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I bought a Cobra 29 LTD NW about 2 years ago and it failed after 3 months, so I got it replaced under warranty. Now I've had the replacement in the repair shop twice, and it needs to go again. :(
I'm sick of POS Cobras and want a GOOD CB.
Suggestions anyone?
How about you, Freebird, since you were an OTR trucker for years?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Swamp
Wow I am shocked. I used Cobras for years and never ever had a fail... I got a nice chrome 29ltd I could make a killer deal to ya, but I am sure you wanna try something new. Galaxy, Midland, Texas Ranger all make good stuff. PM if you wanna deal on mine.
Galaxy 959 /Discussion.
Use it, Love it.
Airmore,
Have you used other CB's besides the Galaxy?
(You're the main reason I'm considering one.)
FWIW, I bought the Cobra at a Pilot truck stop, and the first one failed within their return period, so I exchanged it for another one there, and it has failed in the same way, by only receiving very strong signals, so I suspect that it was simply a bad batch of them.
Weird, does sound like a bad batch. I haven't had any problems with my custom made Cobra 25. If you're willing to wait a few days for one to come in the mail check out Sparky's online he usually has some pretty good deals going on, plus I believe they ALWAYS check every CB that leaves the shop to make sure everything is working correctly.
Get a Cobra 148GTL if you must have a Cobra - or - get a Galaxy.Quote:
Originally Posted by Swamp
Galaxy and some others are not FCC type accepted meaning use at your own risk. They are routinely marketed using a loop-hole as being "10-meter" radios and not for CB. They are however much better than the regular product out there.
Like what has already been said, Galaxy all the way. Sparkys CB shack is about the most trustworthy on the web, and the prices are very competitive. I have bought a ton of stuff from him and have never had anything to complain about. It depends on what you want to do with your radio as to the model you buy. Do you want side bands and channels over and above the straight 40, or just a good 40 channel talker. Something to do a little research on. Regardless of the radio you want to go with Galaxy is pretty hard to beat.
I hate to tell y'all but those Galaxy radios aren't legal. Will you get caught? It's highly unlikely. Could these units screw up 10m and 12m Amateur services? Possibly! Could this tick off your local hams? Yes! Could they organize a fox hunt and find you? If you screwed up bad enough, hell yeah!
You see, while the Galaxy makes what appears to be a good CB when modded for CB service, it's a terrible 10m ham radio. No self respecting ham shop will sell them, and for good reason. My old Icom IC-706 MK-II will blow it into the weeds for output purity and features as a 10m radio. It's this output purity problem that can make them problematic as CBs. When you transmit with a radio with poor output filtering, you can put noise on the adjacent bands. At 4W with a normal CB, this noise is minimal and our ham gear can easily silence it with DSP, a noise blanker or by selecting a narrower receive filter if we even hear it at all. At 100W+, this "splatter" can be a big deal. More power = more filtering required to not step on adjacent bands.
For CB, I'm actually happy with my legal limit Uniden Pro 538. Output purity is acceptable (ie, it doesn't screw up 10/12m) and it's unharmed by antenna or coax failures. Bad SWR can be seen at a glance as the power meter will not light up all the bars when transmitting into a bad antenna. The weather radio inside it is OK, not as good as a police scanner or VHF ham rig, but it does the job. There is no automatic alert however, it relies on you to look at the sky once in a while to see when it might be a good idea to flip that weather switch.
Best of all, it paid for itself twice over in the first few hours that I owned it. I got an early warning of a Texas DPS unit in a truly AWESOME hiding spot and I was doing a solid 15 over. You couldn't see him until he was in your rear view mirror as he was holed up in an abandoned weigh station. This trap is still active and is somewhere between Dallas and Kilgore TX. (I forgot its exact location sadly). I couldn't afford an RDD back then (remember, broke college kid!) so this was the next best thing.
The Pro 520 is much smaller and is essentially the same CB without weather band capability and less lights in the signal meter. I'm thinking about grabbing a 520 as I no longer need NOAA capability (the 2m mobile rig does this and more) The 520 would be a LOT easier to mount considering all the other gear a ham hauls around.
Another really good but sadly illegal alternative is to use a *good* ham set modified to transmit on CB. A friend did this, and programmed all the CB channels in low power output mode. Sadly, the Yaesu FT 857 isn't a type accepted CB...it sure made a good one though! It was the clearest audio I'd ever heard on 11 meters, especially with the DSP engaged. I wish they'd modify the rules to formally allow this wonderful way to use CB.