CB Radio Beginners Guide. Part 6. CB LINEAR AMPLIFIERS / BURNERS

In this 6th video we look at different power CB AMPLIFIERS and the pro and cons of running power on CB radio. My advice is before you look at increasing your power output consider spending the money improving your antenna set up. Also the large RF amps may cause interference with neighbours etc. Something to consider before you click to buy.

[martinabowm]

Hi Fred. You are right about getting the right antenna and improve the entire setup before using amps. My experience shows that having every step of your radio setup goes a long way to achieve excellent range. We do have an amp, but hardly ever use it. We tried to get things right a legal as possible here in Ireland. The endresult was a Lincoln 2, feeding into a COMET300 tuner, next step can be the amplifier or without, then feeding into a Low Pass Filter and from there of it goes up to a Gainmaster. All cables, including all patch leads are made from RG213. The SWR is 1.1 -1.2 over the entire spectrum. With this setup it is sometimes hard to say if a 203P really does deliver much more in reach. I believe in spending money on an top of the range antenna tuner, the best cables and overall in good equipment. This way a "burner" is hardly ever necessary, you can go to far away places! I think we have only once or twice used it. Overall I think it is perfectly possible to stay closer to the "legal" side of things by making the most of what you have without needing burners etc. It is important that you also give your power supply a plus tolerance of +10Amps above max power needed, don't use you power supply flat out. Once a power supply is "driven" to max the overall Quality of your Signal can deminish.

[fridovannoort]

What you said: Good antenna does most of the job. And make sure your antenna has a good swr. That's the basic stuff and to me the most important. With a good antenna you increase your gain much better then with adding more power. Power is nice but not always the key.

[bobmcnelis]

Why not keep them all? They all have their place in Communications. Love your channel Fred!

[andynorton]

I have used hf radios on 11m for approx 40 years, good filtering, vfo and 100w working the world using a good well situated vert antenna...10/4 73

[daienaa]

This person who sold me the amplifier said that when he used it, all the neighborhoods tv was shutting down because it was so powerful. Idk if that’s true or not but when we connected this to my radio the fuse did blow in the amplifier. Thank you for cb radio video 😊

[jeffvaughn]

Hope you still monitor these older posts. it's 4/9 2024. Enjoy your posts and videos. Great advice and you make it interesting and easy to understand.. Been out of the radios since the early 90's but I am diving back into the pool. Setting up the truck then a home base as the year progresses. Thanks for what you do

[earnestmatlock]

Thanks Fred. Good info for newbies. I have been a licensed amateur radio operator in USA for decades now. The antenna and feed line ( coax) are going to give your station the best benefit for improvement of performance. If you already have a high quality performance vertical antenna and you still believe your not satisfied. Then a directional beam antenna is a good way to make a huge improvement in both receive and transmit as well.
You can build a basic qubic quad antenna with simple PVC plumbing pipe and 2 14 guage semi loops of copper wire. Use an RG-8 with foam insulated rather than the popular RG-8x which is a much lower grade coax cable with higher loss problems. If your operating is home base then RG-8 foam is a great way to go. Couple that improved performance feed line coax with a simple 2 element quad antenna and you will be amazed at the difference and your still at legal rf wattage transmitter limit. Add a small amp along with a low pass filter and it should perform well.
73 and GOD bless. K5ewm.

[julianrobertson]

Well said Fred as always, the video was fully comprehensive & very helpful, thank you .

[robertmeyer]

great video. same hear in the US. CB picking up. I have talked all over the world on CB and HAM. portable is big in US . the CB is between 2 ham bands. 10 and 12 meters . most ham antenna's can be tuned for 11 meter CB . even the end fed dipole 1/2 wave wire antenna. just change the length of wire. and if using big ferrite core like a T 240-43 or stack of 2 or 3 can run some power .what I do is string it up a fiberglass pole like the DX commander pole. lean it into a tree and talk skip. even on CB . or the outher way I do. ferrite on table or to a tent stake and wire to a fiberglass pole. about a 45 deg slant. works great. RM Italy has nice amps. now 24V ones. KL 805 . 600 PEP SSB with a ICOM 705 10 watt drive. well my meter shows around 500 watt PEP . and ran on 2-12.8V 50 Ah LiFePO4 battery's . easy US to UK gray line skip. from in a park and all on battery . got one of them antenna kits . just cut wire for CB. 1.2/1.3 SWR . Italy makes great coax as well. M & P . using POTAFLEX 7 50 ft coax. spend money on better antenna and coax and radio first. even the DX commander antenna can be cut for CB . works super. best thing for them amps. keep drive down . keep them cool . some have fans on them.

[Don.E.]

Good video, i really like the way you have your equipment mounted, it looks neat and clean looking.

[boxingday]

A low pass filter is a must with these amps as, they have no output filtering inbuilt.
👍🏻
Nice upload Fred.

[chrismiller]

I'm fond of my KL703 and KL 503 HD. Good little heaters.

[Greg-etdp]

Frid in the shed I learn lot from you about CB

[HearGear]

You talking about people can hear you but you can´t hear them, well, but you did not mention that the KL300-P has a built in Preamp that puts on another 25db on the receiver to be able to hear people better. All RM amps that ends with a P has this built in preamp, it actually works pretty good. I do agree that you gotta put your money on a great antenna and cable first, and tune the antenna to the best possible. in my opinion if you´ve done all that an amp with a preamp can help sort out some of the problems if your house is located in a bad spot or something like that. Thanks for the video... :D

[jerrypolverino]

Great video! There are many factors to consider that are more important than just power. Power is overrated. Antenna, antenna location, SWR and a good cable are critical. Putting out a lot of watts does nothing except annoy people. In addition, unless you have matching sensitivity on the receiver you won’t hear people trying to contact you. Keep things in balance by sticking to basics.

[steppa]

Homebase I use old Bremi BRL210s - they put out about 80 watts FM with 4 watts in, gets me everywhere I need when the lift is on.

[andrewturpin]

Hi Fred, I am watching your videos as I have a slight interest in returning to CB radio, so thank you for this run of videos, I was a child of the 70s, older brothers had CBs, all American AM at that stage and I had a home base in my bedroom. I lived out in the countryside at that stage so putting up an 18 foot Di pole was no issue and noise was minimal . Now I live in town so this will be much more difficult

My favourite CB I had was a Tristar something or another that had SSB etc, then FM was made legal and things seemed to all go down hill for me

One thing you have not mentioned here and does interest me is back then everybody sat on 14 or 19 which was mainly for truckers and then moved away to another channel, is this still the case?

Thanks again for the videos and I will be going through many more as I research my return to cb radio

[Greg-etdp]

Frid in the shed your utube videos are awesome 👌 👏 👍

[paulhotson]

If you start with 10W and a received signal of S5 and increase your power to 400W, that’s a gain of 16dB which will take your signal up to just over S7.5.
Higher power costs a lot yet provides far less gain than most new amateurs understand. Invest your time to improve your antenna system as much as you can and the results will be far better. Your reception is very likely going to improve as well.

[johnbolt]

Hi. Great video. Will you be making a video of a receiver. Forgot what they are called but instead of boosting your signal it brings others in. Thanks