CB Radio Issues

I installed my CB radio last week and finally tuned it last night at the beach. It was a pretty open area with few, if any, obstructions. I got the SWR level to 1.5 on channel 40 and Channel 1. Tutorials and guides I've gone through claim that levels under 2 are considered good with little loss of power.

I tried usi g it today and got (what I believe to be) poor results. I live in Orange County, CA where trucks (commercial) are frequently seen on highways. While on a busy highway I spotted numerous trucks with CBs and tried to tune into their channel. There was lots of activity going on on channel 19, I could hear talking but the intense abundant static drounded out any possibility of being able to clearly understand what they were saying. Other channels were similar. What can be the problem? I have. 4ft firestick with about 3 ft above my roofline. The antenna is grounded straight to the chasis and I didn't coil the coaxial cable at any place. I have a Uniden 538 pro

 

I haven't done this myself yet, but on the top of your antenna you should be able to help tune the antenna by turning the dial. Again, not an expert but just a thought. My instructions also said to tune the antenna on Ch. 20. FYI. Good luck.

 

Yea my antenna has a tunable tip which i can turn like a screw to adjust. This is what I did last night to tune it but it didn't work out I guess

 

maybe you had the squelch set to open....next time try playing with the squelch knob untill you hear no static. the squelch adjustment will prolly have a fine line sort a speak..static or no static

 

Yea I tried the squelch control and found that the point at which static stops, is the same at which all the voices stop and I can no longer hear anyone, and the squelch must be maxxxed out for that to happen

 

Yea i had problems similar to this with a uniden radio. I tried several things, and have helped the situation, but i wouldnt say its been resolved.

First someone told me to make sure i had a good ground plane, it was mounted on my bumper and not at all grounded.

moved the antenna to my trunk lid (small car) and switched to a friends magnet mount. this seemed to help a lot but i still feel like i should sometimes be hearing more of the trucks on CH 19

Most of my CB radio project has been put on hold since i switched to the TACO and havent put it in there yet. Also dont have any friends with CB's to run radio checks with, this would be a big help.


Also 19 is your basic Freq for everyone on the road. If you need to find someone, talk to everyone, get or give traffic/police reports etc is all done on 19. chan 9 is emergencys, and the others are mostly for you to switch to with your friends to be off the main channel.

I also e-mailed uniden back telling them that i felt that my SWR was not coming out to a good number. my radio has a built in SWR meter. They told me i could mail the radio to them and have it checked. If you ever used your radio without an antenna attached this could cause overloading of the transmitter and eff things up, you may consider having the pro's verify that your radio is 100%

Also if you can find a local radio guru store (not the shack) or someone who has radios and maybe a HAM licence they would be much more helpfull than I.

 

It's too difficult test a CB by just trying to talk with a trucker. You have to have someone else you know with a CB to talk with you.

If you do hear truckers talking on 19 they may be miles away and they may be using amplifiers on their CBs.

You really need a controlled test with someone you know. I know its tempting to test your setup with truckers. Sometimes I will here someone talking on their CB and I will ask them for a "Radio Check". If they respond I usually ask them where they are so I can get a feel for how far I am transmitting. But, if its a trucker on the road they are constantly moving (usually away from you) and you will loose them quickly.

 

The SWR is unrelated to the receive abilities. The SWR is a measure of power that is reflected back to the radio due to mismatched impedance at the cable or antenna. The biggest determining factors for receive quality are the gain of the antenna and the ground plane. The best place to mount any antenna is dead center in the middle of your roof. also understand that CB operates on 11meters which is a HF band and very susceptible to atmospheric conditions. Just about all local traffic you receive on a CB is what we call scatter propagation. The reality is that he band and frequencies that CB uses is not ideal for short range communication and is more suited for long distance operation where the waves bounce off the upper atmosphere and land far away. There is a range between the scatter propagation and skip where you cannot receive anything. It is very similar to 10meter ham radio. With this band you can hear people a long ways away but might not hear someone across town unless they are just pushing a ton of power and can reach you through scatter.