Picture courtesy of Mudskipper-John from Wootton Bassett
For those of you who watch The Apprentice on TV with Sir Alan Sugar, I wonder if you realise it was his company that made these radios back in the '80's!
Alan Michael Sugar Trading [AMSTRAD] kindly gave many of us the opportunity to have our first experience of "Legal" CB radio. He even gave a guarantee with these rigs, and an original can be viewed here.
With the distinctive roger beep, found here, which incidentally the Amstrad 900 did NOT have, and rotary tone, RF gain, volume, and squelch controls, this little radio gave me hours of fun. I remember selling the rig to Vicar-John in Broad Town, and helped him set up a 5/8 wave on his garage so he could chat to his CB friends as well as me!
7 comments:
My first ever CB back in the mid 80s - I loved it to bits, particularly the infamous roger bleep which most people would ask you to turn off (it was a bit piercing).
Coupled with a DV27 on a biscuit tin it used to work a treat..!
I converted one of this for use on 10m (29MHz ) ham band. With 100Khz repeater split.
LA1KHA Kjell
Had a 901 given me a few weeks ago, just got it coupled up to a mag mounted springer aerial sat atop a biscuit tin, it works a treat just wish there was more people on the airwaves to have a copy with,
I have just dug mine out of the shed-with it's original price sticker on. Can't believe it cost me £220.00!!!
These were legends and still are, purchased mine brand new in 1984 and it cost 79.99, they use to call rigs with led signal meters "fairy lights"
They suffered with bleed over but were very sensitive, today they are sought after for this reason as your not being bothered by 20 stations in the same street as you.
So there sensitive receive is now the big advantage.
You could also fuse the big green resistor near the back and get 10-11 watts out of them.
They also put the same board in the harvard h404 and h407 homebase unit..
Again a highly sought after cb radio for those in the no
Nice enough radios, not great in anyway and not bad in anyway, modern looking when they came out, plenty of features and offered at a good price when new..
Expect to pay around 30 quid for a nice clean one..
When i was a teenager back in 1984 i had one of these brand new and almost caused world war 3..
same board as the spinneytronic and harvard h-407 homebase
Still got one of these in the collection, reasonable performer and the fairy lights are cool.
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