I am a former ARRL County Emergency Coordinator. I have an Extra Class Ham, a General Radiotelephone license with Ship Radar Endorsement, a Global Maritime Safety System Operator and Maintainer license, a certiified FCC license examiner, and MARS licensee, with ARRL level III Emergency Communications certification. I maintain commercial trunked radio systems for a living, and am a former Radio Officer at sea (merchant mariner). I got all of this through self study. SELF study!!! The knowledge is there if you take communications seriously, you can do it if I did it. Really.
Get a ham license. It’s not just the license that counts, it’s the process of getting one. It’s the knowledge you will gain by actually studying good material that teaches you all you want to know about the subject of communications and antennas and what is best for what etc. As I read these posts asking about tweaking CB’s and such, I see all sorts of bad info. Lots of guesses, and just plain wrong stuff. It’s not as though hams simply don’t like CB’ers, it’s that this can be a lot like listening to a group of kids discuss their knowledge of sex. The info is there for you, and it actually takes some study and work to learn something new. Actual work. If you want the benefits of effective communications ability all for free, you can’t have it. There are 70 cm HAM frequencies with repeater links that will get you a few thousand miles range on less than 5 watts on a handheld radio. I worked Japan on 5 watts from Philadelphia using an HF digital mode. You can do the same with a battery powered low power HF ham radio and a laptop. With ham, you can change your band according to the time of day to adjust for the shift to “E” layer propagation, or maybe greyline path propagation. You cannot do any of these things with a CB. Radio communications is more technical than anything offered at a truck stop. You can get a diseased hooker at a truck stop, and you still have to pay. You can tweek her I guess, but still, it is what it is.
You take the time to figure out preps. Time to figure out ammo and arms. Time to train. Time to stay up on the news. Time to post rants. Time to store food and water. Why? Because our life may one day depend on what we have done while we have the chance to prep. Communications can be a life saver. That’s’ why we talk about it here. But when it comes to putting time into that, it’s time to bypass the best knowledge and it needs to be something we can purchase and get out of a box. Directional antennas? I could make one out of a couple of gift wrap paper tubes and aluminum foil. Amperage is the measure of the flow of electricity through a conductor. You cannot direct it anywhere. You can direct an RF signal with a directional antenna. Coax? It needs to be sized for your frequency to minimize loss. “Better” coax will only rot slower. Extra mileage from the CB? Why? So you can ask for help from drug dealers in South America? Given the likely scenario that 99% of the CB’ers that hear you will not have the range to talk back to you, it’s a waste of time anyway. Right, the truckers with a “box” will go 200 miles out of there way to assist. The interference to other services is not necessarily a matter of overmodulation. It very well could be due to poor station construction by people with no knowledge of how to do it correctly, no concept of what sort of signal they are transmitting, and therefore absolutely no way to remain stealth. If your ham station is getting into your neighbors tv, then you can check your station with confidence, and if you have a good install, then you could recommend the proper filter for your neighbors tv. No license? You neighbor complains and the FCC cooks you. Don’t worry about someone else’s lack of experience with getting caught. Who knows what environment they operate in, or what conditions are at his place, or why no one has complained. Even if they have enough knowledge to put out a clean signal, staying out of jail long enough to actually survive and use his knowledge is still a matter of luck that no one complains. And the FCC does set up random monitoring stations with direction finding gear just for that purpose. Big brother or not or whatever, they actually do it, and that is reality. When they find you, no one that told you how to do the illegal stuff will be there for your defense. They will not take your place in a cell or pay your fine. Worry about yourself and survive. If you do not know about rf signals, and you start putting up home brew antennas with “tweaked” CB’s, you will very likely be creating significant spurious emissions, which will seriously increase the odds that you will be caught. Again, study and get it done, you can do it, and there are clubs just about everywhere that will jump at the chance to teach you and mentor you. You can start with absolutely no knowledge whatsoever. Fine, we all start there, the hams will help.