On a cobra 142gtl what pod would i turn to get better receive
I think you mean what pot or potentiometer.
EVERYTHING I SAY FROM HERE ON ONLY APPLIES IF YOU LIVE IN THE U.S. OTHER COUNTRIES HAVE THEIR OWN COMMUNICATIONS AUTHORITY'S. SOME RULES ARE AGREED UPON AND VALID WORLD WIDE. SOME ARE DIFFERENT SO CHECK WITH YOUR OWN GOVERNING BODY OUTSIDE THE U.S.
NOW ON WITH THE SHOW.....
After working in CB radio for 43 years, I would tell you that your best bet would be to drive to an interstate rest area, get on channel 19 AM and start asking truck drivers who the best tech around is. The Cobra 142 is a fine radio. There are NO "pots" to turn to improve the receive but, as you may have seen, there are lots and lots of pots and coils that you can screw up if you go stabbing around in there with a screwdriver. First, the coil slugs are made out of compressed iron ferite. If you go into them with a metal screwdriver and break one, even though the coil makers buy them for pennies a pound, you will pay dollars for a new one. These are made with different magnetic properties to do different jobs at different frequencies. You would probably wind up buying the whole coil from Cobra. $10 or $15 U.S. Your radio is an AM-USB-LSB transceiver. If you turn the wrong coil slugs, you can invert the two side bands making them useless. Getting them back would require an oscilloscope, a spectrum analyzer, the circuit specifications and LOTS AND LOTS of knowing what you are doing. Expensive equipment you probably don't have lying around in your garage. If you knew how to and went through your radio with a frequency counter, you would find in excess of 30 different frequencies generated around that circuit board. This doesn't include the 40 ACTUAL or so called 120 "channels" that it transmits on. When that radio was aligned at the factory, it was set up so that everything worked together in lock step with each other ACCORDING TO FCC REGULATIONS. I could probably install 5 switches or less in that radio and generate a total of 120+ AM channels with the other 240 associated SSB channels. With no change in parts, I could bring your AM transmit power from 4 watts out at 90% modulation to 8 or 9 watts out at 100% modulation safely and your SSB power to about 20 watts. I could improve your receive by miles with adjustments only but you wouldn't be able to understand your friends who operate within 5 miles of you because they would sound excessively loud. Cobra, Midland, Cybernet and Uniden used to all over build their radios. This is why they were so popular because people knew that it wouldn't take a lot to make them into world class, world talking radios until the FCC got wise to them and changed the regulations as to what was and wasn't permitted or "type accepted" inside the cover. I have over 100 CB's in my collection. Most with more than their legal allotment of channels. Some take more work to modify than others. The most popular early Cybernet chassis used an integrated circuit called a PLLO2A. This chip was first used in 83 channel marine radios. With the addition of 2 switches in a CB with this chip and a few adjustments, I can generate 128 channels. I could use the delta tune and noise blanker switches and you would never know, by looking at it, that that radio could cost you $5,000.00 if you were caught with it. The chip itself is capable of 511 channels but not without some major changes to the board. All of those channels depending in the board, are generated with only 2 or 3 crystals. With the delta tune switch on a Cobra 148 with the MB-8719 chip, you can generate over 100 channels. A Uniden radio with a uPD-858 chip is capable of 399 channels, again, with a lot of work. With 5 switches and a few adjustments, over 100. One of the craziest ones in my collection that was FCC type accepted was a Maxon 40 channel AM only standard CB built in the early 2000's. I made 2 solder spots on the channel switch circuit board that Maxon put there to use. Now the Channel 9 button switches me between 40 channels BELOW CB, 40 channels LEGAL CB and 40 channels ABOVE CB. This isn't like your "120" channel SSB Cobra which actually uses only the 40 legal CB channels, just different segments of each channel and in a different way. CB channels 1 - 40 on my Maxon are 26.965 MHz to 27.405 Mhz. This band also contains 5 R/C channels between channels 3 & 4, 7 & 8, 11 & 12, 15 & 16 and 19 & 20 that legal CB's can NOT access. My Maxon in band "A" is 26.515 to 26.955 MHz, Band "B" is 26.965 to 27.405 MHz and band "C" is 27.415 to 27.855 MHz.
CB radio can still be a lot of fun to talk on OR work on but you have GOT TO KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING!!! I used to live in Florida and would go saling every weekend. YARD SALE-ING THAT IS. I would pick up 4 or 5 working CB's every weekend and not pay more than $5.00 each. Usually less. The ones that looked really bad or that didn't work, I tinkered with to learn. If they were worth keeping, they would go into my collection. If they were too garage beaten or weren't worth fixing, I would part them out, test the parts that I would keep, catalog them in plastic drawer cabinets and trash the body. I learned a lot BUT MAKE NO MISTAKE!!! If you make a wrong transmitter adjustment and start ripping up Mrs. Jones' afternoon soaps, She can complain and you will find an FCC truck full of antennas or a volunteer ham operator outside your door checking every Hz that fly's out of your antenna. If it reads more power or off frequency beyond accepted limits. They will write you a "NOTICE OF APPARENT LIABILITY" Remember your "LEGAL" constitutional rights? THEY DO NOT APPLY IN THIS REALM. Congress is a lawmaking body which the supreme court, from time to time, will judge whether it has passed a law that runs head first into a constitutional brick wall. ON THE OTHER HAND, the FCC is a "RULE MAKING" authority governed under different laws. If you are accused of terminally harming someone and get arrested, you and your lawyer can go to court and not say a word and it is the government's job to prove you guilty. You could be soaked in the victim's blood but you are still innocent until the jury declares you guilty. ON THE OTHER HAND, with a notice of apparent liability, you will be forced to go to the nearest FCC field office, In my case, I would have to travel from east central West Virginia to Gettysburg Pa., and stand before that board and explain why I am NOT guilty. If they don't like what I have to say, I was guilty when I walked in there. It can be an arbitrary process. Like O.J. Simpson was found not guilty in criminal court but the family of the victim beat him out of $33 MILLION in civil court. Whatever happened to double jeopardy protections??? All I'm saying is don't mess around in such a fine radio as the 142. Go out and get a cheap power meter, a 50 ohm dummy load and a frequency counter. Keep your eyes open for a $3.00 CB. Key the mic, change things, move things around and watch the power meter and freq. counter. THEN TAKE NOTES ON WHAT YOU'VE LEARNED!!! On the receiver end, drop the mic, hook up an antenna, change things and listen to the difference that it makes. The older the radio, the better. There's more stuff to fool and tinker with in them. The new radios, there's almost no adjusting them unless you get into the high end exports. You don't want to play with these unless you have more money than you'll ever need. Good luck and BE CAREFUL.
