CB RADIOS

Hey everyone, looking into investing in a good CB radio. Wanted the communities opinion on what’s good and bad out there. I’m looking to spend really no more than 200.

Sorry if this in the wrong area, be more than happy to take it down, just point me into the right direction!

Thanks!

 

Do you have others you know that use CB? I ask because I have both CB and Ham and have removed the antenna because I find it very limited to the point of useless. Unless you're traveling with someone else that has a CB.

 

Oh, I didn’t know this. This may sound stupid but I wanted a CB and was as hoping that some handheld walkie talkies could communicate with me through my CB? Is that even possible?

Outside of that, I don’t know if anyone that had a CB. lol

I apologize for my ignorance.

 

I would suggest getting a ham license, can do a lot more stuff with an amateur ham license. Don't have mine but want to get one.
@anndel01 maybe you could give him some more in-depth info

 

I rolled with a group once that had CB's and I had some decent Walkies, I could here the people on CB's but couldn't get out to them, the walkies just didn't have enough power to make it through a CB's limiting gate.

I have a CB now and am studying for my HAM, a friend of my has his licence and lives near a booster station, he regularly talks to people around the world, CB is almost limited to line of sight, a little farther but not much.

I leave my CB on scan during long drives and I've found that I only get 15-30 seconds of time with oncoming traffic within range or about a mile in front and a mile behind me.

My CB setup is

Cobra 29LX and a tuneable 3' Firestick antenna with some speaker box, I forget which from Loves. Works great and has plenty of power but it isn't as useful as I hoped it would be.

Great when rolling with a group or talking to truckers to get an idea why and how far traffic is backed up, but that's about it.

I plan on getting a ham because if I'm alone and actually need to call for help ham is going to be most reliable means of getting out.

Well that an it seems to be an unspoken rule that if you have your tech license you must get all your friends to get tech licenses, and well I have a friend with his Ham tech humping my leg to get mine.



I picked up my whole CB setup from offerup for under $200.

 

CBs should be pretty handy in a working forest. Most areas are posted with the CB channel so you can listen to the logging truck driver laugh after he runs you off the road. Just got my taco, so I'm not sure how much traffic I'll find on the CB out there, but the Tillamook State Forest is well-marked for CB channels. Cobra makes handheld CBs.

I'm a ham, and you can do quite a bit with a tech license, for sure. For instance, APRS can get your location from GPS and send it out over the air, so your survivors know where to find you body (https://aprs.fi). If you've got good repeater coverage, things are pretty sweet.

Keep an eye on FRS/GMRS; it's about to get a whole lot better (http://www.arrl.org/news/fcc-person...will-affect-gmrs-frs-cb-other-part-95-devices). These are the handheld radios that you can get at WalMart, HomeDepot, etc. They work pretty well, but trees eat your signal pretty quick.


David

 

We only teach the secret handshake if you recruit 10 other techs.

 

Your common handheld walkie talkies that you get in bubble packs from box stores are in the UHF range (300+Mhz). CB is HF (26-27~ MHz). The two are incompatible. UHF is "good enough" for short range comms between a handful of people on the cheap. They're limited in power output (1/4 watt) and the signal is extremely line of sight dependent. Modern UHF/FRS handhelds even have privacy codes so that even if other people are on the same channel, you can switch to a sub channel and not talk over each other. Those UHF radios are on FRS, which is free to use without license as long as your antenna is nondetachable and you stick to the 1/4 watt transmission power.

Thanks for posting that link!

“[M]any current users of GMRS/FRS combination radios do not obtain licenses to operate over the GMRS frequencies in those radios,”

 

That my friend is called illegal!

 

I didn't direct OP to do or advise on how to do anything illegal

 

Wow, thank you everyone for the abundance of useful information. Sounds like I have some more researching and reevaluating to do.

Now how about walkie talkies use in the city let’s say for a 4 mile range. No trees to block but with buildings, cars, power lines make it useless or not?

 

Steel structures, electrical wires, and radio waves of all sorts will play havoc on your UHF radios. Trees would be preferable to steel-and-concrete buildings with massive amounts of electrical wiring everywhere.
Let me put it this way, I had a hard time getting a transmission across about 20 acres of land from one end to the other due to high-tension power lines bisecting the property. This was with a 5 watt GMRS set up. The bubble-pack radios are at 1/4 watt.
In short, your range will vary.

