Can anyone tell me if I am getting a signal on my tti CB radio that over 5 on the CB not the SWR metter Just the CB is that good or bad for CB radios
I’m not sure I understand the question. Are you asking if receiving a signal at more than half strength would hurt a radio?
If so, the answer is no. Receiving a weak or strong signal doesn’t have any harmful effect on the radio receiving it.
Also, please do not double post. It clutters up the forum. The first post will be seen by the members. Multiple postings of the same topic or query will not generate a faster response and may actually deter others from responding.
Hi sorry about this but all I was trying to find out is that my CB radio is given me 5 bar signal on the radio is this good to talk on or do I need a better signal than 5
We are based in the US and do not sell that make or model, as CB is different here than in Europe, so I don’t know what the 5 represents on the scale it is using to measure the signal strength. Is it 5 bars out of 5, 5 bars out of 10? Perhaps another member who is in your region and is more familiar with this brand of radio can provide a better answer to your question.
You seem to be getting a bit confused here. On receive your radio uses the meter to indicate signal received signal strength but on transit it’s an indication of output power - but if the antenna is a poor match, the meter is not reliable at all.
You mentioned you have a VSWR meter - this is your only indication off power output. It will be digital, with a nice display that tells you VSWR and probably power output, or it will have meters that swing. If it has two meters one shows power going out while the other shows reflected power. reflected power means the antenna is performing poorly and is of course wasted power. If you have one real meter there will be a switch that you set to forward and adjust the meter for maximum, then you switch the switch and it reads reflected 1:1 is perfect, 2:1 is kind of just lovable, but over 2, and something is wrong. On transmit, the meter on your CB only gives meaningful results when the VSWR is less than 2:1 Does any of this fit your question, because it’s not that clear what you are actually asking?
"Can anyone tell me if I am getting a signal on my tti CB radio that over 5 " over 5 on receive strength means pretty much loud and clear. If you mean it reads 5 when you transmit, I frankly don’t know because yours is a digital meter and we don’t know what it goes up to? It could be an arbitrary number - maybe 1-10, or it could be Watts? So 5 is more than you’d expect. Best we can do without more detail and context? Treat us like we are thick - and explain exactly what you are doing, what the connections are, what the equipment connected is and where these numbers appear.
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It 5 out of 10 on the radio signal is that go od to transmit on or wil I need to get a better signal that all I am in asking
I’m really sorry - it is 5 out of 10 on receive, as in signal strength or 5 out of 10 if you transmit? That sounds pretty poor. Have you checked the VSWR on your meter?
Ya I am Get just over to 1.5 down range on SWR metter
Yes now I have it the way you can explain this is 100% and how you no your things about all this I hopeing to be were you are if a few years your help was very grateful to me and getting me to understand how this works thanks so much for your help
If the SWR is 1.5, then I’d be happy living with this and it means it’s a pretty good match, not perfect, but good enough for the radio to be happy. Paul
Paul thanks very much for your good time to help me with this all the best 73 to you
I didn’t quite understand. My problem is I don’t know if I’m being heard because no one replies back to me. On my cobra 29ltd I have a 1.1 swr match and when I transmit the needle swings all the way to the right in the red but still no response. Can someone help me?
There are two important things here. If you can hear somebody very loud and very clear with decent signal strength then your meter pinging across means they can almost certainly hear you, but may not wish to answer. One of the best success processes is to wait till you hear somebody calling and reply. This is much better than calling and calling which annoys people.
If on the other hand you are not hearing anyone at all, then there simply may not be any people within range?
Other things you can do are to go to places where you know CB people will be present - walk up to one and ask if you can give them a call - most are quite human and helpful.
What kind of activity can you hear when you listen?
I am located just South of Green Bay, WI in the US. I heard someone on channel 19 calling for a radio check who was claiming to be in Kansas City, MO. This distance is just over 600 miles. I was in my vehicle using an un-amplified Cobra 18 with a 48" Retevis antenna mounted top center on a 2004 Nissan Xterra.
He was clear as a bell.
Now, I did not answer, reasoning that my setup would not allow for such distance using only 4 watts. Somebody else did answer though, and was apparently heard by Mr. One-One-One.
I didn’t think such things were possible except for rare occasions when something causes skip to allow for it. Has something changed since the late 1970’s when I was last using a CB regularly?
Are linear amplifiers being used more than they were back in the day?
No, nothing has changed, and HF radio performance is simply a product of the atmospheric state, helped by something called the sunspot cycle. Transmission modes are quite complex, but tend to either hug the earth, and fizzle out pretty quickly, meaning 10 miles can be considered a long way sometimes. It changes when the various layers of the atmosphere start to interact. A combination of temperature, pressure and electrostatic effects convert it from a medium RF just goes straight through, out into space, or a reflective layer, that RF reflects off. Your RF goes up bounces down somewhere else. Its even possible it happens multiple times getting you around the world.
Amplifiers have been misunderstood for year. When conditions are flat, your 1KW wont increase your reach that much, but when the conditions make the band open that 1KW really helps those skips or hops. The HUGE problem is the other end. If they do not have 1000W then you wont hear them answering. Theres also the incredible potential for causing interference to people local to you. It could make you a very unpopular person. There is plenty of material on the net about RF propogation, some crazily technical, some easy to digest. Its actually quite weird. In the early 70s, the BBC had huge issues with Radio Albania blotting out pop music. As it started to get dark, the Beatles would be gradually replaced by radio albania playing 8 trumpet notes over and over again making albanian jamming the most annoying thing ever! Absolutely nothing we could do. The science is in the sky!
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