This post was to inflame the mentally stupid and to incite a riot at the local CB shop.

Back in the day, a long time ago, when the Citizens Band was practically new and the world ran on tubes.

A legal CB radio with brand new tubes put out about 5 watts of legal transmit power.
As the tubes aged, the power would level out somewhere around 3 watts.

The same holds true with solid state technology.
When brand new - it is as good as it is ever going to be.
Once it has been put through a couple of cycles - on and off and transmitted through a improper match antenna - put it back on the Bird meter with a dummy load ( 50 ohms ) and see how much transmit power it still has.

Now - take that same radio, put it on the service monitor and tune it until you get every last ounce of power out of it and it might show 8 watts of power - if you crank up the deviation until it sounds like kids playing with two tin cans and a piece of string.

The reason why the stock radio is rated at 4 watts is because most power meters has a tolerance of plus or minus 1% for a good power meter and 10% for a cheap Radio Shack. 10% of 4 watts isn't even a half of a watt.

Import radios on the other hand - typically has a output power of somewhere between 25 and 100 watts - depending on your power budget and where you desire to use it. They also cost 200 - 400% more then the cheap Cobra 29 LTD Classic that you can buy at any old Walmart for $79.99 on sale.

By including the term - IMPORT, it is possible to make someone believe that what you are getting is something that is illegal for use in the USA - which it probably is - if you could get someone to enforce the Part 95 rules and regulations of the FCC.
Riley Hollingsworth retired a long time ago and that dog don't hunt no more.
http://www.arrl.org/news/riley-holli...-end-of-an-era