My first CB call was issued in the mid 60's. Just about the same time I got my first pair of glasses and could see from across the room that girls were different and I kinda liked the difference.


I let the license expire. The call was KID1134. A pretty cool call if you turn the 1134 upside down. When I got back in to CB's, mainly to try and make a buck selling them, I got the new call.


That was around '74 or so. Just when the boom was in full swing.


My neighbor was a ham, he was still upset that the FCC had taken 11 meters away from the hams. He took it personally. I had helped him build a 23 channel radio on a breadboard. It was a huge Frankenstein brute of a thing. It had 46 crystals all ground down by hand, wanna guess who's hand did most of the grinding?


The way he designed it we used knife switches to change channels. You could transmit on one channel and listen on a different one. When we first got it working it was putting out close to 50 watts so we had to redesign the driver stage and change the bias resistor to get it down to the allowed 5 watts.


A little over a year later he bought a factory made mobile radio and gave me the monster.

 

Getting back on topic here...

Personally, I have a thing for old radio equipment. Not too long ago I let my Hallicrafters Super Sky Rider go because I got tired of lugging that big heavy beast around. On the headboard of our bed is my Zenith TransOceanic which I restored to near perfection several years ago. That said, I wouldn't even install a "classic" CB radio in my truck -- if I wanted a mobile CB I'd buy a new one, and a higher end unit at that. I've got an old JCPenney 6241 that in its day was highly prized for its quality and performance, and mine's got a few nice little pirate mods in it. It still kicks serious ***, but it's old and I wouldn't risk that the one time I need it is the time it decides to give up the ghost.

Why a higher end unit? Because transmit power is only a piece of the performance puzzle. They're two-way radios, after all. Generally, the more you spend the better the receiver, and that matters a lot when you're in a tricky situation. Maybe the one guy who can hear you really wants to help, but you're not answering his questions because you can't hear him asking them.(And it's for those kinds of situations that I routinely violated the law with an amplifier in-line with my CB's. I didn't want some random idiot to die because he had a cheap radio and I was limited to legal power.)

Of the rigs pictured, the Colt actually has the best receiver but it's still on the crap end of the scale. If memory serves (and it might not), the TRC-427 and the Cobra 21 share the same mainboard, but the Radio Shack model has an even noisier receiver than the Cobra. I don't know how they do things today because IDGAF any more, but in those days both Cobra and RS were selling Unidens, and RS played marketing games to sell more units. The top-of-the-line RS unit was actually Uniden's #2 -- but everyone knew that both RS and Cobra were Uniden radios, and the top of the line rig at Radio Shack was priced lower than the top of the line Cobra elsewhere so the sale got made. The ugly part: Radio Shack's radio wasn't exactly the second-of-the-line Uniden and so the same as the #2 Cobra, either. RS had some higher quality parts like the crystal lattice filters in the audio sections downgraded to cheaper parts, had some ancillary circuits removed entirely, and so on. So the smart money went across town, got the #2 Cobra for less than the #1 Radio Shack, and got more bang for the buck.

Like tired_old_man, I ran a radio shop once upon a time -- but I was a pirate. I doubt I'll ever bother to get a Radio Amateur license because IDGAF about the weather in some random far away place, what equipment the guy there is running, that he made a contact with some other random guy in a far away place last week, or what his medical conditions might be. Unless/until there's a disaster, that's all a ham radio is good for, a bunch of pathetic losers sitting around talking about their bum knees, triple bypasses, and inverted-V antennas.

And unless you know people who use CB or spend time on lonely roads, they're also just about as worthless. But if you're going to rely upon one, fergawdsake rely upon a good one.

 

Keeping my internet privacy in mind I'll narrow mine down to just the alpha: KFQ. I thought the FQ was pretty cool...

I can relate... I was all set to go for my tech license once upon a time so I could legally do the work I was doing anyway. Instead, I paid a Technician Class operator around the corner to pretend he oversaw my work if Uncle Charlie ever came asking. They never did.

And suddenly it really was Children's Band!

