Excited! And maybe I should of thought twice...

[GDog]

Hi All!
So I had a few rigs 40 years ago in my teens, Colt 777 for example which I had modded to put out 12 watts on high
Seriously I am not a Rig Doctor, in fact I just love the smell of old electrics lol.

Anyway, I was chatting to a mate and I was telling him I missed the old days of CB radio, I had looked on Ebay and seen a few UK 40 sets.
I was going to get a portable / hand held - but they seem to be a bit too pricey for me. Well, not that I cant afford one, but just stepping back into a hobby without much thought for its financial / time consequences (Im fairly obsessive about perfection etc, compulsive)

Anyway he said "I have an old set in the garage, I will dig it out for you". Today he kindly gave me that set.

Its a Major M888 - I cant tell you how much I wanted a Multimode II when I was 14 years old lol! They were (fully expanded) around 120 UK pounds
I couldnt afford one, but now finally I have 'almost' got one!

Ive not got a power supply, or an antenna, or an SWR Meter at the moment.
Ive popped the lid off it to see if its been modifed and it look like the DX / Loc switch has been replaced (I dont even remember what this would do)

So, Hello! And Help! Where do I start? Whats the set worth? Its fairly rusty but I can clean that up and try to find an original switch from somewhere.
Id like to expand it, maybe find the lower 40 channels missing from this set and put them on a switch.

It comes with a mic so thats gotta be good right? The rubber curly cord looks a bit 'aged' so I am going to try refurbishing the mic first.

Hello again, and thanks for reading this far.

Maybe I should think twice before getting myself into something that would take my money and lots of time, for me to fail... Maybe I should of thought twice before taking on this challenge of restoring / upgrading this old set. Wow so many wires.... but the smell ahhhhhh!



G

[g1ezj1701+]

hi,well if its the major 588 which i think it may be? then it was as pretty good but but basic 40+hi band multimode,i know it was possible to put either lo ban or hi/hi band on it by adding a crystal to it and a few other bits but i always remember there was no kcs shift on it only a rx clarifier and the amount of radios i have demodified is scary lol. deffinately worth playing with dx/local switch was just an rf gain switch on receive.
ezj.
i have a copy(pdf) of the circuit diagram if you need it?

[GDog]

Thanks for your reply. I didn't see anyone say hello so I forgot about the forum and just did some surfing and reading.

I still have it, I have spoken to some locals and even invested in an antenna. It's been great so far but I've quickly learned the old sets are not necessarily going to serve me well.

I have a lot less electronics knowledge as I initially thought!


Thanks again for the reply and hope we speak again!

[GDog]

Just to add, I was given a FORMAC 120 but it says 88 on the back. I've looked inside it and it's modded to death lol.

I'm hoping someone can help with that and I've started a new thread.

My next purchase when I've saved up will be a crt6900. I'm told it will save me a lot of hassle than using my old retro rigs.

We live and learn lol.