Prep Comms - CB Radio for Preppers pt 4

Episode Date: September 19, 2024

In this episode of Prep Comms Podcast, Caleb wraps up his road-trip into the critical role of CB radios for preppers. He addresses a listener question and breaks down the legal implications surrounding unauthorized radio modifications. Remember your antenna will make or break your communications platform. thanks for listening and sharing the show, 73-K4CDN CB Radio Suggestions Power Supplies Base Stations FREE: CB Radio e-Book Free: PDF of CB Radio Frequencies IMDB top 30 Trucker Films

🎵 welcome into the prep comms podcast caleb nelson your host here k4 cdn thank you for dropping by man my phone has been blowing up uh it's too soon too soon. Wow. We'll talk about that in a few minutes. I want to come back in here real quick. Talk about CB radios. I've done three episodes here about CB radios and how they can apply to the prepper and the prepper's desire to stay communicated in connection with their friends or to gain information or to use it to build rapport with other people, connect with other groups, et cetera. I mean, we're talking about communication, so we know what we're talking about here. And I've gotten some feedback. Not great. Well, I mean, it's not anticipated feedback, so I want to address it real quick.

Yes, I understand that CB radios can be modified. I understand that you can add amplification to your signal to talk further, be louder, echo more, whatever you want to do. I understand that because I've been a CB radio user for 45 years. I've been an amateur radio operator for almost 15. So the first 30 years of that time, I was a CB radio guy and I had it all. I had the echo. I had the tone boards. I had the, the, the, what do we call those noise toys? I had multiple amplifiers, tuned radios, peaked in tune, which may or may not have been the case. Every antenna combination you could come up with, I've done it all. In all seriousness, I've done it all. But I wanted to address some of that real quick because it would be unfair to leave it out of the program because

of its illegality. But at the same time, I'm not promoting that. I'm not telling you this is what you need to do. As a matter of fact, a lot of the things that you do to add power to a CB actually harms your signal more than it will ever help it. And I didn't understand that as a CB radio user as a teenager back in the 1990s. I just thought, you know, more amplifier, bigger microphone or whatever, and I'm talking further. And I never understood, and I've said this before, how important the antenna is. The antenna plays the most important part in any radio setup you have, whether it's CB or ham radio or public service or GMRS, or it doesn't matter if you're,

even if you have your own homebrew AM radio station, your antenna makes or breaks your signal in every case. Hear me now in every case, especially with CB radio, especially with everything, the antenna makes or breaks it all. So you can have all the amplifier you want. You can have power mics and echo mics and peaked and tuned and hot rod radios. You can have every bit of that, but if you got, if your antenna sucks, everything's going to suck. It's not going to perform like you want it to perform. And you're making investments into things that are not going to turn out to be the best investments. And if you go all

the way back to the beginning of this program, that was the guts of the show. That's my heart for this show. And for you is to help you understand what to do, not in fear, but to make good decisions because this stuff you probably don't have laying around unless you're just a 45 year old or 45 year user. And that's probably not you. So thank you for letting me chat with you about this. So, uh, here's the deal. They do make illegal amplifiers to operate on 11 meters for the CB radio band. And you can find them from 20 Watts to 15 to 2000. There's no telling what they'll actually say they'll do and who knows what they'll really do in real life. But there are some big ones you can use out there. Most folks back in the day, the Texas star two 50, Texas star three 50, Texas star five hundreds

were huge in South Carolina. I had one, had a Palomar one 25 that would swing about two 40. It was amazing. It was the best app I had. I don't use amplification anymore with CB radio. I don't even, even have an app left over from the days. I actually had it stolen out of my truck. And, uh, so whatever, did it increase my range? Yes. Could I hear better? Not really because I wouldn't spend the money or the time on the antenna, but I could talk further. So here's the deal. You can, you can, if you, if you make the choice to do that, go down that road, you're going to, you're going to just choose CB for your prepping and you're going to add amplification to it. You know, rules be damned.