As long as it wasn't mine! And as long as I wasn't the poor clod whose ears got insulted as those hand-cut crystals changed in temperature

Now that is unique. I've used toggle switches and wafer switches for that kind of thing, but never knife switches. Didja do Frankenstein movie quotes as you flopped them? I surely would have.

I'd have made it a rheostat, myself. But then I've no respect for authority.

How cool. That was my love of radio, really, the technology of it. I was an electrical engineer before I changed careers and decided to be a software engineer instead, and my big thing in EE was high speed analog (and later A/D) so radio receivers were intriguing to me. Anyone can make transmit power into the tens of kW, but not too many can sneak -124dBm out of the grass.

My first wife used to joke that I could hear pig squeals in the sound of bacon frying... I didn't suspect until after she left me that she meant I was delusional.

 

So far I have never discussed my health problems on the air either on the ham bands or the CB.


I know there are a lot of other OF's who do. I'm afraid its all they got.


When I was lots younger it was fascinating to me to think that I was actually hearing other like minded people from all around the world right in my own home.


Lots of stuff still had a senseo'wonder to it then. Not so much these days. Still I like to listen a lot.


Back in 1960 I made a deal with my neighbor to buy a Hammerlund receiver from him for $50.00. At that time the radio was barely 3 years old and worth at least three times what he was asking. More recently I've seen them on eBay for 5 times the original purchase price and wonder at the mentality of the folks who are buying them.


All my mowing and paper route money went toward the purchase. My folks were pretty upset that the neighbor had asked a kid my age for that kind of money for an old radio.


Once I finally got it paid for and home they still were not particularly impressed with it. In the spring when I finally got a decent long wire antenna up high in the jack pines around the yard and could tune in WSM even in the daytime they were finally happy and actually impressed with my purchase.


Being a licensed radio operator I naturally frown on the freebanders and the dudes with the splattery linears and mic full of noise toys.


But to tell the truth so long as they are not bothering me on the ham bands I don't care all that much. I still own several CB's but haven't had one in any of my cars for years now. I do have an Shakespeare big stick on the house but mainly use it for 10 meters these days.

 

I don't pay much attention to about, oh, 85% of the people I meet in person because I don't find them very interesting. That's why I don't bother with radio. I'm going to put thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours toward hearing about George's triple bypass and his wife's sciatica? Not in this lifetime!

My wife had a cardiac ablation a week ago today, is having her gallbladder removed on the 22nd, and as soon as she's done I'm going to have my thyroid looked at. BFD. This stuff goes with not dying young. George can kiss our butts.

I gave $65, about half of original retail, for my TransOceanic when it didn't work and looked like it had spent most of 40 years sitting in a smoky bar somewhere. The 1948 model I bought in 1985 is now back up to about its original retail price on the open market but I wouldn't accept twice that for mine. Rationality and antique radio don't coexist peacefully.

You've gotta look really, really close to tell from the face that my T/O isn't brand new. There's a scuff on the left side near the top that detracts from the value but it's still one of the cleanest 8G005YTZ1's you'll ever see. I was always a big fan of the Clipper, couldn't tell you why -- I can't recall any happy memories of folks who owned one, or any memories of that model at all. It's just what a kitchen table radio ought to be.

I had a Hallicrafters Super Skyrider (a 1944 SX-28) until not long ago, a rig I got from my neighbor the Tech licensed guy -- he actually just gave it to me to get it out of his shop. It was what a shortwave radio ought to have been, but it weighed about as much as my truck. At least the front half of my truck. Carrying that mufker left yer ***** in yer socks!

That's the thing: My equipment didn't splatter. It could, if you were dumb enough to push it that hard, but as a general rule it didn't. I spent a lot of time with my oscilloscope and spectrum analyzer showing my customers that it didn't matter at all that turning the ***** all the way up made the power meter go higher because all they were doing was annoying people and burning the life out of their final amp stages. I pushed eighth-wave stubs so hard that I gave the first half-dozen of them away -- half of which got ripped out by other local techs who didn't understand why the amps ahead of them didn't let out their magic smoke. But the word got out that I was the guy who could clean up your transmitter and keep Uncle Charlie away, which was well worth the investment in sixty feet or so of coax.

