The CB Radios Channel

Normally listed at $120, we’re having a sale on our Cobra 29 ARMY edition CB radios for a limited time!  Designed by Cobra to honor the men and women in uniform, the Cobra 29 ARMY radio features bold and impressive ARMY styling and colors, with “ARMY STRONG” in large letters across the font.  The microphone also includes a special U.S. Army emblem.  Of course, the radio has all the standard Cobra 29 series features including PA, an SWR meter, Delta tune and more.   This discounted pricing will apply only to our limited stock, so if you’re interested in an ARMY Cobra radio now’s a great time to pick one up.

It’s been an exciting week for new radios!  First the impressive Midland 1001 LWX radio, and now this.  Coming in October 2010 is the new Cobra 29 LX LE CB Radio, a limited edition radio from Cobra to celebrate the Company’s 50th Year Anniversary.

This radio isn’t being released until October 2010, but from the initial specs it looks like it will be a very popular item.  Most notable about the new CB is the MASSIVE color display.  It is apparently customizable via your choice of 4 different colors.  The display takes up the majority of the radio’s face and provides information on all radio functions.  The radio includes weather as well as channel scanning, which is a welcome surprise and not a feature that is available on any of the available Cobra 29 models.

As expected, the usual features such as PA, RF Gain, Delta Tune and others can be found on the radio.  While we’re still a few months away, we’ll be anxiously awaiting the radio’s release!  For full details and specs, please see our product page for the Cobra 29 LXLE on the Right Channel Radios website.

Midland has recently released their new Midland 1001LWX CB radio, which takes the popular Midland 1001z and improves upon it in a number of ways:

• Most notably, the radio now includes NOAA weather channels
• A completely digital and back lit display shows signal and channel information
• The radio has RF gain, ANL and PA functionality, similar to it’s little brother the 1001z

We’re excited about this new Midland CB for a number of reasons, most notably the incredible feature set at such a low price.  At $59.95 ($49.95 after mail in rebate), there aren’t any other radios on the market with a feature set that includes weather, PA, RF gain and a digital display anywhere near this price point.  Additionally, the radio comes in a very small package for easy installation in the most cramped of vehicles.

We’re excited to be carrying this new CB radio from Midland, and expect it will be very popular!  You can check out the full details by visiting the Right Channel Midland 1001LWX product page.

We’ve been meaning to create a complete Pickup Truck CB package, and we’ve finally done it!  The new Right Channel Cobra 29 LTD Pickup Truck Package contains everything needed for an easy CB install on your truck.

The package is built around the Cobra 29 series, the most popular radios on the market.  All six popular version of the Cobra 29 are available with this package, including models with Nightwatch, Weather and Bluetooth functionality.

A Firestik FS antenna is included with the kit.  As the most popular fiberglass antenna with pickup trucks today, this was an easy choice.

What we’re really excited about is the diverse mounting options available.  The kit includes more than a dozen mounting options, including proprietary mounts for Ford, Chevy and GMC, Dodge and Toyota trucks!  We provided as many choices as possible to make it more likely you’ll get the perfect fit with your specific truck make and model.

Finally, the kit also includes an easily routeable Firestik Fire-Ring coax connection which lets you route a small coax cable without having to soldered the end on!

Our kit is new, and we’re always open to ideas on how to improve it.  If you’d like to suggest some additional ways to improve it, please let us know.

In another addition to the off-road offerings at Right Channel Radios, we’ve added the very popular Teraflex CB antenna mount to our line of products!  This mount developed by Teraflex allows Jeep owners to mount a CB antenna by utilizing the existing bolts that hold the tail light to the vehicle’s frame.  Professional looking, easy and fast to install, the mount has become on the most popular choices for CB antenna installation for CJ, YJ and TJ Wranglers built between 1987 and 2006.  We’re offering the mount both as a standalone item, bundled as a mounting pacakge and also as a mounting option with our Uniden 510 and Cobra 75 complete jeep kits!

