Well, fortunately CB (and Amateur) is still a popular hobby so you can find a bunch of accessories to help you set things up the way you want. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the CB license (such as it is) effectively prevents you from modifying or building your own radio gear, which is probably the most significant difference to Amateur radio (plus the extra frequencies that hams can use).

What I'm saying is that if you are going for CB you should be able to find fixed and mobile antennas for the house and car which you can plug your Cobra into.

According to this vendor the Cobra comes with a mobile mounting bracket:

http://www.universal-radio.com/catalog/cb_radio/4634.html

I take this to mean you could fix the bracket to your car and slide the radio into it, so you could move the radio between house and car. In the house you can put an antenna up on the eaves with a wire running back to a desk inside. You will need some sort of power supply (about 3A @ 13.8V) on the desk too. In the car you'd clamp an antenna mount somewhere on the vehicle (or drill a hole (gasp!)) and run the wire to the same place the mounting bracket is. From there you'd pick up a connection to the vehicle power supply too (and 3A is low enough that you can draw it from the cigarette lighter socket). When you move the radio between house and car you have to disconnect power and antenna, then reconnect.

I don't want to make this sound too easy, since it's highly dependent on what space is available in your car and house, but really it's not too hard. The radio is a "black-box" with a power cable and an antenna cable.

A ham radio installation is much the same, except that you have a myriad more choices about which radio, which band, which antenna, what power level etc. etc.

This is my simplistic view of the situation. I know nothing about this model of radio (or about CB usage in the USA, or about the worthiness of Universal Radio), but one thing I will say is that you will need an antenna- Universal Radio do not state that one is included with this radio. smile

73,

A