Over the past 20 years the hobby of scanning has somewhat changed. The signals you can listen to on a scanner these days are less plentiful than they used to be thanks to a lot of communications going digital. Gone are the days of monitoring the police and most other emergency services and not forgetting the analogue mobile phone networks. In some respects the hobby has declined as the number of “in the clear” signals have decreased. A lot of scanner users these days own a radio to compliment another hobby such attending air shows. It is very likely that aircraft communications and marine radio traffic will stay in the clear for the foreseeable future.  Some people might argue the need for an expensive scanner just to monitor a little air or marine traffic and many users are put off by the complexity of some scanners or simply the costs. Enter the TSC-100R!

Time to dust off the mobile rig and head for the hills!

Tango Mike Group Presents DX Super Sunday – 28th November 2010. Take to the hills or operate from home! The most important thing is being on your radio on this date so plenty of contacts can be made. If there is no propagation there is always great fun to be had working around the UK. Even under flat band conditions we have had some amazing contacts reported so give it a try.  You don’t need to be a “big gun” to work the DX as many of our members have proved over the past few years. If nothing else it gives you the oppotunity to warm up those output transistors and blow the dust off those radios!

The TCB-1100 is TTI’s flagship multiband CB radio with front mounted speaker and DIN sized form factor. It has been designed to be mounted in several different combinations where space is at a premium. The best thing about this type of design is that the radio can be mounted in a free DIN size dashboard space in a vehicle. Many cars and vans have a spare DIN slot available so this radio could fill that gap with something attractive and useful.  Some earlier attempts have been made at DIN mount radios by Team in Germany but whilst the TCB-1100 looks similar I am informed by the supplier that this model has a different PCB to the Team models and some additional features not found on models like the Roadcom FS.

This review was made possible by Sharman MultiCOM Ltd, with thanks to Murli for the loan of the equipment.

The TCB-771 is another fairly recent addition to the radio of CB radios made by TTi. It follows on from the popular TCB-770 that has been around for a number of years. TTi have taken some comments on board regarding the operations of the radio and got rid of the dual function control knobs that were often criticised for being difficult to operate especially under mobile conditions.  Another improvement has been the ability to connect the radio directly to 12v and 24v supplies, thus making it ideal for use in trucks and other vehicles with a 24v system without the use of a voltage dropper making the possibility of frying the radio somewhat lower.

This review was made possible by Sharman MultiCOM Ltd, with thanks to Murli for the loan of the equipment.

It’s hard to believe that over ten years have passed since PMR-446 was introduced across Europe as a licence free short range radio service. The simplicity of the service combined with low cost radios has been a key point that ensured the popularity of the concept from day one and proved to be a credible alternative to expensive licensing and contracts for small to medium sized businesses alike.  PMR-446 isn’t without its problems in heavy use areas due to the limited number of available channels but in most cases CTCSS and DCS can help minimise the issue of busy channels.