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cb's who uses them and what u got

RootBreaker

RootBreaker

3/4 ton status
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Location
Williamstown, NJ USA
ok so technology has gotten so good.. do people still use cb radios?

Let me tell you about a story...
it was about 10:45pm on a saturday night.... Going through a quad trail on a fullsize chevy on 33's and 4" body lift. You drive slow through the winds and mud.... headlights off.... looking through the trees only using the moon light as a light source... you have a 1million candle power spot light being used by your passenger.... but cant use it constantly as it takes forever to recharge...
he is also on the cb (ch3).... Everyone you wheel with know areas by name... (little mill had the bath tub, dog leg and a few others...) passenger would shout-out through the cb what area going to.. .and if someone was in that area they had to key up and make a noise...
off in the distance you think you see a shine.. so you drive over to it....
candle power light turned on and viola... u found a truck...
flashlight tag was the game.. and tagged you were!!!!! was a fun way to get wheeling in and stay out of trouble...

it is in my truck but not plugged in.. going to install it just cuz im old school... and love my cb...

so i have owned my cb brand new....
not my pictures..

I have a Realistic TRC-482 - $99 from radio shack

Realistic_TRC-482.jpg



and i have added a Realistic 21-1175 noise cancelling microphone - $40

thumbnail.php


radio shack single antennae.

i will never sell my setup cuz i had too much fun with it....and will pass it on..

now a strange thing is back in 1997 i should have sold it.. i thought it wasnt working and i had a guy offer me $250 for it.. i wouldnt sell it and i asked him why he wanted it.. he told me it was highly modable.. not sure how or why.. turns out if the battery is dead.. you have to remove it.. and the mic will work as a normal non powered mic.... the pre amp on this has 0 - 10 on it... so im guessing you can take the cb from 4watts to 14watts
but a quick google search shows if i remove a piece... it will go from 4 or 8 watts.. whatever legally it is all owed to be to 23 watts....
 
basic comunication in hills were cell dont work around here.

uniden pro 538w peaked n tuned a bit.
mounted in the plow truck i drive most these days when its on the road.

troy console unit 005.jpg

troy console unit 003.jpg
 
ktmoutfront - lol dude... that is funny... yeah i love convoy

sweetk30 - i had to check your user name and make sure it didnt say ryoken :haha: you do good work... something that he would show here... i like that alot.. center console style...

i got to find a pic of mine.. i have my original head liner from jc whitney i paid $200 for and it was to have a radio in it.. i cut it and put the cb there... fits great and mic hangs on side...

hah found it...
these are mine...
jcwhitney_headliner.jpg


headliner5.jpg


headliner1.jpg
 
Working in my shop Tuesday night. Kept hearing people talking outside. Went out looking, nobody around. Go back inside, turn the XM back on. Hear people talking again. I am looking all over for these guys.

Turns out, I left the CB on in the truck, outside on the trailer. Just thought I was getting old and hearing things.
 
I've got a Uniden 510XL Pro in all my trucks. CB is pretty quiet these days, most people are running VHF now. I've got HAM radios in both my trucks as well
 
FWIW, the power mic's main use was to make your voice sound louder, more distorted, and cause the radio to over-modulate and splatter over about three channels.......

A lot of those radios could be modified by replacing the final and turning up the drive to get more power.

My main hunting rigs were Pace 223s, and the final was good to 15 watts as is just by tweaking a coupling slug.
Not that I would do that.......
The rig I use now, is a 10 meter rig, re-tuned to cover 11 meters, and will crank out 50 watts.
Again, I never do that, of course.
 
I do have a 100 watt linear amp I could put in. Waiting to see if I buy a semi as a tow rig. It might go in there.
 
I used to have a picture of a pair of dual trucker fiberglass antennas on a rig a friend of mine drove.
He needed a little extra to cut through the noise, and and I had some help laying around.
He came by the next week, and said his rig had quit receiving or transmitting.
I checked the output of the radio, and it was down a little, but when I hooked it to the antenna system, the reflected power was the same as the forward power.

I turned and looked at the antennas to see if they were still attached, and spotted the problem.
They were the white fiberglass ones with the load coil visible under the plastic covering.
The white plastic covering was now brown where the wire was. Those wires got hot.
Melted the connections loose at the base of the antennas.

Found out that he had had another trucker friend "tweak" the box I had given him. Said it blew two fuses until he got a big enough one to handle the current.........

Don't know what it was putting out, my Byrd only had a 500 watt element..........
 
Cobras and Galaxys In my rigs gotta a couple of Linears as well Wilson Antennas


Like Russel Said though CB's are kinda dead most guys are running VHF , our Club uses VHF and FRS radios for wheeling
 
Cobra 29ltd going in the crew cab soon. Cobra 29ltd "ARMY" in the blazer now.
 
