(This is an article published in Gear Jammer Magazine Sept 2024)
If you are sitting on the bowl, flipping through the pages, and something made you stop here, and you are the type of not liking anything new or hate something different, then keep looking at the pretty pictures, and finish what you sat down to do. However, if you can keep an open mind and see how the new President radios are holding up for me and multiple commercial accounts, you might be surprised.
This radio has been put in every loader I’ve done WITHOUT failure. The main reason is that it’s 12 or 24 volt capable (13.8-27.6). How many times have you plugged something into a loader cig plug that has a 12V sticker above it, and shit, it’s 24 V. It’s 5” wide, 2” tall and 6” deep, AM only. The “AM only” will prevent the operator from pressing buttons then saying, “This piece of shit radio ain’t working again”. You don’t have to get into any crazy menu settings, and it has a manual squelch control knob (vs menu setting squelch). Cool addition: the green tab is a USB charging port for your phone and 7 different screen color choices.
One of the best features of this 1” by 4” by 1” radio, is the positive feedback from every customer that has purchased one from me. This year was my fifth year at Gear Jammer’s Truck show, and many folk stopped by to say how pleased they were with this radio. It takes away the excuse of not having the room, and with the removable bracket you can Velcro it in place from the top or bottom. I sell them with a cig plug already installed, so installation might take 2 minutes. Hell, I have guys (Poppa Bear) using a small amp stuffed into the center console and they’re yapping 30 miles. The green tab is the USB charging port for your phone and the NOAA weather is a valuable feature. Also, 7 different screen colors
Both of these radios along with other models of President radios have a NOAA weather feature that can be easily programmed to sound an alarm if NOAA sends out a weather warning. The warning goes off and it will scan 6 NOAA weather channels to monitor the report.
If you’re still reading this, I still have great potential of pissing off the “stuck in the past” type. Here goes. You know the radio that comes from the truck factory, that one in a new build that you paid too much for, well this is what I replace it with. With a proper tune up, it’ll do what is needed. It’ll tuck into the overhead, has the usual knob controls, and you can change the color with a choice of 7 different ones. It has the weather band alert feature and of course you can charge your phone. With the supplied mic, it has great audio as long as the right hands have been in it. It will strap into the KW pull down holder, or a Mack Plate as well as any Pete that has the hole for a radio. You can preset two other channels of your choice into the emergency switch, or you can scan any or all of them for activity.
I have several accounts that use this in their yards for guys that are on the move. The battery is phenomenal! I use mine intermittently for site surveys and testing installs and I get over 2 months on a charge, yeah I said 2 months. It comes with either a 12 volt or 110 AC charger and an adapter that you can attach a mobile antenna connection (PL 259). It comes with a short rubber duck, and a foldable tactical antenna is available at an extra cost. I would have packaged it together but maybe they were looking for a certain price point. Nonetheless, the tactical antenna works well and is foldable to tuck it out of the way. There are 7 screen color choices. If there is an antenna on anything, you can connect this to it and you are talking.
I can get 90 watts plus out of this very cool radio, but there will be caveats from a driver’s perspective. If you get everything I say in the following description, then you might just dig the shit out of it. It’s an all mode transceiver, has 7 different colors, and a phone charging port. The LCD is outstanding. It will give you the running temperature of the finals and when you come to an alpha channel it shows α symbol without any skips. If you know me, I’m all about the audio, and on a high power setting it’s really good. Even on low it has a decent PEP swing. It’s menu driven so there will be a learning curve but nothing that can’t be mastered after a few times operating it. If you are a multimode guy, give this some serious thought. During bench testing and on-air testing, both sides of the mic were impressed with the performance.
DIGI MIC
If you are in a noisy environment and need a noise cancelling mic, President makes the DIGI MIC with 5 different noise leveling settings. I put a radio in a 988 CAT and thought it was a little loud in the cab. I threw one in, set it to level 3, and nobody knew that it was a 988.
BLUE TOOTH MIC
If you want a hands-free approach for yapping, they make a steering wheel mic where a dongle goes in their 6-pin radio, and the mic gets attached to the aiming wheel. Plug and play, press and talk.
I have been selling President radios for a while and not one of these have been returned to me or the manufacturer for any issues. There have been no failures and today where we have all experienced new stuff “bad in the box”, it says a lot. Think about it, how many times have you returned brand new stuff because it’s not working, makes me fukin insane. My best recommendation is making your purchase from a reputable dealer. Trust me on this please, cheaper is not always better, or, you can learn the hard way. If you have any questions about the President line of radios, feel free to drop me a line. If you insist on texting, my limit is 3, so dial the phone if you’re going to carry on. Next edition, looks like we might be talking about amps for James.