dead key and swing

[fxstsirider]

Hi guys newbie to cb. Ive been reading for about a month now and you guys are a wealth of knowledge. Already know when I get the extra cash I will be calling Mike at radio active. But for now I have a uniden pc66xl made in the phillipines supposedly peaked and tuned with a diesel power mike (25 bucks on EBay) with a little will in my pickup. Got the swr's down to 1.4 on a rpswr-4 meter. Dont know how accurate it is. My question is are your deadkey and swing supposed to change on different channels? Heres what I get off of the uniden cb meter. ch1 dk4 sw7 ch20 dk8 sw30 ch40 dk10 sw40. Also tried with the meter in line and using the antenna tuner matcher but #,s were lower. So I took it out. Thanks for any input you guys may have.

[Phaze91460]

Something does not sound right there. The swing on that radio or PEP watts should only be a max of about 12-15. I would be suspect of a problem with the readings you are getting. Could be a meter, SWR settings, Antenna or Coax problem, etc.

What is your SWR on chan 1 and what is it on 40 ?

BTW,

GREETINGS ! And Welcome To The Forum !

[BigBopper]

Its not tuned correctly, you should swing on that radio to about 20watts

[Rex_foxhound]

Welcome to the forum! You might wanna get that checked out. We have some excellent sponsers on here that would be more than willing to help ya.

[fxstsirider]

swr is 1.4 on ch1 and ch40. I could have been reading meter wrong. I have 2 bars on the meter on radio. Top bar reads 1 2 3 4 tx power bottom one reads sig 1 3 5 7 9 + 30 db I gave reading from bottom bar. If I go off the top bar readings are ch1 dk2 sw4 ch20 dk4 1/2 sw7 ch40 dk5 sw8 can only guess on the ch20 and 40 because meter,s # end at 4 that's why I used bottom bar and went by those #,s. I must get a lot of skip or powerful radios. Because when I was just outside in driveway checking I could here a guy from pa and a guy from milw seems like every channel I go to I can pick some one up. But I know I don't have enough power for them to hear me. Just did a radio check on 19 and talked to a guy about 3 miles away. He said I sounded good. I,m in the suburbs about 30 miles west of chgo. Thanks for the help guy`s.

[fxstsirider]

So if the deadkey and swing change. lower on the low channels. Higher on the high channels. The radio needs to be tuned? At work in addison Il. All the guys talk on 31. On the way home last week at like 4:00am I talked to a guy in the yard from my hse in Geneva Il. 14 miles away. Very poor contact but still able to hear each other. Could not hear other guys in yard, but this guy has a new magnum. And he said I was getting through.

[BigBopper]

you need to get an external meter, you can't use the meter on the radio

[oknaz]

When i installed my Galaxy 88 H/L i had major antenna problem's Either it was bad coax or bad antenna load . So i picked up a goosd antenna from a yard sale and i checked all connection's and decided to hook it up and i was very shocked Ch1 1.2 , Ch 20 1.5 Ch40 2.0 . all i did was adjust the whip 1/8" and the way i went . But that radio should be doing 20 watt's like bopper said ....get you'r self a better meter from like radio shack and that'll tell you what's really going on .

[fxstsirider]

Thanks for the help guys. Off to the rat shack I go.

[Looney]

yup you need a good meter

[fxstsirider]

New meter will be money well spent. Just trying to get this setup to be as good as possible for now, without putting any more $ into it. Any more money spent on radio stuff I want to go towards a new super whackpacked radio. Which will be coming as soon as I can smooze the wife a little. (or don't let her see it). Thanks guys

[fxstsirider]

Got the radio shack meter yesterday. swr`s ch1 1.6 ch40 1.6 ch19 1.1 Dead key and swing are about the same now on ch1 and 40. But power #`s seem too high. Range switch set at 20w dk300 sw1000 range switch set at 200w dk30 sw55 range switch set at 2000w dk5 sw20 I know I should be using the 20w range right? I have all the switches set per instructions. Checked and double checked. Reading are from the lower power scales. 20w reading came from (L) line on the power scale per instructions 200w 2000w reading came from (H) line on power scale per instructions. The readings from the 2000w range seem the closest to what radio should be putting out right? Meter was bought brand new yesterday.

[Rex_foxhound]

When checking your power, on the 20W setting use the bottom line and take off two zeros so the lines would read 0, 1, 5, 10, 20.

for the 200W setting, only take off one zeros so the lines would now be 0, 10, 50, 100, 200.

for the 2000W setting, leave the numbers as they are lol.


Hope that helps

[fxstsirider]

Thanks Rex. Taking off the zero`s makes my readings look like they should. Radio on 20 watt meter on ch20 dk5 sw20 Is that about what it should be? Also the radio has talk back. Is this something that was added on. Or did the pc66xl come that way? No external speaker. Comes out of stock speaker. Always on. Thanks again for the help.

[Rex_foxhound]

Those numbers sound about right. Glad I could help.