Uniden BEARCAT 980 40- Channel SSB CB Radio with Sideband NOAA WeatherBand,7- Color Digital Display PA/CB Switch and Noise Cancelling Mic, Wireless Mic Compatible

I absolutely love this radio. All the features and accessibility make this the best I've owned so far. I was skeptical at first due to some of the negative reviews on Amazon, but after playing with it all day today, I'm glad I bought it. It can be peaked and tuned though it's set perfect out of the box. Doesn't drift at all and the internal diagnostics is a plus though I'm not sure how accurate it is. I purchased this as a replacement from a burned up unit, so I thought. Old one wouldn't transmit and it was very old. Plugged in my new, cheaper antenna to this one and the diagnostic test failed the antenna. Actually metered it finally and sure enough my antenna is bad. So I threw away my old unit for nothing I'm sure. Albeit aside, I'm more than happy with the clarity out of this one and is a huge upgrade from what I had. Weather bands sound great. Memory scan and full channel scan as well as side band are great features. Can fine tune everything quite easily. I watched a single YouTube video about this radio and that's all I needed. No need to break out the manual for this unit. Once you get the idea, it's very simple to navigate through all the features. I put this one in my 2014 Silverado z71 right in the center console. Easy power access and ability to hide all the wires. Looks like it belongs. Highly recommend this unit for new or seasoned operators. Just make sure you don't skimp on the antenna. I'll be buying another Firestick and mounting opposite my radio antenna on the hood. I would also recommend not getting a roof mount antenna for this unit. From other reviews, the cb will fail the diagnostics test. Get a good center load and ground it properly and make sure it's tuned right. Order a Firestix antenna as well Walcott radio has the best prices.

Just getting back into the CB/11 meter world, I wanted a compact unit with legal power and SSB I could set up as a base. So far this little radio has worked phenomenally for my purposes. Paired with a Vertex power supply, this little radio has been quite the legal powerhouse. The built-in SWR meter seems to work well, sound is decent although I use an external speaker and the features are great. Of course, you must have a good coax and antenna. Presently, while I await my base antenna to arrive, I'm using a home-built field antenna on a tripod with a 102" whip, 4 10' radials and 50' of quality RG-8 coax. All in all the tip of the antenna is about 14' or so. Swr is registering 1.2-1.4 and this Bearcat eats it up. I've been told my radio transmission sound like a cellphone and even with a ground oriented home built antenna, it talks and hears exceptionally well. I've hit 14 miles verified from my front porch and the receiver was surprised I was running barefoot since it was such a strong signal. At first was it was reported back that the mic was soft-sounding. Since I was going to buy a new one anyway, I modded the factory mic and now there is no need for a replacement. If you open up the mic, you will see there is a piece of soft felt over the mic hole. Once you remove this, the rubber covering has a tiny hole for speaking. Using a pocket knife, I increased the size of this hole to about 1" and it seemed to work wonders. I still have the mic gain on 4 for it really gets out there now.

EXCELLENT receive audio. I have mine plugged into a hifi speaker that came off the side of a plasma TV, sounds great. I've gotten great audio reports on the TX quality. I'm even pretty happy with the stock mic. The display looks great. The changeable display colors are a lot of fun! Will be great when the radio eventually goes in the truck. You can match the color to the rest of your instruments, or go nuts with some of the wilder colors. ;) The brightness and contrast controls are really slick for setting it up so as not to cause fatigue or distraction.Now, here's a few concerns and criticisms, but for me, it does not sour me on this radio in the least: Mine out of the box does 3W dk. Have not gone inside and turned it up yet, though I plan to. We're allowed 4 Watts, so that’s what I want! All that I've read indicates the adjustment will work out fine. I did, however, do the "beep mod," in which you unsolder one SMD resistor to get rid of the ABSOLUTELY USELESS, ANNOYING, and LOUD BEEP every time you twist a knob or push a button. This radio is annoying as heck, esp. with an external speaker, until this is done. Google for it, the instructions are out there, youtube. This radio does indeed have the Mitsubishi RD16HHF1 Mosfet final, I've confirmed it in mine. I had some concern in reading in forums that these radios blow finals, but once I learned what the part was, I was ok with it as I already have a couple of these parts in my bin. Replacements are a whole $4.75 from RF parts, or 2 for 10 from this guy, without RFparts' minimum order: www.kitsandparts.com/transistors.php I have some ideas in my mind of adding an external heat sink to the back of the radio, I'm not really convinced the final has adequate heat-sinking, just the thin piece of aluminium that makes up the rear panel of the radio.This is a great radio for the tinkering hobbyist, and its the most inexpensive new SSB CB out there.