Newbie performance test on brand new stock Uniden Bearcat 980 SSB CB Radio.
Unit performs great so far with this new antenna (Sirio Turbo 5000), achieving an SWR of 1.0 on both CH1 and CH40. The best antenna I ever tried. Totally a keeper.
Haven't tested the modulation on this unit but I get a dead key of 5W on AM with a little backwards swing when talking (weird), and between 10W-15W on SSB. Quite happy with that.
Just wondering if something's wrong with the modulation, not sure why it swings back.
Also, if I decided to run a 35W or 60W linear amp... should the dead key be brought down?
Originally bought the unit with a Midland antenna but that didn't go well at all. Then got a Cobra 36" antenna and that worked quite well. After that I tested with a Wilson 500 antenna but no matter what I did, the SWR was in the 1.6 to 2.1 range, and added a lot of noise. Lastly i bought this antenna through a recommendation and boy, there's no way back.
