Here is my logic on why you should just buy it and run it first before you let anyone touch it.
1) People who buy radios from CB shops and have them perform a "tune" and "alignment" do so because they don't know how to do it themselves or don't have the equipment.
2) Then they receive the radio - they don't know what has been done to it (unless it's explained to them in detail and even then they don't know what that really means because if they did know they would have just done it themselves).
3) They use the radio and decide it works great (or that it sucks) - without any baseline to compare it against because they didn't have a chance to try out the radio before the work. Nor do they have any equipment to actually test after the work to see if everything was done correctly.
4) Then they tell other people how great a shop is because of their experience.
It's like buying a brand new car and before you ever drive it, you send it to auto repair shop behind the Wal-Mart to have them make sure everything is working perfectly and to tune it up and then you drive it around and you think it's great so you tell all of your friends to send their brand new cars to that shop too.
If your radio doesn't work the way you want it to then yes, send it to someone who can fix it for you or tune it the way you want it to sound, but if you don't know the difference in the first place why would you waste your money? They could literally just break the seal on the box and tell you it's been tuned and aligned and you'd have no clue.
Wanted to chime on this one also.
Buying an "export" style radio is a gamble from the moment you enter your CC info onto a website, until the unit arrives fully converted and tuned-up and ready to use.
First, you know it came here on a boat and got jostled around a good bit on the way, so your first gamble is that nothing was shaken loose enough to short out against anything else.
so, you can be the one to open the case and determine that everything is still intact, or a tech can be the one to do that.
Next, if everything is in place, and you have a working 10 meter radio; you need to convert it for 11 meters because, well, let's be honest here, that's where you are going to use it.
The instructions for the mod can probably be found online, so you can do the mod yourself, or you can have a tech do it.
Now that you have a working 11 meter radio, it's time to check it out and make sure that it is performing properly. Your ability to do this is limited by the test equipment you have on hand. For those who do not do their own radio work, this usually consists of a combo SWR/wattmeter, and maybe a frequency counter.
So, you can now see how many watts the radio puts out, and whether or not it transmits on frequency. That is IF your wattmeter and frequency counter are accurate. are they? how do you know?
OK, well this all seemed to work out well for you, and you now have a cool export radio that will talk on all the channels there are.
But how do you know how well the radio is receiving?
chances are, it's not receiving very well on your 11 meter channels, but is receiving fine in the 10 meter band.
That's because the radio was aligned in the factory for 10 meters, and needs to be re-aligned for 11 meters.
The test equipment that it takes to properly align the receiver, oscillators, IF offsets, modulation, and TX power will cost more than most will ever invest in radio mods done at a radio shop for them.
So it only makes good sense to have an export radio gone through by a reputable tech before it gets to you. If you want it shipped to you, and you want to send it to a tech after operating it for a week or so, i say that is a good thing to do.
However, the shipping both ways will cost you extra. for some that is not a big deal, for some it is a deal breaker.
Export radios DO NOT come from the factory ready to be used as we use them.
They need alignments and quality control checks. all of them.
When you've seen three digits worth of export radios come across your bench, you get to know what to look for, and you start to notice that you see it every time.
screw tightening being a simple, but prevalent example.
The seating of the power transistors can be downright terrible, and heat sink compound is applied as if it was made of platinum.
Aligning the standard export EPT3600 copy is not as easy and straightforward as one might think.
you can't just peak all the receiver coils for max S-meter reading like you used to do on your old uniden. if you do it this way, you will end up with a high noise floor.
Even if you have all the test equipment, if you don't know which coils effect the radio in which way, you can get it wrong.
My personal opinion is that all brand new CB radios need work in order to perform their best, and quality control checks are imperative for these also.
All that being said, the places that sell the radios as well as modify and align them have the largest amount of work, and care the most about profit.
this means they need to limit the time a tech takes on each radio.
I will not offer opinions on who is the best and worst at this, but i will say that a shop that only does repairs will spend longer on your radio than any shop that also sells them.
LC
