President McKinley EU

Any chance of a link to the service manual?

Thanks

https://simonthewizard.files.wordpress.com/2019/12/service-manuals_service-manual-mc-kinley-eu-gd-13-06-2019.pdf

Cheers, that's the same one as I've already got, thought you may have found a new version.

I'm going to treat myself to one of these, it looks good.

Just picking up on this thread, I bought a B grade stock President McKinley EU from Nevada recently, was a bit cheaper.  I was doing some testing with my recently realigned old (and slightly rusty :-) Fidelity 2001 and the Fidelity out performed the McKinley.  I was quite surprised. I was talking to a few people on UK/FM channel and switched between the Fidelity and the President, one of people could just hear me when I was on the Fidelity but not when on the President, another person who could hear both said the signal from the Fidelity was better.  The Fidelity is apparently doing about 3.5W according to the fella who serviced it.  I read on here - https://radioaficion.com/news/president-mckinley-eu-expanded/ - a reference to the poor state of tune of the McKinley from the factory.

There wasn't much in it on receive between the two but the Fidelity was at least as good, also surprising.

So the question is, would my new McKinley benefit from realignment?  Anyone else done similar testing?
Thanks.

The McKinley should perform as well, if not better, than the Fidelity. The only thing I can think of is if you were using the standard microphones the McKinley would likely sound quieter as modern radios have much tighter specifications on the FM deviation.

I'd have to agree with Delboy on this one, especially the point about FM deviation as it comes up again and again.

I've yet to see any older UK 27/81 FM rig have it's FM deviation 'realigned' to specification, it's usually just cranked wide open. The same complaints happened back in the old days with people complaining about 'quiet' FM on the old multimode sidebanders.

The article you referenced does indeed mention 'poor state of tuning' from the President factory but doesn't go on to state where or how so I doubt it.

Although, there is a lot of talk of "modern Chinese rubbish" nowadays (????) but people forget we have relied on cheap Chinese labour for a number of decades. Most consumer electronic goods have been labelled with 'Korea/Thailand/Taiwan/ROC (Republic Of China)' for many decades now. So much so that even back in the 1970s/80s it wasn't unusual to have a 'made in Japan' label attached but the item never saw the shores of Japan whatsoever! It was pretty much all Chinese owned factories back then too and people moaning about 'Chinese rubbish' so clever/false ways were used to disguise this fact in an effort to sell more goods.

You'll probably have a 'made in Japan' label on the back of your Fidelity right?

I'm pretty sure China is the only country to have successfully landed a probe on the far side of the moon....so no doubting their expertise.


I know, it all sounds pedantic and argumentative but I'm actually trying to help out here. 

The President McKinley is a very fine rig and I'd rather trust the organised, structured and fully equipped 'factory tuning' than some 'experts' realignment 'twiddle-twiddle'. As Delboy mentions you're probably using the standard mic and many have 'cured' their UK FM woes by changing mics or altering the rigs mic settings.


It's all a bit of an apples vs oranges debate with such 'testing', but you could also easily argue a full fruit bowl vs an empty one.......

"The President McKinley's SSB modes are exceptional with outstanding audio quality, whereas the Fidelity 2001 sideba......Oh..."


Indeed, use what makes you happy. The Fidelity for UK FM 19 chats and the McKinley for SSB/AM DXing

....or change the mic

I'm surprised that the poster has a Fidelity radio that actually seems to work normal-ish, all I remember is when they first came out they was known as the "Bleed ,over Radios" cos they was so bad for channel rejection you could hear all 40 channels on one channel,  I go back to the 70s onwards using  CB   and President radios  have always been known for quality equipment especially there early stuff which I still use now , so no offense I wouldn't take your experiment as a example.

Thanks for the replies folks, had a busy week or so and not managed to get back.  I don't know enough / fully understand deviation/ FM modulation so have some reading to do.  (I did manage to talk to someone in Germany on the McKinley when then was some skip going on a couple of weeks back. I'm only just getting back into CB and never had any of that back in the day so it's got me all enthusiastic  )

I have had a MK Kinley for a few months now, all basic and no extra power,  SSB and LSB working very well for DX and local, AM is used here a great deal, so i have not had 1 contact on FM so can not say if the FM signal is good or bad.

cube wrote:

Thanks for the replies folks, had a busy week or so and not managed to get back.  I don't know enough / fully understand deviation/ FM modulation so have some reading to do.  (I did manage to talk to someone in Germany on the McKinley when then was some skip going on a couple of weeks back. I'm only just getting back into CB and never had any of that back in the day so it's got me all enthusiastic  )

So basically....

UK standard on UK 40 is 2.5kHz, EU standard is 2kHz. Manufacturers set to 1.8kHz to ensure EU compliance. As a result they sound quieter compared to old UK 40 FM sets.

When you're listening on a receiver with a wider FM deviation to one with a narrower one the narrower one will sound quieter and vice versa. Someone listening on a UK CB with a 2.5kHz deviation will hear those at 1.8kHz as quieter than those using 2.5kHz or higher. Signal strengths will be the same but the audio will be quieter.  Someone listening on a UK CB with 2.5kHz deviation to someone transmitting with 5kHz deviation will have to turn the volume right down so they're not deafened.

When CBs had their mic gain tweaked it wasn't the mic gain being tweaked but the FM deviation being increased.

Btw thanks for that Northern Crusader