Prep Comms - CB Radio For Preppers pt. 2

Episode Date: September 7, 2024

Brought to you by Hub City Mercantile CB (Citizens Band) radio remains a popular communication tool for hobbyists, truckers, and preparedness enthusiasts. Offering a way to connect over short distances without needing a license, CB radios operate on the 11-meter band, a frequency range that holds unique significance. In this episode we get into the practical use of CB's for Preppers (a prepper should had a CB Radio!) as well as a great deal of my past use of the platform (almost 45 years) Free eBook: CB Radio for Preppers CB radio is an essential tool for preppers because it's cheap, easy to access, and many people already own one. Unlike more complex systems, CB radios require minimal setup and can be easily operated without specialized training. Additionally, improvised antennas often work well with CB radios, making them a versatile and reliable communication method during emergencies when traditional networks fail. Don't forget the Antenna! It's the Most Important part of your system! The CB Radio Antenna I grew up with, just add the magnet kit: the K-40 CB Radio Power Supplies SSB CB Radios Radioddity Micro CB CB Radio Base Antenna Ideas: Youtube CB Antennas on Amazon Hub City Mercantile: Baofeng HT Replacement Antenna What is SSB (single sideband): Youtube   Printable PDF CB Frequencies Chart      

welcome back into the prep comms podcast brought to you by me hubcitymercantile.com yep that's my wife and my that's our business has been for over 25 years here in the upstate of south carolina we're a real store. Well, yeah, we're a salon with a boutique and stuff. And we also sell British Birkfeld water filter systems as well as Berkey water filter replacements. We have parts. We have accessories. We've got this really cool water bottle that works as a Berkey kind of filter thing that is not plastic.

And it's insulated. It's amazing. We have all these sorts of things, travel sizes. You're familiar, right? You know what a stainless steel gravity water filter system. I'm just guessing you do because you're a prepper, because you're listening to PrepComs. We have it. We have the replacement parts, the filters, best prices online, hubcitymercantile.com. I'm Caleb, K4CDN, and this is the PrepComs podcast. Yeah, Hub City Mercantile, that's me, but it's also the official show sponsor of this program. All right, so we're continuing to talk about CB radios and how they apply to the prepper or the preparedness end of life.

The last show, we talked about how they came out of the World War II technology, how it was birthed out of necessity for a wireless communication source for our troops. They brought the stuff home. They started fooling with it, and it became a crazy hobby back in the 70s. I was in the 80s. I started using them, got my driver's license in 88 or 89, and immediately put a CB radio in the truck. Loved it, by the way. My friends all had them. We drove all over town, all over the county.

We'd talk all the time, all the way to school, all the way home, all weekend. I mean, it was, there were no cell phones. So it was like our Facebook back in the day. And I loved them. And I still love them, honestly. The utility is not there for me anymore because I'm an amateur radio operator and there's better things than a CB. Sorry if that hurts your feelings. I'm not here to do that. But there is stuff that works better. But that doesn't mean that CB radio isn't a great option for preppers. It's maybe not the best, but I can't leave it out. I can't not mention CB radio in regards to preppers.

And I think every prepper who has taken their preparedness seriously needs to have at least one CB radio. Now, I've written an e-book. The link will be in the show notes. It's CB radios for preppers, how to get on the air before the apocalypse. It's about 100 pages long. It kind of goes through all of the how to's and why to's of a CB radio system, how to set it up and then how to use it, best practices and things like that. But one thing you got to know about CB radio that I did not know. I had no idea about this in the late 1980s, the early 1990s, and then Nextel, I didn't know how important an antenna was to my system. And it's not just CB radio that the antenna is very important to. It's every radio system can

be made or broken by their antenna. And just for instance, oh, I didn't want to go there, but I will. So these little walkie talkies that you buy the bow things on Amazon for 20 bucks, the antennas garbage, you need to toss it, check out Hub City Mercantile peaked radio, and my linear, I thought all that made the difference. I thought those were the things that were important and I would just have whatever antenna on the truck. Now I usually ran a K40 magnet mount antenna on the roof of the truck, which always worked very well, but I would experiment with some fire sticks. And then I really had a lot of success with 102 inch steel whip back in the day as well. But the big picture here is it was just like aesthetically. Oh, I don't want a magnet antenna anymore. I'm just going to put this on the bumper.

And that fire stick looks pretty cool. It's only about four feet tall. Oh, they make a smaller one? Oh, that would even look cooler. And it performed terribly. But I didn't know why. And the reason that it performed terribly was because it was, of course, interfering with my truck and blah, blah, blah. I didn't know why. And the reason that it performed terribly was because it was, of course, interfering with my truck and blah, blah, blah. I didn't know any of this.

