Base Station CB Radio Antenna

This weekend was the first day of decent weather in my area after several days of storms and a lot of rainfall which was proceeded by months of relatively severe winter conditions including high winds and a number of snow storms across the Country so this was the first opportunity to take a look at my Home base CB Radio Antenna which has taken a bit of a beating this Winter.

The worst of it was that during these windy conditions the Coax cable which connects to the base of the antenna had worked itself loose so I have been without any access to the airwaves for several weeks before I took this opportunity to fix it.

At home, I use a venom half wave /Silver Rod which is one of the cheapest homebase antennas available and sadly the issue with them slipping is a bit of a known issue amongst CBers which has to do with the quality of the jubilee clips that it comes with.  The job of the jubilliee clips is to grip each section of the antenna around the next section of aerial to clamp it into position.  This is invariably where they fail.
Because of the excessive winds part of my antenna had slipped inside of itself and needed some attention to get it SWRed in properly again.  This was easily achieved by adjusting the length of each section of antenna to make sure it was exactly the right length to work most efficiently.

I have had the aerial at roof height for over two years though and in that time it has had to deal with a lot of bad weather conditions so it was due some maintenance anyway.  This was the right time to give everything a good 'once over'


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CB Radio Handheld

This week, I thought I'd bring out a few handheld  CB Radios to take a look at them.  Its often the case that when people first get into CB Radio that they tend to start out with some form of handheld Radio.

Since I got back into CB Radio I have collected quite a few different Handheld CB Radios which we will take a look at in a moment.  Typically, Handheld CB Radios were cheaper than the Mobile and Home base CB Radios.that were available.

Since they provide the power, Radio and Antenna in a single unit and you don't need anything else to get on the air.  This would be why a Handheld CB Radio would be a good start.

Certainly in the days when the channels were always busy and there was always someone out there to pick up your signal but Handheld CB Radios have a number of downsides.



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CB Radio with SSB

This time around we are looking at a Colt485DX SSB which as the name suggests is a classic Sideband Radio.  We've looked at a couple of Colt Rigs before with the Colt 210 which is an AM CB Radio we reviewed last year and we've seen quite a lot of the Colt 295 which is the little FM CB Radio that I have used a lot over the summer on the various DX Activation I did last year.

I've had a few Sideband Radios over the years including a HAM International Multimode II as well as a Tristar 777 which I used a lot last year and took with me on a couple of the Sideband Nets that  did last Summer.  Most recently I had a President Lincoln which  I only recently sold.

As I am planning some trips out this Summer I got hold of this Radio because it is quite a lot smaller than the other Radios I hsave had which means it should be a lot easier to carry when out on a CB Radio DX Activation.  I actually got hold of this Radio from a guy in France and have so far been really impressed with it.

The other Radios I had also had some other Modes on them that the Colt 485DX doesnt have.  The other rigs came with both CW and FM Modes where this Colt Radio has only LSB,SSB and AM Modes.




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YouTube Channel Update

I posted the first video on my CB Radio YouTube channel on the 6th February 2016, very shortly after obtaining my Charlie Tango Call sign.  I only realised quite recently that it has therefore been two years since this YouTube channel was created.

I started the Channel just as a way to record my progress in the CB Radio hobby and initially posted footage of me first getting set up on CB Radio both as a home base set up in my garage but also as a mobile set up in my car and even a number of portable activations around the country last Summer

By early February last year I’d attracted about 80 YouTube subscribers.  i decided then to start a Blog Site and started to post regular CB Radio posts on that.  Over the course of the last year I’ve been putting a lot more work into the Channel and had a great summer last year heading out to various bits of the country doing a number of CB Radio DX Activations.  The summer also gave me the chance to fly my new drone and I managed to capture some pretty good footage whilst out and about.

I also launched a new CB Radio site called ‘The Breakers Yard’ and have put a lot of work into building that along withe two UK and US Amazon affiliates sites I have put together.

The winter time is generally a bad time for Radio range because of the lack of Sunshine so the airwaves generally quieten down during the summer months so it was the ideal time to focus down on producing some new CB Radio videos indoors in the warm.

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Free CB Radio Giveaway

Back in January I posted a video about YouTube’s Demonetisation of smaller YouTube channels as at the time I only had 500 subscribers and would need to have at least 1,000 Subscribers before the deadline of 20th February This Year.

I was planning to do a Prize Giveaway once I got to 1,000 subscribers anyway so decided to promote my YouTube channel by offering the chance to win their own brand new CB Radio to new subscribers.

In my video I stated that in order to enter the prize draw for a UK/EU 80 Channel AM/FM CB Radio you had to comment ‘I subscribed’ and also to ‘like’ the video.  I also asked that in order to help me achieve the other criteria of the YouTube Partner Program changes which requires 4,000 hours of watch in the last 365 days people stayed a watched a playlist of the other videos on my YouTube videos.

I did a review of the CRT One on my YouTube channel back in December 2016 and this is the upgraded CRT One N which also has a signal meter.  You can check out the video by following this link :- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stOP60Pnr0c

The response to this video was amazing and it helped me to easily achieve the objectives of 4,000 hours and 1,000 subscribers required to allow my channel to continue to be monetised well in advance of the deadline and the response to the giveaway was astounding!

i was planning to close entry to the Prize Draw when I achieved the 1,000 subscribers but as I managed to achieve it early I have kept the entry window open until the end of February.

So its now early March and as promised I’m now going to do the actual Prize Draw and everyone who subscribed since that video went out and followed the other steps needed to qualify for the Prize Draw will be added to the list of names who then will be automatically entered into a random draw.

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New CB Radio Playlists 2018

If you have visited this site fairly recently you might already realise that I have been posting a huge amount of new CB Radio content on this site in recent months and in fact have been posting literally every single day since the first day of January.

This work equates to over 60 new YouTube videos as well as detailed web articles covering a vast array of different CB Radio topics from getting set up on CB Radio to more advanced radio theory about Single Side Band and Amateur Radio in General.

As there is so much new content I’ve decided to organise them into separate playlists as well as different website pages broadly organised into separate CB Radio related themes.

Hopefully this will help you to be able to find the type of information you are looking for and should make it easier to watch a specific series of videos as well as read through the same specific information on my website that relates to the CB Radio topic that you are interested in.

As there is such a huge amount of information I am hoping that you will be able to find something that you will find useful and hopefully will enjoy watching the videos enough that you subscribe to the my YouTube channel so that you are kept informed of new content as it is created.

https://www.youtube.com/c/26ct1994

My YouTube channel has been running for over two years now and there’s a lot of good CB Radio videos available from it.  I also post new content every week so there is always something new to enjoy.

My website ‘The Breakers Yard’ has been running since late 2017 and already is chock full of interesting CB Radio related articles as well as links to my Amazon Affiliate CB Radio stores for both the UK and America so please take the time to explore both my YouTube channel as well as my new Website.

As I said I have organised my most recent content into new playlists which you can find by going either to my YouTube channel or by clicking the appropriate links on the sidebar of my Website.

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Crossing the Finish Line

Today is quite a memorable day for me!  As it marks the end of a continuous streak of new content on this site for 60 days!  As many of you will already realise I have been posting new content on this site (as well as on my YouTube channel) every day since the 1st of January this year and this represents the last day of 'The 60 Day Challenge'

Firstly I wanted to say thank you to everyone who has been following the progress, joining in by adding comments and sharing both the videos and blog posts on the social networks such as Facebook and Instagram.

Your feedback is always gratefully accepted and its given me the motivation and impetus to keep going and complete the who;e challenge and believe me it has been a huge amount of work.


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