One thing about my VX-7R that I didn’t mention in my initial thoughts or in the full review is that facts that this radio has a very wide receive coverage range. The frequencies that this radio will receive on are approximately 500 KHz to 1 GHz with cellular frequencies blocked of course.

I was traveling today and had to go just over 200 miles and a significant portion of the trip was going to be on the Interstate with the remainder being on a divided US highway. I knew I was going to have a hand held radio at the ready during this trip because I do not have any radios installed in my Blazer yet and decided to take advantage of this wide receive range and see what I could hear.

I knew there would be a fairly large number of 18-wheelers on the road where I would be traveling so I dialed up CB channel 19 (27.185 MHz for those who didn’t know) and figured I’d see what I could hear along the way.

To my surprise, there was absolutely nothing to be heard. I’m sure the frequency probably becomes more active during times when there is bad weather and other similar situations, but I would have thought I would have at least heard something at some point during my three hour drive.

I have heard that as we enter this next sunspot cycle, that the CB band will become more active again because the signals will be able to travel farther and more reliably which will cause more people to use it. The sunspot cycles work at approximately 11 year intervals and reports show that we are about to enter a point in the cycle where CBs will work the way that people remember them working back in the days of “Smokey and the Bandit” when everyone had a CB in his or her vehicle. I guess we will have to wait and see.