Midland 75-822 Opinions and Question

[BrandonS]

I switched vehicles and am now looking at changing CBs. The reason is I can't bring myself to cut a new interior and don't want a permanent mount solution. I already made an external mount and have a 4' firestick to go with it when used in vehicle. I really like that I can remove this when not in use, as well as, use it outside the vehicle for spotting and scouting on foot ahead of the group.I was just wondering if there is something I may have overlooked. For instance I was originally set on the Cobra 75, but kept reading reports of the speaker going out. Additionally for the weather radio part, you can listen to the weather stations and be automatically alerted to watches and warnings correct since it says weather ALERT in it's title?

Thanks for any insight.

 

[4x4junkie]

I would avoid the small handheld CB units at all costs for a number of reasons.
I think miniaturizing of parts in such units hurts their transmission quality (for one thing you can only make an AM signal modulation transformer and it's corresponding audio IC so small). This hurts performance even with an external antenna.
The long 11m wavelength @ 27MHz also makes their in-hand use with anything but a long obnoxious telescoping whip antenna just about useless over about 1/10th of a mile (you'll have much better communication using those little FRS UHF handhelds with fixed antennas, they will easily transmit 10× as far as a 11m CB handheld will).

Can you do something like a transmission hump mount using a standard mobile CB unit? (say a Uniden PRO-510XL or 520XL, both of which are nice compact units) Or maybe mounting it on the side of your center console if you have one... Might even be able to just wedge it in between the seat as a non-permanent solution too, it's pretty thin. I think you would be a lot happier with a mobile unit for vehicle-to-vehicle communications anyway.

Finally, that Midland does appear to have an alert function for weather events, however I'd again say if alerts are important, you might be better off with a separate scanning receiver or weatherradio. The WX receivers built into CBs tend to be mediocre at best in my experience.

Edit:
I might be wrong... Looking through it's .pdf manual I'm not seeing anything about it actually alerting you.

Edit again, looks like theksmith below me has the same conclusion lol

 

[theksmith]

i love my midland 85-822, no problems with it. performs just as good as anyone elses that i know of with a properly tuned antenna.

i don't know if it does instant weather alerts while on the CB, i can't find anything about it in the manual... there's a button to switch between weather stations and cb stations quickly, but i think that's it. i think the marketing thing is telling you that there is ez access to weather alerts, not that it will "alert you" while you are on the CB, not sure though.

if you have an open top rig, it might not be loud enough for you, that's the only drawback i know of.

i've seen several of the cobra 75's fail.

 

[off-roader]

I do like them. I'm on my 2nd unit because the first was dropped several times after nearly a decade of use and although it still works, it gets a little hot after transmitting for a half hour or so. I'd buy another today if I needed one.