CB Radio antenna

I have an ant. mounted on my rear window. It is mounted low so there wont be to much bend when the truck camper is on. Mounted like this it gets about 2.5 miles which is all I ever need to listen to the truckers reporting accidents and construction. It's not old tech to me. I use it every time I go camping. It has saved me days on the road in traffic over the years.

burningman wrote:

If you want emergency communications, go 2-meter ham.

So keep going please.

What's the effective range of a mobile 2-meter rig....on average ? (without repeaters)

And out on the open highway, how many stations would you guess are active within that range.....on average ?

I still think that a cell phone is best in the overwhelming majority of the situations.....unless maybe you spend a LOT of time out in the boonies.

burningman wrote:

It won't hurt to put in a CB. I'm just saying, it's not like it once was.

Which is not all bad.

When every truck and about 1 of 10 cars had a CB, it was pretty much useless much of the time because of ZERO courtesy. Two radio users with illegal linears carrying on an hour long gab-fest could blank out all communications for 10 miles or more on half the channels.
Skip just made it even worse.

Ham radio will not get you local news, or any news for that matter. My wife is a ham operator and there are many ham "nets" that she participates in as well as staying in touch with friends that are also ham operators. We can talk even when they are thousands of miles away. Often ham radio is the only means of communications during natural disasters. Chuck

So with a Ham radio... wouldn't it reach too far to get the local news. Are there a lot of folks putting in Ham radios in their vehicles?

burningman wrote:
If only things were still like that!
Your best bet is the same thing the truckers use, a GPS. That's a FAR more reliable way to find out how to get where you wanna go.

I haul horses in a big truck (Peterbilt 379) from the Pacific Northwest to Southern California and there's barely any CB going on at all. There isn't even nearly the professional courtesy there used to be among truckers (flashing lights to signal OK to pull into lane, tail light flash "thank you" etc). A whole lot of trucking is now done by immigrants from other places who aren't familiar with American ways and customs.

It won't hurt to put in a CB. I'm just saying, it's not like it once was.

gee I never thought life would be more orderly on the right coast than the left.
bumpy

If only things were still like that!
Your best bet is the same thing the truckers use, a GPS. That's a FAR more reliable way to find out how to get where you wanna go.

I haul horses in a big truck (Peterbilt 379) from the Pacific Northwest to Southern California and there's barely any CB going on at all. There isn't even nearly the professional courtesy there used to be among truckers (flashing lights to signal OK to pull into lane, tail light flash "thank you" etc). A whole lot of trucking is now done by immigrants from other places who aren't familiar with American ways and customs.

It won't hurt to put in a CB. I'm just saying, it's not like it once was.

burningman wrote:


If you want emergency communications, go 2-meter ham. CB really is mostly dead, extremely short range (reliably, not talking about "skip shooting") and not a very likely source of news or help in an emergency compared to 2-meters.

and if I want to ask an oncoming trucker whether to take the N or the S bypass or go straight thru exactly how do I reach him on ham radio?
dead, hogwash.
bumpy

To reiterate: antennas don't require "grounding". Antenna groundplanes are a completely different thing than "grounding".

17 is the north-south channel.

If you want emergency communications, go 2-meter ham. CB really is mostly dead, extremely short range (reliably, not talking about "skip shooting") and not a very likely source of news or help in an emergency compared to 2-meters.

It may be old technology but Mine is alive and well, and used regularly... And it sure beats using the FRS/GMRS radios when traveling in groups.