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

Love this CB it easy to use. Has noise cancelation. Your voice is very clear when talking. Love the weather chanels it picks up in every state im in and the areas around me so I know ahead. Nice display on the front and one touch to change channels

First set up as an inverted V in the attic, and the SWR was bad enough that I couldn’t use the radio; the company was no help. I changed the configuration to an L and the SWR improved and showed that the legs had to be shortened. I just folded the ends just before the plastic insulators to shorten the legs by about 3”. The SWR went from above 3:5 to about 1:0 to 1:1± on all channels (by the radio’s SWR meter). I am within five miles of an industrial area with a major rail to truck terminal, and I know that at least one business uses 19 to contact incoming trucks, so I should get a lot of traffic on 19, but so far, I don’t. I’m giving a four for the SWR, but I’ll edit this review if I don’t feel that I’m receiving correctly.

This radio lets you test SWR. Has mic gain, Rf gain, and noise blocking.

Its good

good unit for the price I have been around cb for a number of years I like the colors and easy scan different channels only issue I am having is my aerial

It works better than I expected.

I purchased the Uniden Bearcat 980SSB radio about a week ago and have had some mixed results after 24 hours or so of operation over the period of the week since then. The serial number on this unit is X000CIQY01 and the unit looks brand new, not refurbed or rebuilt. The radio is a real sharp looking piece of equipment, the controls and buttons have a good feel, and the price is good for being both an AM and SSB radio. Sound is good and mostly the radio can hear and talk as good as any CB or ham radio I have owned. I dont have any calibrated test gear but I believe it meets its published specifications. How-some-ever, the operation and display to have some curious faults. The RF control doesnt exist in the sense that the operators manual describes. The RF control is described in operation in two different ways in the operators manual, one way on page E-5 and another way on page E-10. The button depresses on the RF gain and a small indicator lights up with the indication of LOCAL, comeing on in the upper left hand corner of the display section of the front panel. This indicator isnt mentioned in the manual. There is no corresponding LED coming on and variability using the Channel Selector Switch as the manual describes for the RF control, rather its just a sort of On and Off with the RF gain at maximum all the time when not in LOCAL. The AGC circuit in the radio seems to work well though and the radio is very sensitive on receive. The display has 7 colors you can select which is real fine if you have time to play with this while driving, which would have about the same result as texting while driving, probably resulting in a bad car wreck. First and foremost, you cant see the indicators in the daytime. Any ambient sunlight washes out the display and you will be lucky to see the channel you are on with the settings on high brightness and maximum contrast. I like the Green setting but in fact I dont really care. I was using a PRO505 before and it had Yellow I think and was very readable in daylight. The display is dazzling at night and maybe I should mount two of these radios, one under each front wheel well of my car, for extra bling. I havent been able to get the scan to work yet, so perhaps it really does, but I will work on that with the car parked this weekend. All of this sort of leads up to the final problem which is the method in which the operator gets to most of the settings. The MENU/OK and SELECTOR knob combined with the other assorted buttons and contortions make this a pain-in-the-butt radio to set up. I suspect some young software guy who doesnt operate mobile CB, did the semi-demi-drop-down menu for this radio. Who else but a nerd-bird would think that pressing the PTT while the function button for MIC GAIN was activated for 5 seconds after pressing, and you are scrambling to run the SELECTOR knob to the desired MIC GAIN setting, would be a cool thing to do? So overall I would again say its a good radio but Uniden messed up on this one when they rushed it to market. I have read a few reviews and it is total microcomputer controlled and no schematics or service manual are available. You cant fix it and you cant mess with it, so Uniden has you by the proverbial (fill in as appropriate). Therefore I am thinking of removing the 980SSB from the car just as soon as the Galaxy 959 AM/SSB unit arrives. I will use the 980SSB as a base station rig. Probably will never take the top off until one day the microprocessor goes nuts and then just to look at all those surface mount parts. I design microprocessor driven systems plus a lot of homebrew RF, so this aint my first rodeo.

EXCELLENT receive audio. I have mine plugged into a hifi speaker that came off the side of a plasma TV, sounds great. Ive gotten great audio reports on the TX quality. Im 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, heres 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. Were allowed 4 Watts, so that’s what I want! All that Ive 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, Ive 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, Im 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.

This CB is awesome. You can digitally tune the antenna, but, its not like old school ones where its precise. It is a digital step that makes it slightly too high SWR or slightly too low. But, works great anyway. The SSB feature is totally amazing. Ive never messed with CB band SSB, and wow do you get some far out stations! Audio is pretty good. But, the display has to be a just the right angle for you - otherwise its too dim - even with adjustments. A quick thanks to Amazon.com. I ordered one of these, and had it shipped to my work - so I could sign for it. Unfortunately, I work where its starting to become ghetto, and someone stole the package right off of my desk, after the secretary signed for it. I filed another police report, (we have bad internal theft now-a-days). I contacted amazon to see if there was any chance of them having a serial number, for tracing. I didnt think they would, and they didnt. However, I was sent an additional radio at no charge! Let me get this straight - Amazon wasnt even to blame in the least, yet, they sent me a replacement radio just because they felt bad? Holy s***. One percent faith in humanity restored, 99 to go.

Good product only with the right antenna, the recommended antenna is very weak only giving one or two mile range. You will need 10 mile range to make it a good radio