So when it comes to CB radios, you got to hear me. It doesn't really matter if you have the cheapest CB radio that you can buy, the oldest that your granddaddy gave you a hundred years ago, or maybe you buy a brand new Galaxy and it's just a monstrous, a beast, and it lights up and whistles and beeps and all this stuff. Maybe, I don't know. It doesn't really matter if your antenna sucks. And that's just the truth of every radio, every frequency, every band, your antenna is going to make or break what you end up with. But with CB radios, I'm telling you, it is the absolute most important thing in regards to utilizing those frequencies, those channels the best. So we'll talk about antennas later, but just hear me there.

Antennas are ridiculously important for your CB radio. So in the 1980s and the 1990s, CB radio kind of had a revival among the youth. I can't really explain to you why. It could have been just a very localized thing, but everywhere I went back then, everybody had CB radios like it was the 1970s. Oh man, it was so much fun. I actually had fluorescent light bulbs that would attach to my K40 antenna, and with the power through the antenna, when I keyed the microphone, the light would come on the roof of my truck. Anyway, I digress, and I could, I could go back and I won't, but here's the thing. CB radios are very,

very important, especially they're great tool. If you're a prepper, here's why they're cheap. They're very easily to access. And a lot of people already have them. And with their low cost, I mean, they're not much more in some cases than those cheap little walkie talkies I mentioned a minute ago. They are a completely different type of frequency. So you can't use one antenna for the little walkie talkie and the same antenna for the CB and vice versa. But you can enhance both of those with an improved antenna. I didn't know that. I had no idea. We'd set up a CB as a base station at our house with just a magnet on the roof and think, man, I want this thing

talk out of the neighborhood. Well, we had no ground plane. We just didn't know. So let me help you make some good decisions in regards to CB radios for preppers. Now, a lot of this is my opinion, but at the same time, this is my experience. So I've been doing this for almost 45 years. I've had CB radios for almost 45 years. Sometimes I've used them on occasion, and sometimes I've used them, and they were a lifeline to my social life and all my buddies back in the day. Really, CB radio wasn't the first Facebook, but for us as teens, it was how we stayed up with each other from different schools all over the county.

We even met really cute girls back in the day on CBs. Yeah, that did happen a couple of times. So anyway, CB radios for preppers, it's a great tool. They're cheap. They're easy to get. Anybody can use one. I mean, seriously, all you have to have is power to turn it on and an antenna to transmit your signal through. That's all it takes. The vast majority of CB radios operate on 12 volts

direct current or 12 volts DC, just like your car. Okay. So your car generates electricity in the direct current and your house uses alternating current, which is AC. So don't buy a CB radio and plug it into the wall of your house. You have to have something that takes the current in the house and changes it to a direct current. We call that a power supply. Some people call them inverters, but actually it kind of works opposite of that. But anyway, use a 12 volt power supply. If you're powering your radio from your house as a base station. Or if you've got a car, depending on the radio, some of those can actually work through the old cigarette lighter plug. Now, I know, I know, Lord have mercy, somebody heard me say that.

I'm not talking about a full-power 50-watt ham radio mobile. I'm talking about one of these little radio oddity CBs that I have. And they work really great, by the way. They come from the factory with a cigarette lighter plug adapter on it they pull very little draw on the system and they work really well like shockingly well there'll be a link in the show notes they blew me away i'm just i'm just telling you am and fm modes i was completely shocked at the the the usability of this teeny tiny little CB radio. It works phenomenally. So they're cheap, they're easy. It doesn't take a lot to get one established, and most people can use them without any experience. I mean, with a CB radio,

a typical CB radio, you have back in the day 23, now 40 channels. These channels are actually frequencies, but you don't really see the frequencies. You only see the channel. And those channels have been assigned through the FCC for that particular frequency. And as you turn the dial on the CB radio, it's actually changing to a different frequency completely. It's not one or two steps up. It's not the next step up. They're different channelized frequencies. There's 40 of them. And for most CBs, the AM and FM versions that you get four watts on those 40 frequencies. If you have a single sideband CB radio, which we've talked single sideband back

in the shortwave shows, same principle here, guys, You have the 40 channels that have been channelized, but you also have the lower sideband, which is 40 channels, and you have the upper sideband, which is 40 channels. So when you hear me say, if you're going to be serious as a prepper about a CB radio, and that's going to be one of the big parts of your preparedness plan is CB radio. You need to buy a single sideband. Does that sound like an echo? You need to buy a single sideband capable CB radio, at least for your base station in your house. Now the cars nowadays, there's no room to put anything in there. And these little tiny CB radios you can put in there. They're not single sideband capable, but they can still talk back to your house if you're not too far away and

