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In the 60s, CB radio was nothing like it was after the craze took off in the mid-70s. I had a neighbor in 1961 that had the first CB radio I had ever seen (I was 15). I remember it had six channels and used hollow-state technology (tubes). His callsign was 10Q1148!
Ha, that was years ago! My call sign was KLC1542, I'm surprised I can still remember it. The first CB radio I had was a Heathkit that I built. It had tubes and a 'viberator' so it hummed like all mobile radios in those days. It actually worked when I finished building it, surprise, surprise. Over the years I had many makes and models and sold SBE's for a while.
Here on Long Island NY we had clubs,coffee breaks and flea market sales,weekly meetings were fun and we got to know a lot of neighbors,as well as getting traffic info on the major roads.Sadly then came skip and many using power amps so it became annoying and a useless form of communication many times.Oh well another era long gone.MO
PS:Back then we had a few self appointed channel masters that sought to control what was said & done on the air.Well low and behold today on the Internet we have self appointed Web nannies and Trolls LOL some things never change.
Nite Ryder: My CB callsign was KKV5010. I still have the license packed away somwhere. It dates from about 1975.
VHF/UHF-FM amateur radio is somewhat like CB was, excepting that there are no "Smokey reports" or CB lingo. The license to use frequencies above 50 MHz is easy to get.
The skip didn't bother me (it was fun!), it was the "agitators" and "channel masters" that ruined it for me. But it was fun for a while.
GMRS and MURS are cheap, no test and no license for MURS. Both can be pretty quiet if you get a PL tone. MURS is only 2 watts, GMRS up to 50 watts both can go pretty far.
I bought a $70 handheld, and two $90 mobile radios, one is my mobile and the other my base station. It all works very well if there is a repeater on the right hill. I use it for communication, not as a hobby so I don't choose to use amateur bands.
I was a CB radio hobbyist....and in some sense I still am. The problem is, too many folks these days are running power (illegally, no less), to the point of where the radios not running power, can't even get out and talk. I cannot recall how many times during skip, I would call CQ on 38 LSB only to get over ran by everyone else running power. Only when I was fortunate to find a clear channel, could I talk.
Finally said "the heck with it", studied up and became an amateur radio operator. Just on 2 meter alone, I have enjoyed it FAR more than I have on CB. No skip to deal with, not noisy like CB, it's FM so it's a clearer signal, I can use repeaters to re-transmit my signal farther than I could talk relably on a CB...and just flat out more relaible, period. Plus most people on amateur radio are friendly. I have found on CB some of them don't want to talk to you, or they'll spew profanity and insults, CB rambo threats of "whoopin yer ass", etc.. Also you don't have all the roger beeps, echo boxes, noise toys, splattering, overmodulating radios/amps etc. like you find on what some now refer to as the "Childrens Band".
And yes I also agree about the idiots who decide to lock down a channel and use it to play their music (CB disc jockeys) or use it to preach the word of God. (CB evalgelists) Also don't forget some male truckers will sit at a truck stop and whisper into their mics "I ain't got no panties on". Must be a new mating call for them.
Anymore CB is only good if you're traveling on an interstate with a few truck drivers, and you want to keep tabs on if there's an accident up the road. But then again, as mentioned, many truck drivers aren't even using CB's....or they're so tired of all the hash and trash on CB, they'll keep it off.....until they come up on a back up....then all the sudden everyone starts keying up and asking everyone else "what's the hold up?"
Well then again CB is still good for the Jeeps and such that travel off road and need a way to communicate. Or maybe if you want to be a Billy Bad Ass on channel 6....if you don't know what I'm talking about, that's the "super bowl" channel, where all the high powered 20 kw stations run at.
Also if you've ever noticed, CB really hasn't changed much since it debuted in 1958....yes we no longer have tubed radios and we have 17 extra channels than we started off with. But for the most part, CB is still plagued by electrical interference, they still have yet to make remote head CB's to accomate smaller vehicles (like they have with ham radios), you still have problems talking to your buddy 3 miles up the road if mother nature sends you signals back from 4 states away, you're still only legally limited to 4 watts of power, etc.
I had a lot of fun on CB radio in the mid-late 90s. Truckers were amused that a 10 year old kid was so enthusiastic about CBs, especially considering that I then spoke with a lisp. I used my dad's Cobra mobile CB (it actually looked handheld, but was intended for use in cars) - which he purchased in the late 1980s but never got to using - and a standard whip antenna (I believe included with the CB). It was the sunspot minimum when I got into it, so there was only occasionally skip, although for some reason the super-powered guys on ch6 were always there. Most conversations I had were purely local. I think my handle was "Iceboy"...I don't remember the reasoning behind that.
Fast forward to three years later, and my best friend, then an awkward 13-year-old, gets into CB, and I get back into it. But he gets into much more than I ever did, and gets his ham license, and within a year is an Extra-class (back when they had the 5 wpm morse code test). Then he suddenly abandons the hobby. I actually bought a GE 40-channel handheld CB the summer prior to all of this at a pawn shop, which happened to be much worse than the Cobra (it burnt out as the result of the adapter constantly getting disconnected), although I'm pretty sure it was the "rubber-ducky" antenna on it. With that I needed to go on a walk from my house to have any chance of speaking with anybody.
I also got him into scanners, and we both bought FRS radios for our school-sponsored trip to Washington D.C. in 8th grade. I remember making contact with him from a hill about 3 miles from his house, testing out the range of our FRS radios by "ringing" each other (since the ringing sound survived the noise better than our voices).
I had a very nice Radio Shack PRO-106 scanner a few years ago, and I don't remember hearing much on the CB band, even though I scanned it. It seems that truckers have largely abandoned it for cell phones, just as long-haul night truckers abandoned AM clear channel stations for satellite radio.
We used to have a Bearcat scanner back in the late 80's that we listened to throughout most of the 90's.
I broke it out a couple of years ago to show my wife what we used to listen to as kids, and couldn't even get taxi cab traffic like we used to.
Can anybody recommend a good base scanner that can pick up the trunking and whatnot of police, emergency, RR, airport, and simple taxi chatter that won't break the bank?
We used to have a Bearcat scanner back in the late 80's that we listened to throughout most of the 90's.
I broke it out a couple of years ago to show my wife what we used to listen to as kids, and couldn't even get taxi cab traffic like we used to.
Can anybody recommend a good base scanner that can pick up the trunking and whatnot of police, emergency, RR, airport, and simple taxi chatter that won't break the bank?
It depends on where you live. What city is nearest to you?
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Was fun in the 70s
