... doh! I vaguely remember the problem was due to poor grounding issues - something I just didn't know about back then :)
Anyway I checked out a picture of your Lafayette Com-Phone 23A... ha ha awesome
Last edited by mw0uzo; 05-05-2011 at 08:11 AM.
I'm not sure what I did to goober attaching a picture...... Anyway, hook that bad boy up to one of those there skullcraka linears...... Breaker, breaker I've got a long distance phone call on Da Bowl. Lol!
That and I've got an old Realistic TRC-431 sitting around that I have to install over at my buddy's shop. He used to be big into CB back in the mid 70's to early 80's and would like a base station again. I went to high school with his son, Morgan, and we both have CBs in our Jeeps for off roading, snow storms, and keeping tabs on what's happening on the interstate if we're traveling. Needless to say, the old man would like to have an alternative way of getting in contact besides cell phones.
This time the setup won't be as fancy as it was 35 years ago. Long gone is the Siltronix VFO, Lafayette 23 channel base, D&A Maverick, and Moonraker 6. Now it'll just be a plain old Rat Shack base and a Maco V 5/8. The cool thing is, Morgan wants to go for his ham ticket and I've almost got Bob convinced to take the plunge.
I think your friend might be quickly disappointed with the degraded state of CB radio nowadays... Unless he hangs on the "lesser known" channels, like 11, 21, and 22.
It's mostly for interpersonal B.S. communications between us guys at the shop. It'll be a neat toy, plus it might just get the old man to go for a ham ticket finally. He needs a hobby and I think he'll enjoy ham radio.
One of my associates gave me a "deaf and dumb" RCI Mirage 2950; it had a bad internal speaker and the external speaker jack was bad as well as the microphone was mis-wired.
It will operate "anywhere" and, it does have the capability of offsetting the receive and transmit for repeater operations on 29.620 / 29.520. The older model 2950 is better than the 2950 DX model that is hard to "mod".
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Last edited by koØm; 05-12-2011 at 09:23 PM. Reason: spelling
I have a first generation non PLL Hygain V SSB/AM 23 channel. You know, banks of xtals.
And a Johnson Messenger Viking 352 SSB/AM 23 channel, also a non PLL rig.
Neither are modified in any way. The Viking has a great RX, very "listenable".
Last edited by WØTKX; 05-12-2011 at 09:51 PM.
"Where would we be without the agitators of the world to attach the electrodes
of knowledge to the nipples of ignorance?" ~ Professor "Dick" Soloman
I started out in CB with a Royce 1-641 SSB/AM rig. Had a lot of fun with it. Did something stupid with the rig one summer day in '83 and she never worked again.
(An NTE236 or equivalent could have save the day...but the rig was gutted nonetheless.)
Royce made a higher-end version of the '641 - the '642. It had a clock, three separate meters (S/RF, SWR Cal and SWR) and a bunch of features which its little brother did not. I always wanted one but had never seen them for sale anywhere.
Fast forward to 2004: The '642 is fetching upwards of $300 on Fleabay. A coworker "won" a lightning-damaged unit for me for the princely sum of $26. Shortly thereafter I began eBaying on my own and got one that was missing a couple knobs for $29. For a grand total of $55 I have one unit that is literally "mint" plus another parts chassis...including a working power supply.
Royce made a number of the "three meter" radios: 1-640 (23ch version of the -642), 1-624 (23ch AM only) and 1-625 (40ch AM only). I have every one but the '640 and am thinking about buying one then doing a DDS synthesizer mod to move it into 10M.
Royce also made one of the best mobile rigs of the day - the 1-639. It had a modulation meter and a mic gain control...which were never included on the '642 - even though the two models used the same main board!
So many unique radios. On my "to-get" list are Midland's 78-999 and a CPI CP-2000/BC-2000 setup.
Truth be told, I wish I could buy a CB rig with receiver performance and filtering/interference-fighting features which are merely equal to that of my FT-726Rs, themselves by no means on par with other (higher-end) gear in the shack. If equipped with the accessory HF module, that Yaesu satellite rig can receive 26-30MHz. A/B comparisons with the '642 and the '726r make me wonder how CB manufacturers of the day ever justified the prices of their gear.
"Everyone wants to be an AM Gangsta until it's time to start doing AM Gangsta shit."
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