CB reception on my 2013 Ultra Limited is awful. I can hear the voice, but barely over (under) the static. I only get the static during reception. I've tried everything I know of. Kind of at a loss. With the help of a friend (same model bike) I played with the squelch several times at every bar there is. Checked the antennas for R/L orientation, checked with my motor off. It's not the headset; I get the same from my wife's. Every other component works perfectly, including transmitting.

My dealer has looked at it twice & told me there is nothing wrong with it. But there is. I don't know what conditions they test it under, but, well, I'm kind of frustrated. Just a little.

Anybody have an idea?

 

All the squelch threshold will do is mute the ambient ever-present noise at a certain setting. AM reception is always noisy, however receive audio of another station should be well above the noise if you are close (within 200 feet of each other). Remember also that CB receive audio level (volume of the cb receiver) is adjustable only when cb audio is present. Maybe you just need to turn it up a little.

You say its the same on the wifes bike. Do you mean that out on the road you have tested your wifes bike and the cb recieve audio is as bad as it is on your bike? That would be odd.

Do you have HID headlights on those bikes? HID modules "can" create noise in the CB band, but not always.

The harley cb antenna goes on the right side of the tour pack. These antennas are really crappy built, poorly tuned, and hopelessly inefficient. Add to that the maximum output of the cb into a pure 50 ohm load is only around 2 watts, mix in a lot of reflected power and lossy feedline, and you have a shitty performing CB system that might work for distances equivalent to the length of a football field. (YMMV)

J&M recently came out with an "upgrade" harness, but it's just lipstick on a pig.

 

Have you added any light or other accessory under the fairing that also can cause static or even some device plugged into the cig lighter might act up. I had the issue after adding some LED front turn signals and HID head light most of the time just fine then all the sudden static will come back for good.

 

I had to replace the CB Antenna ..........................

 

I had a problem that sounds a lot like what you have described. Mine would work perfect while sitting still but if I was moving over 5 or 10 mph, I couldn't hardly understand anything that I was receiving. I ended up buying and installing the Harley Shorty CB and AM/FM Antenna's and the problem was fixed and still works great several months later. I suspect that the wiring inside of the CB antenna has a break in it. I didn't bother trying to get a Warranty replacement because I really didn't want to have to bother with it. The New Antenna's FIXED the problem - No Doubt !!! - Good Luck -

 

Thanks for the replys..
It was my wife's headset I was referring to, as in it couldn't be my headset cuz it was the same on both. I wish she had a bike! I haven't changed any electronics on the bike at all. Can't I just gut the thing and put an aftermarket head in it? Like I did with the rear shocks? :-)

 

In the off-chance anyone is interested, the fix for my radio static problem was to have the SWR (Standing Wave Radio) tuned. Without going into all the details, it has to do with the length of your antenna. The Harley dealer figured it out after two visits. They said the thing with these radios is they all come out of the box the same. Most of them work fine, some don't. The antenna is coiled up inside the Tour Pak so the SWR can be "tuned" if necessary. It made a huge difference in the performance of my CB.

 

It's not the antenna that is coiled up in the tour pak, it's the coax or the "feedline" that has some extra length and that feeds RF to the base of the antenna. Depending upon the electrical length of the feedline, the feedline can be trimmed or added to in order to find a current node that will yield a slightly better reflected power back to the 50 ohm output of the cb module. All that said, the antenna is still a very poor excuse for a cb antenna. Due to it's length, it's very heavily base loaded with a small-diameter copper wire coil to make the antenna appear electrically longer in hopes of some probability that it will appear to work a little. The antenna impedance can also be transformed to something closer to 50 ohms with an L or PI network at the antenna input, but that would take us beyond the "is it really worth it" point.

Adjusting antenna lengths may be a better way to approach resonance or at least give a better impedance match back to the feedline. That approach works well for full-sized antennas where you can clearly see a resonance point, but these shorty antennas are not as responsive since there is no true resonance point. This antenna is so bad across the entire band there is no real indication of whether to increase or decrease antenna length. Then if you start messing with the actual antenna (the part of the antenna north of the loading coil) length, you no longer have matching antennas on the back of the bike. So we can't have that because we all know that looks and the coolness factor is much more important than performance in the HD world.

Here's a picture of the inside of the HD CB antenna. Its actually really pathetic and poorly built. If you ever bend the bottom part too far, you will likely damage the copper coil or pull the coil wire from one or both of the solder pads. Once you do that, it's over....

 

The first thing to check with any CB problem is the Standing Wave Ratio (SWR). I am surprised that your dealer did not do that the first time. Which would make me ask them "Just what, exactly, did you do?" I hope they didn't charge you for the first visit.

 

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