That was my whole thing: Live like you want to live unless/until you're hampering someone else's right to do the same. More people watch television than do two-way radio, so don't be a nuisance. And when Uncle got after the pirates for interfering with the gubment's otherwise illegal use of the unallocated spectrum, my newsletter told people which frequencies to stay the heck off of. (Remember Secret CB? )

Bingo. No one cares if you're not bothering them, and by golly no one has a right to care if they're not bothered.

The one time Uncle Charlie came to my house, it was because I had a five element dual polarity beam stuck up in the sky so the neighbors just knew it was me tearing up their televisions. It was actually the guy with the Tech license down the street... and, get this, a big part of his problem:

Yep, 'twas the Big Stick. I've replaced dozens of those things due to neighbor complaints. My neighbor the high and mighty Tech (who almost knew Jack's plumbing from the inside out) was big on flea markets and swaps, and if he didn't see any smoke with some random 10m amp on a dummy load he'd switch it up to the Big Stick and start talking on it. If it didn't work or was reported to sound crappy he'd pay me to fix it. Before I figured out it was him I put high pass filters on almost every TV in the neighborhood, and replaced a handful of severely corroded antennas that were playing rectifier in their spare time. After the FCC inspectors left my house (impressed) I wandered on down to his house, found his crappy Big Stick to be the culprit, and fixed it for him.

The fix is just to screw in any old 5/8 wave mobile antenna to replace the top half. It not only fixes the problem, it improves receive gain, too. (No love lost between me and Shakespeare.)

The neighbor was a good guy, but just a tad shy of optimally proficient in radio technology. He memorized enough to pass the test but had no business smoking lead. He was a helluva fine machinist, though, and with his help in that arena I fixed a lot of otherwise junk antenna rotors. I did the engineering, he did the fabricating, and between us we put stuff in the sky that was designed to stay there. It was almost as hard as getting out of bed in the morning. I mean, shucks, do ya want a brass bushing or a needle bearing? Duh.

Like you, I don't want to hear some diesel dummy's roger beep in my FM radio as I roll down the interstate. Radio operators whether licensed or unlicensed, using allocated or unallocated spectrum, don't have the right to futz with my sh_tuff... or yours. There aren't any extra antennas hanging off of that truck in my sig... But if there were you could bet that there'd be the ability to reach out of band with extralegal power. And no one would be the wiser except for the folks I'm talking to.

 

When I'm running power. You'd be hard pressed to know about it by trying to detect any out of band splatter. Though it would seem that those of us with this approach seem rare among the CB community. probably why it's always gotten a bad rap. It's like the wild west and there are some real idiots on there. My theory is that if one behaves with proper RF etiquette the CB can be used like a ham band to a point with no significant attention from charlie.

 

With all these pros in here, can the handheld/portable cbs be modified for more power? Do you guys see a need even to do that anymore these days? Application is offroading, hills, forested, etc. I'm presuming not much benefit would be gained given the terrain, but thought to ask anyways.


Edit: Maybe a really noob question, but honestly I don't know, what is the proper way(s) to filter out the engine feedback??? My power is using the Aux outlet. Warning -- I've only recently gotten my setup the last few months or so and have not worked out all the kinks.

 

It's not worth messing with it. You might want to have a good technician tune the thing to make sure it's working as well as it's designed to work, but other than that there's really no point. Most handhelds just won't turn up at all, and if they will then you get reduced battery life for no perceptible performance increase.

If your handheld provides for connecting an external antenna, that's where you'll get the bang for your buck. Plunk a good quality magnetic mount antenna right smack in the middle of the roof and plug up to that.

Personally, if I was doing a lot of off roading with guys who have CB's, then I'd just go ahead and either permanently install a good one, or rig something up so I could easily and safely install a good radio temporarily with a magnetic mount antenna (e.g. a K40) plunked right smack in the middle of the roof. If you go that temp radio route, be sure that the radio is anchored securely so it can't become a missile in a wreck. Ain't no one should ever be as stupid as my father, who got knocked even stupider by flying crap when he got drunk and crashed his alkie van into a boulder.

