CB Radios

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CitroJim
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Re: CB Radios

Post by CitroJim »

Xac wrote: radio ham (is that just a play on amatuer?)
It's actually derogatory to us proper radio amateurs. It's an acronym for Half-Arsed Mechanic :evil:

So, the Radio Amateurs Exam is unfailable now is it? Disgraceful. Not like in my day when for a class A licence you had to sit a full City and Guilds Exam (in essay form) where you needed to know a lot of radio theory and take a morse test at a Post Office coastal radio station and pass the test faultlessly at 12WPM both sending and receiving... A Class B licence still needed the full exam but with no morse requirement and limited you to VHF (2M) and above only. A Class A licence gave access to all bands.

During the sunspot peak there would be no need for burners to contact the yanks on 27MHz CB. Choose the right time of day and very little power would be needed, just a well-designed and rigged aerial, not one of those silly base-loaded whips; they're actually rather inefficient... We amateurs have the 10M band at 28MHz and at the right times the world was yours with under a watt into a decent sloping Vee...

Once you've learned morse you never forget it, just like the Q codes.

Di di di dah di da....

HF radio comms is my first trade but sadly it is now totally obsolete and hence why these days I work in IT. I will always miss it :cry:
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Re: CB Radios

Post by Xaccers »

http://www.rsgb.org/arls/foundation_licence.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

10-12 hour course, there is a small amount of radio and electronics theory but only enough for you to appreciate things like using the correct fuses in your equipment and how to build an antenna to get the most out of your radio station.
45 minutes to answer 25 multiple choice questions, and that gets you access to all amateur bands at 10W
Shocking.
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Re: CB Radios

Post by Gregg1100 »

Still got my two CB's. Had them for years. A lot of transport firms stopped us using them because they thought we were enjoying themselves. :-D . Even though they were handy to get ourselves right to where we wanted to go in a strange town/city, with the help of friendly monitors. Remember them. Probably now we would be directed to a place where load and rig would get snaffled.
There was also the advantage of always knowing what was on your front door--a quick 10-13 would tell you what was happening out there, ( I think it was 10-13, memory not so good, lol ).
Some drivers could open the cab door, throw the cb kit into cab, and get out miles. Others would painstakingly try to set it all up properly and get out yards- frustrating. I have tried base loader, middle loader and tip types. The tip types were like fibreglass ones, didn't like being hit by overhanging branches :mrgreen:. I will find them out and see if they still work.

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Re: CB Radios

Post by Xaccers »

Here's my rig in place.
The mic fits snug just to the left of it.
Whilst at Jim's today I fitted the SWR meter inline and it fits nicely underneath, just need to get some sticky backed velcro.

Image

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Re: CB Radios

Post by Xaccers »

Well had my first contact today by Bedford, nice chap, said I was coming through clear but that I could do with a power mic as I had to hold mine reasonably close to my mouth to sound loud.
I've asked Santa for a 9ft tank whip antenna so I can see how far I can get :)
I'm also contemplating getting a new rig as the ME4 has served it's purpose and it's difficult to use the squelch.
It all depends on whether work gets round to paying my expenses this month as they missed them last pay day.
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Re: CB Radios

Post by CitroJim »

Xac wrote: said I was coming through clear but that I could do with a power mic as I had to hold mine reasonably close to my mouth to sound loud.
Shouldn't be any need. Inside the rig you should find a mic gain pot and a deviation pot. Adjust both in small steps until you sound loud enough but not distorted. Deviation should ideally be set using a spectrum analyser but you can do it by ear with another CB'er but don't go mad. Too much deviation is not a good thing and can make you bleed into adjacent channels if too high...

I expect these power mics are in fact audio compressors - they amplify the quiet bits of your speech and attenuate (clip) the loud bits... They make you sound like Brian Blessed...
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Re: CB Radios

Post by Xaccers »

CitroJim wrote:
Xac wrote: said I was coming through clear but that I could do with a power mic as I had to hold mine reasonably close to my mouth to sound loud.
Shouldn't be any need. Inside the rig you should find a mic gain pot and a deviation pot. Adjust both in small steps until you sound loud enough but not distorted. Deviation should ideally be set using a spectrum analyser but you can do it by ear with another CB'er but don't go mad. Too much deviation is not a good thing and can make you bleed into adjacent channels if too high...

I expect these power mics are in fact audio compressors - they amplify the quiet bits of your speech and attenuate (clip) the loud bits... They make you sound like Brian Blessed...
Awesome! "Gordon's alive?!?!" :D

The chap I was talking to had an echo mic, and I really am not a fan of them. It had a roger bleep too, but thankfully just a bleep rather than the multi bleep I've heard some with.
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Re: CB Radios

Post by Xaccers »

This is what Danielle has to put up with :D

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Re: CB Radios

Post by Northern_Mike »

CitroJim wrote:By 'burners' I presume you mean big amplifiers to be able to run more transmit power? Bit illegal that! I bet local TV viewers love them to bits
I had a Cobra rig with SSB on it in my younger days. I had it running off a car battery that was on the window sill of my bedroom permanently hooked up to a battery charger.

It also powered a 100w burner :-) I had a 22ft Silver rod aerial on the chimney.

