The CB gateway radio arrived yesterday morning, and using the spare few hours I had before I went out I removed the shelf from the cabinet where the main CB is fitted, and installed the bracket for this radio.
The radio is connected to the existing power supply, with a 12 volt fan glued to the underside directly over the speaker grille, the speaker having been removed from the radio. This was because the original fan, despite it’s small, and slimline, profile, did not fit inside the radio due to the location of a transformer directly under the speaker. The fan draws it’s power from the same power supply, rated at 12 volts, 7 amps, more than enough for a CB transmitting at 4 watts and a computer fan that is rated well under 1 amp current draw.
The radio has it’s auto squelch enabled while it is on the dummy load, and the keys are locked (except for the 9/19 key which, owing to the use of those two specific channels in most CB bandplans. makes some kind of sense. The volume and squelch controls are two switched potentiometers so are not electronically locked and can be changed.
Transmitted audio appears to be good, though I’ve so far only had my trusty Intek H-520 Plus to hear it on though I did connect my extension speaker to the handheld knowing that it would provide better quality audio than the speaker that is in the handheld, received audio I cannot get a good answer on just yet, though the parrot output in the test room on 446 Muppets showed promise.
The last stage is to install an antenna, this will allow me to take the gateway off the dummy load and put it on air, though, to begin with, I may set it up as a shared system, alternate weeks, one with my gateway on the antenna and one with my home CB on the antenna, until a second antenna, tuned to be resonant only at, or close to, the gateway’s frequency, will be installed. Once an antenna is installed, on air tests can be carried out (the gateway will have the testing announcements added during the on air testing phase). The antenna will be tuned on my main CB as this is what it will spend most of it’s time being used on once the gateway has it’s own antenna.
The estimated completion date will be sometime after the Olympics.
More updates will follow
73 de 26CT730
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