Update to the Uniden Uniace 100 repair

The project to repair the Uniden Uniace 100 I picked up for £20 from a radio rally is coming along nicely, with the radio receiving to some extent I turned my attention to the transmitter, and it now transmits fine.

One of the tuning stages within the transmitter had a broken core so I turned this over and adjusted it with an improvised trimmer tool from a piece of plastic I had lying about, this has brought the transmitter up to a suitable output and the 10dB switch does attenuate the signal as it is meant to do, though the default position on the Uniden Uniace 100 is in fact the low power mode, for high power it requires you push the switch in.

With the transmitter now operational my next job is to replace all of the usual suspect capacitors with new ones and any other capacitors that need to be replaced, these are normally electrolytic capacitors, and with the radio at least 41 years old it would be prudent to change them.

All repairs carried out so far have involved traditional 60/40 tin/lead solder for any soldering work as this is what would have been used by Uniden in 1981 as the powers that be hadn't outlawed lead solder in consumer electronics at that point.

Once the capacitors are done the radio will be subjected to a full retune of both transmitter and receiver as changing them may effect the tuning

I hope this set can give another 41 years of service, who knows, it may outlast me!

73 de M0WNU/26CT730

Uniden Uniace 100 repair project

After attending the 2022 Durham & District Amateur radio society rally I came away with 2 CBs, keeping up my long-standing tradition of buying radios at rallies, these were the Midland 77-095 and the Uniden Uniace 100, both type approved under the original CB 27/81 regime started in November 1981.

The Midland was all fine though if it did not work I'd have swiped the volume control from it for the Midland 38 as I suspect the part is identical, the Uniden was modified to 10-meters and this post is about me beginning to restore it to CB use.

So the first thing I found opening the radio was a board added by another ham long ago, this had a few components including 2 crystals and were tapped into the TX and RX stages of the radio, removing this and reinstating two resistors got it back on frequency but very little TX power, RX was fine bar channel 2, I next removed an errant resistor from the bottom of the board and replaced another resistor that was of an incorrect value, TX still very low output and still this fault on channel 2, I next spotted a link across one of the receive tuning cans and a capacitor across the unoccupied 10.695MHz filter position, removal of the link deafened the receive greatly, I then spotted a cut track leading from one of the tuning cans and the filter to another part of the circuit, this was reinstated and improved the receive by a tiny margin, so the radio is in need of a proper tune up once I get trimmer tools.

I suspect that the radio has been retuned to be optimum on 28MHz, so every stage of both the transmitter and the receiver will need to be gone over several times and the discriminator checked, deviation appears to be untouched as received on my handhelds, the meter has a working lamp but due to damage to the front panel it is held in by sticky pads, and fouled the latching mechanism on the PA switch.

This radio is the second Uniden I own so far as they made the President Grant II, and hopefully the third Uniden I'll have used as the first CB I used was an Audioline 341 that the owner mucked up with a screwdriver in front of me, the 341 using the same board as the Uniden Uniace 200, interestingly the Audioline equivalent of the Uniden Uniace 100 does not have a PA facility.

I'll update as progress on this 1980s classic is made

73 de M0WNU/26CT730

Fun with fitting roof bar mounts for antennas

I've fitted roof bars to my car and mounted the two antennas to them, the bars are coated in plastic and their mounting hardware is powder coated, however the bolts holding the fitting kit parts to the car showed continuity to the bodywork, the CB antenna at the very least needs bonding, which I have done using a piece of 27A DC rated cable, but this may be posing a problem itself so I will need a braided strap, while DC continuity is all well and good there could be reactance in the copper cable used, so a braided battery strap is needed instead.

This would be run from the bolts on the CB mount. then one of the bolts holding the roofbar mount fixing plate onto the mounting points on the car.

Using the wire, which is stranded, I got two low-SWR points either side of the CB allocations (SWR remains high within the band) once the mount was bonded, with the wire at the full spool length (2-meters or so) the SWR was much lower but it really needs bonding.

The 2/70 colinear antenna is offset from the centre towards the driver's side of the car, early tests on the VNA suggested that on 2-meters this antenna is working fine so I do not know where the antenna is getting its ground from on that band, I've not checked this on 70cm as yet.

As the VNA battery ran out during tests today I tried to power it from the car charger, this created a ground loop because the car electrical system has its negative grounded to the body as well as is the case in many modern vehicles.

