Am waking up in South Dakota getting ready down the edge of the Plains to Oklahoma. More food for thought:
RF Bonds on your vehicle a help seeing as how you’re apparently out on the road versus those puttering around inside the metro bubble.
Horizontal surfaces + doors + exhaust pipe as priority. (bed to frame & cab if pickup).
Diamond MAT-50 as another idea to try.
The past week or so with
Skip reduced in intensity I’ve found it fairly easy to have near-silence with the radio turned
almost wide-open during the day out in rural areas. (Lincoln II with ASC off and SQ at 02).
That would be easier to accomplish in a personal vehicle. A radio with NRC ought to be able to match this.
Then, with local comms, it’s uncannily like 2-way radio.
The local rock buckets are one thing, the cattle haulers are another. In Texas this would be on the major US Highways versus Interstate for best performance testing.
US-67 west of US-281 a very good road for that. Once you’re out towards Ballenger it’s Gods Country for CB all the way north to Canada.
It’ll show up the low power, mag-mount and marginal signal capture you’ve got going.
Permanent antenna + KL-203 + RF Bonds + coax filter
and you’ll talk & hear as well as the big radios despite using that tiny AT500.
Post in thread 'Getting back into CB...'
Personally, I’d try an NMO-30 or NMO-34 versus the NMO-27. “Radio Tech friends” ought to have an antenna analyzer to get a 5’-7’ whip trimmed right. (That Tram 3500 not as good as you think it to be; 5’ is minimal in the first place).
A 7’ on my pickup is 13’ total clearance (and the whip can take hits well below that). Longest antenna to tallest height is the magic. 14’ on the big truck.
— An NMO antenna can be unscrewed and weather cap installed to disguise that there’s a radio inside. A second one for your scanner would be the way to go.
I occasionally have conversations with a one, two, three NMO antenna configured roof that passes me I easily note it from my height advantage
and that one of them is likely CB.
I’ve asked if they heard some of what I had earlier heard, and, if not, filled them in.
DSP is the missing link. The men without it are blind in one eye and deaf in one ear.
You’ll crack up the bull haulers you tell them you’re running an $80 cigarette pack-sized radio (with all of the above improvements). That crowd still into 98VHP with chrome case and switch covers (got $800 in it).
I get it that
budget may not allow.
Seems not to be enough of a performance upgrade. Yet it is.
Being at home (near Waco?), the RF noise of a metro covers up what it
could do out and away (west of US-281). This phenomenon tricks many as to what are the limitations of CB.
The next step up (as above) puts you into a rarified world.
Clays Radio in San Antonio good for any need (I’ve used his shop 25-years), and
Larry’s CB in McKinney is worth the drive as it’s Santa’s Workshop for inventory and not far north of
Ham Radio Outlet in Plano.
MTC in Paris has all the zillions of little parts & pieces beyond being a well-regarded Amateur retailer.
Tomorrow morning I’ll be traversing OKC pre-dawn and will be using the guys on AM-19 on their base stations not far off the IH-35 & IH-40 junction as a range test, RX & TX. I can usually start to pick them up 20-plus miles out (depends on what antenna they’re using, or how it’s aimed), and can
usually converse easily at about ten miles.
Easier in approach versus retreat as the van gets in the way.
More than once I’ve found weak points this way.
You’d do better than that in a personal vehicle (as above).
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