What's a Tune & Align? - Leave it Stock?

Yes and no some inports are very good some are junk ....

This is one of the better Chineese made ones They don't make CB radios YET .....

http://www.powerwerx.com/wouxun-radios/?gclid=CJixvJLelqUCFSpj7Aod6GDLMw

I don't deal with e-bay but a shop has to have good equpment and many
don't you can't tune a cb with a $20 meter or align a receiver with some cheap gen many will drift out of the receiver bandpass while your tring to use it. Our shop IFR 1200s's cost $12,000 new even a low end test station is several thousand bucks .....

People like Sparky HAVE what it takes to do it right.

 

Many of the even higher end radios come out of the factory not tuned very well.
Sparky checks the alignment to be sure the channels are dead on frequency.
He will not crank up the output wattage beyond what the radio will handle like some shops will.
Some will crank it wide open.Is it loud? Yes, but not clean and clear and sounds like junk.

Sparky knows his stuff.Not like some of these roadside CB hack shops.

 

buzzard , dont waste the extra money on the cobra 29 night watch with weather !
the weather band dosent bring in any thing unless you are right on top of the noa
station. other than that the radio is a good unit. I get my weather info off the trk am,fm ,weather band stock radio, most trks come stock with this set up.

 

I can't speak for $39 radios but the FCC allows +/- about 1.2 khz for the transmit frequency and this is why you hear a squeal when there are many stations on a channel. If someone wantd to get close to dead on that's fine but again you must have a meter that is good enough to be right and many sold for cb are not that good.
Since the bandwidth on AM is about +/- 3Khz you would not hear a change # 1Khz so if the factory is that far off it does not matter and the radio is legal.

ALSO all radios drift with changing temp ..... And so do meter time bases.

 

CB = 27 Mhz
WX = 162 Mhz

Yes you need a antenna cut for both for both to work right. Now the draw back is you will loose something because the antenna trap for weather is lossy ob CB and the CB side is on WX.

Same goes for the antennas HAMS have to use when using mulitband radios ....

 

stay with any antenna that is 5 foot or longer there is a choice of them from firesticks to K-40 to monkeymade and on and on most are good and it becomes a cra# shoot as to which is better .....