CB 2013

[K7SGJ]

Folks must be pretty progressive in Ohio. The CB crowd in Florida certainly did not have computers and use BBS in the 1980s. Matter of fact, CB was pretty well done by the 80s except for bucketmouths and bullies. Overall, the prime of CB was in the mid to late 70s, and most sensible people had either drifted away or gotten their Tech licenses and shifted to repeater culture.

What killed CB was its own popularity, and a contingent of bad actors and behaviors that all too soon became the norm.

There are times that I miss the social scene that accompanied CB in the 70s...

Ya mean like Big Enos and Little Enos?

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[AE1PT]

No, more like the every day coffee gatherings at all times of the day or night, social groups meeting at each others houses to play games or get blind, and the seemingly endless string of CB honeys that liked to have some fun and a bit of company getting through the night... :cool2:

[K7SGJ]

No, more like the every day coffee gatherings at all times of the day or night, social groups meeting at each others houses to play games or get blind, and the seemingly endless string of CB honeys that liked to have some fun and a bit of company getting through the night... :cool2:

Well......yeah.......I guess there is that, too.

[kb2vxa]

Oh those beloved coffee breaks that ranged from an impromptu gathering at a local diner to hamfest style organized festivities often covered live on radio and TV. One somewhere in the swamps of Jersey was quite memorable, it was Halloween and everybody came in costume. There was a contest for the best costume, a friend and I came well prepared, he as a GI with a man pack radio and I in a borrowed authentic Nazi Luftwaffe colonel's full dress uniform rather like Klink when called to Berlin. FYI I had to strip down to shirtsleeves, that tight knit wool tunic is HOT indoors! His was a last minute hurried affair but it turned out perfectly, everything scrounged from WW2 uniform and equipment souvenirs except for a Lafayette Comsat 25B, a motorcycle battery, headset and short loaded antenna.

Now picture this, radio and battery in a backpack with a mobile mic in hand, the headset minus the band mounted in the helmet and the antenna in a hole drilled in the top. Definitely the cool soldier from Mars. After suiting up in the parking lot he got on the talk in channel and faked a mobile coming in as we walked to the door. At the registration table where the talk in was we stopped and at that moment the guy giving directions asked "What's your 20 now?" and he replied "Look up." Yeah, the look on the guys face was priceless. Oh the contest, some drop dead gorgeous Tinker Bell won first prize naturally but the soldier from Mars came in second. I guess they didn't like the colonel too much, I look more German than Werner Klemperer. (;->)

[Happy_Hamer]

I drive a truck locally, there are still a lot of people on the CB daily. Sure 19 is the channel I use most of the time, but I hear people on 38 LSB all the time.

If I want a good laugh, I go to channel 6 or 11, hilarious at times.

I know conditions are open when I hear a truck wash in California, I am in Chicagoland, start advertising on channel 19 "no waiting all lanes are open".

[N2NH]

Oh those beloved coffee breaks that ranged from an impromptu gathering at a local diner to hamfest style organized festivities often covered live on radio and TV.

Two words. Adventurer's Inn. We used to have them at the one in Flushing (Queens) and there was a similar place in Soundview (The Bronx). Even had drawings. Must've been 500 people there for the event at Soundview. The one in Queens also had a selling area complete with guys who did screwdriver jobs and modulators.

[KC2UGV]

Oddly enough, CB radio is still pretty big in my locale, with both truckers (Business users), and casual users. Weekends, you'll hear plenty of chats on 11, 16,21, 22, 35, and 38. On channel 5 most nights, there's a decent crowd of about 10-15 people using the channel to just shoot the shit, until 1 or 2AM.

[WØTKX]

I just took an RX cruise in that region.

From this QTH, I hear plenty of road (trucker) stuff on 19, some locals yakking, and 3-4 SSB QSO's.
All on "legal channels", nothing on the free-bander areas, but the band is not "open" right now.

[N8YX]

In the late 70s/early 80s one could not find an open CB channel in this area, especially during the day in summertime. Couple the number of users countrywide with a single or double-hop Sporadic E event and all 40 channels became nothing but a roar. One of my cousins had a simplistic little Cobra mobile rig in his car; on a summer night in '78 we tuned the bands looking for things of interest...and the roar stayed with us until well after midnight.

Similar events were experienced in my own shack up until summer of '83: My prized Royce 1-641 gave up the ghost while in QSO with a mutual friend of a then-girlfriend, and I recycled the rig's components into other projects after the object of my affection had faded into a dim memory.

'87 or thereabouts saw my return to radio in general and I played around with 11M up until I started with my current employer. We still use it on the bikes as a means of communication but coffee breaks, SSB Club picnics, late night 'technician'/card/booze parties and antenna raising get-togethers have all disappeared into the Americana history books.

I Elmered quite a few CBers into the amateur radio fold during those days. Most of the people I talked to within the Class D service have passed on or disconnected the gear and scrapped or sold it.

The demand for repairs and modifications gave rise to a number of "experts" in and around the vicinity, some of whom ply their trade to this day. Most of these gentlemen are of the clip/peak/hope-for-the-best school of "How to influence radio friends and generate TVI everywhere" while a few of us focused our efforts of restoration and proper (legal) setup of the transmitter section.

Another '641 graces my collection today; it was an eBay DOA project which was gotten cheap. Likewise, the radio I always wanted as a kid - the Royce 1-642 - is present...ditto rescue and restoration. Also present is a 1-624...a 1-625...and two 1-639s (the latter being IMHO one of the best mobile rigs produced during the boom years).

I started looking for something better than the Royce and found in in the CPI CP400/2000/2500 rigs plus their varied peripherals. My late friend Hank, KA8RZT had a '2000 in his shack and it was a hard choice between that radio and a Cobra 2000GTL, right up until I played with the CPI stuff on the air. It works as good on 11M as most of my HF ham gear does on 10. That's to say the idiot whose tweaked "export model" transceiver crunches the CP2000's front end will do similar to, say, my Paragon IIs, Omnis...various Yaesus and maybe even the TR7/R7 (though that would come as a surprise).

Memories. Too bad none of my rigs have a "Now/Then" function switch on them. At times I would really like to go back.

[K7SGJ]

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