At last! A practical use for the Cobra 148 Gee Tee Ell "DEE" radio. Cobra shopped around for low bidders to build the 148 for 25 years and finally succeeded in ruining it. The "D" apparently stands for "Dog".
It's famously useless for sideband. Never mind why. At least it can serve as an organ donor to keep an older 148 alive. Just one problem. The "LA" prefix type numbers used by Uniden for the 10mm slug-tuned coils and IF transformers got replaced by a simple 3-digit number. Here is a preliminary cross reference from the old radio's LA type to the new 3-digit type numbers.
But here's how it looks with the front panel and controls unhooked. Just the naked pc board.
The solder side.
It's probably best to remove the two metal shields first.
So here it is, the marriage made in heaven. Our parts-donor board and a propane torch.
A light touch is easy to say, but just do it outside and stand upwind.
The technique, if you can call it that, is to play the flame over an area of the board and slap the chassis down onto a table surface you don't care about.
Outdoors.
Here are the main targets for recovery. These 10mm RF/IF coils are essentially obsolete and more trouble to track down as time goes by.
Only one of them suffered a missing pin. Probably got it a bit too hot.
The scorching penetrated to the component side, but you can see what comes loose. Stuff you want and lots of disc caps, resistors, diodes and transistors you may or may not want.
So here is the haul. 24 10mm coils. Should be 25 but one of them had already been "harvested" before this process. A MMB8719, the balanced modulator chip, two crystal filters, a ceramic filter four quartz crystals, VCO module and a whine choke. You'll need to pry the tabs on the choke and SSB filter upwards to get them loose.
Cobra 148GTL-D with KEPC-332-G2 pcb uses the same tuneable inductors as the older versions, but with new numbers. This will cross the new part numbers to the older Toko "LA" numbers.
L21 is missing because it was already gone.
Schemo Toko# KEPC#
callout
L1 LA038 179
L2 LA179 180
L3 LA163 204
L4 LA261 200
L5 LA260 135
L6 LA259 188
L7 LA258 182
L8 LA257 199
L9 LA268 201
L10 LA269 183
L12 LA270 190
L13 LA272 203
L14 LA271 197
L15 LA264 202
L19 LA216 193
L20 LA195 186
L21 LA256
L22 LA051 185
L23 LA285 191
L30 LA266 196
L31 LA265 199
L45 LA254 187
L46 LA220 181
L47 LA160 192
L48 LA219 198
L59 LA284 184
With any luck I'll stumble across another 148"D" cadaver and proofread this list for accuracy.
73
It's famously useless for sideband. Never mind why. At least it can serve as an organ donor to keep an older 148 alive. Just one problem. The "LA" prefix type numbers used by Uniden for the 10mm slug-tuned coils and IF transformers got replaced by a simple 3-digit number. Here is a preliminary cross reference from the old radio's LA type to the new 3-digit type numbers.
But here's how it looks with the front panel and controls unhooked. Just the naked pc board.
The solder side.
It's probably best to remove the two metal shields first.
So here it is, the marriage made in heaven. Our parts-donor board and a propane torch.
A light touch is easy to say, but just do it outside and stand upwind.
The technique, if you can call it that, is to play the flame over an area of the board and slap the chassis down onto a table surface you don't care about.
Outdoors.
Here are the main targets for recovery. These 10mm RF/IF coils are essentially obsolete and more trouble to track down as time goes by.
Only one of them suffered a missing pin. Probably got it a bit too hot.
The scorching penetrated to the component side, but you can see what comes loose. Stuff you want and lots of disc caps, resistors, diodes and transistors you may or may not want.
So here is the haul. 24 10mm coils. Should be 25 but one of them had already been "harvested" before this process. A MMB8719, the balanced modulator chip, two crystal filters, a ceramic filter four quartz crystals, VCO module and a whine choke. You'll need to pry the tabs on the choke and SSB filter upwards to get them loose.
Cobra 148GTL-D with KEPC-332-G2 pcb uses the same tuneable inductors as the older versions, but with new numbers. This will cross the new part numbers to the older Toko "LA" numbers.
L21 is missing because it was already gone.
Schemo Toko# KEPC#
callout
L1 LA038 179
L2 LA179 180
L3 LA163 204
L4 LA261 200
L5 LA260 135
L6 LA259 188
L7 LA258 182
L8 LA257 199
L9 LA268 201
L10 LA269 183
L12 LA270 190
L13 LA272 203
L14 LA271 197
L15 LA264 202
L19 LA216 193
L20 LA195 186
L21 LA256
L22 LA051 185
L23 LA285 191
L30 LA266 196
L31 LA265 199
L45 LA254 187
L46 LA220 181
L47 LA160 192
L48 LA219 198
L59 LA284 184
With any luck I'll stumble across another 148"D" cadaver and proofread this list for accuracy.
73