Oddly, I never got any complaints about interference from the neighbours. I suspect being the highest house on the hill, and the way the signal goes out from the twig just went over everyone. Not one complaint.

Furthest chap I ever spoke to was in Australia, which must be a good 12,000 miles away. That was running on 4w parked up in the car in BB4 on a hill very late one night. I was as surprised as he was.
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Re: CB Radios

Post by Northern_Mike »

CitroJim wrote:By 'burners' I presume you mean big amplifiers to be able to run more transmit power? Bit illegal that! I bet local TV viewers love them to bits
As well as the Cobra in the bedroom, I had a small midland unit in the car, with a mag-mount aerial on the roof. It would slide towards the back windscreen at anything over 55mph and left scratches in the roof. I never used the burner in the car. At that time, we used to get stopped by plod quite often driving around to meet others late at night...
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Re: CB Radios

Post by Xaccers »

SSB should be legalised in the UK next October according to the mumblings from Ofcom.
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Re: CB Radios

Post by CitroJim »

Xac wrote:SSB should be legalised in the UK next October according to the mumblings from Ofcom.
SSB is much more efficient than FM and also makes more efficient use of the available bandwidth thus allowing many more channels to be used. The downside is that you need accurate frequency control; otherwise people become unintelligible at worst or sound like Donald Duck :-D

I doubt these cheap rigs have the necessary stability for good control but they fudge the issue with a clarifier control...
Activa_Mike wrote:Furthest chap I ever spoke to was in Australia, which must be a good 12,000 miles away. That was running on 4w parked up in the car in BB4 on a hill very late one night. I was as surprised as he was.
No surprise. The conditions have to be absolutely right for this to occur. High solar (sunspot) activity and the right time of day when a good deal of the path is in daylight. You may have taken advantage of a phenomenon called 'Chordal Hop' and going the long way round (Long Path) to get to the Antipodes.

The sunspot activity follows an 11 year cycle. We're currently riding on a upper part of the current cycle which is predicted to peak in May 2013. The current cycle looks to be a bit of a shallow one so really exceptional 'DX' on the CB bands might be a bit sparse fro a while yet.

You can glean an idea of when a path may be 'open' by consulting a MUF Map such as this one.

HF Propagation is, being a natural phenomenon, highly variable and you never know what may happen, especially just after a massive solar flare so it's always worth a listen around to see what's going on. Great for amateurs but it used to be a challenge for professional operators back in the days when HF Radio was used for world-wide comms. One of my jobs back 25 years ago was to draw up frequency predictions for a number of destinations on a monthly basis. I knew my subject then and writing this scares me as it makes me realise just how much I've already forgotten on what was one of my specialist subjects :cry: I even wrote some prediction software in C (running under DOS). Today I wouldn't know where to start :roll:

That was back in the days when an 8086 processor running at 8MHz was the bees knees. My software ran really quite slowly, doing all the floating-point maths involved and I was amazed at what the fitting of an optional maths co-processor did for the performance. It then ran like lightning...

Sorry, I'm rambling... I'll get my coat...
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Re: CB Radios

Post by Xaccers »

8MHz? Lightening fast! our 8088 was only 4.77MHz :)
I had someone from the states come through on channel 19 today, just a few seconds of his voice now and again by Kingston, very suprising!
Hopefully Father Christmas will be bringing me a 9foot antenna and I'm tempted to use my overtime money I've just been paid to get myself a new rig.
Was tempted by an anytone 555 (or one of it's variants/copies) as it's only £150, but it's really a 10m radio that can be programmed for 11m and performs well with SSB, but would be very very naughty to use, and it's dimensions are a bit big for mobile use.
Maybe if I get my cornflakes packet license after April...
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Re: CB Radios

Post by Northern_Mike »

CitroJim wrote:
No surprise. The conditions have to be absolutely right for this to occur. High solar (sunspot) activity and the right time of day when a good deal of the path is in daylight. You may have taken advantage of a phenomenon called 'Chordal Hop' and going the long way round (Long Path) to get to the Antipodes.

The sunspot activity follows an 11 year cycle. We're currently riding on a upper part of the current cycle which is predicted to peak in May 2013. The current cycle looks to be a bit of a shallow one so really exceptional 'DX' on the CB bands might be a bit sparse fro a while yet.
Makes sense, that would have been early 1991 when I spoke to the Australian chap, which follows the 11 year cycle..
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Re: CB Radios

Post by Xaccers »

While I was at Jim's yesterday I fitted my new 9foot tank whip.
SWR is 1:1.1-1.2 across the muppets and 1:1.5-1.2 on the mids
Jim's road is normally a bit of a dead spot, but I was able to pick up several breakers (mostly non-english speaking) and Olga the Russian Taxi dispatcher across even more channels now!
Recieved a new batch of Maplin discount vouchers this morning, £3 off when you spend over £30, £7 off when you spend over £75, and a free £15 screwdriver set when you spend over £50
The radio I bought was £90, so I should have been able to get both the free screwdriver set and £7 off, but the voucher says it can't be used with other offers, so I thought I'd try the screwdriver voucher first, and to my suprise rather than adding the screwdriver set for £0, it knocked £15 off the price of my basket. So the radio would only cost me £75.
Somehow *innocent look* my mouse clicked on "checkout" and I've had confirmation of the order, so fingers crossed :D
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