Wednesday, Jul 06, 2011 at 06:54
There is a good article on this site.
Here
Adding to that, wrt scanning. Generally you will chose a channel to communicate with others in your group, say 29. But you may want to hear other channels. Scanning listens to all or selected channels for voice traffic. If it detects a transmission it will briefly pause so you can hear it.
3 examples of why you might want to listen to other channels are
a) The
Simpson Desert official channel is 10 but you may want to talk on 29 within your group so everyone doesn't have to listen to general car to car chat. In this case you would set your UHF to scan 10 as
well as your selected 29. You would then be aware of other vehicles in your area.
b)if you are in a logging truck area that is tight and windy you could scan all channels to listen for any traffic. Trucks often announce their presence on these roads.
c)if you are on a tight track, you may want to scann all channels for oncoming traffic and to talk to them when you pass re the number of vehicles in each party etc etc.
Many dedicated UHF CB's will do selective and all channel scans quickly. The FDC unit takes about 10 seconds to scan all channels and may miss some transmissions. Also it is very hard to set or unset individual channels.
IMHO the FDC is a brilliant SECOND CB for winching, hand held use or lending to someone in the group who doesn't have a CB, but for a primary vehicle based UHF it falls a little short.
FollowupID:
732844