Antenna for a handheld CB radio
by David Harvey VK2DMH on Sunday, August 16th, 2009 | 1 Comment
I have an early 90′s style Radio-Shack handheld radio and an antenna mount. Is there a specific type of antenna I should buy to fit this radio?
What is the best way to buy an antenna and set it up without having to spend a heaps of money?
I have I read that you need to tune the antenna using an SWR meter, but I do not own one. Is there a way to tune the antenna without using an SWR meter?
So, what type of CB antenna should I buy for a handheld radio?
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You haven’t told us the exact model of Radio Shack walkie talkie, so I can only reply generally. I cannot know what fitting or connector is used to link your old handheld CB to a replacement antenna, and you have not explained what is wrong with the original antenna and what type it was meant to be.
If your CB used to have an extendable metal whip antenna, which had no visible loading coil in the middle of it, Radio Shack _used_to_ have a slide-on replacement 27 MHz rubber-duckie antenna. From memory, the whole thing was about 14 inches in length, and had a metal collar on the bottom that slipped over the stump of the original (now broken) telescopic whip antenna. The replacement rubber duck antenna contained nothing more than a long coiled helical spring that was covered in a shiny black rubber casing. The antenna’s performance was abysmal. I owned one once, thirty years ago, or was it longer?
If your CB walkie talkie has a connection point* where you can plug in an external antenna, this could let you plug in a base-station antenna or use a mobile CB antenna on your car. But now you can’t walk around with the radio any more, so it would be very clumsy.
The most efficient mobile antenna for a 27 MHz CB radio is the 9-foot stainless steel whip. But that is obviously far too big to have on a handheld walkie talkie. In any case, that is only half of the effective antenna – the other half uses the car’s body! But a smaller antenna, that uses the capacitance of your body as part of the antenna ‘ground’ or counterpoise, will never tune up effectively; so an SWR meter is useless to help configure it. SWR meters are only useful with a base-station or a mobile (car) antenna.
Your best bet by far is to chuck away your old walkie talkie and buy a new one. Or get an FRS walkie talkie radio transceiver instead.
I’m sorry I couldn’t help more than this, but that’s my honest opinion.
David, vk2dmh.
* By a ‘proper’ antenna connection, on a walkie talkie, I mean a fitting designed to attach an antenna or the coaxial lead to an external antenna (either base or mobile) to your portable radio. These are usually the tiny SMA connector, the medium-sized BNC connector or the larger-sized UHF connector (an SO-239 female fitting that a male PL-259 plug screws into). Sometimes you will also see two-way radios that use cheap little RCA connectors, the types normally used for audio or video patch cables.