CB was alot of fun!

When I was in high school. Reagan was still President! Most of my class mates spent Friday and Saturday nights cruising and talking on the CB radio. We had a lot of fun. There was a new love-hate relationship every weekend. So there was a lot of drama.

Those of us who knew about radios. Showed them off. The elite, like me, had Ranger 2950's or 2510's. Remember those radios? Plus a "foot warmer" behind them. By my senior year, I was KB9EBV and my friend Jeff became KB9FRE. We had our "super secret" channels! People began to buy scanners or even got their license. It was a lot of fun. Those were the memories.

By the mid 1990's, CB was dying out. People got older. Cell phones became cheaper.

Those were my CB Radio Glory Years!

Andy KF4JQD

It's still fun...to listen to, if you like Ozzie and Harriet-style entertainment.

Some folks in my area still use the Class D service in the manner which it was intended. The dysfunctional merely use it as another outlet by which to vent their frustrations at this week's perceived set of evils.

A number of the motorcycle crowd whom I run around with have equipped their touring bikes with CBs, and some of us (who are licensed hams) have integrated VHF/UHF amateur gear into our bikes' OEM stereo systems.

FRS, GMRS and MURS equipment also lends itself to this application.

Go to one of the larger motorcycle rallies and you'll find that channels 1 through 40 are positively filled with bike-to-bike traffic. It's nice to have a ham rig aboard in such cases.

Post Deleted

This is going to be a little long, so grab a serving of your favorite beverage and sit a spell.

Well, let's take it back to the beginning. 1974.

My father had purchased an AM/FM/SW/Cassette radio from Readers' Digest. The thing covered from 4 to 12 MHz AM shortwave, but it was enough for an 11-year-old. I had a ball listening to BBC, Radio Beijing, the occasional Bible-thumper, many more. Set my timepieces to WWV -- thought I was high-tech. :)

Two years later, I was introduced to CB by a neighbor down the street, who ran a mobile as a base station, powering it from a car battery with a charger floating thereon, into a Hy-Gain Penetrator groundplane. He did rather well, out in the travel trailer next to his home. One just had to be careful touching anything metallic on the exterior, when standing outside barefoot or with wet shoes after a rainstorm. Whee. :shock:

Little did I know of the explosion that I was in the midst of. Seemingly everyone had, or was getting, a CB rig. Local base-station operators homesteaded channels, and if someone got out of line, there was hell to pay. Or so they said. Before- and after-work drivetimes would find ops in their mobiles chattering away with the significant others or kids at their home bases. "Pick up ________ at the store," "I'm on [Highway] 175 at ________ Road, be there in a minute," and so on.

When all were home from their toils at the salt mines and had dinner, nightly court would commence. Roundtable discussions about various and sundry topics, with a helping of silliness thrown in, some of it rather suggestive. The occasional argument would ensue, with plenty of name-calling, heterodynes, and music-playing to "lock down the channel." I think that the first tune I heard broadcast over CB was the parody of "In The Mood," by the Henhouse Five Plus Too [a.k.a. Ray Stevens -- yes, that Ray Stevens].

For Christmas 1976 I received a Cobra 85 AM base. A local op donated a Radio Shack 1/4-wave groundplane and a section of mast, and off I went. There were a few kids that I went to school with, on the air. But mostly it was older teens and twentysomethings, then late-thirties and older. Just about all were white, lower-middle-class, workaday types. And in that part of Dallas, this usually meant redneck, if not white trash.

A move to another town in 1977 brought a new antenna for my birthday that year, and a new crop of operators to contend with. The then-new 40-channel band expansion resulted in some of the older group staking claims on the upper 17 channels [not that some of them weren't already there]. There were a group of us teens camped out on Channel 14 [fittingly, the channel supplied with the usual walkie-talkie back then]. We were all soon getting drivers' licenses and installing mobiles in our cars, to carry on the tradition.

I ran under my older brother's callsign in the 1970s, and then obtained my own license when I turned 18. Unfortunately, CB licenses were abolished not long afterward.

I had a base station up until the time I married in 1984, and then sold it and the antenna. Looking back, I should have kept both; at least stored in the attic of the family home. I ran mobile throughout my marriage, and attempted a base with an indoor dipole in a couple of apartments. But, range was limited, as might be expected.

A divorce and attempted reconciliation came and went, and I was starting over. Started running mobile again; handy to have for road reports and the like. Very few of those with whom I grew up were still around, having married and/or moved away. A lot of the older group still remained, more ornery and arrogant than before.

I'd learned of Amateur Radio back in the 1970s, but didn't have the funds or other resources at the time to really get into it. In 1990 I bought a Realistic DX-440 receiver with the original intent of copying W1AW code bulletins. Also purchased one of the Gordon West-produced license-study packages from Radio Shack, and took the plunge. I took the Novice code- and theory exams in September that year, and aced them. One of the VEs asked if I wanted to go for Technician while I was there. I was feeling bulletproof, and said, "why not?" Bang, I got it.

Oh, but then some Olde Timers were saying that I screwed up, that testing for both license classes simultaneously would result in the paperwork being delayed at Gettysburg [remember, this was back in the day before Internet submittal was de rigueur]. I had my Tech ticket in hand about a month to the day after the exam.

I was on the 10-Meter band with a Realistic HTX-100 and a retuned Antron 99 antenna. I made contacts all over the country and even to New Zealand. Yes, we had good propagation back then. Alas, there was a fly in the ointment. A local CBer would desense my receiver when he'd fire up his amplifier. After a while of this I became frustrated and decided to try 2-Meter FM, a little sooner than I’d anticipated. Back to Radio Shack I went, for a Realistic HTX-202 portable and accessories. I fashioned a 1/4-wave trunk-mount whip from spare CB antenna parts, and did well enough into local repeaters with the resulting lashup.

Eventually, I took Skywarn training, joined the county RACES group, graduated to a Yaesu dual-band mobile in the car. Along the way I met some very nice, and some not-so-nice, hams. In time I also grew weary of repeater- and organizational "politics." If that was Amateur Radio, it certainly wasn’t fun.

In recent years there have been equipment failures and such that I’ve had to set aside for not having the time or money to tend to. Also, being off the air has given me the opportunity to reflect upon where I might want to venture next in Amateur Radio. The jury is still out on this. 8)