Howdy folks.

Last weekend I was stuck on the highway for over an hour while local authorities pulled over every car heading out of town for the long weekend looking for drunks and booze. I decided that if I'd have had a CB these kinds of things might be avoidable in the future.

With that in mind I picked up a Midland 75-822. It was cheap and the fact that it's convertible for hand held or in car use was too good an offer to pass on as a CB is handy to have for SAR work sometimes.

Have any of you used this model? Did I buy a lemon? Any tips or tricks I should know about?

Thanks.

I have had a bunch of CB's over the years, even a Midland or three. I am not familiar with that particular model, but if it is made by Midland it is probably quality. Personally, we don't need lots of power in a CB, we only use it for trying to figure out what is going on ahead when traffic starts backing up, so yours will probably do just fine for that...

I have the same one. I must say that I love it. I have, well lets say at one time "I had" it mounted for vehicle use with and external antenna. Eventually I found myself changing vehicles when i thought of my new plan for it. I keep a set of rechargeables for "planned use" and i leave a set of lithiums in it all the time. it rides in the cupholder of my truck along with a handheld HAMM radio as well. It works great if you take time to get out of the vehicle before trying to transmit, but will do just fine for "listening" inside your vehicle.Not that its meant for transmitting with the rubber duckie antenna when connected to teh 12v plug, i have used it that way for monitoring just to conserve battery power. If any one reading this knows if you can "safely" use the regular BNC antenna with the 12 v adapter please let me know.

Thanks...

http://www.amazon.com/Midland-75-822-Handheld-Vehicle-Adapter/dp/B00000K2YR

-just a quick link to one, as well as a nice pic.

Ok one last thing. I forgot to answer one of your questions.

It works great outdoors. I have used for basic communications over several miles.


CB simply has its limitations as with all communications, but for the price and the ease of intended use, I love mine.

We don't have that model - just a couple of (positive) comments about handheld CBs.

We have a pair of "walkie-talkie" style that have been very useful. When afoot, we use an earbud and mike. When in the vehicles, we use 12v power, attach a regular CB handset, and attach a magnetic mount external antenna. Both configurations work extremely well for our intended purposes.

A SWR meter (Radio Shack is where I bought mine years ago) is extremely useful for tweaking the external antenna length. I check each vehicle setup before every major trip.

When using CBs to communicate between vehicles on trips, we have found it very useful to pre-arrange one primary and two alternate channels (usually one up and one down from primary).

Based on our usage of portable CBs over the last 9 years, I give the idea two thumbs up. I see little advantage to putting in a conventional vehicle mount CB vs the handhelds - certainly none for us. And I prefer the CBs to FRS radios.

HAM would be nice, but I don't need another hobby/tech these days <grin>

Tom

I second using an SWR meter. A properly tuned antenna makes all the difference in the world.

I have the 75-820 which is just a slightly older model than the 822. Very handy IMHO. I have a couple of the rechargeable packs that I leave eneloops in and charge them after use and a backup alkaline pack. We've used one of the rechargeable packs off an on for a whole day and it never went dead.