Waiting For Santa

Yep, 52 years old and I feel like a Kid on Christmas Eve, my DHL Shipment from Knights CB arrives today, woke up at 5am in sheer excitement, a welcome bit of excitement after 8 weeks of this lockdown. It reminds me of getting my first CB back in the Christmas of 1981, a York 861 and DV27. I'm 14 again LOL!

So c`mon what have you got ??


Or is it a secret?

Same feeling back in 81, got my first FM rig, Harrier cbx, and loft twig set up, from am days, still had a New Formac 88 set up, happy days.

Come on MV, tell us what you got.!

Well, I got carried away and spent yesterday afternoon lashing  the kit up in my car. The DHL Van delivered my kit around midday, all packaged very well from Knights:

CRT SS 9700 10M Rig (Export)
Thunderpole Red Devil & Magmount
Cobra M75 Power Mic

Today I also have a Sirio Performer 5000 & SWR Meter arriving.

I started with tuning the whip using a nanoVNA and this tuned on my drive to 1.2 at 27.555, however, got this down to 1:0.5 when I relocated to surroundings with no trees or obstructions. After much faffing and coffee,  I got a local rig check on 27.555 with good report, my second contact was with an Italian on Sicily with a 3/4 signal. I had relocated to white horse hill in Wiltshire when I got the Sicily contact, so far I was impressed with the Red Devil.  First impressions of the 7900 are very good, I like the menu system and its relatively easy to use, the only thing I don't like it the lack of backlit controls.

As for the Cobra Mic, this must be a very poor match for this rig, it sounds very 'muddy' and does not sound as good as the CRT stock mic, this was a disappointment.  I did try to research as much as I could on the 9700 but there isn't much info on the web or youtube about it so my match of the cobra mic was touch n go from the start, I'll try one of the KPO mics once they are restocked in Knights.

I tested the mic with my little Tecsun 660 SSB Receiver and have recorded the results to share in a video I hope to get out this weekend, this also includes the antenna set up and a review of the kit.

First impressions of the CRT9700 is very good, I think this may be an under rated rig but I can see the controls of the 6900 etc are better for mobile use due to their ease of accessibility.  The speaker / audio from the 9700 is very clear, channel isolation sounds very good although the audio is a little too quiet, I have hooked the speaker output up to my vehicles aux input and this sounds very good!

I'm tinkering with it more later today and will continue to video which I hope to get online for the weekend, if you are interested I'll post a link here.  I will be doing a more in depth look at the rig, I have access to an R&S ETL Analyser but have left my coupler at work

All fine business Mike, glad to hear so far so good.

Yes do upload the video for us when you can it's always good to see those contacts.

73's Gary.

Well here's a quick hashed up video of some of my adventures with the CRT 7900 so far, a bit random but its my first video for my YT channel. Hope you enjoy!

Hi Mike,

looks like you have been enjoying yourself

I also bought a SS7900 from Knights and found the mic reports to be a little quiet.

I decided to increase the mic setting to 36 in the menu and also took the mike apart and drilled a larger hole directly in front of the electret condenser mic and placed a small piece of lightweight foam from the mic end of and old headset between the mic and the hole. The reports I have received confirm my audio has doubled if not more.

May be worth trying if you don't have any success with the KPO.

Cheers

Graeme.