New Starter

Hello Everyone,

A lot of information on here, excellent foundation but I'm suffering from TMI ha ha ha.... I have recently moved from Scotland to Canada, Nova Scotia and wanted to purchase a base station CB but looking at a lot of chat blogs it appears CB's are a thing of the past here, so a lot of money to spend for zero coms! I'm not interested in listening to what our fantastic emergency services are up to, I only want to sit at home during quiet nights and chat and meet new people in Canada or if affordable around the world. I have a good budget, so expense is not the issue but as a typical Scot I hate wasting money. My education days are over so the thought of exams etc scares me a little so simple is good.......... what should I buy, CB? Scanner, amateur radio? Ham? or a package CB/Scanner with separate antennas........ any advice on what to buy and where to buy it from would be appreciated bearing in mind all I want to do is chat to people, not listen to others or sit with static ha ha ha......many thanks

Based on what you're wanting to accomplish, we can eliminate scanners right away. They are receive only and only intended for receiving local area communications (mostly law enforcement and fire/ems), anyway.

Cb radio is fairly limited in range and, in the US, not very active any longer aside from the trucking industry. There may be some small pockets of activity outside trucking, but it's not used much for chatting any more around here.

The best option, in my opinion, for what you want to accomplish is amateur (Ham) radio. I don't know the requirements for licensing in Canada, however, the basic license in the US will allow you to talk around the world and is not a very difficult test. I will assume Canada has a similar basic license for beginners. While the basic (US Tech license) was very limited, the advent of the internet, now allows the same licensee to transmit on his low power radio to an internet connected radio which then transfers his signal to another radio around the world. There are even inexpensive "dongles" that can be connected directly to your home computer and can be used to talk to others (on computer or radio) anywhere in the world.

I'll suggest checking with others in either the ham radio and/or the Canada section. You can also search for "D-star", "DMR" and "DV-4 mini". D-star is probably the most radio-like, DMR can be but, I believe there's more of a learning curve to getting it setup for worldwide use. The DV-4 mini is a dongle that connects to your computer to permit radio-like communication using only your computer.

Jeff.

I would second getting your ham licence the range of people you can talk to covers more area than CB.