Okay. That's fine. That's you. It's not me. I I'm not going to condone it. I'm just not going to, if you want to do it, dude, it's on you, but you can, and it will increase, increase the distance that you're able to talk with your radios. Now, if you don't spend time on your antenna, it's not going to help you on the receive because a lot of them have a receive pre-amplification, which actually amplifies in a sense, the signal coming back to you. So, uh, yeah, if you want to buy a, uh, a CB radio and add an app to it, that's fine. Now I had a question the other day and it was a really good question. And the question basically was, why do I see these 10 meter and 12 meter radios on Amazon that, you know, produce 50, 60, a hundred Watts,

but they're called CB radios and they look like a CB radio and they're made by a CB radio company, but they're not CBs. They're made for ham radio operators. And you can't see the air quotes there, but I'm air quoting when it says amateur radio. Now you can use those legally on the amateur radio bands. And some people do, I'm not going to say it's the best idea. Um, because, uh, a lot of them, not, not all of them, but a lot of them are just channelized frequencies and you got to get in there and really screw with stuff to make it really worth your time where you could take the same amount of money and buy a an amateur radio that does you know a lot of different bands other than just 10 and 12 and for the same money and get a lot better performance but really what happens is they're called export radios a lot of times you'll hear the term export

radio and that's a radio made by an American manufacturer intended, in air quotes, for use overseas where they don't have the same FCC and the same legalities on the 11 meter, 10 meter, 12 meter bands. And what happens is you can buy those export radios here in the U.S., and it's a very simple process to open the case of the radio up, maybe cut a diode or desolder or something. And then magically, magically this 10 meter radio that you bought from Amazon, that's a legal piece of equipment now becomes an 11 meter, 65 Watts CB radio. People do it all the time. You can do it if you want to. Do I condone it? Absolutely

not, but you can. It's a really cheap way to get some power, some extra power. They'll work on single sideband. Now they'll do AM FM and single sideband by clipping a diode or desoldering something here or there. You've got a really high power CB radio. That's why when you're looking on Amazon and you see these real expensive CBs or these real expensive single band or maybe 10 meter, 12 meter band, amateur radio, export radios, you're like, man, that looks just like a CB. Why does it cost $500? Well, the reason it costs $500 because you can buy it, open it up, do what I just said, and then you've got a 6,500-watt, whatever, 150-watt CB radio with no amplifier. It has the amplifier built into it.

Some of them even had a heat sink built onto the bottom of these things because they turn out so much heat with the amplification circuits inside. They're basically a little bitty CB with a great big amp. So that's the answer to that question, Gordon. They can't say that. It's illegal to say that, but it's the known secret. Everybody's well aware that you can take these radios and manipulate them like that. Now, we're not talking about ham radio at this point. We're talking about CB. There's some new ones out there from a company called Anytone or Anytone. I don't know how you say A-N-Y-T-O-N-E. I know how we say it in South Carolina. That's Anytone. But anyway, you can buy this radio. It does 10 meters. You do a little snip here, a little trick there,

and you got 10 meters, 11 meters, maybe 12 meters, 65 watts, 250 bucks, $300. It's a great deal. It's a great ham radio. I'll tell you that right now. And there's a lot of people that are buying them and they're manipulating them. They're modifying them to work in 11 meters for CB radios. So again, I didn't want to get beyond this topic without sharing that with you and let you know that it is against the law. Now I'm not telling you that they're going to burst your door down and, and, you know, put you in shackles. I don't know what they're going to do. I know the FCC is not what it used to be. Um, I don't care about your labels. So you can go ahead and call

me whatever you want to call me. I'm plenty confident in who I am and your, your labels don't bother me. Um, but I'm not going to do it. Uh, because I spent what, two weeks and 35 bucks and got a ticket. I can talk all around the world for $35. So did my 15 year old daughter. So I don't know what your excuse is. Anyway. Um, CBs are great.

