I just went out and purchased my first cb radio and probably went a little overkill on it. Haha. I ended up purchasing a cobra 75, 18' coax cable and 4' udjustable firestick. Because I haven't ever done any of my own electrical work... I am wondering what I should use as my power source for my cb?

 

Once you have the CB installed. Take the black wire and ground it. I tied mine to an exciting ground stud I found. The red or hot wire goes straight to the positive terminal on your battery.

 

my first intuition was to run the cb in parallel with the power outlet. Would it be better to run to the battery directly? I was a little concerned with the cb drawing small amount of current from the battery even when the engine is off. Sorta the way an audio amp does. Like I said, I'm not familiar with auto electronics.

 

If it does, it's not enough to worry about. If your battery is in good shape, you can leave the radio on overnight and it shouldn't kill the battery. I've done it many a time.

 

I have my cobra 29LX hooked up directly to the battery. First cb here too, took a lil playing around with but easy setup and the folks over at cobra will help out a lot with any questions!

 

I guess I shouldve said, an audio amp connected directly to the battery. Without some sort of switch, I figure there is always a current draw of some sort... I always blow things out of proportion, but only for the fact that I wanna be sure I get things correct the first time. Haha

 

I actually have a set-up much like what you described. My PA wasn't loud enough for me. So I added a cheap amp that I found on Ebay. I Tapped into the switched acc. and ran a wire into the cab. Which worked out good for me, I later used it to run my LED flood and LED rock lights. All on a 5 amp fuse.

Before I caulked the hole I drilled for the wire.

 

Bought the same setup Mango, though with the 3' Firestick Antenna. My goal was to make the install as clean as humanly possible, wiring it directly to the battery, and the install turned out better than I expected!

I'm real happy with the setup, though the connector for my CB hangs underneath the glove box but barely - so I bought a 3' extension cable (cobra branded) and routed that over to the drivers side, behind the console. Works like a charm now!

Hope your setup is working well.

 

FWIW, I'd suggest running a dedicated circuit directly from the battery, and fusing both the positive and negative conductors. Then, run a "ground strap" (see: w w w.abrind.com/Products/Browse/4/0/0) from the radio chassis to the vehicle chassis (some major metal frame component). The CB's are more susceptible to engine noise than VHF / UHF radios. The ground strap may help with this. Make sure your antenna connection (the point where the outer coax braid is connected to ground) is also well grounded to the vehicle chassis (you may want to use another ground strap to do this).

 

I mounted mine inside my center console and used the power outlet feed right there to wire in my power and ground. Turned out great, and I have no feedback from using this outlet. It is constant power so you will want to remember to cut it off. I have left mine on a couple of times and the battery was just fine.