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Cool! I would suggest not limiting yourself to just CB. Look around for your local amateur radio club. The basic exam is not tough and it will put you in insta

Cool! I would suggest not limiting yourself to just CB. Look around for your local amateur radio club. The basic exam is not tough and it will put you in instant contact with loads of other radio nerds keen to chat. With a HAM license you'll have many many more channels to play/work with. Taking the advanced exam will require more study (unless you are a MSc electrical eng) but the reward is definitely proportionally greater

unoti 5y ago
Definitely don't stop at CB. Get a CB, yes, but go get your technician level amateur radio license. While studying for that license, you'll learn that output power on CB's is limited by the FCC to 4 watts[1], but with a technician license you can go to far more watts than you actually need (1500W)[2]. I have a CB and a HAM radio in my both of my Jeeps, and the HAM radios blow the doors off what the CB can do. Even the handheld HAM radios run circles around the CB's-- both in terms of communication distance, but also in the wealth and variety of people you can talk to both locally and around the world. For emergency communications you have a lot of better options once you have your ham radio license. Best of all, in the process for preparing for the exam, you'll learn all about what those options are. The exam itself is not hard; my wife crammed for it starting on a Thursday evening and passed it on Saturday. If you're actually interested in learning about the options and the technology though, taking your time to read and learn is a better idea. There's a wealth of information online and in widely available exam guides about preparing for the test and getting your license.[3] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CB_radio_in_the_United_States#Eligibility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CB_radio_in_the_United_States#... [2] http://www.arrl.org/frequency-allocations http://www.arrl.org/frequency-allocations [3] https://www.amazon.com/ARRL-Radio-License-Manual-Spiral/dp/1625950829 https://www.amazon.com/ARRL-Radio-License-Manual-Spiral/dp/1...
- hatsunearu 5y ago
  I crammed 15 minutes in front of the door for the Technician exam. It's stupidly easy. I studied the General with a question bank for about a week while I'm doing something boring and passed General and Extra.
- bitbckt 5y ago
  I run a mobile GMRS in my Jeep with a couple of 5W HTs for spotting and keeping touch on the go - most folks I know have moved off CB entirely. There are excellent ground-plane independent antennae from Larsen and Laird that work well with the "challenging" Jeep installs. Having a HT or base ham radio is nice for SHTF scenarios, but I haven't really found the need for a mobile.
- chrismorgan 5y ago
  1500W! Wow, that’s a lot, especially compared with the limits of lower frequencies like 1W or 5W. On the 630 metres frequencies: > 5 W EIRP maximum, except in Alaska within 496 miles of Russia where the power limit is 1 W EIRP. Wonder where that weird distance came from. 496 miles ≈ 798.2km, so it’s just below what I’d expect to be chosen as a round number, whether defined in miles or kilometres.
  - csunbird 5y ago
    It is probably 800km and they rounded the miles to 496 instead
    - chrismorgan 5y ago
      800km ≈ 497.1km. You’re not likely to round that to 496.
      - rpeden 5y ago
        Lots of people learned in school (in my part of Canada, at least) that 1km = 0.62 miles. If you use that value, you get 800km = 496 miles. Seems like that's what happened here.
        chrismorgan 5y ago
        Hmm, so the statute is probably in metric and this particular site made this error in conversion? Still feels a weird error to make, I’d expect to (a) use metric, (b) use a more correct conversion, or (c) round up to 500. From the metric perspective, most people go with 1 mile = 1.6km, which is a bit less accurate (about −0.58%, rather than about +0.22%), but definitely easier to work with.
        rpeden 5y ago
        It's in FCC §97.313 (l) and you're right, it's metric: https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/47/97.313 https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/47/97.313

unoti 5y ago

Definitely don't stop at CB. Get a CB, yes, but go get your technician level amateur radio license. While studying for that license, you'll learn that output power on CB's is limited by the FCC to 4 watts[1], but with a technician license you can go to far more watts than you actually need (1500W)[2]. I have a CB and a HAM radio in my both of my Jeeps, and the HAM radios blow the doors off what the CB can do. Even the handheld HAM radios run circles around the CB's-- both in terms of communication distance, but also in the wealth and variety of people you can talk to both locally and around the world. For emergency communications you have a lot of better options once you have your ham radio license. Best of all, in the process for preparing for the exam, you'll learn all about what those options are. The exam itself is not hard; my wife crammed for it starting on a Thursday evening and passed it on Saturday. If you're actually interested in learning about the options and the technology though, taking your time to read and learn is a better idea. There's a wealth of information online and in widely available exam guides about preparing for the test and getting your license.[3] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CB_radio_in_the_United_States#Eligibility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CB_radio_in_the_United_States#... [2] http://www.arrl.org/frequency-allocations http://www.arrl.org/frequency-allocations [3] https://www.amazon.com/ARRL-Radio-License-Manual-Spiral/dp/1625950829 https://www.amazon.com/ARRL-Radio-License-Manual-Spiral/dp/1...

hatsunearu 5y ago
I crammed 15 minutes in front of the door for the Technician exam. It's stupidly easy. I studied the General with a question bank for about a week while I'm doing something boring and passed General and Extra.
bitbckt 5y ago
I run a mobile GMRS in my Jeep with a couple of 5W HTs for spotting and keeping touch on the go - most folks I know have moved off CB entirely. There are excellent ground-plane independent antennae from Larsen and Laird that work well with the "challenging" Jeep installs. Having a HT or base ham radio is nice for SHTF scenarios, but I haven't really found the need for a mobile.
chrismorgan 5y ago
1500W! Wow, that’s a lot, especially compared with the limits of lower frequencies like 1W or 5W. On the 630 metres frequencies: > 5 W EIRP maximum, except in Alaska within 496 miles of Russia where the power limit is 1 W EIRP. Wonder where that weird distance came from. 496 miles ≈ 798.2km, so it’s just below what I’d expect to be chosen as a round number, whether defined in miles or kilometres.
- csunbird 5y ago
  It is probably 800km and they rounded the miles to 496 instead
  - chrismorgan 5y ago
    800km ≈ 497.1km. You’re not likely to round that to 496.
    - rpeden 5y ago
      Lots of people learned in school (in my part of Canada, at least) that 1km = 0.62 miles. If you use that value, you get 800km = 496 miles. Seems like that's what happened here.
      - chrismorgan 5y ago
        Hmm, so the statute is probably in metric and this particular site made this error in conversion? Still feels a weird error to make, I’d expect to (a) use metric, (b) use a more correct conversion, or (c) round up to 500. From the metric perspective, most people go with 1 mile = 1.6km, which is a bit less accurate (about −0.58%, rather than about +0.22%), but definitely easier to work with.
        rpeden 5y ago
        It's in FCC §97.313 (l) and you're right, it's metric: https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/47/97.313 https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/47/97.313