Tomorrow I will pick up a braided earth strap of suitable length and try this on the car to bond the CB antenna as I suspect this copper DC cable I've used may not be working as expected.

73 de M0WNU/26CT730

Moonraker Micro CB radio

My recent main YouTube video was on the Moonraker Micro CB radio, which is indeed a compact radio, based on an AnyTone chassis as it turned out so has the 10-meter mode and the naughtiness inside, though of course I have no issue putting this set on 10 it does not have SSB capability and being channelised may require a frequency counter to get an idea what channel is associated with which frequency if you want to use it on 10.

The radio came to me with bare ended wires so I fitted a cigarette lighter plug, rated 5A as this is ample for this radio, to be able to plug it in in the car to do tests, the radio seems to do well, and is good when put against a comparable set, which in my case was a PNI Escort HP7120.

When I did the original bench tests on the radio the power levels were reading lower than expected, however later testing showed it was in fact fine.

Both videos are below

73 de M0WNU/26CT730

Realistic TRC-1007, a quick first look

 I have had the radio now for a couple of days, it arrived quicker than expected and well ahead of the dummy batteries which have not shown up as yet (despite being sent via Amazon Prime) meaning to get the voltage required I've had to fit 10 normal AA batteries with two of them insulated by tape to remove them from the circuit and a wire to jump the last in-circuit battery to the negative terminal, the batteries in the radio are two of the 10 Duracell batteries that were in it on delivery taped over to remove them from circuit and 8 Kodak batteries from Poundland, the radio indeed has an intact telescopic and seems to transmit and receive fine.

After filming the attached video I found out when this radio dates from, if I have read the date code correctly it is from September 1987, making this radio 33 years old and aside from a crack in the housing it is in very good order.

With the non-standard external antenna connector I cannot get even a rough power measurement off it because I need an adaptor and I will have to call Knights on Monday to see if they have any in, though they list them on their website as limited stock it is best I check ahead.

On Wednesday I hope to put up the boomerang antenna, connect it up to the President Grant II and go up to the Downholme viewing point with the Realistic and the modern Intek and Midland handhelds I also own which will be tested on both the supplied rubber duck antennas and the Albrecht CL27 with the Realistic using its own telescopic which is longer than the CL27, which will be filmed and uploaded to YouTube

In the mean time though here is the video on this radio not long after it arrived

73 de M0WNU/26CT730

Classic 80s CB on its way... but will it work?

I placed a bid on a "seems to work" but being sold as "spares or repairs" Realistic TRC-1007 27/81 spec CB handheld, and surprisingly won it as the only bidder, this would be the second Tandy/Realistic product I would own after the scanner which needs work and maybe the switches cleaning.

I do have a soft spot for the older radio gear as well as the modern radios you can get today, and if this handheld needs work I can refer to Richard Shireby at UK CB radio servicing on YouTube as he has done this radio and has a service manual for it.

With the seller having tested this and suggesting that it seems to work, it should be a good project if there are any faults, the telescopic antenna appeared intact from the photos on ebay, however I will find out in a few days, and as will you guys as this radio will be featured on the YouTube channel at some point not long after it arrives.

This will either be the third working handheld or the second non-worker depending on actual condition as I have a broken Intek H-520 Plus that I may be able to repair if I can get a scrap one in the future.

I will post an update when the radio arrives, to err on the side of caution I have some dummy batteries (which were sold in a kit from Amazon) which will arrive ahead of the radio, testing the radio for TX power is not immediately possible because the Realistic handhelds appear to use a phono or Motorola connector (unsure which it is) but I will be setting up something to test the radio from high ground.

73 de M0WNU/26CT730

Handheld CB discussion

I came across a video on UK CB Radio Servicing on YouTube in which Richard G0OJF has a go at servicing a PNI Escort HP62, which as I have worked out is the same radio as the Moonraker Major 42 which also from what I am to believe shares internals with the new "digital squelch" version of the Midland Alan 42, Richard also worked out that the circuit is designed to run off 12 volts rather than 13.8 volts, I wondered if the older Midland 42 Multi, which I own, was OK at that voltage, it is, then I did some digging with my Intek H-520 Plus car kit and concluded that the radio is designed for 9V as it is regulated down in the Intek car kit, whereas the Midland Alan 42 Multi car kit is straight through with no regulation.

