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Zugzub t1_ja549cv wrote

Reply to comment by dzlux in Been in every car I’ve had since 1986. by 710dabner

There's no way that thing has a 10 mile range.

With a good external antenna it might on a good day hit 5 miles.

With the supplied antenna more like 2 miles.

Antenna quality and proper tuning of the antenna is everything when it comes to range.

As far as wattage goes that's 4 ways pep. Cb radios are AM, amplitude modulation. When you speak into the mic and observe power out put it will vary as you speak. Initially it will swing to 4 watts. But then the modulation limiter will kick in and you will see around 2 maybe 3 watts.

You can remove the modulation limiter. Usually by clipping a diode or removing a transistor. At that point depending on the final output power rating of the final transistor you might see 6 to 8 watts.

A Cobra 149 or Uniden President grant radio could hit 29 to 25 watts once modified.

And a full wavelength in the 11 meter band is 32.125 feet not 40.

As for antennas, you can get a half wave antenna that's only 3 foot long, that's accomplished by winding 16 feet of wire around a fiberglass rod.

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dzlux t1_ja5bhia wrote

You are welcome to have opinions, but arguing about range shortcomings without very specific parameters is pointless. I am traveling down the Texas coastal region today and regularly have 5-10 mile unobstructed line of sight - even a modest monopole antenna will outperform your claims in this area.

> And a full wavelength in the 11 meter band is 32.125 feet not 40.

If you want to be more exact about full wave length in an effort correct someone, then you moght consider explaining how you arrived at “32.125 ft”

CB is 26.965 Mhz - 27.405 Mhz. Which ranges from 36.465 ft to 35.879 ft for a full wave.

Your 32.125 ft would be appropriate for ~30.6m Mhz.

Not that the correcting for exact length adds anything to my comment above, or the one above it……. but whatever. Enjoy yourself.

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[deleted] t1_ja5qkdy wrote

[deleted]

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dzlux t1_ja5ttbk wrote

> …seems we are both wrong.

If it makes you feel better to view an approximate number as wrong, then enjoy it. This is the internet after all.

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takeoff_power_set t1_ja6e6f9 wrote

I've personally had better results than that transmitting on a handheld set to 5w. There are a lot of variables to range on low power, small antenna units like this. Frequency, obstacles, characteristics of the terrain, condition of the antenna and connector, height above ground, background interference etc.

The best thing you can do to help yourself if you need to use one of these in the wilderness is to get as high as safely possible above potential receivers with it before transmitting. I.e. climb a hill or mountain with it if you want to be heard.

A neat trick if you have two decent handhelds and some rope: set one radio up to retransmit what it receives, tie a rope to its lanyard and throw it up into a tree branch as high as you can. With the other unit you can now transmit with your impromptu repeater being (hopefully) significantly higher up and giving you waaay better range. A decade or so ago I set up a very crude pair of solar powered repeaters like this in the mountains, it worked well and I was able to talk to people dozens of miles away on the other side of the mountains so long as I had LOS with the first repeater. The repeaters in trees at mountain peaks had massive transmit range even at low wattage. Not bad for some cheap Quansheng radios

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