CB in cars...

[earthbrown]

Want to put a CB in car for road trips, have my origional cheap midland, that should work nicely in the car, but looking for antenna options that work well, yet
does not look awful....

what are my options, I want to keep functionality yet not have a 5foot whip on the car.

I also donot want to use a magnetic mount, as I dont want to mess up the paint on the car.


K

[pro1driver]

Originally Posted by earthbrown

Want to put a CB in car for road trips, have my origional cheap midland, that should work nicely in the car, but looking for antenna options that work well, yet
does not look awful....

what are my options, I want to keep functionality yet not have a 5foot whip on the car.

I also donot want to use a magnetic mount, as I dont want to mess up the paint on the car.


K

then your options are slim to none...............

most magnetic mounts have some sort of pad to protect the paint, and you can remove the antenna for security.

i would never recommend any of those glass mount cell phone looking antenna's either as they stink, simple.............

i would not recommend the 102" tall whip either as you would need to drill a hole in the body or bumper..............

you can always get a "roof mount" cb antenna, but then you will need to drill a hole in the (what else) roof.

you can buy a mirror bracket adaptor, and find a way to drill/mount it in the inner lip of the front fender where the hood sits on that fender and then mount an antenna there, or at the trunk rear quarter fender lip............


personally..................i'd go magnetic mount and be done with it.............simplistic solution.................

[Redneck]

You can buy trunk mount antenna's also..But it will scar the paint right were it fits over the lip of the truck lid.

Magnetic mount is the best to not scar your paint, if it worries you then add another layer of plastic to the bottom of the mount, plastic bag, sandwich baggy any will work.
One thing though when and if you go with the magenent make sure the mag is big enough to hold the antenna so the wind does not take it off your car.

[Boilermaker]

Put a piece of thin felt between the magnet and paint. Problem solved.

[Rawlco]

You could get a handheld unit. Plugs into your cigarette lighter or uses AA batteries, and it has a short built in antenna. You won't have the range of a big radio, but it will work line of sight.

[Ronnocomot]

After being stuck in a traffic jam on I-80 in Wyoming for 4 hours last week (a cattlehauler had tipped over and there were cows all over the road) I thought it would have been nice to have a CB in my SUV. Luckily a trucker parked next to me needed to stretch his legs and walked around to all the cars and explained what was up.

I saw some handheld units on EBay, but don't know enough about them to know good from bad. Are they any good?

Any advice for a handheld model, or regular model for that matter, would be appreciated. Just looking for something extremely basic.

Thanks in advance.

[Rawlco]

First thing to consider: If you want to use the AA batteries and talk on the go - FORGET IT. I use these this way for one or two days per year where I need short range communication BUT even a set of Duracell coppertop batteries doesn't last long. Perhaps 4-5 hours of good use. At 8 to 10 batteries each you will go broke.

Second thing to consider: NiCad rechargeables may save you some money, but they don't work very well. See most AA batteries are 1.5 volts, but the Nicads are 1.2 volts each. With these rechargeable batteries the transmit range is less than 1/4 mile, barring hills.

SO the lesson here is to get the handhelds with a car power cord that will plug into a cigarette lighter. For household use you can get a 12 volt power brick that will do nicely. The universal ones from Walmart work fine.

----------------------------------
I own two different models of handheld CB radios.
The first one is Cobra HH-36. This includes the "soundtracker" special deal that some people don't like. There is also an off switch for the "soundtracker" feature. I have had good luck with this radio. As a bonus you can get an adapter on Ebay so that you can plug in a standard CB antenna. It takes 10 AA batteries.

The other is and old GE 40 chanel handheld. It was cheap, it works. It only takes 8 AA batteries. It is slightly smaller and lighter than the Cobra.

[Redneck]

Originally Posted by Ronnocomot

After being stuck in a traffic jam on I-80 in Wyoming for 4 hours last week (a cattlehauler had tipped over and there were cows all over the road) I thought it would have been nice to have a CB in my SUV. Luckily a trucker parked next to me needed to stretch his legs and walked around to all the cars and explained what was up.

I saw some handheld units on EBay, but don't know enough about them to know good from bad. Are they any good?

Any advice for a handheld model, or regular model for that matter, would be appreciated. Just looking for something extremely basic.

Thanks in advance.

The hand held radio's cost almost the same price as a small CB radio, and a magnetic antenna. If you place something under the magnet it won't scratch your paint. The magnet's come with a piece of plastic already on them. But for added protection, you can add to it it will not hurt anything.

With the hand held radio, you will only here a mile or so maybe not that far, and talk even less. I know the ads say 5 miles......maybe if you were on top of a MTN, and it was 5 miles to the bottom and there was a base station located at the bottom...

You can buy a cheap CB new...Uniden Pro 510 XL


Comes with mounting hardware...sometimes with a antenna....but you can buy a antenna cheap magnet mount...
You will but much more satisfied with something like this, than a handheld radio...BTW this does not take battery's....you can fix a cig plug in for these.

[Ronnocomot]

Thanks for the info.

[earthbrown]

I have a midland that is similar.

I think I am gonna take an extra mirror I have for the car, and come up with some kind of custom mount that will allow me to unscrew the whip when not in use.


K