Awesome video.

You are exactly correct. I started playing radio in 79, stepped away from it around 91, divorce, life changes, etc, and got back on the air two years ago after i retired. Anyone thats been around since the old days can attest to this comical fact, and i know a lot of you have heard the local ducks shushin' and whistlin', twiddlin' and tweakin', trying to squeeze every last watt out of their junk, which usually resulted in them pushing it too hard and blowing their crap up because they just dont understand this simple fact. A lot of guys here in vegas still do this today and it cracks me up. You have to leave headroom and keep your junk running forever. Antenna, location, decent coax are the biggest gains your gonna make, and are gonna be the biggest bang for your buck instead of trying to push a 4 pill through that crappy antron or imax yah got strapped to your roof at 10 or 20 foot. If you take the money you spent on that 4 pill or more pill and applied it to a decent antenna at a decent height, some 213, and you can get off a 50 to a 100 watt deadkey with some clean, not over driven audio and swing, your gonna do great, and your gonna get heard. Yeah we all think more is always better, and it is to a degree, but know the playing field and how it all REALLY works. For local, your never going to beat proximity no matter now much you run in most cases. Location is everything. For DX : yeah we all know the huge doods running 10, 20, 50 k through them huge long johns at a 100 foot that are at the top of the game. Understand propagation and do what you can to play to it the right way, and understand your limitations if you aren't a well loaded guy with money to burn to play in the big leagues. Dont play on a field thats over your head that extreme. Take your little 100 to 500 watt station and play on the field that best suits you. Your still gonna make contacts and have fun. For me, doing more with less is more fun, not the other way around.

Who Cares what the S meter says, what matters is the sound, the readability of the signal.

It is exactly this that makes part of this test not add up. Now I am not saying the guy is a liar. But maybe something weird going on in his shop there with reflections or something. With the radio barefoot it reads about an S3 on the meter without modulation. Then swings up to an S9 when he is "audioing it". 6 S unit increase on just modulating the radio alone! Do the power calculations on that. If the radio is indeed keying up at 2 watts then to get to an S9 from an S3 it would have to be modulating up to 8192 watts! Or if you worked the math the other way saying 35 watts got it to an S9 then the unmodulated carrier would have to be only about 8.54 milliwatts! Also not likely. So we have to assume something else is coming into play. The numbers at the higher end of the scale seem a bit more realistic. A max of about S9 was observed with the radio modulated to the 35 watts and then with the amplifier turned on got about half way to 10dB over S9. Which would put the power of the amplifier right around the 140+ watt mark.

Hopefully this answered some questions

Thanks Mitch!

That’s the exact same setup I used for several years. Got my 2970 in 1994 and I used RG214 coax fed to a 102” steel whip mounted on the right rear bumper. I worked a lot of stations across the U.S., to include Hawaii, and also worked a station in Kobe, Japan. I had to position my truck so that the signal would be radiated East/West from my Georgia location. When I sold that truck my next one, and each subsequent vehicle thereafter, didn’t have any room to mount that radio. It’s collecting dust and waiting to be put back in service one day. Still have that Radio Shack whip also, it’s almost 30 years old 😊.

@@dereklea1183 That is the key to it, a radio with the power boost built in. Most stable situation, and no offence to techs, but if the operator is not a dummy load about swr, no tech needed. Amps that need a 4 watt radio tuned down to operate reliably, are absurd. The LINEAR should have a dummy load built in, then a loose coupling gets excited to drive the amp, but no, gotta be fragilé, like the lamp on A Christmas Story. The typical "big talkin' radio" has a max 15 watt carrier, and needs a peak meter as a sidekick to appear to haul some skip. Never let her go, though that in 5 minutes, could catch $600 plus on ebay, mplace, ect. in an emergency!!!

Not a coincidence. The first 100watts is the most important. To gain 1 S-unit you have to quadruple your power so at 100 watts to gain 1 s-unit you need to go to 400watts. 4 watts to 100 watts is huge 100 watts to 200 watts is almost nothing

It's a considerable difference. Did we watch the same video?

Realistically? Couple hundred dollars give or take. eBay? $300-$500

@@Rooster_Radio I should offer the estate sales person $350 dollars for their unused new old stock Cobra 148GTL radio ? It's a beautiful looking CB.

@@unitedstatesirie7431 i wouldn't pay that myself, no. It's an estate sale you can probably get it significantly cheaper than inflated eBay prices

@@Rooster_Radio ok, thanks. How can a person identify if it is a counterfeit copy of a Cobra 148GTL radio CB ?

@@unitedstatesirie7431 im not aware of any counterfeit 148 cobra radios.

Signal meter top left. Band scope/spectrum scope bottom middle. Icom 7700 is the radio

Please tell me where I said anything about that being a model number for a radio or "box"

200 amp power supply isn't struggling to run a 200 watt amp

Bingo

A station 15 miles away will put a larger signal most likely. Transmitting dummy load to dummy load is a pretty good simulation of a station in the distance

Amazing that you don't have a life

I don't talk to gatekeeper?