I just had the Harley CB radio added to my 2007 Roadglide. My wife has a J&M radio on her bike. We tested the new radio by her sitting the driveway while I rode around the neighborhood. She said that she could hear me fine wherever I was but I could not hear her if I was more than 700 feet away. I changed the HARLEY antenna with a J&M short antenna and got more range, thus the 700 feet range. She has used hers on a couple of rides with people that had CB's and did not notice any problems with range in the group so I am wondering if there is a problem with mine. I used the 2009 antenna kit to install the antenna on the tourpak. The 2009 kit does not come with a load coil because the 2009 bikes do not use a load coil. I don't know if this makes a difference because the cb is supposed to be for 2006-2009 bikes.

We both had the squelch turned up.

Anyway I was expecting the range to be in miles not feet. It has been a long time since I have had any experience with CB's but it seems like the range for cars was 5-7 miles and I expected the bike to be less but would still be measured in miles.

What kind of range are most of you getting with your Harley CB's?

sporty06

 

never really tested it but use it a lot more than i thought i woulb my buddy uses a handlebor mounted midland handheld i had problems hearing him it had a long or short range switch when he finallt tried the short range it was much better. the farthest apart we got was 1/4 mile and we were fine.stop by a cb shop (truck stop) and they can check the sw on your antena and set u up. i do know if the antena isnt right it can fry the output transistor on the cb.

 

Check our standing wave!!!

 

tfrun the squelch down to about one or two bars on your dial if you turn the squelch up you tune out all but the strongest signals

 

I think I found a combination of problems. First, my wife was sitting in the driveway with a metal carport right next to her. Second, as mentioned above my squelch was set to too many bars.

I had her move to the middle of the drive away from the metal carport and set my squelch to two bars. I started riding and was still receiving her signal at just over a mile. That was good enough so I turned around and started back home. This was in a neighbor hood with several changes in elevation so I expect that out on the open road the range will be close to 2 miles.

Thanks for the suggestions.

sporty06

 

When ever you install a CB on any vehicle you need to use an SWR meter and have the antenna trimmed for best performance. What ever you do DO NOT arbitrarily cut the antenna to a short length just because it looks cool. Doing so can cause irreparable damage to the finals (amps) inside your radio.

Check this link for more info

http://www.rightchannelradios.com/pa...-pv-c0-58.html

http://www.firestik.com/Tech_Docs/Setting_SWR.htm


http://www.stu-offroad.com/cb/cb_install-2.htm

 

Like everyone else, it's been 30 years since i used a cb radio. The one on my bike just doesn't seem all that impressive to me, but it does what i want it to do, allows me to chit chat with riding buddys on trips.