Firestik AR-1A

[ersin]

I just spoke to the Firestik CB Antenna people. The AR-1A device that they manufacture was designed to let an AM/FM radio and a CB radio use a single CB antenna. They told me it uses diodes to separate the circuits (so the 4 watt CB energy wont fry your radio).

I am thinking, and the Firestik people say this "should" work, of using a scanner in place of the AM/FM radio. So I could have both the scanner and a CB with only one additional antenna on the car.

Has anyone done this? If so, any comments? TIA.

[crabbyman]

I've thought about getting one of these..but after reading so much on CB/radio waves..I decided against it.

The reviews I have found state its not worth the cost.

Plus the wave lengths of each transimission wave is extremely different. So at best, you will have mediocre radio and mediocre CB. You can't have both on one antenna since the antenna length for each is extremely differently idealy.

[ersin]

Well, not exactly. The idea is to have an antenna resonant on the CB frequencies for transmission. Since the scanner doesn't transmit it doesn't need to be resonant. It just needs a wire outside of the car. A CB antenna will do well. However it needs to be protected from the CB transmits. This is what the AR-1A does, it isolates the scanner from the CB transmissions. However, the AR-1A was designed mainly for the AM/FM radio, not a scanner. Theoretically it should work. So, I was wondering if anybody had any practical experience with it.

You may be thinking of some of the little boxes that claim to let you use the car's existing antenna for the AM/FM radio. This does not work well at all since you cannot tune this sort of radio for CB transmission.

[computerpro3]

I have one and it works great with my Uniden 520XL and Firestick antennae, altough I want to upgrade the antennae to something really nice eventually. I get a solid 7-10 mile range with it installed and get better FM/AM radio than I did with my stock antennae.