The Moonraker variant is the cheapest handheld on the market today, it joins its Midland and PNI cousins on the Moonraker website (they're all fundamentally the same radio), other options out there are the K-Po Panther (which is really a President Randy II and uses a TNC antenna rather than a BNC one and has also been featured on a video by Richard G0OJF), and just recently appeared to market is the TTI TCB-H100 which has a roger bleep and echo facility onboard, as well as a drop-in charger as standard which to my knowledge no handheld marketed previously had one as standard and only the Randy II/K-Po Panther/Lafayette Urano had one as an optional extra, the Intek H-520 and 512 had the contacts for one but one was not made or marketed.

Having owned the Alan 42 Multi for some years (and my XYL liking that radio too) I am keen to see how the Moonraker Major 42 and the PNI Escort HP62 fair, the latter radio is solely the car kit and battery boxes and a BNC antenna are optional, it's also supplied with the Extra 48 antenna of which I already have one, the Moonraker handheld meanwhile comes with at least one battery box and the car adaptor is optional.

Though handheld CBs generally lack in performance due to their compromise antennas, though the longer Albrecht CL27 antennas are available and I have proven that antenna is a good option on YouTube, they can be very handy for communications in a similar manner to PMR446, you have flexibility of all 80 legal channels, I do still advocate their use but to do anything realistic with them a longer antenna is always better, modern ones also don't eat batteries as much as their older counterparts and can be put into low power anyway to save battery power if you don't need a full 4 watts (and some, like the Intek H-520 plus, refuse to even key up at full power when the batteries are at a certain level).

Moonraker do sell 5 PNI CB radio products including the Escort HP62, which I will cover another day, I also hope, finances pending, to be able to take a look at the Major 42 and see how it fairs against a distant cousin by Midland, and also hopefully take a look at some more PNI offerings because they're so affordable it makes sense not to promote these radios to those looking to start out in CB.

Again I hope to discuss this on my YouTube channel though I've not decided if I should do it as a live stream or a regular filmed video, but keep an eye on the channel.

73 de M0WNU/26CT730

both antennas arrived, both scheduled for YouTube upload by Monday

I now have both antennas that I ordered, however the Thunderpole Boomerang antenna was to be delivered by Parcelforce (or Parcelfarce as I call them because they are incredibly useless) and they failed to deliver it to a neighbour as instructed, ignored the fact I rescheduled and left it at Catterick Garrison Post Office meaning after filming the video for the Sirio Hi-Power 4000 (and subjecting it to 70MPH due to a trip to nearby Darlington to do a bank run) I had to call at the Post Office to collect it, with that done editing work was finished for the Sirio antenna and the Boomerang unboxing video was filmed.

A big surprise with the Sirio was that I did not need to adjust it, SWR under 1.5:1 across all 80 channels, for the most part, the top end of 27/81 was about 1.4 which is acceptable, I was to compare between my K-Po and Zetagi SWR meters however this did not happen because another vehicle parked next to my car before I could do that, and the driver did not seem happy that I was even up there, probably because I don't own a dog, unfortunately public land means I have a right to go up there, it is ideal for radio given height and forms part of my mobile standardised test route, now I have the antenna I will be doing a dry run on video before actually doing anything on the air to show you the route from the car.

The only part to do from the perspective of the new antennas is the on-air test of the Boomerang, once it is up and tuned, given the fine adjustments that may be needed I won't bore you and give a final SWR reading as per the K-Po meter, the Zetagi meter, and the one built in to the President Grant II.

I will be working from 4pm tonight and as ever will be monitoring UK 19, which is usually full of the burner brigade running illegal power to speak to their pals which the 4 watts can do fine for them but they generally don't have a good understanding of this fact, that and they have the squelch turned all the way up which is a bit ridiculous really, maybe even with them I may notice a difference on this antenna on receive, the one thing that will be noticed is the fact I have a bigger antenna on the car.

73 de M0WNU/26CT730

Thunderpole T-3000 is winging its way to my shack

Today was my payday, and factoring in that I have a bit of extra cash left over from my salary I placed an order for a Thunderpole T-3000 CB radio, which so far I have heard good reports about, this radio has already been looked at by RustySkull Productions on YouTube and Lewis M3HHY from channel "RingwayManchester" has looked at the radio this is a rebadge of, the Nanfone CB-689, and tested with another station radio to radio, the other station having the T-3000, was found to work well.

