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Topics - Pensioner Prepper

#1
CB / Is it wise to buy a CB
October 07, 2019, 06:38:09 AM
Firstly I am a big fan of CB but, always a but, not necessarily a fan of CB radios. Why, well generaly speaking when compared to Ham radio equipment a CB radio can be found wanting. I will give you an example. I have a President Grant 2 CB radio which I was using to have an interesting conversation with a fellow prepper on USB. Sudenly my noise floor went from 0 to over 9 making further communication impossible. In the UK we have 80 CB channels to play with and have FM AM USB and LSB. The noise was over the whole 80 channels and over all modes. This persisted until daylight the next day when 0 noise level returned.

This was the clue as I was operating from a commercial caravan site. For the benifit of the residents the site owners have installed outside lights which are triggered to come on depending on light levels.
Right all well and good. The next night I switched on the CB and waited for the lights to come on.

You have guess it, lights on noise level 9 unusable. Then I had a thought, would this affect my Ham equipment. Pulling out my trusty FT - 897 and tuning to the same CB channel and using the same antenna the 897 was quite as the proverbial church mouse.

What does this tell you about shielding in CB equipment. I do have a few other CBs to try but I strongly suspect they will yield similar results.

My conclusion is that a case may be made that it is perhaps better to buy a ham HF set, have it opened up, which I feel all prepper radios should be and use that in preference to a dedicated CB set.

I know there are legal considerations but after all we are Preppers.