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The future of CB radio

I still have my Cobra 148 GTL (stock, not tricked out), with which I talked to New Mexico, Alaska, and Coahuila MX when I had a quad loop and a wire beam aimed SE. The wire beam blew down and the quad loop also broke during a windstorm. My 148 still works. My Uniden PC122 no longer works. I think it transmits but won't 'hear' on receive. I've recapped some bad looking caps but it still doesn't work. No problem, as I have no CB antenna anymore, and no interest, being that sunspots are down and no one's on locally.

CB during its heyday was pretty cool. Between the early 80's and mid 90's it was still quite the place to chat with people, and some people even had meet ups (I didn't).

As for CB's future, I think as long as there are CBers and CB radios, it will be active when sunspots are up. Governments really have no use for the spectrum, and never used any of the spectrum surrounding the CB band that was their territory. Hams don't want it. They rarely use their 10 meter band just up the dial a bit. With renewed interest in disaster planning and TEOTWAWKI planning, CB is probably a vital tool in that scenario as well.
 
ok walters said:
I was a big CBer in the 90's and had a big rig in my truck. Cobra 148GTL radio with a 4 pill linear with a small driver swinging about 1000 watts. It was a loud, strong, and completely illegal rig, but it was nothing compared to what the boys run on channel 6. I was in the DC area then, and there were guys running 20,000 watt rigs out of automobiles and vans. They had large battery systems with multiple alternators to charge them - how many amps of power do you need to run a 20K watt linear? They would meet in a parking lot and have "keydowns" to see who had the more powerful rig.

And more importantly - how much RF is that just a few feet from the operator?
Click to expand...
Urban legend. Even broadcast transmitters require three phase power to create that much TPO. 3kW, maybe with battery or single phase. 20kW? Nope.
 
boombox4 said:
My 148 still works. My Uniden PC122 no longer works. I think it transmits but won't 'hear' on receive. I've recapped some bad looking caps but it still doesn't work.
Click to expand...
My old Royce base transmitted OK when I last tested it, but only makes a steady muted whistling noise rather than receiving audio. It also had this symptom when I first acquired it. Since I didn't have time to look at it too deeply myself back then, I took it to a CB shop at a nearby truck stop. I got it back about a week later with everything working normally again, and they told me it just needed a good cleaning but no cap or component replacement. Maybe one day I'll rescue it from my parents' place, make the necessary repairs and operate it with a temporary antenna setup just to see if there's still any life on that band in my area.
 
I should take my PC122 to a truck stop, if they have a CB repair guy there. Haven't thought of that... The radio has a few memories attached to it. It was a good radio for the price.
 
:D

 
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