Prep Comms - CB Radios for Preppers: pt 3

Episode Date: September 7, 2024

Continuing the CB Radio for Preppers and Caleb looks back to his teens and how CB Radio was what lead him to Radio Shack, FM Radio and Ham Radio and eventually Podcasting. CB isn't what it was, but it's a Very Practical Comms Tool you should consider for your preps! Hub City Mercantile is the Offical Show Sponsor of the Prep Comms Podcast! Radiodity Micro CB Radio Antennas and Cables The 11-meter band sits within the **high-frequency (HF)** spectrum, and its properties significantly affect the performance of CB radios. Frequencies within this range can travel through the ionosphere, especially during favorable atmospheric conditions, making **skip propagation** possible. Skip propagation allows signals to bounce off the ionosphere, potentially reaching hundreds of miles beyond their typical range. However, not all conditions favor such long-distance communication. Atmospheric disturbances, solar cycles, and interference from other devices can limit the effective range of CB radios operating in the 11-meter band. For most users, this range averages between **1 to 15 miles**, depending on the terrain and other factors. AM vs. SSB Modes: Performance and Usage CB radios typically operate using one of two communication modes: **Amplitude Modulation (AM)** and **Single Sideband (SSB)**. Both have their advantages and trade-offs, impacting how CB users experience clarity, range, and performance. AM (Amplitude Modulation) The AM mode is the default communication method for most CB radios. It works by modulating the amplitude of the radio wave to carry the audio signal. AM is relatively simple in terms of technology and is favored by truckers and casual users for local communication. However, it has limitations, particularly in clarity and range. AM transmissions are more susceptible to **noise interference** from electrical devices, power lines, and atmospheric conditions. The sound quality tends to degrade over longer distances, and the range can be limited, typically extending no further than **5 to 10 miles** in most conditions. While convenient for general communication, AM may not offer the performance needed for long-distance or emergency communication. SSB (Single Sideband) SSB mode offers a significant upgrade in performance, allowing CB users to achieve greater range and clarity. Unlike AM, which transmits a full signal that includes a carrier and both upper and lower sidebands, SSB transmits only one sideband (upper or lower), removing the carrier. This makes SSB more **efficient** in terms of power and bandwidth usage. In practical terms, SSB can extend communication range by **50 to 100%** compared to AM, making it ideal for those who need to cover larger areas. It also provides clearer audio, especially in noisy or interference-prone environments. The trade-off, however, is that not all CB radios support SSB, and it requires more precise tuning for optimal performance. CB Radio Suggestions What is SSB?: YouTube Power Supplies Base Stations Beware/Aware: Most CB Radio Traffic is Rated R FREE: CB Radio e-Book Free: PDF of CB Radio Frequencies

it is the prep comms podcast i'm caleb nelson k4 cdn uh i'm a ham radio guy i also have a gmrs license it's wrbr 237 a business it, whatever back. I can't remember what it was. And back in the day, I was a ham radio operator. I was a CB radio operator and loved it. It was so fun as a teenager back in the day. Now, gosh, if you're less than 25 years old and you're listening to this, you're amazing. God bless you. Thank you so much for listening. Let me know.

I'll send you something. Yeah. Back when we were your age, we didn't have phones to stare at. So we actually would go out into public and have friends. And a lot of us had CB radios in our cars and our trucks. And we would drive around the mall or the Walmart or whatever and talk on our CBs and pick up girls. It's a lot of fun. At least it seemed fun then. It was a tremendous waste of time. But talking on the CB has been a passion of mine almost 45 years now. And it's held greater passions at different times, a greater depth of passion for me personally over the years. But it's always been a fun hobby that I've had.

It actually is what got me into working for Radio Shack. It got me into being on the FM radio dial. It got me into amateur radio and we'll see what it can get you into. One thing, it can get you out of trouble if you're in a mess. Now it can get you into trouble too. I won't, you know, if you, if you're doing things the wrong way, um, and you get caught, then it's going to get you in a mess. But if you're stuck on the side of the road or you're trying to figure out where the local restaurants are on the interstate, you may, and I say that with extreme caution, you may be able to get some help on the road with a CB radio. And if you're a prepper, it might even help you establish a

communications plan and a setup within your group or your family or your farm or your bug out location or whatever. It's a great tool. It's called CB radio, and it's been around for a very long time here in the U S hub city mercantile is mine and my wife, Carla's business. We sell Berkey and British Birkfeld replacement filters we sell the british burkfeld brand of filters the gravity water filter systems that's the one all the others are copied after like it's the original everyone else is a clone and you know i hate to give the british credit for that you know our cousins that we beat almost well we beat them back across the ocean that's what we did in 1776 so anyway uh it's it's a business that my wife and i have here in our salon and boutique in the upstate of south carolina we

