Hand Held CB radio

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Hand Held CB radio

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Arguably the easiest way to get mobile on CB radio is using a hand held CB radio. A hand held CB would be ideal for using outside or carrying during outdoor activities, for example during hill walking etc.

The advantages are that it is a self contained unit and there is little or no setting up to do. Hand held CB's work from their own internal power and have a compact antenna conveniently attached to the top and apart from installing or charging the batteries, it would be pretty much ready to go once it is removed from the box.

Hand held CB's can be powered by alkaline batteries or rechargeable batteries which could be charged using a mains charger and/or an adapter to use a 12V inside a vehicle. In this way, using an in-car adapter and externally mounted antenna, a hand-held CB could be used as an in-vehicle CB radio.

The disadvantages are that the antennas a very small and as such will have much reduced range of perhaps 1 or 2 miles when compared to a mobile CB radio with a larger antenna mounted on the roof of a vehicle that should achieve 3 to 5 miles.

If attempting to use a hand-held CB inside a vehicle range will be further reduced due to the significant screening effect of the vehicle's metal bodywork. To overcome these difficulties a hand-held CB can be connected to an external antenna (such as a better mobile antenna mounted on the roof of the vehicle or even a full size home-base antenna). A hand held radio has the loudspeaker and microphone built into its body, of course, and this makes it rather large and heavy to use when compared to a normal fist microphone that would be supplied with a standard mobile CB radio. This can be overcome by purchasing an accessory 'speaker mic', which would make for much more convenient operation.

Midland Alan 42
hand-held
CB radio

Hand held CB's are also rather more expensive than a typical mobile rig, especially when considering that additional accessories may be needed.

So, to sum up, a hand held CB would be useful when out and about and is adaptable for other uses such as in a vehicle or even with a home-base antenna, but a mobile CB (nect topic) would probably be a more cost effective and, perhaps, more convenient solution.

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Article details

Article ID:	5
Category:	CB Radio
Date added:	2009-05-05 03:50:24
Views:	228
Rating (Votes):	(6)

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Hand Held CB radio