CB's and vehicle Wiring

There is too much info that needs to be addressed regarding the 'proper" way to install mobile/portable CB and ham gear. We cannot afford to let this info get buried as there is too much at stake.

First and foremost: Pay attention to detail when dealing with vehicle wiring. The words of wisdom I have seen here regarding the use of heavy gauge wire, fuses, etc, cannot be over emphasized. The fastest (and most
spectacular) way to find out how much current your battery can deliver when inadvertently shorted due to poor/bad wiring is a whole topic within itself. Fuses, fuses, fuses....and MORE fuses! Protect your vehicle, especially if
you are depending upon it to safely deliver you and your family/survival group to your bug-out location after "the balloon goes up!"

Second of all: YOU DO NOT NEED any kind of special mount for your CB set! The days of the large CB rig that sits under the dash board are O-V-E-R, over!!

Hy-Gain, Midland, and others make nice little 5W hand-held CB transceivers (HTs) complete with a compromise "rubber duck" antenna (an electrically shortened antenna of dubious effectiveness) for under $100!!

My solution (and this is taking into consideration that I started in CB in 1959 and became a Ham in 1963, have
taught VoEd Electronics for 17 years, written six books on electronics and have blown up all sorts of "stuff") is to use one of the small HTs coupled to a 13.8V DC cigar lighter plug (for DC power) and a mag-mount antenna on
the roof, rear deck, or front fender of the vehicle. This means no holes to drill in the vehicle's body, no wires to run/hide in the interior of the vehicle and a much more expedient solution to the problem.

Today's CB HT will give you a full "legal" output of 4W (which is also enough to drive a nice little, ILLEGAL, 10dB Linear Amp for a 40W output, should you desire), in a very small and manageable package. The cigar lighter will
supply the necessary DC voltages to the HT so you won't deplete the on-board battery pack inside the HT. Most of these portable HT CB sets use rechargeable (NiCad, Lithium Ion, or NiMH) battery packs which can be
recharged while using the external 13.8VDC power cabling. The HT can be quickly removed from the vehicle and stuffed into a cargo pocket and ditto with the antenna. You can now "bug-out" with the necessary radio gear on
your body to keep you informed of what is out there going "bump in the night".

Also, most of the current generation of CB HTs will offer NOAA S.A.M.E receive-only weather (WX) channels, so you can keep track of changing WX patterns while on the move, eiher in the vehicle or on foot/bicycle/horseback, etc. The instruction sets that come with these newer CB HTs also go into great detail regarding the NOAA S.A.M.E. transmissions, and how they relate directly to your locale. Ditto for FRS/GMRS walkie-talkies that operate in the UHF portion of the radio spectrum. Also, the FRS/GMRS HTs run frequency modulation (FM) in stead of amplitude modulation (AM) on the CB radio sets. If I had the option, I would pack BOTH a CB HT and a FRS/GMRS HT with NOAA WX/S.A.M.E. capabilities. This sounds like a whole bunch of "extra" gear, but in reality it is not. Not when you factor in the ability to keep abreast of weather news as well as bug-out plans, or lack
there of.

The CB HTs all feature optional speaker/mics, which allow you to position the radio and flex antenna (I'd ditch the rubber duck and get some kind of flexi-whip to improve overall performance...the rubber ducks are infamous attenuators of both receive and transmit signals, although they can prove to be a useful tool in RDF (radio direction finding) by using the rubber duck antenna and your body as physical indicators of which direction the signals are coming in from).

Today's CB HTs also have built in (as in LCD readout) S-meters, which are useful in determining the RELATIVE Signal Level (RSL) of the other station. Since CB is still within the upper limits of the High Frequency (HF) range, accurate signal direction finding is a little more difficult to perform owing to the fact that the incoming HF signals tend to change polarity (vertical and horizontal polarization) as they refract off of layers of the ionosphere. This is a whole other topic for discussion, and can/will include Adcock antennas, time domain reflectometry, phase distortion and a whole lot more "STUFF" to understand and deal with.

Oh, one other thing regarding fuses and automobile electronics: Commercial two-way radio shops (Motorola, GE, Maxxon, etc) all require their technicians to wire and fuse the main power cables for their radio installations DIRECTLY to the positive/negative leads of the vehicle battery. Why would ANYONE put a fuse in the negative (ground) lead of a power supply?? Weird, huh?

Well, the scenario goes something like this: If you do not have your gear wired directly to the DC bus line of the vehicle (incorporating the proper fuses, of course), there exists a chance, although remote, that under extreme duress, the negative power cable lead that goes from the negative side of the vehicle battery to the frame of the vehicle could fail physically (like a broken wire) thereby shunting the entire current load of the vehicle directly through your radio gear!! This, to say the least, is not a good thing to have happen. The in-line fuse in the negative power lead would keep your gear safe should the need arrive.

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