do sell water filter systems replacement filters and whatnot and we'd like to help you with your needs hubcitymercantile.com there'll be a show link in the show notes as always i'm caleb nelson k4 cd and i've already told you that and we're continuing our talk here about citizens band or cb radios way back in the day as i mentioned these things were so popular and if you were cool you had one and if you wanted to be cool you wanted the cb radio because everybody had one. There were movies and television programs made specifically around the CB radio. Oh my gosh, there were so many cool CB movies back in the day. It operates in a frequency band known as The 11 meter band, it used to belong to the amateur radio guys. And back in the late fifties, they gave that band to the citizenry. They opened it up first as a

license to where you paid to basically have a little ticket that you could use to legally talk on the radio. And it made it very accessible because the technology was there and the market was flooded and you could buy brands from Kmart that were their own brand all the way up to Cobra and Johnson and all these Browning you've heard before. I bought a Tram CB radio a couple of weeks ago and sold it at the same within five minutes. I wish I'd have kept it now. One of the most beautiful radios I've ever seen. I know there's some guys grimacing when I say that I need to get a picture so that I can show it to you guys.

It was a beautiful, beautiful rate. I may just go buy it again. Just pay for what I sold it for. I wonder if Brett's listening in on LPT. If you're listening to this program, I want to buy the CB radio. Okay. Um, 11 meters is in HF. It's part of the shortwave end of the spectrum. And that means that these signals can travel longer distances sometimes, not every time. They can travel a lot further

with illegal power amplifiers, but usually the conditions don't favor extremely long distance communications for these particular frequencies. You can realistically expect a CB radio to operate up to about 15 miles, just depending on your terrain and where you find yourself, what's between you and the person you're trying to talk to. And I mean that literally, like, is there a massive city full of all kinds of radio frequency interference and tall buildings? Maybe there's a huge mountain between you and your grandma. Um, and that may not be the best thing to try to use, but could also work pretty well just depending on what uncle son, uncle soul, old soul, the sun is doing to the ionosphere. For the vast majority of CBs that you'll find made prior to the last five or six years, they come with two flavors, AM and single sideband. We've talked about single sideband numerous times. Real quick, AM is called amplitude modulation.

And this has just been the default of CB radios from day one, and it modulates the amplitude of the radio wave carrying the audio signal. Unfortunately, AM is very susceptible to interference from all kind of devices, and, you know, five to ten miles is about the best you're going to do, right? So single sideband is the other. And again, I said the last time through, if you're serious, if you're very serious about CB radio communications and your prepper plan, uh, you, you should have a single sideband capable, uh, CB radio in your toolbox, because it's going to give you 50 to 100% more range. You get a little bit more power, but at the same time, the way that it breaks the signal down, you're going to get a lot more range.

Now, I say a lot, guys. I'm not talking, you know, 300 miles versus 15, maybe 100, maybe. And again, it depends on your antenna every time. And then what else you've toys you've put in there that we're not going to talk about. Um, the only problem with a single sideband radio is if you have one and you're on single sideband, uh, upper sideband channel 39, and your buddy's got a regular old CB on channel 39, you're going to sound like a Charlie Brown school teacher to your buddy. He's not going to be able to decode. The radio can't decode the single sideband because it's AM only. But with that said, if you're going to have CBs in your preparedness plan, and let's say you've got 12 people you're trying to do, make a plan in this plan, maybe two or three get single sidebands, set them up as base stations in

their house. Everybody can have a low cost, old am fm cb in their car the little radio oddity is amazing i keep beating that drum guys it's a very very good little radio and it's it's the size of half the size of a paperback book so there'll be a link in the show notes for that one the thing about it is um if you're going to set it up in your house you should really consider spending the money for an large and well-made external antenna. Now you can make them cheap and they'll work fantastically. Um, but you can buy, buy one that's, you know, weatherproof and ready to go permanently mounted outside and stay out there a hundred bucks or so. And, uh, there'll be links for all this stuff in the show notes as well that makes the biggest difference you got to have cable to go between the radio and the antenna it's called

coax you don't have to spend a lot of money on that coax now when we get into higher frequencies we'll explain the difference there but you can really get in with the low cost coaxial cable for cb radios and it's not going to bother you. Um, CB radios, man, 15 miles max, sometimes just depending on what's going on around you, maybe just one to two miles. Um, you can use up to 12 Watts and single sideband. You've got four Watts on AM that's the output power. Um, it's, it's really, it's really all about the antenna and having the antenna properly tuned, properly grounded and working, um, so that it can be at its best performance state for your signal. And I know you guys are like, would you just please tell us what to buy?