I don't want to discourage anyone from using them because they are a great tool. They're very inexpensive. I've gone over all this. They're very inexpensive. It's a great way to capture intelligence that's happening around you. It can help when you're on the highway. You can build community with it. As a matter of fact, I've got a couple of them.

I mean, I do not discount their value. I grew up on CB radio. So if you love getting out there and talking, talking skip and all this and that, and that's fine. I mean, my brother still does it. I mean, everybody I know still does it. I just don't take the time anymore. I've got the equipment. I don't fool with it, but it's, it's a good alternative to invest in a lot in a radio. Most people have them laying around. They're easy enough to find at a pawn shop. You can have a way to communicate other than your phone. If you have nothing, you can't beat a CB radio the end because it's better than nothing. Is it GMRS? Absolutely not. That's coming soon, but it's a great alternative to having nothing. Now, if you want to do it with high power and big antennas and linear amplifiers and talk box boards, go ahead. That's fine. I'm not going to beat you up. I'm not going to wag

my finger at you. I'm just telling you, I don't do it. I'm 51 years old. I choose not to. You are your own person. And if you want to, that's, that's fine. I don't care. I'm not going to come like tell on you. I don't care. I just really don't care. The hobby's big, big enough for all of us. Okay. And, um, I just wanted to say that. So anyway, if you, if you like CB, if you want to amplify your CB, if you want to modify your CB, whatever. It doesn't matter to me. It can be done, so that's why I'm addressing it here. It does increase the power.

It does exceed the 12 watts out on single sideband or the 4 on AM and FM. But every bit of that is your responsibility to deal with. Again, no matter what you intend to do with your CB, make sure you spend your time and money on your antenna. And that goes for your car, for your house, for your handy walkie talkie, whatever. Whatever you're doing with CB radio, your antenna is going to make or break your efforts. So hear me now. If you have a chance to buy a $50 antenna or a $100 amplifier buy the $50 antenna it'll be worth more than the $100 amplifier in the long run performance wise okay anyway can

you do it yes you can should you do it that's on you not me i'm not playing that game but i appreciate you listening i hope you guys have enjoyed this series on CB radio. I felt like I probably could have gone eight or 10 episodes and I'm not going to because we've got a lot, we've got a lot of ground to cover in this stuff. So thank you for bearing with me through that. I hope you've enjoyed it. And those of you who have contacted me, let me know that you've enjoyed it. Thank you very much. I appreciate that.

I hope this answers some of the questions to the guys who were, you know, questioning whatever. But anyway, make your communications plan, get your communication stuff together. Um, and, and so I was saying earlier, my phone was blowing up. Uh, we're right here where the stuff has happened in Lebanon, but the pagers and the ICOM handy talk is blowing up in the last couple of days. I've been in the comms my whole life. My dad retired out of the phone company. It's all I know.

I mean, it's like my passion. And I had never dreamt of that. I'm a James Bond fan. You know, I love the spies. And that is one of the most brilliant acts of sabotage I have ever, ever can. I can't even conceive it, but it's beyond amazing. Now I'm not like cheering for war and death and people being maimed and hurt and innocent civilians getting injured. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying the process of what happened over there astounds me. I just, wow. I'm just floored with it. And whatever, I had to say that because it's common in this current news. But again, my name's Caleb to some of you, and I'm an amateur radio guy. I've been podcasting for 10 years now. Yeah,

almost 11 years. I was in FM radio for 10 years, been a CB radio user since I was about six years old. And I love this stuff. And I appreciate the opportunity to talk about this stuff with you. Thank you for listening to the program. Thank you for sharing the program with others, or if you see it in your feed sharing the post um i appreciate it and and don't forget if you need water filters we have those for you my wife and i own a company we sell british birkfeld water filters uh berkey replacement filters that fit whatever water filter system you have we've got it and you can find it at hubcitymercantile.com. Check this show out, our past episodes as well at prepcoms.com. And until next time, I wish you all great health, prosperity, and peace. God bless you guys. 73 y'all. Outro Music