I plan to use this radio as my main mobile CB, even though it does not have SSB which I only really use parked up because adjusting the RIT (or clarifier as it's called on CBs) while mobile is a pain and with SSB you sometimes have to concentrate on the incoming audio which is certainly not ideal while driving, as this radio is so slimline it can fit any modern car with ease either into a DIN sized space or fixed to the dash with a bracket in the normal way.

The unit I ordered is an ex display unit, what that means is that Thunderpole have had it out of the box and had it on display, though they will have tested all accessories to ensure they function, particularly the microphone, which although has an LED in it, or at least a position for one, no LED lights up on transmit, this is because an optional Bluetooth mic is available for the Nanfone unit and would work with this as well, by virtue of the Kenwood HT type connector on the front (as I have a speaker mic and some headsets from Baofeng radios that fit I may test these too.

Naturally I will be doing a video with this radio, power tests (4 watts of course), how it looks and feels, ease of use and hopefully if there are any stations on that day a radio report.

I plan to mount this radio in the car, and ultimately keep my Grant II for portable work on 11-meters SSB, the antenna on the car at the moment for 11-meters is in fact my Orbitor/Tornado Stinger antenna that during the summer my XYL painted white and her and I converted into the antenna we dubbed the 'spider antenna', the magmount is an older version of the Sirio magmount I have in use for my 2/70 antenna, except this older one had near destroyed cable so I had to rewire it using coax from a snail mount I was not using, I will later on be replacing the rear antenna with something similar to the antenna I loaned, I'll have to see if GB Communications sell one of these because I then don't have to travel far and can swap the antennas over immediately, provided I remember an SWR meter because the T-3000 does not have one installed.

I certainly am eager to receive one of the most unique CB radios made today to fit into the most unique Toyota Aygo of them all, not because I've fitted radio equipment in it but because it did a journey from my home QTH to well into Bavaria and back and did not seem bothered, so a unique design of CB radio should complement it nicely.

There is a Sci-Fi connection with the naming scheme of the Thunderpole T-series CB radios, I've spotted it, can you spot it too?

I have started monitoring and calling out on 19 due to the appearance of a Ford Fiesta, a Volkswagen Bora and a pick up truck all equipped with Orbitor style antennas, so I know people are out there using the CB, and I'm pretty sure the drivers of these vehicles have seen the antennas on my car too, and I saw a video on YouTube where a CB operator drives to work on the motorway, gets passed by an HGV and the driver of the HGV calls out after seeing the antenna on the car of the operator that's filming, I suspect he's using a President Grant II in that video, no idea what the trucker was using though.

Hope to catch you on the CB and also don't forget as I'm a licenced Amateur radio operator I can be found on local repeaters in my area and sometimes the calling channel on 2-meters.

73 de M0WNU/26CT730 (or you can just call me the red squirrel on the CB if you like)

RTL-SDR dedicated machine sort of set up

I have an old laptop with a display that has no working backlight, a Samsung RV510, and am putting this machine to use as a dedicated RTL-SDR receiver, it originally served as the now closed Richmond CB FRN gateway, with me having high SWR (and having to use a matcher), it remained closed for quite some time however the machine was in fact hibernating from the very point it was closed down.

It seems to run the SDR# software fine and works with both RTL-SDR sticks (I already know that the cheapo black one works, the NESDR SMArt was tested). so first test was with Soundmodem and APRS, it worked ok, though I don’t think I configured it correctly to pass packets from soundmodem to APRSIS32 so nothing was gated in that experiment.

Next was to decode DMR, it did not do well here either due to there being some noise on the frequency I could not seem to get rid of, though this was in the 70cm band and the supplied magmount is fitted with RG58, trying a piece of 213 and a dipole didn’t make a difference and destroyed my SMA-M to SO239 adaptor almost to the cost of the stick’s SMA-F connector (though the sheared pin was removed with Blu-Tack.

I am going to rehash my Handheld CB and PMR446 videos after either the Ripon or Blackpool rally, the first videos were all HT to HT (or in the 446 video between two units with fixed helical antennas) using this setup, the final location of this receiver of many talents will be next to my “Stranger Things” radio (the Realistic Pro-53 Patrolman, I call it that because it really looks like it was pulled from the Netflix series Stranger Things though I owned it before I heard of that).

The two videos will be done under the same conditions at the TX end, using the same radios (Intek MT-5050 for PMR446 and Midland Alan 42 Multi for 11-meters, both again using the stock rubber duck antennas), the RTL-SDR will be connected to an antenna using a lenght of RG213 to keep loss as low as possible, the antenna will most likely be in the window, outside if possible, and I want to make it from a couple of cheap CB antennas with the 3/8th thread on them as I have a dipole centre configured this way, that arrangement won’t be used for TX as there would be no choke.