I'm trying to help you understand that why you have to buy stuff. I get that. If you don't have it, you have to buy it. And you are interested in knowing what to buy. But at the same time, you got to know why, like I may say, you need to buy this $120 antenna and you're thinking, well, man, I can get on Amazon. There's an antenna for $12. But if it's not operating at its peak efficiency, you're already behind, you know, behind the black ball when you're trying to operate a CB with its low power output on this particular range of frequencies. Sometimes you got to spend, and that may lead you to building your own antenna, which they work really well. If you'll just follow the instructions, they work really, really well. So yes, you do need to buy stuff, especially if you're wanting to add CB radios to your

prepper toolbox. Now, let me just go through a couple of things. I love this little radio oddity. It'll be in the show notes. Number one choice. Back in the day, I was a huge Cobra radio user. I had the Cobra 25 LTD classic. I had a 21 LTD.

I had a 29 LTD, 146 GTL. I had a lot of these different things. And that's just like, is he speaking Chinese? No. Those are model numbers from Cobra Radios. They were a really good quality back in the day. Well-built, not necessarily industrial grade stuff, but everybody had one. They all worked well. They sounded fantastic. Even with the stock microphone and stock power output, they were great radios and lasted for forever. What happened was, uh, I kind of got not so in the CB and more into big subwoofers and amplifiers, but I didn't want to give up my CB radio communications potential. So I downsized from the Cobra 25 LTD Classic, or one of its variants, down to a Uniden 510 Pro or the Uniden 520 Pro. I've had them both. I've

still got a couple of those. Matter of fact, I like to buy them when I find them cheap at Hamfest and whatnot, because they just work. They're very small footprint. They're a little bit bigger than the Radio Oddity, and they're a little bit smaller than the big Cobra. So they'll still go into modern day vehicles pretty easily. They come with this real tiny microphone, which works well. And guys, I'm telling you, 30 years later, they still work and they work very, very well. So they don't take up a lot of space in your car, but they may perform a little better than the real tiny ones that are out now from China. So again, the Radio Oddity, great success. Cobra, Uniden.

And then if you want something larger, it's really hard to beat a Galaxy or a President. Those are brands, Galaxy brand and the President brand. The Presidents are cool because they have they're all named after former presidents of the united states which is crazy uh i love the idea and they're on the internet you can find them i'll link some of my favorites in the show notes and then galaxy radios are just fantastic right before i got my amateur radio license i finally bought me what's called it like a trucker CB is a galaxy nine 59 DX. And man, that was a, that was a talking radio. I love that thing. And then like

six weeks later, I got my amateur license and really haven't used it in the last 15 years. But that to say they still make them, they make great products. And I would encourage you if you, if you're willing to spend, it's really hard to beat a Galaxy or a President. And there's other brands out there too, Striker, and then you've got Radio Oddity. Anytone, I think, is doing CBs. I'll link some stuff in the show notes. And you just have to decide, one, it's all really, we've talked about this before, how much do you want to spend, how far do you want to talk,

and how bad does the person on the other end want to talk back to you? So again, if you're looking for just a low cost entry, you've got the Uniden 510, 520s, you've got the radio oddities and maybe one or two of the little antitones. If you want to spend some more money, you've got the Cobras, the Galaxies, and the Presidents. And that's really kind of where I would stop. Now, if you're going to utilize any of these radios in your car, they connect to the battery. Now, I don't suggest taking the larger radios to your cigarette lighter plug, but I know you're going to do it anyway. Okay. I know you're going to, uh, it's just the best practice to go all the way to the battery. If you can't go

all the way to the battery, you can take your radio or take your car to a local electronic shop and they can run the wire through the firewall for you. A lot of people do that. It's pretty inexpensively. If you don't want to go that far, at least go back to the fuse block. Okay. Keep it out of your cigarette lighter because that's going to be in the way of charging your phone. Let's just be honest. Okay. If you're going to use it at home, then you need a power supply. And this is one And this is a box that you plug into your wall and it takes that type of electricity and turns it into the type of electricity that your CB radio needs to operate. That's 12 volts DC. And these can be found anywhere from $29 or even less up to hundreds of dollars. I'll put some links in the show notes that can do a

