Thunderpole T-X CE MultiNorm UK FM/EU AM-FM CB radio hand-portable - Overview & service

Normally I launch the technical video first, but decided to do the Field test first, the 'On the Air' test second & this technical video last. The radio has no internal adjustments whatsoever, so I open it up in this video to show the innards; I had fun putting it back together & getting the contact sprints to mate up with the loudspeaker! The battery is 7.4V & I did most of the bench tests using the 12V car kit. Power output at 12V & 13.8V were identical. Powering it at 9V just to see if it would work, the radio developed 1.5W. RF power output was identical both on a fully charged internal battery & the 12V car adaptor Kit. We connected the radio to the computer as some transmit parameters are adjustable via software. We only adjusted the transmit power output slightly by 0.25W bringing it to 3.2W on our Marconi test set....and 4.1W on the Zetagi power meter, both into a dummy load of course. We saw no power output difference between the aerial socket on the radio (BNC) or using the 12V car kit & it's flying SO239 connector. This is a first....all others we have tested have been lossy on the car kit! On the air, this is the best test result of any modern hand-portable that uses a helical aerial....as against a 1980's model with a huge 1.5M telescopic, some of which work better than this but are not really practical. In the summer we're going to do a hand portable supertest with this, the President Randy III, the TTI H100, The Midland 42 Multi & Midland 42 DS, the K-PO panther & others....along with a 1981 Realistic TRC1001 as reference. These will all be side by side for immediate & direct comparison. Until this test with the Thunderpole T-X, the only modern hand-portable to reach our 4 mile point was the expensive Randy III. This Thunderpole set has surpassed that radio. Thunderpole know that I am ruthless even when sent demonstration radios but had faith in their product to send this to me for evaluation & test. There are others that use the same chassis as this set, just as there are that look like the Thunderpole T3000. However, the firmware in T3000 'look-a-likes' is different; we've covered those sets & anyone can see from our videos that the firmware is different & inferior to the T3000. Though I've not personally seen any of the other handhelds using this chassis, chances are that factory setup & firmware don't match this Thunderpole version of the set. I am very impressed & enthusiastic about this radio. Our thanks to Thunderpole for kindly supplying the T-X for review at no cost to us. This is the sole reason for the paid promotion flag on this video. Richard G0OJF Richard 2E0FKC Lincolnshire, UK (C) Tango Systems Group 2023

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