I've just picked up a Midland 77-805 and it's working superbly on receive and transmit, however, there's a niggle with the power meter reading when working on its telescopic antenna.
With all cells fully charged and working into a dummy load, the rig is outputting 4W into a power meter and lighting the corresponding 4 red LED power lights on the rig TX power meter.
I've also connected the rig to a variable power supply and varied the voltage from 10.5V to 13.2V, and the rig shows 1 LED for 1W, 2 LED's for 2W, 3 for 3W, 4 for 4W etc'.. All is as should be into a dummy load.
With the Telescopic antenna installed and a full battery pack (10 x NiMh AA) connected, when I key, the power meter on the rig is only just lighting 1 led - but signal reports are good from several miles away.
I had one of these many years ago and didn't have this problem, and a YouTube search on this rig shows other people's TX meter light all 4 LED's when used in the same circumstances as me.
I was going to alter the TX meter variable resistor, but as it's reading perfectly fine into a dummy load it's seemingly set up factory perfect.
By the way, I checked for continuity from the telescopic antenna stud to the tip and all is good as I suspected the centre load coil might've been open circuit.
Can anyone tell me what the problem could be?
There is an original schematic here -
http://www.cbtricks.com/radios/midland/77_805/index.htm