CB questions

He'd have to trade something in

Perhaps his 110

Who'll make the first bid

DieSea

No , I've not looked in to it. Could be a bit of a busmans holiday IYSWIM but I may look in to it when I get some other things out of the way.

Lee D

B-)

I suspect that you could well be more useful doing the day job for any incident that would require RAYNET.

A lot also depends on the attitude of the local CEPO. When I was involved some had their heads so far into the sand you couldn't see their arses. Staffs where one of the more on ball counties IIRC though.

Slightly altered now a days Dave

One group I know gets £5k a year from their CEPO

Another group has two permanent representatives on a county Coop's panel

But a third CEPO wouldn't touch RAYNET with a bargepole ,

Secure communications is muttered on each occasion

Then of course there is the Hierarchy who must turn out in their full regalia for EVERY occasion

Big Fish in a little pool springs to mind

DieSea

In message , Austin Shackles writes

Aye; not too bad, AFAIK. I had (maybe still have, somewhere in shedspace) a Uniace 100, and that was a pretty good rig in its day. It worked OK as a base rig, working into my 28 MHz amateur-band vertical centre-fed dipole via an antenna tuner unit, and also in the car, with the centre-loaded mobile antenna whose name I forget, or with a base-loaded Half-Breed. I got 1.5:1 SWR or better across the UK CB band with either mobile antenna.

I agree entirely. Also, the shorter the antenna, the narrower SWR-bandwidth you'll get; if you can manage 1.5:1 or better on all channels, you're doing well with some of the really short ones. The 2ft. Dial-a-Match was easy to tune, but a very poor (lossy) antenna. The 2ft. Firestik types were better antennas, but somewhat more difficult to tune up.

I've not tried a short antenna with am 80-channel UK-plus-CEPT CB rig, but I doubt that one would give a low-enough SWR right across both bands.

Most reasonable rigs would survive up to 2:1 or so SWR (some of them reduce their power automatically if they 'see' a bad match), but some of the cheap/poorly-built ones didn't.

A short base-loaded antenna ought to be good enough for 1.5 miles across flattish terrain. A selection of pre-tuned antennas, of different types/lengths, and on bayonet-style quick-release mounts, might be a way to go.

Some of the shorter antennas will 'cook' their loading coils with very high power. On my 29/51/145/433Mhz amateur mobile set-up, the loading coil on the cut-down centre-loaded CB whip, about 4ft. 6in. long, which I sometimes use on 29MHz FM with that rig (Yaesu FT8900R; 50 watts) can get warm on a long over, but nowhere near hot enough to damage the antenna. The coil on my base-loaded Half-Breed, now also cut-down to

One antenna to consider might be the type where the coil is 'wound' into the whip itself, made of black-coated (anodised/enamelled?) steel. I have one of these, with the coil about 1ft. up from the base. It's about