What's The "Average" Effective Range?

Improper install + junk equiptment = Poor Performance

 

The range depends on your antenna, if skip is rolling, what type of terrain you're in, how low (or high) your SWR is, if the person you're trying to talk to is on a base or a mobile and how good their antenna is, how good their receive is, how good your transmit power is...

Lately I turn on my base station and there's a bunch of mumbling, it's skip though.

As a rule, line of sight is your best effective range, on a barefoot (no amp) Cobra and a 102 whip I've talked 10-14 miles locally and during skip I've talked to several states away.

I've also talked 9-10 miles on a Cobra 21 barefoot (no amp) and a Wilson 1000 mag mount antenna, once to another truck driver on the interstate, and another to a base station operator in the next town over.

With this same set up there's another base station operator in the other town from me which is 20 miles and him and I were communicating very loud and clear. He had a beam antenna for his base station.

 

5 miles over the road is almost always possible. 10 miles starts getting noisy. Most of it depends on the antenna assuming the radio is a normal stock radio.

There was an interesting study done a long time ago which I can't quote right now, so believe it or don't, your choice, which showed that the maximum range without skip on the CB band is about 40 miles, and the range increases to that figure with increasing power, but that the 40 miles 'limit' corresponded to about 500 watts, and beyond that, throwing more power at the problem did not increase the range. There was a chart for this too. It showed that doubling the power did not double the distance, but rather the power had to be 7-10X to double the distance. It was not a linear 'curve'.

Nothing is etched in stone, there are always exceptions for the better and the worse.

 

M818, Is the the chart you are refering to? It is posted on http://www.cbradiomagazine.com/ I have found it to pretty darn close.

 

I concur with this. The time I chatted from my mobile to a base station 10 miles out I experienced this. I had a Wilson 1000 antenna and a Cobra 21 (older brother to the famous Cobra 25).

However I have been able to communicate 9-10 miles ok when I was running a 102 whip and a Cobra 148GTL, and that was on 19 AM, not on sideband.

If you find this I'd like to see it.

 

Curvature of the earth tends to be a problem. Take a look at most radio stations, they are running 10,000s of watts from antennas way up in the sky. How far can they reach out??? Around here I start to loose my favorite station at around 60 miles or so.

 

Thats about right at 40 miles...If I'm running 500w's in my truck, usually I have no problem on quiet channels talking 20-25 miles to another station of equal power...On some days 30 miles is not out of the question...

Now if I'm running my 16 pill Amp, which will swing around 3200w's, you would think locally I could talk 50 or 60 miles easy! But thats not necessarily the case. Usually all I can do is 30 to maybe 40 miles...On occasion I sometimes can pick up a Base Station 60 miles off or better, but it has to be real quiet at the time with a low noise level...

About the only advantage of running watts like "3200" is locally your allot louder...It doesn't necessarily mean you can talk that much farther than someone running just a couple hundred watts...

Now when DX is rolling..."All Bets are off!"

If your CB is only getting out a mile or two...There is something seriously wrong with your set-up...and I would bet most of the problem is "Antenna" related...

 

Since I use 2 meters which is LINE OF SIGHT I agree 40-60 miles is about the limit then mother earth calls the shots .....

 

Yes it is. I'd take that over what my memory told me to write. Thanks for finding it!