I had a sidebander II back in the day. I used to DX the "Freeband", above channel 23. I pulled out one of the xtals and replaced it with an old Simpson signal generator. It was noticeably drifty.
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The SBEs in the shack are also both 23 channel. One is a Trinidad and the other is a Console II. My first CB was a Trinidad.
Oh yeah, Starduster. Works good on 10!
I sure see a lot of qrz & eham bios referring to the ole venerable antron A-99. Guys just swearing by them.
I remember swearing AT them. Especially after getting a handful of fiberglass silvers grabbing onto one of the dumb things after it had been up a few years.
Yeah, stardusters......that goes back a ways!
i bought a cheap CB radio intending to set it up and listen in ... it's still in the box. i'm so lazy ...
I see no one in the US has 11 meters on their web SDR receivers. I thought that might have been an easier way to listen in without opening that box. Damn.
Just listen to any of 'those' frequencies on 75, 40 or 20 & get yer fix that way. Right?
I need to get a handheld one. A lot of OHV trails still use CB, and even if my range is only a quarter mile or so it might be useful if I break an axle and need to let the next vehicle ahead know what happened.
Here's how it worked, or didn't work for me back in the daze, make of it what you will. Two were given to me, I never bought one because they're just not what they're cracked up to be. The one with a telescopic whip was just too unwieldy and the one with a loaded whip was rather like a 2M HT with a rubber duck we call a rubber dummy load only worse. The long and short of it they just couldn't get out of my back yard quite literally, the closest station only a few blocks away said I was down in the mud. Since 5 watts is 5 watts they worked like any other rig on the base and mobile antennas.
"...it might be useful if I break an axle and need to let the next vehicle ahead know what happened."
That depends on how far ahead that vehicle is, what sort of rig and antenna it has, what you're using for an antenna and how crowded the channel is. For my money I'd use just what I had in the mobubble, a through hole mounted base loaded whip, a plain Jane radio and a commercial dynamic hand held mic for better than crap "stock mic" audio. No useless bells and whistles on the radio, no roger beeps, gooney birds, echo mic or any of the other nonsense some are so fond of these days, CB is Communicating Band, not Children's Band... but I'd better stop here before I get into why I sold out and moved on.
Oh and by the way, if you break an axle it's nature's way of telling you you're doing it wrong, next time you may break your neck. (;->)