Maybe it's my youth calling me back or something but since I picked up this Teaberry "Five by Five" 23 channel CB I suddenly got the itch again to play around with 11 meters.
It's been a long time since I played around with antennas at 26MHz but if I remember right vertical polarization is the way to go correct?
I know most CB mobile users use vertical antennas but I would imagine a horizontal dipole would get out farther because of skywave?
Maybe I am thinking about mediumwave radio too much but I know with MW a horizontal antenna is needed if you want to get any sort of signal out there at night via skywave. Verticals are only good down there for local broadcasting. So is the same true for the 11 meter band?
I have a simple 17 foot dipole strung up in my room with a balun and it works great. Around 1.5 for SWR and I didn't even try hard to cut it just precisely. Picking up a lot of stuff on every channel with it horizontally mounted with reception east to west.
When I was on from late 70's to early 90's, in southwest BC anyway, ham radio procedures were observed by the regular crowd (mind you, most of us didn't even have or use AM).
I noticed that dead key on this radio is exactly 3.5 watts. At first I thought it was just my antenna but now I know it's the CB itself. It uses a 2SC799 for the final and looking at the datasheet it indeed is a 3.5 watt transistor.
Well that is kind of a bummer lol. I thought most all CBs ran exactly 4 watts carrier?
I'm not going to complain though because the unit seems to have a lot of positive swing when modulating with very little distortion which I find peculiar given that it was made to do that from factory. I can tell this unit has never been opened and molested by some idiot, put it that way.
Was it common for older 70s CBs to have positive carrier swing and only 3.5 watts carrier? Most CBs I have had that were modern had exactly 4 watts carrier and sadly were cheaply designed having negative carrier swing
I suppose the 102" 1/4 wave antenna I just wired up temporarily with 6 wire radials will more than make up for it's weaknesses since most people are just using tiny whip antennas compared to what I am running
Alas, my lattitude really sucks for high HF comms at this sunspot cycle and my QTH kinda makes NVIS the only way out of the big rocks sticking several thousand feet up out of the ground around me
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