trials and tribulations of cb radio

I dont know how i found about cb radios nor why i wanted one, i just did. Well i went out to good ol walmart and got the cheapest one they had a 35$ cobra 19 III and the only antenna they sell. One of them 10$ cheapo magnet ones.

then i went i came home i went to hook it up. boy was that a mistake. i knew nothing about how to hook it up. i finally went to radio shack and purchased a cigarette plug thingy that would power the radio. when i asked the guy there he had no clue what it was or if they sold it(go figure).

I ran the coax through the open window and hooked up the power to the cigarette outlet.

When i was searching for truckers cb lingo i found the truckers report and found that in their forum they had a sub category based on cb/ham radios. learned alot about the trucker lingo and about antennas. even learned that you needed to tune your antenna to get the lowest standing wave ratio comming back into the radio.

when i went to tune my antenna i could never get it low enough to where i could transmit without frying my radio so i went and bought a lil wilson(magnet mount whip antenna).

boy did that do the trick. with a little bit of trimming of the whip part of the antenna i got it to transmit without ruining the radio.

its been almost 3 years since ive had the walmart antenna and going on 2 for the wilson antenna. gave the walmart antenna to my friend after i got the wilson and when he was on the freeway one day the magnet antenna from walmart came off(very weak magnet).

I dont have the biggest, loudest or mega watt radio like the cb rambos have but mine has enough range on it to talk to people around me and hear the bear reports.