Do You Use A Cb Radio In Your Rv? Options

[RanMan]

Recently a friend of mine suggested that I install a CB radio in my RV Park office in order to communicate with passing RV's. I was just wondering if this would be beneficial or not. According to him, some campgrounds he recently drove near are using the CB radio to broadcast a short message to RV's in their area, announcing site availability. I would like to hear from some of you to find out if you use a CB radio in your RV and, if so, do you monitor Channel 19 most of the time when you are traveling?

[BJMA]

Recently a friend of mine suggested that I install a CB radio in my RV Park office in order to communicate with passing RV's. I was just wondering if this would be beneficial or not. According to him, some campgrounds he recently drove near are using the CB radio to broadcast a short message to RV's in their area, announcing site availability. I would like to hear from some of you to find out if you use a CB radio in your RV and, if so, do you monitor Channel 19 most of the time when you are traveling?

please consider my comments here as a former CB user. I have been a licensed amateur radio operator for almost 35 years and have not been active on CB for many - MANY years.


There are some technical considerations you need to remember with CB.
1) it is unlicensed, and while there are official rules and regualtion, they are ignored. This means that language on CB is quite "colorful", so it may be unwise to have the receiver on in the general public may be able to hear.

2) What you propose could be considered "broadcasting", and is against the FCC Rules & Regulations. But, hey, it is CB and no one pays attention to the FCC anymore.

3) it is AM, noise is the norm.

4) it is very local communications. While hams can easily communicate literaly around the world on less than 5 watts RF, since CB is AM, with all the noise, reliable communications is maybe 1 to 3 miles.

A better option would be FRS. Family Radio Service. Also unlicensed, but it is FM and on UHF. This allows you to use a scanning receiver in the receiving area, and a handheld transceiver can be left in the charger until someone calls.

You can publish the FRS channel and CTCSS tone that you plan to use. You should read the FCC Rules before use, there are some channels that are restricted to GMRS users. GMRS is licensed and interference by unlicensed users is not tolerated very well.