In the near future, I'm going to be getting my ham license. For now I wish to purchase a radio that will monitor cb/Gmrs and eventually ham. I believe Baofeng portables will with an external antenna. Again for now looking to monitor not talk (unless and emergency) on CB/GMRS and really don't want to buy two radios (CB and then Ham). Can it be done

And lastly is their an all around antenna that I could use on my vehicle as opposed to having to mount two more antenna on the jeep


Cheers
Al

 

You will need two antennas to use for CB and ham. I don't think that there is a radio that you can use for CB & ham. CB is AM & most ham bands that are popular with mobile users use FM. I may be wrong about that but I'm pretty sure you'll need two transceivers and 2 antennas.

Sent from my manual typewriter

 

In the U. S. CB radios operate in the high frequency (HF) range and Tech license HAM operators will most likely be operating in the 2 meter very high frequency (VHF) range. The two bands are not compatible and will require separate radios (transceivers) and antennas. I don't know if that is true in Canada, but I think there would be similar regulations.

 

Two antennas and two transceivers. I have a CB and a 2m/70cm HAM in my JK right now. It took some creative thinking and a while to find a way to fit both of those. Note with a HAM you will most likely need an external speaker mounted somewhere.

 

Get a Yaesu 857D and do the Mars cap mod. You then can program the CB frequencies into it as well as the gmrs frequencies. Use a Yaesu Atas 120 antenna which covers 40 meters thru 70cm which auto tunes off of the 857 radio. You then will have 1 radio and 1 antenna to cover all. That's my setup. Plus you can mount the radio base in the rear and have the head unit up front. I have the baofeng and woxoun as well a Yaesu ft 817, 857, and a 897 All 3 of the Yaesus can cover the the hf-uhf frequencies. The 817 is a 5 watt backpack unit, the 857 is a mobile 100 watt and the 897 is a mobile/base battery powered 100w unit. You ft what you pay for, go for the Yaesu, eBay 500-700 for the radio. 200-350 for the antenna plus another 75 for the Diamond MX 62 duplexer to combine it all for the 1 antenna to cover it

 

Not that I would recommend it but there are several Ham radios that can be modified to work on 11 meters (CB). You would still need two (2) antennae.