The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 2021 approved the FM band for use on CB radios – arguably the biggest change in decades, and one that sent radio suppliers back to the engineering room to reconfigure FM capabilities alongside AM and single-sideband (SSB) modes.
FM provides users with improved audio quality and greater ability to circumvent background signal noise typical on CB’s long-standing AM side.
President's Walker III FCC is one of five CB radios the longtime manufacturer offers in the U.S. with AM/FM capabilities.President
“This is going to bring a lot of good things for professional users of the CB radio band like truckers because a lot times when the skip’s really rolling and the [solar] cycle is at its peak, sometimes it can interfere with truckers communicating up and down the highways. FM is really going to cut that down,” amateur radio expert Matt Kaskavitch explained in a video that went viral on a YouTube channel named for his ham radio call sign K0LWC.
Signal skip, or DX as it’s also known, occurs when radio signals are carried over long distances generally during the daily peak of the solar cycle. Various atmospheric conditions can also lead to greater transmission spans and greater background noise.
Skip is particularly common on the 11 meter band, which the FCC set aside for CB use among 40 channels ranging from 26.965 MHz to 27.405 MHz. On higher-end CBs, upper and lower SSB modes can be selected among those 40 channels to provide improved AM transmissions with greater power and range.
