Citizens Band radios were in its heyday in the 70’s & 80’s and brought its own subculture. It was the primary means of communication for truckers and citizens alike. People were using “handles” instead of call signs and using it was license free. Popular movies of the time used CB radios as part of their storyline and even flowed over into songs. The popularity died down and then came other new ways of communicating like the cell phone and internet.
The Citizens Band radio frequency is on the 11 meter band and considered HF because it falls between 3 and 30 MHz. To be more specific, the CB radio is 27 MHz. Although it is HF, the CB radio frequencies are channelized to 40 specific frequencies and given a channel number, 1 through 40. Its not as open as the amateur radio frequency band plan but nevertheless, still a form of communications.
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Minor correction; CB required a license during its heyday, but it was free. The application came in the box with the radio. Later on, the FCC said "The hell with it," left CB for dead, and made it licnese-free.
ReplyDeleteUsed to run 11 meters...500w from the top of a 23 floor building. If you were within a mile I was on every CB channel and used to talk with folks in Australia every evening.
ReplyDeleteThen I got into girls.
back in the 70's everyone had one rigged up in their PU. The truckers would get pissed when we came on acting like the Bandit.
ReplyDeleteFirat, I've been a licensed amateur operator since 1975.
ReplyDeleteSecond, I always found it humorous that anybody who picked up a CB mike thought he had to sound like a toothless, cousin-humping hillbilly to talk on it.
Third, for a means of communication they had more cute and obscure codes, abbreviations and tribal gibberish that a drug deal in the hood.
AND we didn't have to have NO stinkin' license, or put up with you pompous asshole Ham operators who do have a license.
DeleteYou guys don't "Get-it". When the SHTF, there won't be any need for any stinkin' HAM license. Who's gunna stop me from talking?
As far as I am concerned, the FCC has no jurisdiction to control anyone on the air unless they are a commercial operation. Everyone else should be free to use whatever frequency they fucking want.
After lying dormant in my Brain-Housing Group for over 40-years, reading the article brought my old CB call letters up through the sludge - just like that! More a lifelong SW guy but a converted CB radio running as a 10M mobile rig was impressive. On early Fall evenings it wasn't unusual to talk to mobile rigs in Western Europe. Back in the '70's, was a fan of the "Alligator Net" on 75M. Great entertainment. Now a 'Net radio fan.
ReplyDeleteYou could convert a 23 channel CB rig to 10 meters pretty easily, just by some tuning capacitor manipulation and sometimes bending a coil or two. The 40 meter ones, I never tried, but heard they were much harder. 10 meters is a legitimate ham band, but only useful during a period of decent sunspot activity.
Deletepigpen51
I still run a CB in my vehicle. Mainly for when I got on 4WD outings with a local Jeep club, to stay in contact on the trail. But even they are starting to all convert over to SW radios. There really isn't much chatter on the CB while on the highway, anymore. When I drove out to Florida, a few years ago, about the only place anyone was talking on it was in West Louisiana and East Texas. Those boys just don't shut up down there.
ReplyDeleteAh, memories....I used the handle "Thunder-tongue" for a while, then settled on "Mr. Lucky"....back in the 70's a CB and a Radar Detector were required if you wanted to make any time during the double nickle days.....I remember hauling up and down the eastern seaboard before I-95 was finished....there was a lot of travel through Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia on 301 and other highways no longer used....there was also a good stretch of I-10 through Florida and Mississippi that put you onto US 90....I actually kind of miss those days.....there were some great restaurants on those old roads....
ReplyDelete