vice versa. If you're going to have a base station set up at your bug out location or whatever, you may really seriously want to consider one that has single sideband capabilities because that really opens up the radio, literally. It gives you some extra power and it's a whole nother landscape. It's a CB radio times three. That's the easiest way I can say it. So why would a prepper want a CB radio? Again, they're cheap. They're very easy to use. You can find them everywhere. I mean, let's just be honest. If it gets in the fan one day, CB radio is going to be busy. And that doesn't mean that it's going to be great and a lot of fun and so easy to talk to your grandma across, you know, the country or anything like that. But I mean, you can utilize CB radio even today

as an information gathering source. I mean, that's really where the heyday of CB came in. It was information gathering. Oh, there's a Smokey down here at exit 21, Brecker. You know what I'm saying? So they've been using, it's a tactical advantage, they've been using CB radios in that regard for forever. Now, don't you think that if it ever went sideways and the trucks were still moving at some level, that they're going to be talking about what they saw down the road or in the previous city they drove through or what they've heard while they've been on the road? It may be a bunch of crap. It may be a bunch of gossip. You don't know, but wouldn't you want to know as much as you can about what's going on around you?

Of course you would. That's why every prepper who is serious about communication should have a CB radio. Now that doesn't mean that you have to go buy a $300 single sideband radio. I mean, these little ones from Amazon, these little radio oddities are, they're amazing. At least get you one of those and, and have an antenna that will work with it. Whether it's a magnet mount antenna to put on the roof of your car, or maybe you can build an antenna. You can, you can build an antenna for a CB radio to use like as a base station extremely inexpensively. I'll find some videos and put those in the show notes. They're very easy to make, and you can like hang it up in a tree and talk.

You would be shocked. Now, if you want to get real serious, I always recommend either the A99, and I'll link these things, the A99 or the Starduster. Those have been around for forever. They're omnidirectional. They're the A99 is probably, I don't know, 12 or 15 feet tall. The Starduster is a little shorter, but you could put these on a mast against your house or your chimney. Maybe like my stuff's in a barn.

You could put it up at the barn. And, uh, I've got a CB radio up there and a CB radio antenna that can also work on other amateur radio operator bands. And, um, I talk all over the world on that thing, not with CB, but other, other radios, but they, they work great. This is an Antron 899. They maybe call a solar con now, but either way, the link will be in the show notes. That's a base station antenna. Uh, you'll need coaxial cable or coax. And of course you need to buy it long enough to go from your radio to your antenna. In regards to CB radios and a lot of the lower frequencies that we'll talk about in amateur

radio down the road, you don't have to spend a tremendous amount of money on the coax due to losses in the frequencies. The 10 meter band and and ham radio and the 12-meter band and ham radio are on either side of the 11-meter CB radio band. As a matter of fact, the 11-meter band used to belong to amateur radio operators, and then the FCC back in the 50s gave it to CB radio, which is fine, and they channelized it and whatever. But there's two bands on each side of that that belong to the amateur radio operators and their antennas can kind of go one way or the other.

So if you have a 10 meter antenna, you could probably talk on 11. If you have an 11 meter antenna, you can probably talk on 10 meters. And either one of those doesn't require a great deal of money spent on coax cable. So if you're a prepper and you're wanting to get this thing figured out, we're going to talk some more in the next program about the ins and outs. But here's the thing. CB radios are not the greatest communication device of all time, but they are cheap. They're very extremely, they're so easy to use. Once you have it connected to the power supply and to the antenna, you simply power the radio on, you turn the channel knob to the channel you and your buddies

have established as your go-to channel. Make sure you've got it in the correct mode, AM, FM, or single sideband. And then you just press the button on the microphone and call your buddy. I mean, it's so easy. A kid can do it. And there's not a bunch of, most of, most of them don't have a lot of different buttons that you got to fool with and this and that. I mean, there, there are some very complex radios. Don't misunderstand me, but by and large, these things will talk four to 12 miles. Uh, and maybe a lot further. If you get crazy with it. We won't go there in this program, but it's a great tool. It really is a great tool, and it's one that you should consider having

in your toolbox for your preparedness communications. I'm going to go this time, be back as we talk more about CB radios for preppers here on the PrepComs podcast. I'm Caleb, K4CDN. Don't forget to check us out at prepcoms.com. Thank you for sharing the show, telling your buddies about the show. You may not be the comms guy or gal in your group, but make sure your whole group's listening because this could be some great information for them as well. Always appreciate the great reviews.

Appreciate you guys listening, and we'll be back next time. 73, y'all. God bless.