CB radio's for emergency communications

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I have a Cobra CB a 100 watt liniar booster and a antanna. Could some one help me put together a 12 volt battery system? What do I need, how do I wire it. I have knowledge of AC current, limited on DC current. I plan to get this system working in order to have some way to communicate with the HAMS if we all lose the land lines. Thanks.

-- PBJ (PBJ@oregon.com), October 02, 1999

Answers

As I hold both an Extra Class amateur license, an FCC Commercial 1st. class license, and a degree in electronics with 45 years experience, I believe I am qualified to address your problem. And it's not technical.

In no way would I, or any other responsible Amateur assist you in operating illegally, which is what you desire. Cross band operation - CB to Amateur - is illegal, as is the operating power you desire. Such conduct would encourage Federal intervention. You cannot operate on the Ham bands without the appropriate license, and without a verifiable assigned callsign no Amateur would respond. I expect some _would_ however, track your location in a heartbeat and turn you in.

CB'ers have a questionable name already. Do you really thing Amateurs would participate in or condone such proceedings?

-- A. Hambley (a.hambley@usa.net), October 02, 1999.


sorry, A, you let your dander get in the way of your judgement

1) he's not asking you to help him do something illegal; he's asking all to help him learn how to accomplish a simple task that may allow him to do something that may, in the future, become prudent and valuable - should the need arise

2) should the need arise, there will be plenty of hams who will willingly exchange information with him - under ANY circumstance - and they won't be asking him for any credentials...

3) some believe there may be a time soon, when there may not be a Fed to enforce the rules you so vocally admire

4) (ever hear of pirate radio?)

5) lighten up! with all your knowledge and experience one would hope for more tolerance and magnanimity...

PBJ - pick up an ARRL Manual at your bookstore; you'll know a lot very shortly and won't have to take any BS from others...be happy to help if needed

Perry

-- Perry Arnett (pjarnett@pdqnet.net), October 02, 1999.


Mr.Hambley,

a chain could go like this--a person with a normal CB contacts a local Ham operator,who has a CB base unit,inturn the Ham operator could relay a long distance message to a third party/fourth party.I'm talking about an important message/emergency.What are your thoughts on this.

-- Maggie (aaa@aaa.com), October 02, 1999.


By the way,if a person has a police scanner,you can program it to listen to the HAM operators.A battery hand held one might be a good choice and use rechargable battery's in it.You can get a solar charger for about $20.00.

-- Maggie (aaa@aaa.com), October 02, 1999.

Mr. Hambley,

Your reply just gave your vaunted Hams a bad name. Now, had you taken the care to explain -- politely -- that the amateur bands and the CB frequencies are different, and that it would require a common station, (dual radios, one on CB, the other serving as a relay station on ham bands) as suggested above, then you would have gotten the information across without sounding like a horse's ass.

-- de (delewis@XOUTinetone.net), October 02, 1999.



I am an Aussie Ham who first got licensed and legal back in 1978. Many of us in those days started out as CBers. Back then in Australia, the Hams also had the 11m Band, as CB was illegal in Oz. So I started as a pirate before CBs were licensable in Australia. Back then on 11m (27MHz) the Hams would listen to your chatter, and if they judged you "responsible" and not an idiot troublemaker, someone might talk to you anonymously (illegally, since no callsign) to feel you out and see if you wanted to becom a licensed Amateur. If you sounded OK, they would point us to the WIA (Wireless Institute of Australia) where they held Novice classes to get newbies trained for a ticket. Back then as a Novice, we were only allowed low power on segments of 3 Ham bands: 80m (3.525-6.025), 15m (21.125-21.200) and 10m (28-28.600) if my memory serves me well enough. And we were allowed to use AM and SSB as well as CW, which we had to pass at a low 5 wpm. I started with a Tram XL5 23-channel SSB CB converted to work on 10m, and since the sunspot cycle back then was very good I had LOTS of DX contacts from my old Toyota Corolla car back then with a 6 foot helical 80m whip, or from home with just an 8 1/2 foot home made quarter-wave vertical ground plane. Never needed or used a linear amp... SO TO ANSWER PJB, if TSHTF the whole world could well be in the biggest state of emergency it has _ever_ had. I don't think there will be many burocrats enforcing FCC rules in such a case; in an case Hams are allowed to communicate on any frequency if a geniune full-blown emergency justifies it. JUST CONSIDER THAT AS A SURVIVOR YOU COULD BE BETTER OFF LAYING VERY LOW AND KEEPING VERY QUIET. No radio. No nothing. Because it is all too easy for someone to DF (direction find) you... If others are starving and you're prepared, someone is going to want what you've got... Think about it. -- As to linears, they consume BIG JUICE even if they can run at 12V dc. Stay barefoot and use a good antenna. Then you will only use up about 2 Amps from your battery. Get a couple of solar panels NOW. By the way, most Hams are happy to help a prospect like you. 73.