I've talked to people in Hawaii with my cheap setup. Cobra 19 with a properly tuned firestik.
 
A cheap little cobra I got from pep boys for $40. Nothing fancy but works great when needed. Though I've been using a pair of Cobra rechargeable walkie-talkies lately since they're more portable and not limited to being in the vehicle.
 
I have a ton of CB stuff from my younger days...never use them now,most of it is in boxes in my garage stored up overhead!..I have a Realistic 40 channel that was mounted in the dash of my '75 K5 2wd Blazer,and several older 23 channel ones, by Pace,Royce,and Roberts,maybe a few others with crystals that only had 3 channels...

Also have a Courier Centurion base in the house,a 40 channel SSB with expanded channels...used to talk all over the world on that thing!..its been peaked and has a Turner 3+3 power mike,I used to have an Antron 99 antenna until 3 blizzards and a hurricane finished it off,all I have now is a 9 foot Shakespear fiberglass whip on the 30 foot pole in the back yard...last time I turned it on,the transmit/receive relays in the base were sticking,and the power mikes battery was leaking and dead,luckily it didn't ruin it...I also have a 100 watt linear ,one of those transistor bootleg ones they sold at truck stops,and a CB band TVI filter ,that I never really used..

Now that cell phones are "family radio" bands took over,the CB is actually usefull again,not many people on the channels now,so you can actually USE them again..nothing like the old days when you had 1000 paople walking all over each other and the ones with the biggest linears and beam antennas were the only ones who could be heard hogging the airwaves!..
 
I have an old modded Uniden Grant XL that my uncle gave me.





He was into them pretty big years ago (I know next to nothing about these). On the bottom pic where the zip tie points to is where it had been modded, that dial was added to give 6 positions. Position 1 allows 12 channels below channel 1, position 2 will give you your normal 1 - 40. Position 3 -6 will give you from 41 to 108. I have a road map that tells you what position to put the added knob on, what channel to put it on
and what channel you will be actually on. So position 3, channel 23 would actually be channel 41 and so on.

Like I said I really dont know much about these. I used to play around with it a lot when I first got it years ago but forgot most of what I learned. When my 84 is done it will go back in and I will hit my uncle up to relearn me.


Rebil
 
My Courier base had the extra channels added ,to switch to them you have to pull out the noise blanker switch..I never did have a frequency counter to borrow to see just what the frequencies were..illegal ones most likely!..

Uniden's are good radios...I had a President Washington base,and a Browning Golden Eagle years ago,with a D-104 mike,that I sold for 100 bucks,I got it for 75--then I found out they are considered the holy grail of 23 channel rigs and I could have got twice that easily just for the radio!...

A friend had a Ranger radio that had SSB and extra channels--I think it went from 25 to 30 mghz...another one had a huge "Galaxy" base unit that took up a whole desk top,that had AM,SSB,and FM capeability and a "slider" so you could go in betweeen channels!...it had more switches and knobs to fool with than I'd ever seen before...both those guys had Moonraker beam antennas and talked skip worldwide often with them..
 
I've been into CB's for the last 15 years...they used to be very popular in my area back when all my friends and I were in high school & our early 20's. Then life kicked in and we all got settled down and those of us that still have them rarely use them. It helped back then that we had a local tech who did AWESOME work, and it was always a inner group battle to see who could have the biggest setup. We still have the tech, but due to economic's and a lousy business partner he had to relocate closer to the interstate which put him about 20-25 miles away from us.

My "BIG" radio is a Connex 3300HP dual final. Out of the box 4 watts transmit power....my tech's magic tricks 80 watt's now.:D

I run a max'd out Cobra 25 in my K20...it was my first nice radio when I was 16.:haha:

My fiance is ok with them but didn't want a radio in her truck, until we took a trip cross country in her S10 blazer. When we got back she didn't want me to take mine out. Ended up buying her a Cobra 29 LTD Black Chrome edition and she's had it worked on by our tech also. :waytogo:

Also, Rootbreaker the game you describe sounds similar to one we used to play every weekend we called it "FoxHunt" You get a group of vehicles together with radio's determine the hiding limits, pick one person to go hide, and they have to give clues as to where they are at. First one to find them gets to go hide the next go around. God its a wonder we never ended up in jail the crazy hi-jink's we pulled those nights.:haha::whistle:
 
Had a simular game. called it CB-Tag.... in Bay area..lots of places to hide.

One time a friend almost went to jail, cops didnt believe the story that we were playing a game. They thought he was casing a computer store.

We were hidding in a dumpster enclosure, our ride was a honda accord...

When we pulled out infront of the cops, we got alot of questions and the car got searched.... We were ordered out of Fremont for the night....lol

GOOD times

could hide that car anywhere....lol
 
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