CB radio is alive and well across the country and around the world! It takes next to nothing to establish a station. Interested? Study into antennas, ground plane and Standing Wave Ratio (SWR). Any creativity that aims at these three goals will skip across the country with a well-functioning, old-school stock mobile radio on both AM and SSB. And you might even be pleasantly surprised to discover a local CB community, right in front of your face! If not, start one. What is Freedom without talk around the Water Cooler?
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CB Radio is so quiet now, I only hear anyone on it when travelling. I have been looking into getting my HAM license, talked to a guy in town the other day I know that is a HAM, and he said even HAM around here is pretty quiet compared to 20 years ago.
I bought my boys 8w portable HAM radios for Christmas. Trying to get them to get their license. Never know how important this could become.
From what I hear it is alot easier now that they took the Morse Code requirement out. Also I have heard several times to study up, and go take the test for the Technicians license, and right after finishing that you can take the General license test for free, if you pass the General then you get your General license instead of the Technician license, opening up more frequencies.
Thanks for the information!
No-Nonsense Technician Class study guide: https://files.catbox.moe/t9puj3.pdf
https://hamexam.org/
Thank you, I sent this to my wife.
You can study for two hours to get the Technician license which is perfect for making contacts within a few hundred miles. Use a flash card system like Ankidroid. Tech license all you need to know is how not to break the law and how not to kill yourself or others. I got my General a few years ago which is needed to make really long distance contacts (global point to point) and that one took a LOT more studying, probably like 80 hours.
Extra Class amateur op since 2009 and volunteer examiner here.
General Class is worth it just for the HF privileges - wasn't too much harder for me. HF is a lot of fun (and can be very useful too - long distance comms with no infrastructure in between needed).
HamStudy.org and the ARRL license study books are both very good resources. QRZ.com for practice exams - keep going until you can hit 90 percent consistently, and you should be good to take the tests!
I have my General Ham License! My wife is interested in getting her Technican, it's easy
No expertise on this, but I recently heard that in emergencies you are not required to have a license to operate a HAM radio. War time qualifies as a bit of an emergency, eh? Internet down would def be an emergency.
Definitely, if an emergency: Katy bar the door and no holds barred. Green dots light up the sky and walkies will be the way to communicate
Let me guess, Baofeng UV-5R?
Is that a good one? Or the latest hype?
They are really cheap, and popular...I have a couple of them that I use for just a scanner.
On Thanksgiving Day, I threw out an audio call just watching my modulation on ch28 and got a reply. From 3000mi away. It never hurts to just push the button and start talking. Make some noise and 73's!
My grandpa had a license plate back in the 70's that Said "you bet your sweet ass I'm a CB'er"
HAM is well and alive on digital modes! Can reach thousands of miles on low power without an antenna tower.
Well yeah, we have the internet now.
break - radio check, thank you driver
Check's in the MAIL! 73's
Everyone should have at least 2 CB radios. The DS can block internet comms, but CB and the like is orders of magnitude harder to block/censor/etc.
As an EE I've never heard of signal to wave ratio, I've heard of standing wave ratio and signal to noise ratio, both are appricable in radio but i suspect standing wave ratio is what you were after in regards to antenna / ground planes. Regardless, I have been telling myself I should get one, I just have so many projects as it is :P
Yes, standing wave ratio 👍 Probably an honest mistake by OP with all the signal to noise ratio talk lately.
Yes, my bad. Johnny Come Lately, here...
I thought that CBs only transmitted a relatively short distance. No?
Depends on propagation which depends on frequency, modulation mode, RF power, sunspots, time of day. In ideal conditions you can make very long distance contacts w CB. But generally speaking, 10 miles or so is about it.
Yeah, that's what I thought. Thanks. It's still a neat idea for talking to people close by, but you can't count on it for long distance.
Definitely. If shtf, 10 miles is a long way.
I bought about a dozen radios last year. Old, new, bunch of mics, PAs. Still haven't gotten around to installing them as I need to get decent antennas and havent had time to research them. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
I figured there would be subreddits for this kinda thing and sure enough
https://www.reddit.com/r/HamRadio/
https://www.reddit.com/r/cbradio/
https://www.reddit.com/r/amateurradio/
I dusted off my old CB radio and have had it on every day. It's an old analog one and I have one channel on a day all day long and not a peep on any of them so far.
Have an old Cobra 29 in the truck, I fire it up all the time....crickets around here. Sometime I get skip to listen to though.