Hi All

[tiger29]

Hi guys

Im Andy and am new to cbing, I live in telford in sunny shropshire just bought a midland alan 78 cb and a 1.5 meter aerial from a car booty
really know very little about cb's but gonna give it a go! any cb'ers in my area? not sure what sort of a range im gonna get any help would be appreciated lol!

can any body help with how to contact people i believe its channel 19 on uk is that correct?

also my tx signal meter is very low on channels 1-18 19-30 is about half strength and 31-40 its full does this mean my aerial is incorrect?

as I havent spoke to anybody on it yet im not sure if it is working lol

would be great for any help possible

thanks

Andy

[MadDog]

Welcome to the forum. Nice to see another person taking an interest in the CB's

Will try and answer some of your questions. The 19 channel is historically used for a calling channel, and once you have made contact with someone it is the norm to move to another channel to keep 19 clear. You may find however that alot of people stick on 19 and hog the channel chatting, so sometimes it's worth just scanning through the range of channels seeing if you can find a chat that you might be able to jump into the side of. If you find a chat that you want to join in on, just wait for a sutiable break in the chat and then politely ask if you can join in.

As for info on getting the best out of your aerial I would definatly suggest getting an SWR meter and linking that into your rig to make sure you are getting the best performance out of the aerial possible. You basically plug the aerial into the SWR meter and then another patch lead out of the meter and into the CB. I've included a couple of videos from Youtube which give you some more info on setting up and using the SWR Meter. Once you have set up the aerial, take the meter out of the loop of else you could lose some power from the trasmittion.

Part 1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLJj3QGW ... re=related
Part 2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bl0vnjiI ... re=related

Cant help you with finding people in your area. I'm from Nuneaton so very very much doubt you would get enough range to get me. The best advice I can give would be to get some height. The heigher you are the better your transmit range is going to be. Thunderpole has a map showing CB users who have registered on the map, which you can find here http://www.thunderpole.co.uk/user-map.html hope some of this info is of help to you.

Catch you later good buddy.

[tiger29]

hi madDog

thanks for the reply the info has been of great help and interest for me! I have been on this evening and can hear people chatting so it must be receiving ok the radio is new I bought it from maplins and the aerial
is second hand I tried chatting but no reply either they couldnt hear me of its a clicky group! I will invest in a swr meter the vids are helpfull cheers! since my earlier post I have seen the word ground plane used alot I have a 7" magmount which i plan to use in the loft will I need to put it on a metal base? will it make a difference?

I searched the cept channels this evening and it sounded like spanish talking? surely my aerial wouldnt pick up spain?

thanks again for your help madDog

all the best

Andy

[MadDog]

Glad to hear you can hear some people. The info I'm going to give you now is correct to the best of my knowledge. If anyone spots any mistakes please correct me. The metal base used with a mag mount helps ground the aerial helping to reduce the swr signal down producing a more clear signal.

Ok now onto your Spanish encounter. What you are experiencing here is commonly know as skip. Due to certain atmospheric conditions radio signals can skip over large distances and be piked up. I think it's more common in summer due to the suns solar radiation. Under these conditions it is sometimes possible to reply to a received signal, as long as they understand English or you understand Spanish. The breakers you heard talking could be clicky as you said, or just outside ur transmition range. Use of burners their end would boost their signal to you, but ur not powerfull enough to reply. I would stongly advise against using a burner though, boosting your signal normally just causes interference to other people and will annoy any other cb users in your area.

Whats ur handle? I'll have to pm message you, swap ideas etc.

[tiger29]

thanks madog

when i moved into my house there was a footplate left in the garage about 5foot x5 so i might try that as my ground plane if the missus will let me lol!
i had a look on they sell the swr meter for under a tenner so will invest in one of those!

that sounds very interesting I might see if I can reply to the foreigners next time i hear them! I listen to hf radio( aircraft across the atlantic)
I assume its very similar to the atmospheric conditions that affect the receiving range on that!

yes no problem at all with pm , I am using glider258 as my handle as it was I glider I use to have a share in a few years ago!

yeh not gonna go down the road of burners as I dont wanna get a bad name for myself epecially as I am new to cbing

thanks again for help

Andy

[MadDog]

No problems with the help. Nice to feel I'm being of some use to people on here. Think I'll have to hit the car boot sales to see what's on offer. Chances are if you got ur aerial from a car boot the amount of movement it will have received will have knocked it's calibration out. Definatly suggest using the SWR meter on it. Thinking about checking out some of the radio rallies this year, see what kit is around etc, just need to find which ones are around here. Do you know of any in ur neck of the woods? On that note it's a big 10-4 from me good buddy and I'll catch you on the flip side. Out.

[stampman]

hi and welcome andy

[andy@thunderpole.co.uk]

Hi and welcome to the forum

Andy

[star raider 610]

hi andy, new to this site but not cb, used be on a lot in the eighties, then late ninties, then its been a while, but now im doing some space exploration from south shropshire and had amazing night last nt 19/7/13, but seen your message , and was wondering if we can chat on cb to night 20/7, but i also wanted to chat to different people, and ive got to say a big hello to all on this site, await any replies, kind regards to all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[porky.69]