what does it all mean?

Actually, the most useful terms you will use and need.

Off and ON.

The other stuff can all be found in your owners manual, when you purchase a CB.

 

AM: Amplitude Modulation... this is the transmission type a true CB uses.

SSB: Single Sideband... A special transmission type where no "carrier" wave is transmitted allowing all power to go into the actual transmission.. There are both upper and lower sidebands. meaning the transmission is on the upper or lower side of the base freq.

10 meter: length of the base frequency wave. 10 meter band is a range of frequencies all centered around 10 meters.

Swing: Power level above the base power of your carrier wave. The more "swing" the the better your transmission will sound. Example: My setup typically deadkeys at 120watts but swings to almost 200. You can see this on your receive meter sometimes. When listening to someone you can watch the needle swing at each word. When someone has a real modulation problem you might see the needle swing but stay nearly stationary for the entire transmission and they will sound faint.

Deadkey: Keying the mic but not talking. It transmits the base carrier wave and nothing else.

Modulation: See "swing" above

Skip: Transmission skip off the atmosphere. If you have a good setup you can get very long range transmissions. I typically hear CB shops in Alabama, Upstate NY, and Texas on my routes when I get away from high radio traffic routes in the midwest. Frequency generally effects exactly where a "skip" lands.

RF: Radio Frequency. Usually used when refering to power or interference.

TX: Transmit

Finals: Transmit amplifier final drive transisters

 

Radios on sideband are often said to have advantages over an AM carrier, On SSB there is no carrier so that enables the radio to decrease in its power level yet carry the basically the same amount of signal with the SSB channel you are on. Also when you are on SSB the bandwidth or (amount of channel space) is narrower, it allows thru less channel noise and interference.

 

SSB is useless to the average CBer. The average CBer only needs a CB for road reports, occasional chatting, and maybe reporting in with a customer's guardshack.

The only time I've ever used SSB was running across Texas around 94' A friend and I had the same destination and we were running too far apart for good comms on AM.

 

To add to the 10 meter question....10 meters is a HAM band, 11 meters is a CB band. Those 10 meter ametuer radio you see for sale like Connex and Magnum...are actually CB radios not set up on the CB bands...you can get them set up on the CB bands but you also have other bands that still put you on 10 meters....which unless you have an ametuer license are not supposed to use or be on.

Hi Dave...

SSB is good for when skip rolls in, and you want to see how many contacts you can make several states away. This is done mainly by CB hobbyists as a way of having fun. "Making contacts" using a SSB radio is said to be sort of like the little brother to the HAM radio.

The one drawback about SSB is finding the proper frequency the other party is on. Until you do, they're going to sound like a slowed down voice or a sped up one or Donald Duck or so forth.

However as pointed out, SSB can also be good for when you and your other party are 20 miles apart and just need something to cut thru all the crap. But if the other party DOES NOT have a SSB and you do, then you cannot communicate with them. In other words, if you're on SSB, they also have to be.

But for a truck driver, unless you also use your CB radio as a hobby....sitting at a truck stop during skip conditions and seeing if you can talk several states away, then having SSB on a your radio is useless. Because when you buy a radio, the main thing you should ask yourself is "what options will I use the most?"

When you purchase an AM only radio, then you only have one band to work with: AM. That's the legal way of doing it. SSB is just another mode of AM, and as mentioned it removes one sideband (when in use) and focuses all of it's power on the other, which in turn makes it a much more efficient radio.

However when you buy a SSB radio, you still have the option of using AM if you want to. I personally have a Cobra SSB radio: I can leave it on 19 AM to talk to all the truckers, and then when I hear skip rolling in, I can flip it to 38 AM, then seclect "LSB" (lower side band) which then puts me on 38 LSB....then I can hollar out my call numbers and usually get people back from North Carolina, Florida, etc.

Either will be a good radio. The 959 has all the bells and whistles, like talkback (useless on a radio w/o echo like a 959), RF power (good for driving a linear amp), tone (adjust output speaker's sound), roger beep (makes a beep when you let unkey the mic...good for annoying the crap out of other drivers) along with the other usual things like mic gain, rf gain, etc.

The Cobra 29 LTD is your basic AM radio with not as many features, but has stood the test of time since being introduced back in the 1970's. If you do get a 29 LTD, look for a side mic one as they're said to be better built. The new front mic ones are known to crap out. And don't get a nightwatch one either because once the back lighting LED burns out (which it will), replacing the parts needed to fix it cost about as much as the radio itself.

Also FWIW the side mic models were made in Taiwan or the Phillipenes, where as the crappy front mic ones are all made in China.


Hope this helps.