CB Static
 

I have a general question....I know that proper grounds and power are required for a CB to get optimal reception and clarity along with a good, tuned antenna. However, in general, if you flip on your CB and tune to a channel with no activity, should it be dead quiet or full of static? How about when you flip to a channel being used (such as 19 on the highway)? Should there be static behind the voice? Clear behind the voice? Static between transmissions? I'm wondering if mine needs to be cleaned up or not. Thanks!

If your getting static on a dead channel, you have some type of interference.

or your squelch (sp?) is too low

staic in the backgound would be normal depending on squelch setting.

static on recive is relitive. it either means your setup is sketch, or the person transmitting is sketchy.

a properly convfigured system on both ends, you should hear a clear clean crisp voice. or known as full quieting.

KC0TXH

my squelch is all the way down (turned to the left). there is a very small band at the low end where I can hear the static, once I pass a certain point, the static goes away but so do the voices i think, though i should test this again...

If I recall correctly, squelch controls how powerful a signal must be to pass on to the speakers so you can hear it. If your squelch is turned all the way down, your hearing everything your radio pics up, i.e. signals from all sorts of stuff. So if you turn up your squelch, your trying to make it so only powerful signals, such as someone else broadcasting, is all that you hear. If the voices go away with a higher squelch, then I would guess they are really far away so thier signal is as weak as the natural background noise.

Fell free to :saw: me if I'm totally wrong :)

Erich

Erich's is the perfect "In Plain English" explanation, and he hit the nail on the head.

thanks guys, i forgot to update. i caravaned with some friend for about an hour drive and they each had handheld CBs so we were able to speack just fine. i turned my squelch until the static went away and then all i heard was them when broadcasting. thanks again

CB frequency is 27 MHz, prone to manmade and natural noise. Add to that the noise from millions of CBers worldwide keying up, and you always have some level of static/noise. It's usually lower at night, because the atmospheric effects that increase it are gone at night.

ya that would be thing called the sun :D

how can i get rid of the stadic from the radio engin noise those things ?