Antenna tuning ?

Using which type of vehicles?
Who was at the receiving end and what type of vehicle were they driving and where was their antenna mounted, and which direction were they facing?
What types of antennas have you used over those years and how were they attached to the vehicle, and what type of vehicles were they?
Who tuned your radio and who tuned the receiving radio?
I'm sure I pointed out some variables that may have been overlooked in those 25 years.

 

Especially if the radio plugged into the amplifier is a splatterbox things only get worse when they get Amplified.
Fortunately I haven't had those issues
Since I stopped getting radios hacked up.

 

Vehicles range from pickup trucks to Crown Victoria’s to Caprice Classics, Ford F100, various makes of tractor trailers and base stations. Antenna mounts ranged from trunk lip mount, bumper mount, bed mount, roof magnets, fiberglass 102 Shakespeare’s, 102 steel whips, Wilson 1000 and 5000, Predator 10k, monkey made, a Merlin made coil (maybe), Everhardt Tiger, Browning, Tram, Skipshooter, Francis, K40. There are probably 100 mobile antennas at my disposal at my dad’s house.

Basestations range from Maco 5 element, Gizmotchy, Big Gun, Moonraker, and Antron and Imax. Heights from 30’-180’. Radios cover the entire spectrum, Cobra, Uniden, Ranger brands, even radios you have never seen or knew existed and the tech’s were various ones. Power supplied by Pride, Gray, Texas Star, Silver Eagle, Fatboy, Switchblade, Maco Tube, Heathkit and a few others.

I have talked to four other people today that run mobiles and they all agree, five to ten miles is doing really good mobile to mobile in Mississippi considering the terrain. My tech said today even in the 70s when there wasn’t near the interference you would be lucky to talk 20 miles on a clear night mobile to mobile.

I can’t stress enough there isn’t something we are overlooking here when it comes to mobiles or base stations for that matter. My amp builder has 9 250 amp alternators under his hood, he showed me how to set up vehicles to talk well through grounding and bonding. My tech tunes his radios and when my builder is locking down channel 6, his station is clear as a bell.

We have all the test equipment at our disposal. If you need a 32 pill built, we got you covered. If you need any radio fixed, besides one struck by lightning, we got you covered. Multiple alternator setups? Motor mauls? Big power supplies? Tube amps the size of refrigerators? You can find it all down here. You just won’t find any barefoot mobile talking 30 miles or more to each other. Here is my amp builder talking on a radio my tech tunes at his base on channel 6 from Mississippi to Idaho.

 

Yeah no contest loblolly pine trees vs open desert. Desert's gonna win regardless of humidity

 

Not true if you know how to ground. Plenty of folks run amps with radios that’s have the limiter cut, swing kits etc and don’t interfere with their trucks electronics one single bit. A lot depends on the tune of the amp and how clean it was built (class C), very little reflect coming back from the antenna down the coax.

 

Who's the technician?

 

The most I was able to hear somebody in the desert was probably about 30 miles and the guy was running a stock Cobra 29 in a Volvo truck with Factory antennas when I was rolling eastbound through Mojave California he was about 30 miles east from my mile marker with a stock Cobra 29 in a Volvo truck with Factory antennas.
That 45 mile Cobra 29 video was done in the mountains of Pennsylvania and it's always nice and wet with lots of trees out here. I always get better results in Pennsylvania than I did out in the desert near Barstow California.
The flatlands of Illinois and Indiana are where I had the most amount of fun.
Nice and flat ground and nice and wet ground.

 

In the case of the YouTube video, and since 2007,that my former boss who got into fixing cb’s a long time ago. He lives about seven miles from me and fixes them at his house for next to nothing. I’ve never seen someone so patient and with an attention to detail, and he is persistent with any radio until he fixes it.

I could bring him a radio for a tune, soldering issue, parts installs, and he never wants to charge me. I pay him anyway. He converted his garage into a radio room with a repair desk years ago. It’s a shame guys like him are getting fewer and far between, and he is 63.

 

Without comparing his tune to someone else's tune, it would be difficult to say that 10 miles is a maximum range.
Not all tunes are the same, in fact most techs can't replicate their own work consistently on different radios.