John,

Sorry if I'm not impressed; 75 and 40 meters are good for hundreds of miles
on low power; thousands of miles at night. I ran 25 watts on 160 meters and
was good to cover the United States at night.

Power is not everything. The ability to change frequencies (I'm talking
decades, not channels) will determine what distances you can send and
receive well to. I remember well breaking into a group on 75 meters in the
Carolinas. I was running well under 1 watt. Way *way* under 1 watt.

160 meters did me quite well even in the daytime. Check in to ground wave.
Not what you think of ground wave (which is space wave); true ground wave.
At that frequency, if you have it vertically polarized, the wave will react
to the curvature of the earth as a knife edge. I could pound into
Washington, D.C. in the afternoon. With all of 65 watts.

My handheld reaches into Canada 24/7. On 440 MHz. Of course, I have to
rely on a decent Canadian repeater for that, but the fact is that I hit a
Canadian repeater directly from the handheld with no Internet involved.

On hf, the proper choice (I'll leave 160 out of this as the antennas are
quite unwieldy) between 80 and 40 will allow you several hundred miles 24/7.
With a modest amount of power.

So I remain unimpressed with power alone. I buzzed right through a kilowatt
station years ago running only 75 watts. It isn't the size of the ship;
it's the motion through the ocean )


73 from Rochester, NY
Jim AA2QA


"John Smith" wrote in message
news
Jim:

In my area, 250 watts is the norm on CB, probably about ~25% of all other
stations are 400 watts and better. A lot of the truckers have kilowatt+
rigs in their trucks... there are a handful of 5-50 watt stations out there.

Omnidirectional antenna rule the airways, but there are beams, yagis,
quads, and other CB specific directional antennas about (the scanner is one
example, ancient antenna made by antenna specialists and lots still around.)

Freebanders and pirate stations abound.

It is possible to reach out 50+ miles here on the valley floor if the
channels are quite with a 100 watt linear in your mobile (2-6 am in the
morning) otherwise 10-30 miles is about it.

Channel 17 is the truckers chan though the central valley here, most of
calif I think.

John

"Jim Hampton" wrote in message
...
Hello, John

With a reliable daytime communications range of perhaps 5 miles in this
city
(up to 20 miles at 3 am in the morning when most folks are asleep), if
you
multiply reliable communications range by the number of folks, cb will
fall
short. Even shorter if you need a good reliable 100 or 200 mile range
24/7.


73 from Rochester, NY
Jim AA2QA



"John Smith" wrote in message
...
Naaa, CB has just absorbed amateur radio. Heck, what could we expect,
they out number hams a few times over!

John

"Bruce" wrote in message
...
WHO CARES, Ham radio is dead CB is King