Re: [Paddlewise] cb radios /VHF antennas

At 10:11 AM 2/13/99 -0500, Gabriel L Romeu wrote:
>In one of my catalogs (one of the daily deluge), they offer a hand held
>14 channel cb radio for 30.00 US.  Not disposable by any means, nor
>waterproof, but mmay be something for contacting within a group and
>perhaps a bit of a longer range than 'line of site'.
>
>Any thoughts on this? thanks. 

Hi Gabe et al
	Our kids have a set of the $39.95 radshack CB handhelds. Their effective
range around the 'hood is only 4 or 5 blocks . . . try before you buy. You
will find that CB transceivers are normally limited to pretty much line of
sight, or a maximum of a couple of miles on flat open terrain, and
generally will not perform as well as a VHF radio under the same
conditions. An additional handicap is that CBs transmit an amplitude
modulation (AM) signal vs the VHF radios frequency modulation (FM) signal.
This results in significantly poorer signal quality, especially with weak
signals. Another unfortunate problem with the CB channels (at least around
here) is that even if you do get someone to answer your call, you are not
likely to get more than a burst of profanity. That said, the frequencies
used by CB (27MHz) are very close to the 10 meter amateur band (28MHz), and
given the correct atmospheric conditions have the potential for
international communications. I don't think that you'd want to count on
this happening, tho. 
	By the way, I had mentioned in an earlier post that I was looking into
another possibility for a higher gain VHF antenna which might be carried on
a kayak. I have an article from a amateur radio magazine describing the
construction of a "collinear" antenna which can be fabricated rather easily
from coaxial cable. Anyone wanting a copy, let me know and I'll drop one in
your e-mail. It's about a 1.3MB .zip file. I haven't had the opportunity to
put one together yet, but a couple of other hams have, and they appear to
work quite well. Whether or not one would be of any real use on a kayak in
adverse conditions (read deployment problems) is a question I will leave
for your consideration.
ByeBye! S.
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