Jim Cathey wrote: > The CB in the Unimog worked, even floored on the highway with me > wearing shooting muffs. It was mounted over my head, though.
Yeah, CBs are at least designed for in-vehicle use. > That's a real problem with CB too unless you're using a real antenna. > Only the rooftop magnetic mount antennae I've tried haven't given me > a noticeable problem with this when caravanning. (I've never used an > even better hard-mount whip antenna.) Antennas are a problem for CB, because the frequency is relatively low. Any antenna of a reasonable length for mobile use ends up being very inefficient. Almost no one can run a full quarter-wave whip, so everyone ends up using antennas with loading coils. This is why hams generally use the VHF bands for car-to-car communications. A quarter-wave whip for the popular 2 meter band is only about a foot long. A 5/8-wave whip (which gives around 3 dB gain, by not radiating anything straight up or straight down) is a little over four feet. Very managable. >From a modern perspective, the frequency allocation for CB makes no sense. Give people the 11 meter band, a shortwave band, and then tell them not to make long-distance contacts? Ridiculous. The problem was, back when CB was created, VHF radios were expensive to build.
