Am pleased for you on the upgrade.
My “home” (I’m nearing retirement and am slowly restoring an aluminum travel trailer when off the road), won’t be using an antenna such as this; it’ll have to be something portable (tripod) until I mount something on the roof that will lay flat for travel. (Still won’t be close to a V-4000).
Get sonny boy to run the radius-miles circles from your home where map coordinates coincide with roads crossing those lines. As a benefit to your neighborhood it’d be a good thing should other services fail. (I believe you see my thinking).
CB is criticized by those who (a) have an agenda against the rest of us; or (b) who simply parrot bad advice on family comms.
It isn’t the best or the (whatever), but it’s darned effective for what it is.
“Proving out the antenna” (sorta like field strength charts) may matter some day. Ol’ Fred can hear me (tested) once I’m inbound past the hardware store near RT-7.
This may appeal or not, but I am one who wants family to have an understanding of the REACH of CB in the local environs. (That other means of communication can be at hand is neither here nor there).
A truck driver acquaintance of mine is looking to get an antenna high up at home to test both AM & SSB to have the grandkids see who could get Granpa on his mobile the farthest out when he’s called to say he’ll be home tomorrow.
Over time he’ll be inbound from at least three cardinal directions. Getting GPS coordinates is simple, thus.
Were I in your shoes I should like to know the lobes and nulls (so to speak) of the locale per mobile comms. The apparatus isn’t a directional beam, so “reading the local geography” adds a whole other aspect to operation.
You touch on some very important subject matter here, particularly if the excrement ever hits the fan. I do agree that CB is unfairly criticized by those with an agenda - be they elitist hams or anyone else. I have found CB to be vastly improved from my time on the air some 25 or more years ago.
I like CB radio because it presents me with a challenge. I must learn how to pick and use the RIGHT equipment. I must learn how to tune it to maximize my reach.
I'm not using a walkie talkie to key into a repeater and letting it do all the heavy lifting. To me, that's not much fun.
With my previous antenna, the Sirio GPE 27, I was able to talk to base stations in all surrounding counties, and sometimes even two counties away. I presume that this antenna upgrade is going to afford me noticeably greater distance, having switched from an antenna that was 17/18 feet to something 30+ feet tall.
Since I have become somewhat of an antenna junkie, I converted one of my old heavy-duty PA speaker tripods to accept a 10-foot mast pipe and I am able to portably mount base station antennas about 13 feet off the ground, from the base of the antenna. While not optimal for permanent use, in a pinch it works quite well. It makes tuning a lot easier.
My Sirio GPE has telescoping elements that do not fully separate. I could, with ease, keep it in the trunk of my vehicle with the speaker stand and mast pipe and easily add mounting screws to lock the elements and set up a portable station with more gain than a mobile antenna pretty easily.
I had a Super Penetrator 500 on this stand a couple of weeks ago, and with a Uniden handheld CB talking to me in my mobile, there were no dead spots anywhere in the city. In many cases, I could not fully squelch out the handheld station.
I'm sure you also saw that this weekend I procured a vintage Super Scanner and tower that I am doing a full restoration on. I am going to construct and mount a 50-foot tower for the Super Scanner. I have also created a few dipoles out of heavy household extension cord. One will go in each vehicle and one is going up in the top of my pine tree as an emergency backup antenna.
I am really enjoying being back in the radio hobby.
