SA CB Radio in the Late 70s! The channel Clubs...remember? (Midland: home, high school)

[Sunnysee]

Oh, come on! Somebody that was a member of a local channel there, please see this thread and post your memories.
Anyone from Channel 12 or Channel 8, reading?
I hope so!

[Sonny Chiba57]

I remember the CB days specially when the song "Convoy" by C.W.McCall came out. Only we hung out on channel 19 to agitate the truckers. Matter of factly I recently sold some of my CB equipment on Craigslist.

[TrapperL]

I was part of the Bexar County REACT program back then. Better known as the LumberDumper Base we operated on channel 9 from 6am to 6 pm and pretty much covered most of the downtown areas. I've still got the old Royce base unit. At night, a friend I lived with at the time had a Celtronics 1011D ham with the CB crystal. With it's adjustable power, a Mako 2000 and a beam antennae, we were a little hard to talk over. Thankfully the next door neighbor was just as nutz as we were because when the system was operating at full power, the guys TV set worked even in the off position. Crazy the things we did back in the day.

[TexasRedneck]

Y'mean like backing up to some of the local eatery's an' seein' if we could "bleed over" into their PA systems?

[Sunnysee]

LOL I can't remember if we ever tried to bleed-over the fast food joints' systems. I bow to your creativity.

I can't remember the name of our base station. We had various brands in our autos, but I sure can remember the name of our home antenna..why, is beyond me. Hygain Penetrator with 5/8 wave, was it called? telescopic antenna that was, then supposed to go no higher than 40ft. but we kept ours at 60ft. well, till one of our Texas-style Thunderstorms with good winds.

I was in the shower when my best bud, a dude drove up to take me out with our other CB buds, and he told mom and had her come tell me that "my" antenna was at a ninety-degree angle, and pointing straight out front, over the roof of the house, LOL!

Oh, the shooting skip, on sideband as well as regular channels! (dang sideband bleedover sure sucked, though didn't it?!

Did any of y'all use a PO Box for receiving and sending cards and letters to folks you hooked-up with, during great Skip conditions? THAT was a blast and so stupid for it to have been "illegal" to talk skip, as if we mere humans would actually stop talking, turn off our radios when the conditions were perfect for it.

Running barefoot did stink, so I was very glad that my CB buds didn't. Sure was cool to drive up to Canyon Lake at night, and have a breaker party right there, and be talking back to Mom and Dad at the house, etc.

Thanks for sharing any and all memories you can think of. Bring 'em on...what warm fuzzies, ya know?

[Dwangle]

When I lived off Bandera Road near Mainland I hooked up a CB radio at my home and listened. I could listen to the commuter traffic with the help of "Red Ryder" "One eyed Snake" and a bunch of other guy's. My range(as close as I could figure out) was --Bandera, 410, Culebra and 1604. There were not many channels with coheren't conversation. I only found one. Most of them were racist and vulgar (sorry, they really were!). This was around 1980. I like to fly model airplanes. The CB craze wiped out any hope of safely using those channels. Things have changed now and those channels are mostly vacant. Good news for me!

[Rustybolt]

I have to admit I had both a mobile and base station in the late 70s. Didn't belong to any clubs, however. Definitely a piece of nostalgia!

[Sunnysee]

Here's something that younger folks find hard to believe, so I have found. Before 1980, by a couple of years, I think...Car Dealerships actually sold brand new cars with CB radios built-in! LOL funny to think of now, but they dang, sure did. It was a true craze, and yet so very convenient since this was before we all had cell phones.

[OzzyRules]

I can remember my brother using a CB around 1981. We had one in the family car and we sat out there at night listening to some of the conversations one time. I remember one creepy guy (probably a high school teenager) trying to impress some ladies on the channel.

[TexasRedneck]

Ah....yeah - folks had an Caddy that came w/a factory CB radio. I was runnin' CB pretty hard in the mid-to-late 70's - D104 "lollipop" with a Midland base that had a li'l box next to it that'd dim lights if ya flipped it a certain way......a Radio Shack TRS-46 (IIRC) SSB unit w/a box next to it that'd dim the headlights if ya keyed IT in the car - an' a whole lotta "fox hunts" late at night while stationed in Norfolk, Va back in '74-'76.