-- David Harvey (vk2dmh@hotmail.com), October 02, 1999.

PBJ, Connect a deep cycle marine (trolling) or (RV) battery to your Cobra and then a charger to the battery. Select a charger that will cut in at low battery voltage and cut out at high battery voltage. Skip the linear amplifier as it makes less difference than you think but eats your battery and is illegal. If you don't drive it right it goes non- linear and makes a hell of a mess for others far away from "your" frequency. Buy a good antenna instead. Study propagation characteristics! Now and in 2000 you are more likely to be heard in South America than 10 miles from you on 27/28 MHz. As for communications with Hams on their band, you better wait for real emergencies. Hams will not casually compare notes with you now as they risk losing their license. Wolf

-- wolf (kb2fs@ mindspring.com), October 02, 1999.

PBJ, I just set up my base station. I used to be a CBer a decade ago. Dragged all the stuff outta mothballs and set er up.

She used to get out barefoot quite well in the SF Bay area. Used to get skip clear to the east coast. I haven't tried her in this new location and am curious to see how far she transmits and recieves. I am at 3500 ft elevation, so that might do some interesting things to skip.

I know sideband is a lot cleaner on background noise. If anyone wants to try some test transmissions for DX on lower sideband, I'm game.

-- marsh (armstrng@sisqtel.net), October 02, 1999.


I'm not as old-school as A. Hambley. I only hold a lowly Tech Amateur Radio license since I haven't got time, or free memory space in my head, to allocate to learning Morse. I don't have any degree in electronics but I can build most anything from a schematic and can fix most anything. I don't have an FCC commercial license although I could get one if I had the time to pursue it. Hell, I know more about the Win32 API than any one human should, so I know it's achievable but guess it's simply not as high on the priority scale.

But I feel I'm also qualified to post on this topic.

Yes, A. is right, and yes, he came across all wrong. (Side note to A.: Coming out on the total defensive and launching a salvo on a guy that probably didn't know better is NOT good for the Amateur Radio crowd. Ever heard of that addage regarding honey vs. vinegar?)

But I'll try to explain -why- exactly A. had such a terse response. (If I'm off slightly on the specifics, deal with it. My memory's not perfect. ;-D)

Hams (Amateur Radio afficionados are known as this if you're not familiar with the term) are EXCEEDINGLY defensive of their broadcast rights and frequency alottments. They are intolerant to the extreme, bordering on manic, when it comes to protecting the bands they have to work with.

They have good reason to.

When CB went no-license the quality of communications took a crap. The whole cumulative IQ of CB flatlined. Although there are plenty of decent CB operators, a few of them close friends of mine in fact, the overall quality of the conversation is toilet-level in most places on the more actively used channels. Some of us don't really use profanity in normal conversation and prefer to not expose ourselves to it. Profanity is often nothing more than a feeble mind's attempt to express itself forcefully.

Hams are totally, and I mean TOTALLY, NOT going to allow that to happen to their hobby and will actively find (triangulate) and report any transgressors they discover broadcasting illegally. Not broadcasting a valid callsign that made sense would be a dead giveaway, for example. (Yes, if you detune your 11-meter CB into the 10-meter band a few Hams will lock onto you as quickly as during your first transmit and the FCC will be looking your way VERY soon. Hams often engage in a "foxhunt" sport, playing find-the-transmitter over huge distances, even across states, so finding an illegal signal source is child's play.)

Not only that, but the FCC is under constant assault by commercial and industrial entities that want the Ham bands for themselves for for-profit use. Case in point: The cluster of signal allotments in the 80-160 MHz range. In there you have FM broadcast (88-108), aircraft, burst transmissions galore, the FRS band in the 154 MHz neighborhood, the business bands in the 147-150 MHz range, and on and on and on. The 2-meter ham band, at 144-147 MHz, sits smack in the middle of one of the most hotly contested spaces of frequencies that exists.

