I ordered a 120w/channel stereo amp for the ‘Raith radio but mostly for the CB PA output to play around with. I think standard CB is about 10watts. $10 delivered. It’s rated 12-28v. If it doesn’t work well enough on 12, a 12 to 24 step up amp is like $17.
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I did a few hours of armchair research with Mr. Canadian Mist while I watched a movie where a computer was taking over the United States (the electronic/circuitry topic seemed appropriate).
@sgtsandman is correct about the signal output, and then I heard and also read that the same amp board inside the CB powers the signal, and also powers the speaker in the CB and the power to the PA circuit, but nothing was telling me what that power was.
Apparently, that internal amp is a little bit better than 10/12 W in the sense that it’ll feed the 12 watts in the single sideband mode. The output is regulated down after the amp to meet the four watt legal limit. But that is a guess, because condensing the signal frequency will also improve the quality on the receiving end, which can be accomplished without increasing amperage. So, from all my reading, my best guess is the radio has a 7 to 10 W internal amplifier, and that the 12 W used in single sideband mode may not be technically correct, but it is the equivalent effect of combining a condensed signal with a few more watts. Let me put in the disclaimer that I may be wrong on all of this since the majority of my electrical knowledge on wattage came from fixing the light on my bicycle powered by a generator that rubbed on the wheel when I was a kid.
Several sites said to use a speaker capable of at least 4 watts, another 7 watts, and one recommended a 10 watt speaker. I even looked at the owners manuals of several different radios, Cobra, and realistic, etc, and they tell you how to operate it, but they don’t tell you what the output is.
To summarize everything I reviewed, most of the stuff out there is about putting an amp on your radio to increase the signal out, and to assist with grabbing signals from other radios (all illegal). My only interest is increasing the PA system volume, and it looks like the amp I purchased is exactly what I needed, actually overkill, because it will power two circuits/a stereo circuit.
The final thing that might be of interest is that the volume is apparently controlled by the dynamike knob, and not by the volume control, so the amp power out be un-controllable on a cheap CB without a dynamike knob.
It’s raining today, so I’m going to take a few radios over to my bench set up and just play with them before the amp comes in. And then I’ll compare results when the amp does come in before I start putting anything together.
Sweet Pea doesn’t understand the importance of this research and work…
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