In article <telecom24.123.5@telecom-digest.org>,
paulcoxwell@tiscali.co.uk says:
> It was the same over here. I took in CB repairs for several years,
> but one of the reasons I dropped CB work in the end was that I was
> getting more and more fed up with (a) getting nowhere trying to
> correct the horrendous misconceptions that were around, and (b) having
> to put right sets in which every darned preset and coil had been
> interfered with before somebody decided it needed repair and brought
> it to me.
> One incident sticks in my mind of a guy who had me fit a crystal
> I.F. filter in his set. It improved the receiver's selectivity no
> end, but unfortunately, he wasn't at all happy. Apparently all his
> buddies had the modulation on their transmitters cranked up so far
> that with his improved receiver they now sounded terrible (and keep in
> mind that the British CB service uses FM). There was just no way I
> could convince him that the filter was doing its job exactly as
> intended and that he should tell his friends who were splattering over
> about three channels either side to get their deviation with limits.
> I wouldn't even like to guess at how many sets came in with the
> calibration pot on the meter turned up to maximum by somebody who
> actually thought he had increased his RF output that way. Even when a
> transmitter did have the output tuned up a little higher, you were on
> a losing battle trying to convince most of them that going from 4 to 5
> watts carrier power isn't going to make a huge difference and that
> raising the antenna or replacing the coax with something less lossly
> would have a far greater effect, not to mention improving reception as
> well.
Interestingly I was in with a group that understood the importance of
good feed line and good antenna's. Never did hop up a set and that's
what actually channeled me into amateur radio.
One of the fellows in the group was an EE - actually designed a tube
based 1KW amp for the 11m band. Now if he'd gotten his amateur ticket
and moved it up to the 10m band he would have been pretty much legal.
Of the entire bunch of us that were on during that period, three of us
ended up getting our amateur licenses.
Tony P. (kd1s@nospamplease.cox.reallynospam.net)