[Alkie Van: Ten or more year old conversion van with visible duct tape and/or baling wire, and/or one or more plywood, plexiglas, garbage bag or duct tape windows.]

Got a switch on there labeled NB or ANL? If so, switch it on and see what happens. If you don't have any such switch or turning it on doesn't work, then I suggest that you carefully remove and set aside the screws that hold the radio case together so you can expose the circuit board. Then, employing appropriate safety measures, bash the piece of crap with a big freakin' hammer.

But, seriously now, what I'd do is to plug the radio into another vehicle, preferably one that's known to have a top notch electrical system, and if possible, plug another handy talkie into the same power outlet on your truck where your radio is noisy. Does the noise follow the radio or stay with the truck? If it follows the radio it's likely hammer time (or learning to live with it, a thing I could never personally do). On the other hand, if it stays with the truck... things will get a lot more interesting. And more fixable, perhaps more costly, probably more time consuming, too. At that point it'll be time to figure out what kind of noise it is and how it's being coupled into the radio.

If you really want to pursue the noise and maybe make it go away, start with that test. I'll try not to go MIA so much and be around to help out... can't promise much this month, though, and don't know what to expect of June, but I'll try to be around more than I have been lately.

 

Probably the best way to filter alternator whine out of your CB is to put a choke in the positive line and bridge a 1000mfd capacitor of at least 200 working volts to ground.


You can use almost any iron core transformer for a choke. You run your 12V through the primary side then twist secondary wires together and ground them through the cap.


Keep your ground wire as short as you can and do not put a fuse in the ground side. If you do and that fuse should fail you can end up putting all the supply voltage places you don't want it to go.


In the old days a lot of CB's came with a fuse in both sides of the supply wire because there were a lot of semi's out there with positive ground electrical systems.


As far as boosting the power out on a hand held rig,... think about it for a second. Would you put your head in a microwave oven and turn it on?


Radios use the same electromagnetic spectrum as microwaves ya know. CB's are in a much lower part of the frequency spectrum, but still. We hams are required to do a power density test to make sure we are not microwaving our brains. Or the neighbors.


Here is a link to an online site that makes it easy to figure out.


http://hintlink.com/power_density.htm


Every now and then you'll hear on the news about someone with brain cancer who blames it on their cell phone. I can see how some folks might have a problem with it. Some folks can not seem to be able to put their cell phone down, ever. Even wifi and blutooth use electromagnetic spectrum at very low power and very high frequencies.


In reality most hand held radios have finals that can put out lots more power than the rig is rated for. You have to raise the power output by a factor of 4 to see even one S unit of difference at the other end.


That's why most ham radios are 100 watts straight out of the box. We are allowed up to 1500 watts on most bands depending on the level of license we hold and can achieve that with a liner amplifier.


The thing that helps hand held rigs 'get out better' is a better antenna.


These days the hand held radios have a very short antenna. A CB antenna is 11 meters long, thats roughly 33 feet. Look at your hand held and guess how long that rubber ducky antenna is.


Little shorter ain't it?


Modern CB hand held radios do not have a provision to attach a better antenna. The two ancient 'hand held' {more like lugable portable} CB's I have here do have a little socket where I can plug in an external antenna through an RCA jack. They also have very long center loaded extendable antennas on them.


A quarter wave antenna for CB is 109” long you need as much or slightly more for counter poise. With a hand held your body is the counter poise.


Height and antenna design is where its at.

 

I should have elaborated more on my setup and gladly put this out there as an example to get critiqued by you pros.

It's a 102" whip using a stake hole mount (front driver side). I think my cable length is 10'. The system was tuned/checked at a CB shop. Adding a quick disconnect to the whip improved it.

Here are pictures:

http://s150.photobucket.com/albums/s...view=slideshow

I've used the setup with the whip bowed as shown on a snow run and I didn't seem to have any transmit/receive problems.

Only issue that arose was the engine noise. Faster you rpm, the louder the hummmmm. I can't recall if I attempted to turn squelch up...assuming it would have an affect.

Here is the radio and I have not checked on the ANL or NB switch. Used it on motorcycle trip and haven't unpacked yet.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...ls_o02_s00_i01