Red Wave Radio

OK.  So I picked up this CB at a garage sale (it's for my kids)
and it had this cute little box which allows you to degrad the
performance of your AM/FM radio by using the built in car antenna as
a dual AM/FM/CB antenna.  Opps, I meant allow dual utilization.

This little box, with an adjusting knob on the front to 'tune'
the antenna for optimal CB performance:  How close to a random
wire antenna-tuner is this?  I reckon it should work for 10 meters,
but how about 30, 40 or 80?

I'd like to use the box as part of my QRP station, as a random-wire tuner.
If it works, I'd take it and the QRP setup 'in the field' like at Scout Camp.

I'll probably go scope it with my MFJ SWR Analyzer, but would appreciate
any comments on how successful I'm likely to be.

Mark (never to proud to steal technology) KB2els
mccuistion!attmail.com

I've got one of those (from JC Whitney).  It works OK, but not the sort of
gizmo you'd want to use for working 11 meter DX.  If you can see'em, you can
work'em.

I opened the box up.  It consists of a pair of LC traps.  One is a parallel
circuit which isolates the AM/FM from the CB.  The other is a series circuit
which tunes the CB to the antenna.  Both circuits use a variable capacitor
for the tuning, and depending on which antenna I used (long story) it did or
did not have sufficient range to tune for <2:1 SWR.

They probably wouldn't work for ham use, but then again, you could build
one yourself for less cost, that would.

Greg  KO6TH