Hams all over the US are constantly in a fight to prevent losing their frequencies to businesses, etc. This coupled with what happened to CB when it went public bode poorly for the whole idea of Amateur Radio should the Hams lose the fight. As a result, they will do anything, and I mean ANYTHING, legal to protect the hobby. If that involvesd ratting a pirate station out, so be it. If that involves flaming an unsuspecting poster that might not have realized that A - 100 watts on CB is WAY illegal (I think it's 5 watts and 50 miles max. known range) and B - direct CB to Ham band broadcasts are also WAY illegal (Check FCC rules section 98), so be it.

Now, this illegal operation means shiezen if the FCC takes a nosedive into oblivion. If the FCC colapses, I'd expect that there'd be massive chaos on practically all bands as the enforcer of the rules wouldn't exist to perform that function any more. Would all sorts of currently illegal transmissions happen? Most certainly. Would Hams participate? Highly unlikely. They'll try to protect their bands as long as they could, and as other transmitters die off they'd probably expand into now vacant frequency groups. As David Harvey mentioned, Hams can transmit outside their license class or even outside their band if there's an emergency involved, or if an emergency declaration (FCC or otherwise if they're out of the picture) opens new privledges or frequencies.

After all, Hams tend to be more capable of operating without a power grid by virtue of what they enjoy to do and where they often do it.

Now, for the response to what you ask...

I'd not suggest running a linear amp that big on 11 meters because of the legal issues. I'd not even suggest it if/when TSHTF simply because 100 watts on CB is a LOT of power that you might not need. (My father caught a bounce just right and chatted with a dude in Encino, CA, from Detriot, MI, on a -five watt- CB. If you catch the ionishpere just right, away you go.) That kind of power will be rough on batteries (can you say 20+ amps at 12 volts of draw? remember, a 100 W amp uses -more- than 100 watts to operate!) and might give away your position to unsavory types that might be equipped with a few handhelds with homebrew Yagi antennas.

Okay, that's my two cents' worth of gold or other precious metals...



-- OddOne (mocklamer_1999@yahoo.com), October 02, 1999.


PBJ- A 100 watt linear amp uses a whole lot of power. You will drain a car battery quickly, infact you won't be able to use it at all unless you have several batteries in parallel. A power pull of 35 amps is about the norm.

Your best bet to stay legal is to get a CB that has upper and lower sidebands- the switch on the radio says USB or LSB- because the sidebands are a more efficient use of power.

As you listen to the CB bands you will learn that the use of linear amplifiers, while technically illegal, is almost universal. The FCC seems to have given up enforcement of these rules unless a particular individual is making serious trouble. Considering they only have 3 extra agents for all of North Carolina to police thousands of radio operators, the likelihood that they could show up at your door is small, but not non-existent.

You will also find that most long range communications in this band take place either below channel 1 (26.965) or above channel 40 (27.405.) Cb operators in every other part of the world use these ranges, but not the US because the current channel allocations were set in the 1950's and never changed. Using these channels above and below the CB standard 40 is called 'freebanding', do an Internet search to learn more.

Your best bet is to use a Galaxy or other export/modifiable radio, and to talk primarily on sidebands. You can reach the Caribbean and Canada easily on the power of the radio alone.

You will also need an antenna tuner, such as the MFJ 949, to adjust your antenna impedance correctly and maintain a low Standing Wave Ratio (SWR). A high SWR, above 2:1, will fry your radio.

There is a lot of information to learn. One of the best places is on the Internet, but other CB'ers out there will give you lots of excellent information.

I have a ham liscence also, yet you will find an enormous amount of Hamsnobbery out there. CB is a bastard child, and the price tag of ham equipment vs. CB equipment reflects the class distinctions of the two hobbies.

-- Forrest Covington (theforrest@mindspring.com), October 03, 1999.



Thanks for the info: "A", did not mean to insinuate I would be walking over your territory of Hamdome. If SHTF, I will do what ever it takes to communicate. We are going to set up HAM stations or centers in our part of Oregon so communications will remain some what intact. Not evry one is a Ham operator but alot have CB's. I'll bet there will be valuable info passed onto the HAMS from a minor citizen using a CB that can be passed onto the people that needs this info to help others. Am I wrong? If SHTF, the law will be working hard at other things then trying to find a" rouge CBer"! Wolf, thanks, you have a head on your shoulder, not a chip.

-- PBJ (PBJ@oregon.com), October 03, 1999.

PBJ, i am a ham also. i would suggest you do 2 things. 1 is to find the webpage of the rogue valley, oregon y2k group. they have a communications plan that involves both CB and ham radio. you can print out the plan and use it as a model. 2 is to contact REACT, the CB emergency group and see what they are planning. you can contact them on the web also. good luck.

-- jocelyne slough (jonslough@tln.net), October 04, 1999.

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