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[slowmover]

Nice report!

Family is the best example. It’s not hard to get separated. A well-plotted Trip Plan is always needed, solo, or in convoy (stops pre-determined per miles & time), so Radio is that last moment change one can make where otherwise we scrupulously avoid that type decision.

It’s difficult to convey to other truck drivers how much their efficiency can go up with a HP radio.

This isn’t for the boss, but for them.

When one has choices and has learned from experience what works . . .

. . . there’s no going back.

If I want to re-route and go around, I often can.

If I want to avoid the sheeple herd being re-routed per G-Maps, etc, I almost always can.

If I want to avoid being a sitting duck on a road with no exit across shoulder or median, I can (given I understand my routing beforehand; a solid trip plan).

— That last one is that a long trip can have choke points. “One route to X”. I can pull off to inquire ahead of time how it looks up ahead. Extra time (wait) or a re-route that’s longer is the solution (use of HOS clock).

The goal in every mile is the same: Maximum Vehicle Separation. A quarter-mile is about right.
This saves driver energy, fuel, tires & brakes.

And when it’s time to re-route one has the reserves in all ways.

For the vacationer and family man it’s nearly the same. One can’t make time by traveling faster. Traffic Volume is king. Increasing risk with collapsed space isn’t an answer. It’s always in avoiding situations which become monkey-skill reaction tests (which isn’t “skill”, per se).

HP Citizen Band is that we co-operate with others of our kind. Get the radio rig and develop the use of tools (maps, compass, clock = predictive power in a Trip Plan per planned stops) to reap the benefits.

.

 

[jcrmadden]

A little after midnight last night I made my longest mobile to base contact.

I was tickled, but the story is more interesting that the stat.

I was swapping antennas while talking to the local stations (4, 8, and 11 miles to the three who were still on that late).

I was looking to find out which of my antennas could reach the farthest with the least amount of noise so I waited for skip to die off.

As an aside, the GR45 and the 7' skipshooter both had excellent audio and S-meter reports, with the GR45 having just a tick higher signal capture on my end.

So, around 12:30 am a new guy breaks in to ask what I'm running, and I happily shared the details.

He told me he didn't have an S-meter so he couldn't give me a reading, but said, "You're definitely getting on; I've got a room full of ya and you're crystal clear!"

I let him know that he was hitting me with an S9 but that he sounded like he was pushing a ton of static or back ground noise too (sounded like a fan running).

He said, "That makes sense, this tube radio is ancient, hasn't been on in 20 years, and isn't warmed up good yet."

Not knowing anything about tube radios I made a few inquiries of my own, and he said he didn't know much about radios himself.

He explained that the radio had three "levels", was as large as a refrigerator, and plugged into a 220v AC outlet.

He said the first level had a single tube with no numbers on it, the second level had two tubes with the number 4-400b on them, and the bottom level had four tubes that were the size of 1 gallon pickle jars and burned blue-hot.

He said he had a 5/8 wavelength antenna with a gamma match on it just to try it out. I have no idea what that means.

I've never seen or even heard of such a beast, but I though it was interesting.

So did all the other stations who where scrambling to ask questions so we traded location information and I backed out.

I came in and ran the numbers on the google machine.

I didn't know the other operator's exact location but the closest he could have been was 29.6 air miles.

That's on AM22 and not on SSB.

 

[slowmover]

Clarity is King