The receiver works from as low as 24MHz right up to 1.7GHz. so 10-meters, 6-meters, 4 meters. 2-meters, 70cm and a lot of commercial, licence-free and aviation frequencies are also covered as well as the Amateur bands and CB frequencies, first things first is that I require a new SMA-M to SO239 adaptor and preferably a way to stop the SMA pin shearing off.

On closing I now have an extended battery to record video footage from the camcorder, this is so I can record footage of the Ripon and Blackpool rallies , Ripon is on Sunday (with an aim to have the video uploaded by Monday afternoon), Blackpool is two weeks later (with an aim to have the video uploaded by the following Monday afternoon)

73 de 2E0EIJ/26CT730

putting all my RG213 to use and repairing the T2LT

With the crimp-on plugs having arrived earlier this week I set to work fitting them to the cables, starting off with the RG213, which is all now terminated and can be put to use, all of it tested into a dummy load showing no mismatch, these cables should see me through for a while, and will be used to feed antennas over the longer RG58 that came from the cut off piece of the groundplane antenna, which will receive a plug hopefully tomorrow.

The T2LT had a cut in the feedline outer jacket, I have cut this out and crimped on a new PL259 at that point, it will be tested tomorrow provided the wind dies down sufficiently, if not Wednesday, I noticed this cut during the Activate All Counties event last summer but the antenna was still working as the braid had not been compromised, just the outer jacket.

Another antenna I hope to test tomorrow if it gets completed and the wind dies down is the second dipole for 2-meters made from the metal strips found inside the rubber part of car windscreen wiper blades, the antenna is deliberately too long for 2-meters so will be cut to length in the field, it will be fed with the RG213 I have and the QYT KT8900D will be taken with me as it is less prone to pager noise than the Leixen VV-898 and once the SWR meter is removed the HTs may be damaged having a heavy coax connected to them, and should this antenna work it will be my go-to portable ops antenna, for campsite use I'll use my copper-wire dipole as this does work fine as I have had it on the air before.

I will post results of the new dipole on YouTube and on here, the T2LT, however, I will just post on here as I know the antenna does work OK

73 de 2E0EIJ/26CT730

Team RoadCom-FS-UK hopefully coming to my shack real soon

Been scouring eBay at CB sets recently seeing if I could find a bargain or two, no Audioline 341s sadly as I am still after one of these to this day, however another radio I've been after for a while did show up, the Team RoadCom-FS, the UK variant of this radio, it fits a car stereo spaced hole (DIN mount) though can be mounted on a standard rig bracket, the radio I found was advertised with a K-PO linear amplifier, which I'd never use on CB other than into a dummy load, an SWR meter with power measurement, useful to have, a magmount that appeared to be a Sirio Mag 145 PL, a through body mount, and what appeared to be an antenna switch, so some testing to do, winning bid of £49! Yes it really was £49, add in shipping it comes to £57, so a bargain even for just the radio that retailed, when new, for £100+ (£135 as listed on Radioworld.co.uk, though of course they report it out of stock as it was new in 2008, making the radio at most 11 years old, my oldest CB is 13 years old this year).

The radio is one of the few that have CTCSS on board that are type approved for the 11-meter band, the original RoadCom,the TTI TCB-1100 and at least one or two Albrecht radios have this as well but it is very rare to find it on a CB radio, "export" radios (those meant for 10-meters) have it due to the fact that 10-meters is an Amateur band and occasionally you will find repeaters there that would require CTCSS to access them, there are no repeaters on 11-meters but FRN gateways do sometimes operate there with CTCSS on board, though this is rare (the gateway in Clacton-on-Sea, for instance, is open on UK29).

The radio started a trend of DIN size radios with front speakers, the Albrecht AE6491 and its rebadged cousins being an example of this, the TTI TCB-1100 is also similar in this regard, both these radios are still available new however.

Naturally on arrival I will inspect the radio and anything that comes with it and test as appropriate, RF generators into dummy loads, cables for continuity, mic audio on the radio's TX during tests, my Maplin linear supply would happily run the radio, however current draw from the linear may require me to use a slightly higher current rated supply, I have an old ATX supply under the desk I was using to power the SS9900 with.

I'll update on this when the items arrive

73 de 2E0EIJ/26CT730