HISTORY:
In a previous life I was heavily involved in professional communications (Maritime) and on a personal level, Amateur radio (ex VK2DWF and now relinquished for some years) so of course I collected radio equipment, even very early AM Citizen Band equipment. HF frequencies were always of interest, particularly with phenomenons such as "skip" allowing communications over great distances with very low power, when the conditions were "right"
These days I couldn't imagine anyone using such equipment and if on HF they would use gear such as CODAN's and like, however it can still be fun to "listen around", particularly in the evenings when the HF bands can "open up"
Of course, along with those strange sounding long distance signals you will hear loads of atmospheric noise - it's part of the deal on HF, particularly during our latest round of thunderstorms which we have recently experienced!
NO fancy bells & whistles, meaning no DTMF, Control Sub-Tones, SELCAL or Voice scrambling - this is a plain old low power AM HF transceiver, with fixed 40 channel selection and of course no BFO's etc so it's not of much use for SSB either.
If you are looking for a transceiver that you can power up and start talking immediately to your mates using good old AM (not SSB and certainly not UHF) then perhaps this equipment may interest you or just keep it as a "museum piece"
This is a later model to the REALISTIC TRC-415 I have advertised HERE (that TRC-415 unit DOES need attention however)
Please read on for the details of this REALISTIC TRC-435 mobile transceiver ...
REALISTIC - COMMUNICATIONS TRANSCEIVER
Designed & made in Taiwan
Marketed by Realistic (Intertan Australia)
Intended for the Australian Citizen Band user market - Black face panel
Dates from the 1990's period
Model: TRC-435
Analog AM HF Transceiver
Frequency range: 27Mhz (fixed channels totally 40 in number)
Not user programmable
Instant Channel 9 access (Emergency Channel) using a slide switch
ANL (Automatic Noise Limiter) available via a slide switch
RF power output: 4W maximum **
Internal speaker fitted ** See note below about this though!
Basic front panel with rotary Volume (which integrates with the ON-OFF switch), rotary Channel control and Squelch adjustment
Display is a nice Ruby Red LED numerical display with a bar graph indicating RX signal strength and TX RF power output plus other functions.
PL259 Antenna connector
External Speaker connector
DC (nominally 13.6V) is supplied via a special 3 pin male socket at the rear.
I am NOT supplying the matching DC plug (already found a new home for that one)
ITEMS NOT SUPPLIED:
A microphone is NOT supplied and you will need a DYNAMIC microphone, NOT this RS Condenser microphone HERE or alternately, I have another RS microphone which could be changed between condenser or dynamic inserts (not yet listed)
Mounting bracket and thumb screws are NOT supplied
DC power plug (3 pin) is NOT supplied - I did have one but this has found a new home. See HERE for details of this plug
DIMENSIONS:
140mm wide x 200mm depth x 40mm height (slightly larger than the TRC-415)
WEIGHT:
800g
COSMETIC CONDITION:
USED
CLEAN
NO physical damage to the folded steel body or the front panel
Light mark here and there on the steel top & underside covers but nothing serious.
ALL knobs present and none are damaged
ALL labelling is clear and easy to read
I took a quick look inside the unit (easy to access by removing 4x side screws), all clean and it does not appear to have been "worked on" previously.
TESTING:
This is the part that really matters!
I only had a 12V supply at hand for testing and at a low current capability but at least it enabled me to test the transceiver (within limitations)
Same goes for an antenna, just a simple 'whip' antenna used for testing.
** Audio note: while the transceiver works as it should (TX and RX) WITHOUT the microphone plugged in, there will be no local audio from the internal loudspeaker. Plug in the microphone and the internal speaker will come alive.
Power ON (rotate the Volume control) and the very retro RED display comes alive
No sound yet because the squelch is fully clockwise, wound it back and greeted with 'white noise" - all good.
Channel changing (using the larger rotary knob) was easy and working fine, each click changed the channel indication on the display
Switching around the channels I can hear "atmospheric sounds" and I also used one of the other AM CB units I have here at the moment and successfully received all channels fine on receive.
I then reversed the situation, pressed the PTT and I had full RF output on each channel, along with audio (my Frequency Analyser that I am keeping for the moment confirmed this)
NO issues observed at all
** While looking around online at the general comments about this model I did notice that some mods can be made, one apparently even substantially increases the RF output to 10W+ !!! Just an interesting point ...
Nice (if somewhat dated technology) AM HF transceiver in fully functioning condition