 

It use to be, back in the day, most all walkie talkies were tuned to CB channel 14. Is that not so any more?

 

Yeah, not everyone pays for the license, but they should.

I'd say that most single-channel hand held radios are still on 14. They are getting hard to find.

 

I recommend running the

$90 Midland 75-822 40 Channel CB-Way Radio

Midland 75-822

it is extremely easy to install, range, clarity and operation are simple

and the largest reason: it easily unplugs from the truck to become fully portable

I was in the Colorado mountains, got stuck on the mountain after a guy in a Jeep screwed me over (long story) and started to hike down... I ended up getting rescued by search and rescue

but having a cb radio that I could have removed from the truck, clipped to my belt, and kept comms open would have made the whole thing a lot easier (and potentially life saving)

plus it's under $100

 

tell us a story or do you have a link to it. what happened

 

I figure one of these days when I figure out how to run the coax into the cab without drilling holes I'm going to pick up one of these.

https://www.amazon.com/AnyTone-Smar...d=1490399234&sr=1-1&keywords=Albrecht+AE-6110

 

super easy to run. 2nd gen have a grommet under the drive side seat. only hard thing is tuning it. I dont have the correct tool

 

I had a stock f-250 and had driven up to my favorite shooting area on Mt. Herman off Rampart Range Road in Monument, Colorado. My wife and best friend were with me. My best friend was deploying to Afghanistan the very next day and this was going to be our last "day of fun" before he deployed.

We got to our shooting spot with no difficulties even though there was about 12" of snow on the ground, but the sun had melted a lot of it the exposed trail. We are shooting and having fun when a guy trudged up from a dense side trail and explained that he got his Jeep stuck about 1/2 mile back on that trail and asked if we could help

I said no promises but we'd try.

well this small trail is totally shaded (so no snow melt) about 10 ft wide, and about a 15* angle sloping away from the shear rock face on one side, and had a 150ft dropoff on the other side.

somehow, I get my truck within tow strap range of his Jeep that is buried in a snowbank and do a pull to get him out, but when we pulled him out, the jerking motion sent my drivers side 2 wheels (front and rear) off the ledge. so my truck is teetering on the edge of a cliff.... we all freak out and jump out of the truck

the guy in the Jeep pulls up and said "thanks! but I dont think I can pull you out... it's getting dark, I have to go" and leaves us. stranded.

we dug and rocked the truck back and forth for a couple hours.... finally around 9pm we gave up and started to walk down the mountain.... my buddy and myself were Active Duty at the time and we were in pretty decent shape and of course, my buddy had to be back to base by 5am to deploy.

well my wife has a heart condition, so the altitude and the exercise started to take a toll on her, so I told my buddy to go on ahead w/out me, I'll hang back with her and if either of us saw anyone, we would either get help, or a ride down the mountain.

My wife and I found a middle aged couple out for a joy ride and they offered to help pull my truck out in his stock Ford Ranger. My buddy ended up finding a ride down the mountain with some guys that had been riding dirt bikes and alerted Search and Rescue on his way down.

Search and Rescue find us and the middle aged couple (who cannot even make it to my truck and got stuck in the process of getting back to reach my truck (it was about 11:30PM by this point so everything was frozen / icy)

Search and Rescue end up winching his truck out of a snow bank, but it accidentally slipped off the winch line when they unhooked (because it was in neutral) and fell off the cliff.... luckily it only fell about 10 ft because 2 trees caught the truck *it totaled the Ford Ranger*

So S&R gave us all a ride down the mountain and we all called respective friends to come pick us up from the S&R / Ranger station.... we were all in pretty rough shape and had borderline frostbite.

the next day was unseasonably warm, so my wife and I bought a bunch of recovery gear at 4wheelparts and took her ford explorer to the shooting spot and hiked out to the spot my truck was and used a hi lift jack and some tow straps to winch my truck back onto the trail, and some recovery boards to get out....

I had to reverse the 1/2 mile since there was no room to turn around and found out that my drivers side brake line had been severed by a sharp stick when I winched it back onto the trail.... so I drove down the mountain w/ barely any brake pedal and ended up changing a brake line / bleeding the brakes in a parking lot at the base of the mountain.


I told you it was a long story... but you can see why I think a portable CB would have been HUGELY helpful... and now I dont ever go into the mountains or anywhere completely unprepared and w/out recovery gear

 

I have an SWR meter, will that work for this type of radio?