Somehow I missed this one yesterday. Maybe the notification thing only shows the 15 most recent ones and this was one of the earliest two?
Anyway, I don't think I ever said what I have. It's a 40 channel Uniden PRO520XL that I got used for $5 a few years ago and the antenna is a magnetic Wilson 1000. Theoretically that setup should be able to skip in years with ideal ionospheric conditions, and the guy I bought the antenna from was kind of complaining that he was trying to talk to someone local once and wound up talking to someone in Georgia.
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I didn't have a banana, but here it is with my Ranger for scale.
But I'm an idiot. The guy I bought the antenna from had the cord tightly coiled for storage, and since it was still long enough I didn't even think to remove that inductor. I unwound it with the radio on and hears a conversation becoming clearer as I did so.
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Then I hopped on the interstate and ran up the mountain to the Wal-Mart in Evergreen at 10:00 last night. I forgot how much gas that little excursion burns, so at $4.49/gallon I don't think I'll be doing that again just to go to a Wal-Mart where I won't have to wait for the cashier to yell for a translator because the manufacturer's coupon on a can of soup is expired and she doesn't speak English. Again.
I only got one response when I was asking for a radio check on 19, but he said I was loud and clear and he sounded pretty good on my end. I also picked up some rag chewing on 6 once I got high enough. After I got back down I also picked up a conversation that, based on how it dropped out for a while when I dropped behind the mesa and then came back real strong for a brief time, may have been happening as far as 6 or 8 miles away. Everything except the radio check response wouldn't have broken squelch, but there's no telling how far away the guys on 6 were between the wattages that some people run on there and the fact that I was probably 2,000 feet above Denver with a clear line of sight way off into the plains.
I haven't really tried calibrating anything. I don't have an SWR meter, and even on my cheap handheld ham radio that I definitely don't use on GMRS frequencies without a GMRS license (the definition of a government cash grab, the only license requirement is to send them money) on wheeling trips I'm constantly fiddling with settings and I usually leave the squelch pretty low. In March I was talking to the other part of our group that went up an even harder section of trail from a good distance away one night and no one else in my group could hear the other end of that conversation.
I tried to find someone in my 4x4 club group chat, but the only response there was "What's CB?" from one girl and another girl's explanation of "Something that truckers used to use." I know one guy in it had a CB in his Toyota, but he sold it when he bought his 392 swapped Jeep and I think he only has a GMRS now. On the other hand there are only 4 girls active in that club and I kind of got 2 of them to talk to me briefly. Even though at least 3/4 of them are taken and I wouldn't be interested in any of them, that's the most action I've gotten in a long time...
But I am probably going back to Tennessee in a couple of weeks for the rest of the summer. I have my great grandfather's old 40 channel that he used as a base station that I could bring out here when I come back. It still worked when he died, and rumor has it that that radio may be over the legal wattage limit. If anyone saw my post about AI in whatever thread that was that's the same great grandfather that was mentioned in the New York Times article.
I've found that gluing the foam back on doesn't affect the quality enough for me to notice if it's done right. I have tinnitus in my right ear and I've ruptured my left eardrum twice from infections, so while I can appreciate good speakers there's a point where "good enough" doesn't really improve. If I want really good quality I'll fire up the 115 pound towers in my living room that each have 7 speakers in them. I pulled them both out of a dumpster.
And my only working AC is opening the windows, so at the moment I mainly need speakers that are still audible and sound halfway decent over both the wind noise and my earplugs. I don't have enough steel bumper to be comfortable with running someone over yet, but I do need to get my air horn hooked to a real switch. And now I also need to run dedicated power to my CB so that I can stop listening to my fuel pump.
Do you really want to discuss it, or do you just want an excuse to verify my claims of having an unusually high voice so that you can better poke fun at me? Jokes aside I might, but I'm not too big on talking on the phone. Living in Georgia for so long you probably wouldn't have as much trouble understanding me as people in Colorado or in foreign call centers, but my voice also likes to randomly quit working so well. If it's happy I can get several hours out of it, but if it isn't then even short conversations become interesting as my voice randomly drops out for one or two words in the middle of a sentence.
Well, now I'm off to relube my caliper slide pins. It's only been 2,500 miles, and I used that Sil-Glyde stuff, but my temperature gun says that that brake is dragging just a hair. I'll still have a look at the bearings while I'm in there, but that rotor was at least 20 degrees warmer than the other rotor and both hubs after 15 minutes of driving. There's also no play in anything except the ball joints and I've smelled hot brakes a couple of times in the last week.