Based on the popularity of our Jeep and Off-Road packages, we’re introducting a CB package created exclsively for Toyota’s FJ Cruisers!  More than likely you’ve seen these cool vehicles around.  Introduced by Toyota in 2006, these slick little rigs have gained quite the following in a very short time.  So, for the lucky new owners, we’ve assembled a FJ Cruiser CB Radio package complete with everything you’ll need to get up and running quickly.  The kit includes the choice of a Midland 75-822 or Cobra 75 radio, Wilson FLEX antenna and, most importantly the Bandi Mount.  Famous in FJ circles, the Bandi Mount allows FJ owners to easily mount a CB antenna without drilling any holes in their vehicle - a slick idea originally thought of by a FJCruiserforums.com member.

So if you’re in the market for a FJ Cruiser CB package, please make sure to check out our new packages at Right Channel Radios!

We want your CB radio reviews and are willing to give you up to a $20 gift certificate for them!  We’ve recently incorporated customer product reviews into the Right Channel CB Radios site and are soliciting candid reviews from individuals who have experience with the CB radios and antennas we sell.  It’s really simple:  For a limited time provide us with honest reviews of the products we sell and we’ll email you a FREE gift certificate for our online store!  You don’t even have to have been a customer;  you just need to have experience with the product in question.

For more information, please see the complete details of our CB radio reviews program.

If you haven’t heard of tuning your CB antenna, you’re not alone.  Most people new to CB radios have never heard of it, let along could describe what it entails.

To tune an antenna is to adjust it so that is works most efficiently given its surroundings.  In terms of a vehicle installation, tuning a CB antenna means adjusting it to the correct height so that it will work most efficiently given your specific vehicle and where you’ve chosen to install it.  As antennas uses the ground plane of the vehicle to transmit a signal, each antenna needs to be adjusted to match the specific vehicle its been installed on.

To tune an antenna, you’ll need a SWR meter.  SWR stands for standing wave ratio, which refers to how efficiently the antenna is transmitting the energy sent from the radio into the air.  The lower the ratio, the more efficient the antenna, and the better tuned it is.  A SWR ratio of 2.0 or lower is acceptable for operations while a ratio of 3.0 indicates serious problems that need addressing.  Tuning a CB antenna is synonymous with getting the antenna’s SWR ratio as low as possible.

While the tuning process isn’t too complicated, I’m not going to hash out all the details in this post.  For complete details, please refer to the appropriate articles on CB antenna tuning in the Right Channel Radios Resource Library.  In it’s abbreviated form, the tuning process consists of using a SWR meter to determine the appropriate length of the antenna.  Depending on the readings provided by the meter, the antenna will need to be lengthened or shortened.  For CB antennas with “tunable tips”, this lengthening and shortening is a fairly simple process.  A tunable tip is simply a small screw in the tip of the antenna.  The antenna can be adjusted, or tuned, by screwing the screw in or out, making the antenna incrementally longer or shorter.  For antennas without a tunable tip screw, the antenna can be shortened by cutting of bits off the tip.  For obvious reasons, a tunable tip is a much simpler and more desirable option.

Is it important to tune your antenna?  This is a questions we are frequently asked.  There are many people who when we strongly recommend antenna tuning tell us that they’ve used CB antennas before without tuning them and they worked just fine, thank-you-very-much.  While it’s possible, and even common, to use a CB antenna without tuning it, we don’t recommend it for two main reasons:

Potential Radio Death - Use a CB without properly tuning your antenna and you run the risk of frying your radio.  An non-tuned antenna isn’t able to efficiently transform (or transmit) the power sent to it into radio frequencies.  This non-transmitted power is reflected back down the coax line toward at the radio.  If too much non-transmitted power is reflected back at the radio, it can cause excess heat and damage critical radio components.  As mentioned before, you want your SWR levels to be below 2.0 to ensure this isn’t a problem.  SWR levels of 3.0+ indicate a serious problem and a much higher chance for radio damage.

