ProductImages/08603635.jpg' alt='How To Install Uhf Cb Radio' title='How To Install Uhf Cb Radio' />Poor HF propagation should not stop the real radio Amateur. SSB 2 meter SSB offers regular openings into Europe and. Zq2JmU_HeRE/maxresdefault.jpg' alt='How To Install Uhf Cb Radio' title='How To Install Uhf Cb Radio' />Three impotant things to consider before building a ham radio or CB antenna. Adding and Optimizing an External Antenna to Your Two Way Radio Part 1 Choosing an Antenna. There are very many different sizes and styles of car antennas. All give much better performance than the short antenna on the radio itself. This is the first part of a two part article please also read part two Installing an Antenna  for helpful further information on how to connect your antenna to your radio and how to tune your antenna for best performance. CB Radio Schematics Service Manuals. Do you need a HAM CB ScannerMonitor radio schematics service information to repair, modify, test or install you vintage. Best place to mount the CB Radio Antenna, also covered is the difference in 3dB to higher gain 9dB antennas MORE ON CB RADIOS httpsyoutu. Third character Tenth character Frequency range MHz Notes 3 1 136162 This is low split high band, sometimes called a range 1 radio. Its ideal for amateur. Readers with CBs and Ham Radios talk about the advantages of these technologies. Bp4FIZk' alt='How To Install Uhf Cb Radio' title='How To Install Uhf Cb Radio' />Perhaps the easiest improvement you can make to a two way radio is also one of the least expensive and definitely the one that will have the greatest impact on both your radios transmitting and receiving range. This is the replacement of the antenna. Although the concept of swapping one antenna for another sounds easy and simple, there are some issues and challenges associated with it. But keep reading well help make the challenges easy and issues easily resolved. This article is designed for people using either Ham type VHFUHF radios, or alternatively, MURSGMRS radios. Much of what we say applies to CB radios too, except that their antennas are ideally very much larger five times larger than 2mGMRS and 1. MURS. Note that FRS radios are not allowed to have external antennas, and if you have an HF or other less common Ham radio, then with your General or Extra license, you probably already know most of these things If you have a base station or mobile two way radio, it almost certainly does not have an antenna provided with it, and so you can skip the next section but not the other sections. No Update After Rfe Response Uscis on this page. If you have a portable type walkie talkie, then theres a big question you first need to answer. Can Your Radio Accept an External Antenna Okay, so the first consideration is whether or not your radio is even capable of accepting an external antenna. Hopefully, you used our two part article How to Choose the Best Walkie Talkie to help you select your Handheld Transceiver HT and one of the very first things we recommend in that article series is to get an HT that has a removablereplaceable antenna. If your radio has a fixed antenna, then youre dead in the water and you need to start off by getting a better radio. Fortunately, thats not a major investment these days about 4. Baofeng UV 5. R at Amazon and thats more than good enough for most ordinary purposes if you want an appreciably better radio, youd need to almost add another zero to the cost of the UV 5. R series. Measuring and Comparing Antenna GainEfficiency. Antennas can have their efficiency measured, so as to give you an understanding of how good they are. This is often referred to as the antennas gain. This measurement is in decibels, and is either measured in d. Bi or d. Bd units. What is the difference  To convert from d. Bi to d. Bd you subtract 2. Bi rating to get the equivalent d. Bd rating.   For example, an antenna with a rating of 4d. Bi is the same as one with a rating of 1. Bd. In case you wondered, the i means it is a measurement relative to an isotropic antenna, and the d means it is a measurement relative to a dipole antenna, and dipoles have a 2. B gain compared to an isotropic antenna. Sometimes youll see an antenna that is described as having a certain d. B gain, but the specification doesnt indicate if it is in d. Bi units or d. Bd units. If the rating isnt specified, you can safely assume it to be on the least favorable scale, ie, d. Bi. Choosing an External Antenna. There are three main families of external antennas. There are short antennas designed to be used with handheld transceivers, larger mobile antennas suitable for mounting on a vehicle either permanently or temporarily and even larger antennas again for use with a fixed base station at your dwelling or retreat or office. Slightly different issues apply to choosing a fixed antenna for a base station you can consider issues such as directionality of your antenna as well as antenna style and, most of all, antenna location and coax cable run length and those issues are beyond the scope of this article. Certainly, no matter what type of radio you have, you should have the best possible antennas at your main fixed bases, and these are issues we will consider separately. But for this article, we are focused on antennas that radiate more or less evenly in a full 3. Portable Antennas. The standard antenna your radio comes with typically called a rubber ducky is not a very efficient antenna. It was designed to be short and convenient and hopefully moderately sturdy too. But it was not designed for best performance. Fortunately, there are many other after market antennas out there that give massively better performance. As we reported in our article on How to Maximize the Range of your Radio, swapping from the standard antenna to an after market antenna improved the signal strength radiated by a small portable radio about eight fold. Thats a huge improvement in signal strength, for probably a less than 2. If the antennas you are selecting from quote their gain figure, then use that to help you evaluate the best antenna for your portable. Otherwise, a generally rule of thumb can be that the bigger the antenna the better but make sure it is designed for the frequency bands you are wishing to use. And with antennas being such low cost items, theres no harm in buying two or three and then experimenting with them to see which works the best. You could even probably sell the ones you didnt want on e. Bay or Craigslist for close to what you paid for them. Mobile Antennas. Having a separate antenna for a radio being used as a mobile ie in a vehicle rather than handheld provides two major benefits. The first benefit is that an antenna mounted on the outside of your vehicle is better than an antenna inside your vehicle. Not only is it slightly higher up and free from the partial shielding, obstructions, and absorbent materials inside the vehicle, but it may also have a better ground connection using your entire vehicle as part of its overall antenna configuration than is the case for a portable antenna on the radio itself. The second benefit is that it can be larger and therefore more efficient. It is common to note that many mobile antennas are coiled in the middle. There is one downside to such a design the coil seems to act as a wind trapmusical instrument when driving down the road and particularly if your antenna is on your vehicle roof, youll get very much more wind noise inside the vehicle than you would with a different design of antenna. If you find yourself unable to get an alternate style of antenna, then you can modify your coiled antenna either by placing something around the outside of the coil or something on the inside of the coil in both cases, to make it a solid object that doesnt make as much of a whistling noise in the wind. Unfortunately though if you do this, you will increase the antennas wind resistance and may cause it to bend over more when driving down the road at freeway speeds, and the movement from vertical to angled will reduce the antennas functionality. Better to either accept the wind noise or to choose an antenna that doesnt have the center coil in it. The best location for an external antenna is in the center of the vehicles roof. Sometimes this is not practical, but it should be your first choice whenever possible. Dual vs Single Band Antennas.