Hey guys. I have a 200 Watt audio amplifier for a few small subwoofers or other speakers. Is there a way I could rig that sucker to amplify my CB radio if I were to put it in my room? I live in almost the highest house on the highest hill in my town, and from there, I'm confident I could talk for miles upon miles. How far do you think the radio would transmit without an amplifier? Remember, I have nothing in my way, so a factory radio... anyway, I'm just lookin for ideas.

Ryan

 

Not going to happen. A sound amplifier and a signal amplifier are two different animals.
Also, think about the locals in your area that you would bother by keying into the conversation with an amplified signal. It doesn't just send it farther, it makes it much stronger,too.

 

does your signal strengh cut down theres? I have read the few CB threads on here and never quite understood how your signal strengh affects others?

 

Radio frequencys can be absorbed in to anything electrical,electronic or machanical depending on how strong the signal is if it is not shielded either electronically or physically. Anything that's hooked to some kind of wiring like house wiring, telephone line or what ever, the wires act like a antenna and absorb the signal. This is why coaxial cable has all but replaced unshielded wiring for cable tv, tv antennas, and any type of electronic equipment hook ups.
When CB was in it's hayday back in the 70's the last thing you wanted was for your neighbor to set up a base station in his house, especially if he was using a linear amplifier to boost his output power.
Ham operators could also be heard through your tv,stereo, and such, but they tended to be more cooperative when you complained about bleed through and and would offer to either stay off the air at prime time tv viewing times or offer to install filters, chokes or ferrite cores on your lines to surpress the signal absorbtion. Hopefully they were just nice guys or were more afraid or getting a visit from Uncle Charlie (FCC) and maybe lose their license. CB operators tended to be more renagade because the CB license in the early days was a joke and barely anyone got one. Tv, radio and electronic component manufacturers finally got the hint and started incorperating filtering into their products which helped some, but if someone is tranmitting a real strong signal very close to you, you could still get bleed over.
I've heard a hundred stories over the years about people being able to hear their neighbor talking through their Tv, stereo, telephone, even their toasters and hair dryers.

 

If a Ham operator is interfering with a TV, the FCC will tell the person to complain to the TV manufacturer, (but really, if a Ham is interfering with your TV, talk to them and they will fix it - Ham guys like these kind of problems..)

If it a CB interfering though, and you know the guys address, the FCC might just check it out. They like easy busts for high power if someone else does the groundwork. One way around it is through a gain antenna, especially if you live on a hill. FCC doesn't care how high gain your antenna is, as long as only 4 Watts come out on carrier from the transmitter and the EM field isn't in direct conflict with someones health.

A cheap and easy base CB antenna can be made from copper tubing. Do a search for "J Pole antenna" on google. Physically easy to build, I'd say it's probably an intermediate project to tune, beside the fact that it'll be about 25 ft tall. I built my first one for CB back in the 70's and it worked well. Dipoles are easier to build and tune, but they don't have verticle polarity. A lot of the commercial antennas cost $$$ and need a ground plane which the J pole doesn't, (works under the Gamma match theory.) There's nothing like building your own and there are calculators online if you don't feel like doing the math - use ch. 19 (27.185MHz) as the plug in number.

 

I used to build direction finders out of copper tubing and broom stick handles with a vari-cap in the middle to tune it. The guys used them for fox hunts.
I just happend upon a store that was going out of business over in Lake Charles La. several years ago and bought two Super Scanners for $15 each. One of them is on the roof. They work quite well.