CB radio. And if you decide you want to add more, as we go through the process, there'll be growth there with its capabilities. So you don't have to do this two or three times. Um, there's one I really love. It's about between 79 and $99. I have a couple of them all over. I've got radios everywhere and you have to power them. Uh, so I them. So I've got this stuff everywhere, but they work well. They're very quiet. So they're not going to make a bunch of noise when you're operating or whatnot. And they just do what they're supposed to do. So it doesn't take a lot to have a CB. It doesn't take a lot of money to get started. Again, you can buy a small one for your car, get a little antenna, put it on the roof, you'll be shocked. And if you put the radio on channel 19 and you go down the

interstate, you'll probably be really shocked. I should have said this very firstly, but CB radio nowadays is rated R most everywhere. It doesn't mean it's all bad all the time, but it's a cross section of humanity. And I mean, you can get on YouTube and watch music videos and you can see there's some really great stuff and there's some garbage. And it's just like that with everything, including CB radio. So, uh, don't get on the highway. You know, you've got your kids in their car seats in the back and you turn on channel 19, you're going to talk to truckers all the way to grandma's house. Your kids are going to learn some words you may not want them to know. So just be cautious with that kind of stuff, guys, even in your home, be aware. But that's not to deter you. I mean, it's a great tool for preppers. It's pretty cheap, comparatively speaking, to everything else

out there. And if things ever go sideways, you've got a great way to communicate. And it's also a way that you can start at the bottom end of things with your prepper group or your friends or whomever you're planning to hopefully talk to. Base stations are a lot of fun. I would encourage a larger radio for that. Most especially if you're serious, I would do a single sideband radio. Again, you can get those from Uniden, Galaxy, Cobra, President. There's a selection of sideband radios with different features. And you're just going to have to decide how much you're willing to spend. If it were me, I would definitely, if I was serious and I was kind of the center of attention or the place everyone wanted to speak to, or I wanted to speak to everybody, I would invest in an external antenna. I would mount it up as high as I can get it.

Back in the day, they used to put them in trees. They would mount it to a mast and then attach the mast up into a tree. It's a great idea. Actually, you could spray paint the outside with a gray or a green or even a brown, and it goes up in the tree. It's kind of camouflaged, even in the fall, the winter, and you can get some height that way. I mean, you can get creative, man. YouTube is full of people telling you how to do all this stuff. That's not where we're going with this program.

I'm just trying to help you make good decisions as you're trying to figure out what's going to work best for you. So you need a really good antenna. There are CB radio operators everywhere, and you can probably find someone that can help you if you have questions. And of course, we're here to help if you need some help, but we're not local to most people. So try to make some friends and know that not everybody's going to like you because you have a CB, but understand that not everybody talks on the CB radios and it's okay. It's a great tool. If you're a prepper and you're looking for a great tool, CB radio is it. These show notes for this particular program will be more link oriented to get you pointed in the right direction for gear. It's really simple as buying a radio, buying the

cable to go between the radio and the antenna and and buying an antenna, and then how you're going to power it. If you're looking at mobile installations, most of those antennas come with the cable attached to it. If you're setting up a base station, you'll have when you decide how much you're measuring out to purchase to feed the antenna with. The power supplies will be in the show notes as well. Again, this allows you to operate the 12-volt radio that can work in your car. It allows you to power it from the inside of your home. This is not hard stuff. The e-book will be linked in the show notes. It goes to a lot of

these things. A lot of this stuff is common sense. And guys, you know as well as I do, that's why you're a podcast listener, that YouTube has the answers to virtually everything. But if you stumble into something and you just can't figure it out, please don't ever hesitate to contact us and we'll do our best to get you squared away or at least pointed in the right direction. Now, this is not going to finish out our talk on CB radios. We'll probably come back one more time, but I hope this has been some understanding for you and some help. I mean, it's not hard. Communications is not hard. It's just, it doesn't like fit in everybody's understanding, but it still doesn't mean that it's hard.

And that's the purpose of this program to help you make good decisions, not in fear so that you can move forward in your communications plans and strategies in case something were to happen because you're prepping for something, right? We all are, whether we realize it or not. Okay. I'm going to go where you, we can be found online at prepcoms.com. Of course, Hub City Mercantile is our show sponsor, hubcitymercantile.com. That'll be in the show notes. We appreciate your business, by the way. Always love it when you guys review the program,

share the show and check us out on YouTube. Now there's no like real videos there. It's just this, but some people like to listen through YouTube. Of course, we're on Spotify and the Apple thing too. So we're everywhere. And thanks to you, we're continuing to grow the program. We'll be back next time. We're going to be finishing up CB's then, but until that moment in time, guys have a great day. Thank you again for listening. God bless you. Send me three y'all. We'll see you next time. you