RE: Bad Antennas

kas.lewis — Wed, 18 Dec 2013 17:10:38 GMT

Very interesting post. I will probably read it again when I'm not at work so I can read it a bit more carefully and not just do a quick skim.

RE: Bad Antennas

DAB — Fri, 01 Nov 2013 20:05:45 GMT

Great Post.

My dad was big into CB's when they first got popular back in the 1960's,

He started off with the cheap antennas, but soon found that he needed better equipment to do the things he wanted.

He mounted a huge antenna on the house with the full rotation control. He did miss the point about properly matching impedences, but he still was able to do some impressive things with his setup.

As you and I have discussed before, the manufacturers just build to meet a basic spec. Little if any optimization is done, but in their defence, there is no way to plan for everyones basic setup. I have seen some really creative ways to hook the equipment together.

I soon realized that the CB gear was just like the computer gear. Compatibility is in the eye of the user, not the manufacturer.

Plus, people can have a lot of fun with devices that they really do not understand. The really serious ones end up taking a lot of electronics courses and acquiring good test equipment so that they can squeeze better performance from their gear.

DAB