Moonraker Titan CB Review of CW mode (New Version, v2)

Moonraker TITAN CB in CW Mode

Introduction:

There are plenty of reviews written on this tiny transceiver and most of them cover AM/FM/SSB operation etc, so I won't bore you by repeating that easily available information. Instead I'd like to talk about this transceivers CW capabilities. In the past I have bought and tested most multimode CBs with CW mode over the years and in short I have been sorely disappointed. Not only was the rx/tx performance bad (as expected at this price point), but the designers understanding of what is required to make the radio useable in this mode was flawed. I did try and point out all the flaws of the Lincoln II+ in CW mode to President Electronics, but CB radio magazine and most other users seemed to fob this off as "what do you expect from a CB?". My point was that if it advertises CW mode, why shouldn't it be as useable as FM or SSB modes?

Receiver:

So enter the Moonraker TITAN (new version) CB. The receiver isn't as selective as a ham radio receiver (as expected) and on hooking up to an external YAGI antenna blocking was immediately obvious. Any presence of a strong signal would cause a hole of silence in the receiver about 1KHz in both directions. However this radios receiver is sensitive enough and if used with small mobile antennas, should perform satisfactorily enough on non-contest days.

In every other CB until now, one of the major usability failures is that CW mode appears as DSB (Double Side Band) where every CW signal has an upper and lower image signal. This means as you tune around the band you hear every signal twice, which leads to confusion of where you need to tune to actually work a station. In ham radios you can select to hear either sideband (UCW or LCW) but not both at the same time (which would be nuts right? This needs to be explained to most CB manufacturers).

The Moonraker TITAN is the first CB to implement UCW as opposed to DSB. They have managed to suppress the unwanted sideband image, so you only ever hear each station once and its always the upper image of a CW signal. The designer needs to be congratulated on being the first to market with this implementation for CB. Its not perfect as LCW capability is missing and there is a non-adjustable offset of 1KHz between carrier and CW tone (normally 600Hz or so is used dependant on operator). Not having LCW is fine as UCW is predominantly used, but the designer may not have realised that this feature is also used by hams for interference mitigation, where an operator can remove unwanted signals by switching between UCW and LCW to put the unwanted signal outside the filter passband. The 1KHz fixed offset for the CW tone is too high for comfort and easy listening, but it isn't a deal breaker. The TX CW sidetone from the radio is 1KHz, so you tune the wanted RX signal to be the same as your TX sidetone in frequency, then you know that when you transmit, the other station will hear you....easy! 

To help you make that first contact there is another first! This radio has adjustable passband filtering all centred around the +1Khz position away from the carrier frequency. These are as follows: 

CF1 Wide -1.8KHz to +1Khz so 2.8KHz width in total

CF2 Narrow -120Hz to +240Hz so 360Hz width in total

CF3 Mid -300Hz to +340Hz so 640Hz width in total

Note the odd ordering of the above filter width selection.

My advice is to find a station using wide CF1 and tune till it till the audio matches your tx CW sidetone frequency (1Khz), then switch to mid CF3 if you were near 1KHz audio frequency before the signal will be there, if not re-tune, then switch to the narrow CF2 filter position. With a bit of practice you will be able to net correctly onto a stations frequency and the signal will appear in all filter selections. The order of the filter width is a bit unintuitive, but hopefully a firmware upgrade will re-order these filter selections according to passband width and make then a bit easier to access. In narrow CF2 position, if you can hear a 1KHz tone CW signal there is a good chance you can work it!

The radio tuning works in two modes Channelised or VFO.

In Channelised mode, the central large tuning knob is used. The radio jumps around in 5KHz steps with the large tuning knob and the smaller CLA knob can be used for an adjustable offset tuning value. Annoyingly any deviation in frequency from the initial channel frequency caused by using the CLA knob is remembered until the radio is reset (by changing the band 10/12/cb/HF etc). The offset is retained through simple power on/off. This is common to some other CBs and is a pest, but not a problem in my opinion.

CW is best used In VFO mode (10m band only, rotate Band knob until UF displayed above frequency display), the smaller CLA knob is used exclusively (The large tuning knob does nothing). For me this is preferable to channelised mode as the retention of offset frequency is gone. Another marker of a decent radio is that when the frequency is changed by one click of the CLA knob, the audio doesn't momentarily vanish like changing the channel on a conventional CB (President Lincoln II+ take note). The CLA knob works better than the main tuning knob which has the age old problem or random up/down movement in frequency when rotating in one direction (firmware sampling of analogue switch, lack of de-bounce logic). 

Transmitter:

There is a delay between hitting the CW key and the radio going into transmit and the emanation of the sidetone. The result is very confusing for the operators brain who must ignore their ears and independently rely on their hand movement to control sending (I do not have this capability!). One hack may be to use a key with an independent immediate sidetone (not the laggy radios) and try to only listen to the keys sidetone whilst sending.

The time for the radio to unkey is also slow and so in contest situations you would most definitely lose the first second of any response. This isn't a deal breaker in my opinion as most people will use this type of radio for casual operating only.

Looking at the output CW signal on the bandscope of an FTDX101D shows some distortion on the initial sent CW element, but again this isn't unexpected for a CB.

Summary:

This is a massive step forward for the RX implementation on CW mode from any other CB on the market today. Don't get me wrong, the radio still ain't a ham radio by any stretch of the imagination, but for £125 this is now a great deal for CW operators wanting to monitor the bands and make an occasional basic CW contact. The designer needs to be congratulated for the first improvement in CW mode for CBs ever!

Doug (GM0ELP)