Poor Performance - As all stock CB radios only run at 4 watts or transmission power, the antenna is usually the largest determinant of system performance.  As such, the degree to which the antenna is tuned will have a dramatic impact on a CB system’s performance and range.  CB antennas that aren’t tuned won’t transmit efficiently and will exhibit extremely poor range.  If your friend 200 feet up the road can’t hear you, don’t curse your radio!  Buy a SWR meter and properly tune your antenna.

Tuning you antenna is, bar none, the most important step you can take to make sure your CB system is performing at its best.  Hopefully this post shed a little light on this often confusing issue and made a strong case for why you should always tune your antenna.

Many RV and motorhome owners make use of CB radios for road reports, weather information and to chat with other drivers on the road.  Due to their unique construction and fiberglass siding, most RVs don’t have  sufficient ground planet from the chassis to use a standard grounded antenna.  An alternative must be utilized……

There are a few options to solve this no-ground problem.  The first, and most common, is to make use of a no-ground plane (NGP) CB antenna.  As the name implies, NGP antennas don’t need a standard metallic ground plane in order to function well.  While they aren’t nearly as effective as an equivalent grounded antenna, they are the best option when no solid ground plane is available.   No ground plane antennas and coax are built differently than standard CB equipment and generate the necessary signal counterpoise needed to operate properly.  Due to their unique construction, traditional and NGP equipment aren’t interchangeable.  If using a NGP antenna, you’ll need special NGP coax to go with it.

The other option for RV owners is to use co-phased dual antennas.  Using dual antennas is another way to get around the no-ground problem as the co-phased installation creates the necessary counterpoise required for transmission. Dual antennas also increases signal strength in a direction perpendicular to the alignment of the antennas.  In the case of a vehicle installation, this translates into a stronger signal both up and down the direction of travel.

For best performance it’s important have at least 2/3 of the antenna about the roofline of the vehicle.  RVs are large vehicles and they can significantly block RF signals if the antenna is hidden on one side of the chassis.  Also, NGP antennas need to be tuned just like grounded antennas.  Make sure you use a SWR meter to properly tune the antenna for your specific vehicle.

For more information as well as a number of realated products, please check out the selection of NGP CB Antenna kits as well as  RV CB radio and antenna kits at Right Channel Radios.

Professional truck drivers are the group that likely makes the most consistent use of CB radios.  A necessary piece of equipment for every driver, the CB acts as a source of highway communication as well as provides crucial weather and road updates.

Large trucks tend to use center and top loaded CB antennas almost exclusively.  Top loaded fiberglass antennas are the simpler and cheaper antenna.  However, they aren’t well suited for high-wattage applications.  In these instances, a center loaded antenna would be a better choice.   Performance will vary based on a number of factors, but in most instances a quality center-loaded antenna, such as the Wilson 2000 CB antenna, will outperform similar fiberglass antennas.

Nearly all truck antennas are mounted on the rear-view mirrors in a co-phased (i.e. dual antenna) installation.  It’s best if the antenna coil is above the roof of the cab, but this is not always possible.  Co-phased antennas improve the antennas performance, generally in a direction parallel to the road.  For best performance, it’s important to have the antennas separated by at least 8-9 feet, which shouldn’t be an issue for most large trucks.  The antennas should be mounted as high and as far out on the mirror arms as possible to maximize their distance from each other, as well as their vertical height.

Many trucks come with pre-wired CB cabling already installed in the vehicle.  While extremely convenient, the cable used is often of poor quality and contains little RF shielding.  If you’re experiencing significant interference or electrical noise using factory installed CB coax, you should strongly consider replacing the stock coax cable with high quality shielded CB coax for Belden, Firestik or another reputable brand.

We’ve assembled a number of CB antenna and radio kits to meet the needs of professional drivers.  All kits include quality CB components to ensure years or strong performance and care free maintenance.   If you’re in need of a new CB radio or antenna for your truck, make sure to check out our custom CB Radio Semi Truck Packages.