cb radios

[northdude]

anyone here still play around with cb radios?

[bladeracer]

anyone here still play around with cb radios?

Only two-way, but I'll sometimes take one out with me just to see what the truck drivers are chatting about. I just use small hand-held units with VOX throat mikes and air-tube ear pieces.

[Blr243]

Don’t play around with them but occasionally I carry a 5 watt handheld for safety.. once / actually twice I used it to call for help wen I was bogged ......if I’m hunting a new place and the owners don’t know me yet properly I think they appreciate the fact that I have some sort of back up safety plan

[bigrich]

i'm looking at setting up a 5 watt GME in my tojo next week . for safety on large property and road reports

[animalpest]

All my work vehicles have them and we have some hand helds as well. Great for comms between vehicles, people of foot, farmers etc.

Still have the HF sets but don't get much use nowadays- sat phones get the nod todsy.

[northdude]

We have 5w handhelds we carry. Also have a fixed one in 4wd those ones are uhf. Got a couple of am ones to have a play with. Have any of you made your own antennas. Did they work very well

[bigrich]

Mounting my uhf might be a problem for me. I’m considering getting a CB with all the controls in the mic , and the unit is hidden in the dash . Having all the controls in the mic looks too fussy for my liking though. Anyone got any practical advice? I could just mount the CB on the passenger side of the centre console if I have to

[disco stu]

I've got an old 40ch in the car, and a handheld cheap Chinese one that I reprogrammed with Aus channels. I also have a plb in my bag at all times. I've loaned the handheld out to others when conditions are bad and people can potentially get stuck etc, at $40 I'm not so worried about losing it. Transmission strength is down a little on 5w, but it's still well over 2 (others have measured around 4w), and it communicates better than yelling.

Used the handheld once when stuck in my Camry when away with the club.

I like the idea of longer range communications, but I'm not a ham kind of guy and its only for non life threatening emergencies (got the plb for live threatening). I did look at other frequencies with longer range, but cost and antennae size etc has made it look unattractive.

When I first heard about starlink it sounded like it could be a solution, as it was described as needing minimal equipment etc. Since found out that it needs permanently mounted antenna etc so it put that idea out of action

[Die Judicii]

I've got GME in my ute,,,,,,,,, but can't remember the last time I actually used it.
In fact,,,,,, don't recall if I was able to ever have an intelligent conversation with any randoms on the other end.
The exception was truckies that you invariably talk to when travelling any length of time and they are behind or in front of you for many miles.

These days most of em either don't have their set turned on or are just plain rude.

[northdude]

Any one have any success with one of those antennas you make out of wire a certain length and stretch it out. Forget what they are called

[geoff]

I've got a UHF in all my cars and I've worked a lot of jobs where we communicated over various VHF platforms a lot. I'm comfortable enough using it and they are a godsend driving remote WA highways where you interact with big mining oversize a lot. Nothing worse than some numpty banking up traffic behind a big oversize while the pilot spends half an hour trying to call them on ch40

Turn it on for crying out loud

[animalpest]

Have used a piece of wire cut to quarter wave length for my HF set. Worked better than a aerial.

My dad used to do this when he was in the forestry back in the late 50's. Throw it over a tree and away you talk.

[Bugman]

Have two 5 watt units for use when hunting and also a small epirb, but no cb unit anymore in the ute.

[on_one_wheel]

Yeah ... mainly just listening to the 11 meter bands, still haven't got around to getting a licence but I've done my homework for it.
There's been loads of good skip on teh chicken band and the idiots have been quiet for a chance.

I run 27mhz and uhf in the 4x4 and have a decent base station in the shed

[Sarco]

Play a little on 27Mhz (11M band) but have an amateur licence so spend more time on the amateur HF bands and also VHF and UHF. Been starting to play with digital VHF & UHF radio lately but it is a steep learning curve and I will admit that some of the technical jargon tends to go over my head, but I am getting there.

[northdude]

Is 11m the wavelength for 27 mhz. Sorry still trying to learn this stuff

[deye243]

Yes 11 metres is chook band 28 and 29 MHz is the 10 meter ham band
The thing I really like about 10 m is you get to do it SSB AM and FM

[bigrich]

Yes 11 metres is chook band 28 and 29 MHz is the 10 meter ham band
The thing I really like about 10 m is you get to do it SSB AM and FM

you guys are talking wizardry as far as i'm concerned

[Blr243]

Same. I got no idea. They could be selling meth to each other via code and I would be oblivious

[deye243]

UHF chook band is roughly 63 cm a smidgen less .

When we talk centimetres or metres it's the length of a full wavelength

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[northdude]

Anyone familliar with adjusting antenna for swr. Ive got to a point with mine where the lowest i can get it is 3. Ive made sure its got good grounding( shed roof). The unit is a bit of an odd one a midland 203.

[northdude]

Its recieving good tho picking up aussie at the moment. Newcastle by the sounds of it

[northdude]

Oh and its a base loaded antenna if that makes a differance

[niteowl]

300 divided by the frequency in Megahertz will give you the wave length of any system in meters. eg 300/27 = 11.11111 m.
An antenna, regardless of type (half wave, quarter wave), will be approx 5% shorter than the calculated wave length.