Pages: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) Modulation page // Oscillator Page

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Let's go over here to the antenna. Let's grab it by that ball at the top and slide down the antenna into the rig. This is like Fantastic Voyage! Oops -- watch your step around that coil; it's humming with juice. Okay, now that we're all together, everyone look down at your copy of the tour map through this section of the rig called the receiver.

Our radio frequency slides down the antenna into a Radio Frequency Amplifier, where the signal is made a lot stronger. From maybe a few millionths of a volt, our signal jumps to a tenth of a volt or so. When I'm talking about a radio frequency in the Citizen's Band, I mean a regular wave with a frequency of a 27 million cycles per second. That means 27 million waves, 36 feet long, radiate from your antenna each second, traveling at the speed of light. This can be represented by waves like this:

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[Editor's note: the coil is that lump of metal you often see on an otherwise straight antenna. We try to approximate the antenna length with the length of the wave that the radio transmits or receives on. In the case of Citizen's Band radio frequencies, 29 Mhz, that's about 36 feet, far too tall for mobile work. So we make a shorter antenna, say four feet in length, and wrap the remaining 32 feet of wire into a coil. While not as efficient as a regular antenna, a loading coil does maintain the correct electrical length and is better in getting out your signal than an unloaded antenna.

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From The Big Dummy's Guide to C.B. Radio, courtesy of The Book Publishing Company P.O. Box 99,Summertown, TN 38483 (888) 260-8458, (1976). Editors: White Lightning (Albert Houston) WB4BWR, Stringbean WA4LXC (Mark Long), Minnesota Mumbler WB4KDH (Jeffrey Keating), Ratchet Jaw K4IAP (William Hershfield), Buffalo Bill WA4KCF (William Bradley) Illustrations by Mark Schlichting and Peter Hoyt.