About 3-4 weeks ago I picked up some chat that sounded Italian. It was on Ch 19 CB about 2pm on Thursday I think? Anyhow, with the gradual increase of popularity of PMR 8 @ 8, perhaps in the not too distant future we might start hearing more traffic on CB again.
I've got one of these radios on order now to feature in a video on my channel soon, looks like you picked a good day for taking it out on the hill and it does seem to work well, there's been skip running for the last few days on and off, I have noticed this as I have another Thunderpole radio, the T-3000, in my car with a Sirio Hi-Power 4000 on the roof, and I tend to monitor CB and local 2-meter repeaters daily when I'm at work, so not surprising you heard the Italian stations but, as you quite rightly said, they're more than likely running a bit of power too, from one Paul to another, 73 and keep up the good work
Makes me wish I still had my Uniden HR-2510. Used to love working with that set during some nice band openings. FM repeaters on 10m were good fun once I got my amateur license, best contact was Florida USA!
Good sets,here's your options in 2024-President George 2/Washington 2 loads of features including ctcss,repeater shift,12&10m bands ,things have moved on with CB kit.
I was skeptical about low power cb 4 watts and lower and wasted money on amps etc. Dont get me wrong amps work but you will be suprised what you can do with 4 watts. Recently i have made several contacts into Europe on under 4 watts power with a dipole antenna in my loft. In fact, with a T-800 also. Great fun! You just got to keep trying and eventually you will get through. Great video and radio btw, i am a big fan of the T-800. 👍
Those radios R are more frustrating than anything they don't even have enough juice to get over local traffic let alone skip just rolls over em no matter what band U R on. That's why I watched this video to just confirm what commonsense already told me. For FM I recently found on line FB market place an old Tellular FM radio for $50 bucks.... it was some kind of companies radio and it has about 25 channels and got signal with a CB antenna on it although I had to get a jack for the FM antenna port on it. Seems like it will broadcast if I talk.. One day I will get back to screwing around with it. It says it's 55Watt rated and has a huge heat sink on the back of it.. I really wanna see what it can do... Right now I do know if I can use a regular CB antenna with it...
Great vid, long time since I have been on Charlie Bravo, if you were where I think you was them hills have a excellent takeoff, had many of great night up there.
Superb videos. I have the same set up from a recent purchase. On the first test(mobile) I got out to 7-8 miles. I got the radio set up the other day only to find every time I turned it on it would blow the 2amp fuse... Would it be a wise choice to try a 3amp? Any advice greatly appreciated, cheers.
Yeah there was definitely some sort of skip round about then. I went down to Berwick in the car a few days after you posted this vid and was picking up foreign radio stations
hey pal, just to inform you that i'm about 2500km from the UK and i've picked up some signals from there, i think the both i've picked up were some TV signals, one was some drama talking and the other is from animal planet, i was amazed tho, didn't think the uv3r+ and the uv5r would pick up a signal from that far, and that was with the cheap nagoya counterfeit... the drama was on 452.750 the animal planet was on 145.750 oh and btw the squelch was on 9 :D
benz merc the uc3r+ and the uv5r are baofeng brand walkie talkies, the nagoya (counterfeits) are antennas for the walkie talkies. those numbers are the radio frequencies :)
Wasn't from the UK we don't use analogue TV and a baofeng can't pick up digital signals. Also, 145 is HAM band and we've never broadcast TV on the frequency.
Haha! Looking about rigging one of these up in the loft and maybe going mobile in the summer. I heard AM/FM could either be dead, good, or you could get loads of swearing and abuse, is it alright out there then?
Yeah, I’d expect that, I’m just studying for my foundation Ham ticket at the mo so looking for something license free to keep me company, might be good, you never know.
The furthest I've communicated on 4 watts 27/81 CB was about 5 years ago. A Rotel 240, homebase with a 22ft aerial on the chimney stack. Burnley, Northwest England to Corsica! Same guy in Corsica talking to someone near London, but I couldn't hear them. Weather conditions must have been perfect. We were both 9 pound radio 5 😀
@@knoxieman I know one thing I just showed my CAT that car you drive and told him I will be looking into buying an economy car like that soon. He looked at me all pissed off and told me he's gonna start looking for another home if I do that. He likes having the back seat of the truck all to himself...
Hi. Thinking of getting the T800 & was hoping you could advise me on a antenna to shove up on my house roof? Ideally I need a 15 meter antenna cable. Is this possible with the t800??? All the best,
I’m looking to get a set up just for fun. North Oxfordshire based. T800 would get me started or would you recommend a different unit, same sort of budget ...
@@knoxieman today was my day seem the whole of Cornwall was on ..good fun even mobile..30 miles round trip people on the handle all the way .better than listening to the radio.
Hello I recently bought a t800 Nd bought a silver rod mounted it way above my roofline and I got the swr very low I am still struggling to make contacts on fm and am is it tod do with the t 800 and should I save up fir a ssb radio cheers
Side band will enable much greater range that's for sure, keep an eye out on the sun spot cycles, CB varies from area to area, my advice if you can is go mobile to high ground, mag mount on the roof, I've had some amazing contacts doing that, it's quiet at my house as well
If one owns a simple primitive tool such as an angle grinder with a metal cutting blade y'all can shit can that 3D printer horse shit. I make everything from brackets 4 my stock car to plumbing pipe brackets even towing hitches for my lawn tractors and I cut body panels in my shop daily for doing auto body.... Buy one and U will discover the fact U won't know how ya ever did without one for so long. They're also really great for slicing off thieves piddies. I am thinkin about hackin up Joe Biden with my 6 inch grinder soon
For some odd reason from what I understand mine doesn't seem to put out the the maximum of 4 watts the lights that turn when the mic is pushed only lights up to about 2 maybe 3 instead of 4. I'm not sure quite why.
If the lights are not going all the way up on transmit that normally indicates low power as you said or a bad swr match on the antenna, get a cheap 50 ohm CB dummy load, screw it in to the antenna socket and key up, if you get all the lights then it's the antenna or cable, there may be an adjustment for the power meter though and it may just be low and needs adjusting, check your swr first if you have a meter. 👍
@@knoxieman ok thanks. I will look into that. It wasnt a real expensive cb anyway we got it kinda cheap from Amazon. But if we end up needing a new antenna or what ever for it I will look into getting something a little bit more worth the money
AM will work over greater distances, FM better audio quality for sure from my experience. Trouble with AM in the UK is lots of traffic from Europe bleeds over the top also AM is more sensitive to local electrical interference making it hard to use in built up areas.
@@knoxieman Thanks for the reply am learning and definitely got a bot of a radio bug. Last time I tried CB it was a disaster as i hadn't a clue what i was doing so sold up after a month. Am hesitant to get the gear and end up with no use for it again.
All antennas must be tuned to the frequency they are being used on. The scale we use for this is measuring what amount of power is being reflected back to the radio, if the ratio is too high the power coming back to the radio will burn out the final output transistors, the scale/meter we use measures the "SWR" or standing wave ratio.
