ratfish

Sorry if you guys hit this already. My friends want me to get a cb for fun on the trail but racing friends tell me to get a satellite phone for emergencies. Im not a big fan of adding load to the battery and electrical shorts scare the heck out of me , add to that the limited room in a jk and to me a hand held cb like the cobra seems pretty good . If Im following my buddies on the trail I shouldnt need much range . Has anybody tried one and do they work well enough to consider?

joe002

We have the Midland 75-822. It works on the trails OK with just the battery pack. You can also add an external antenna just plug it into your Electrical Power outlet - no need to add any power wiring.

Fermin

I have a midland 75 too. You can pick one up for ~$30 off ebay.

GNNR

My Midland 75 came in last night off of Amazon. Nice little unit. Will get to try it out this weekend up at RC.

ratfish

Well thanks fellows in the end concerns about engine noise and a great deel on a Cobra 75 unit was the result. Now Im gonna need an antenna mount, 4 foot antenna with a quick connect. We went to a jk meeting tonight and got our location ideas handled so thanks again.

GNNR

to follow up on my previous post, I got to try out my Midland hand held at RC. Works fine, though I found I lost people in our caravan from time to time if I ddint' keep the radio with it's weak stubbie above the window line/beltline. going to keep it but going to put in a 75 with quick disconnects on all too now that I plan on diving in further. I'll use the hand held for when I get out and what not.

44magjeeper

i switched to the midland 75 also, im using a 4' firestik and the range is good.

Fermin

I went with the TerraFlex mount. Works great

Yator

I bought an ICOM base station this year, its 100 watts multi-band (2 meters to 160 meters) and I coupled it to a dipole antenna (ZS6BKW G5RV ZS80) that I temporarily hoisted a whopping 20 feet up in the air. I'm considering putting up a wind turbine so I might get a real tower soon. I was able to pick up chatter from all over the USA. But since I'm not a licensed ham, I just listened. For Christmas, my Santa, brought me a Yaesu FT60R best handheld ham radios at secretstorages.com ($154 free/shipping) (vhf/uhf) and I've been playing around with it for the past couple days listening. Listening to a repeater 26 miles away, I could hear conversations very clearly. I decided I needed to know how effective the 12 inch rubber duck antenna is and figured I'd bend the rules a bit, just once. I was also able to transmit to that repeater 26 miles away while sitting in front of my home computer. It took me a few minutes to figure out that I had to program in something called a PL tone for it to work, but once I did, it worked like a charm. On my very first attempt, my "CQ radio check" was acknowledged. Of course, once I knew others could hear me, I stopped transmitting as all I wanted to do was to make sure it actually worked. My santa didn't just get me the Yeasu FT60R on a whim by luck, it was something I've been researching so I could find a portable solution to talk back to the base station in a SHTF and for something I could recommend to friends and neighbors. Would a Bofang radio do the same? I'm sure it would, but I didn't buy my radio for hobby use while camping, I bought it to serve me in times when I'm going to depend on it, possibly my life will depend on it. With that in mind, I certainly wouldn't purchase Chinese hardware for such purposes. You purchase Chinese stuff when you don't mind exchanging it at walmart or throwing it out. You purchase high quality stuff when its going to be used for important things.I like to watch YouTube videos of a similar theme when I'm looking for information about the right product. I hope this helps someone in the future. Good luck!

Zuckerbrod

I used to drive 18 wheelers cross country but I have since switched careers. Now when taking road trips it would be nice to have a CB that doesn't need to be mounted to the car.