Poor receive sensitivity or is your S meter not linear. 

I built and repaired precision meters for 16 years at a top manufacture. Those springs are called Hair Springs. I soldered them with no glasses to the tabs if the meter armatures. We then centered them with special tweezers around the pivot. Crimped them with another special tweezer, and soldered them to the zero adjustment. The pivots are seated into glass jewels. They are cone shaped. Cheap meters do not have spring back jewels. Meaning they don’t have a spring below the glass jewel to help prevent friction from worn jewels from over tightening or vibration. Friction shows up when the meter does not return to zero until you tap on the meter. We also built the Bird meters. Many of our meters were taught band suspension. No friction. A platinum band is soldered in a spring with a track for the band.

perfect explanation thanks for sharing...

I absolutely Agree Mike. My TRC 457 has the same issue. and yes the S meter is for reference only. Great point you make here for people to see about Analog meters

Another great, infomative video

On analog radios, the s meter reading is often derived from the receiver's agc. This is a big reason for the non-linearity.

Yeah' I have a Colt 1000 base with a similar issue, Oh well just add an S point or two on radio checks. Great video Mike !

I wish i could get a hold of Mike i would love for him to work on a few of my radios. Im very OCD. I love his style. He seems to be a little OCD also and a perfectionist. that's the best type of technician you would want to be working on your radios. Your radios would be fixed or peaked and tuned to perfection. They definitely would not be a SPLATTER BOX or a MUD DUCK radio.

I feel like this was an intentional design choice by many of the CB radio manufacturers over the years. On many amateur radios, it's not uncommon to see an S3-S4+ ground noise level with an antenna connected, but CB operators want the needle to be all the way down when there are no signals. If they calibrate the movements to show very little deflection at an S3-S4, then the user gets what they want. This Navaho is probably a little worse than most, but it does what most people want their CB radio meters to do.

Hope you get a chance to come back with some more repair videos - I for one miss watching you do your magic on the radios. Hope you and your family and friends are all doing okay.

We have quite a few guys here in the ARK-LA-TEX Area that would love to get you to work on their radios - there are very few people that can ACTUALLY REPAIR a radio most are just want to be shops which just destroy radios.

Yes, you did explain that well. I have seen digital meters way off. They di tend to be a bit better, but I like to see a neter moving, maybe I am just someone with an old timer#s mind set.

its the receiver circuitry not the meter. connect a commercial very nice analog meter to the navaho's meter wires and watch same scale "tightness" on lower end. I've done it.

Ah, my first CB was a Realistic Navaho 23 channel purchased brand new back around 1973. I wish I had kept it.

Mikes radio repar my hobbies are painting pictures and listening to shortwave and ssb I have 5 shortwave receivers iam thinking about getting my ham license

Mikes radio repar the owner Realistic Navaho am/SSB 40 channel CB radio is awesome

Just crank that meter adjustment to a higher reading so that it does read the low levels better. It would not be accurate anywhere but Mr. consumer would be happy that his meter is bouncing around good. Probably wouldn't know any different.

Hi Mike! What do you think about a President George who is missing the S-meter 7? The RF, Modulation and SWR meter are still ok! I have replaced 4 transistors; DTA114TK but no succes...

So I'm not crazy. I have the same situation on my Ten-Tec omni that I've refilled with magic smoke. Once I got it to receive it sounds great but I compared the S meter to my Icom 7300 and got very similar results as you have here. I couldn't figure out why to save my life. Now I know.

the difference in the navho of mine is that it don't have the clock.

you had a midland on your last video that you made. I just wonder if you fixed it. could you preform Marcel on it?

I see a lot of meters, if you look at the scale printing on it, they actually try to print the them in a way to compensate for the no linearity. The points that represent s meter levels are actually spaced apart differently. My thoughts anyway. Even that is not always that good. Cool video.

Mikes radio repar iam thinking about getting a hand held am/fm/SSB 40 channel

The split signal being the same in this type of voltage divider setup assumes both radio's have exactly the same impedance.......although assumed to be 50 ohms, it can be different.

Is Mike a Canadian in the U.S. or a real America?

Black tape alway fix my signal meter on my radios.as long as i can hear the people im taking too i not care about the signal there giving me..yet again a good video

When I was studying for my water license, a answer to a question was that meters PSI and such are most accurate at half there scale.

Is that where the term 73's came from.

Would like to send you a radio or 2 to have you do your magic

If he still doesn't think it works well I would be more than happy to dispose that 457 for him. I would dispose it right next to my 458.

I stated in another one of your videos these meters cost pennies to manufacture. They are absolute junk. They will not track accurately. Set S9 at -73dbm and the rest of the scale is a joke!