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Gerowen
03-03-2014, 05:36 PM
So the other night I gave a friend a laptop power cord and an old busted laptop to use for parts, and in exchange he gave me a bunch of spare stuff for CB radios; 3 old radios, a bunch of mics that needed plugs, etc.

In the pile was this old Radio Shack TRC-443 radio. It worked, but only if I flexed the back of the radio, so I figured there was some loose solder somewhere. I touched up the solder from the antenna plug just to check, but that wasn't it. After touching and wiggling parts for about 10 minutes, I figured out it was the RF1 final in the middle of the board. I just touched up the old solder and pushed it back into position to make good contact, and now this old thing is running like a champ on my spare/test antenna (A 36" Lil' Wil' whip stuck on the roof). It's even picking up skip from Mexico and stuff. I plan on using it as a "test" radio to test mics and for monitoring a channel other than the one I'm actually talking on with my big radio. People know to look for me on 10 because that's usually where I go to talk to friends and family so I don't take up space on other channels, but I also spend a lot of time on channel 3 talking to the local CBers. Now I can use my big radio to talk on 3, and use the little one here to monitor 10.
1546

This one is a "Realistic" (AKA Radio Shack I think) 40 channel radio, and although it looks pretty rough, it actually works just fine. I just need to get an adapter to change it over from a 5 pin mic plug to a 4 pin one cause' the 5 pin plugs are pretty much outdated and a pain to re-wire, and that's assuming I even had a 5 pin mic. I took it apart and crossed over the pins on the back of the plug to make sure the radio worked, I just don't have any mics to fit it. It looks as though at some point somebody lost the proper channel selector knob and just jammed one on there for the time being, so it kind of looks like the Frankenstein radio.
1545

halfwatt959
03-03-2014, 07:58 PM
Sounds like you got the better deal although the last time I bought a computer pwr supply cord for a laptop I got the universal with several differnt ends and adjustable voltage at wal-mart cost me 80 bucks.