CB alive and well?

[4dude]

Interesting.........

 

[Basnya]

FWIW, I am really tired of the 'super bowl' (channel 6). Some of these guys are running broadcast-level power and do nothing but sit there all day and say the same thing, usually a number... Ditto for channel 11. As for channel 19... well there is a reason the truckers call it 'Sesame Street'.

I've been into CB since '74 and have seen it degenerate into a total cesspool. I've felt for a long time the only reason the FCC hasn't really done anything is because the band is not commercially viable.

 

[kd4rnc1964]

I live in E Tenn. and from what I hear on 11 meters via my shortwave receiver, the band is dead by both propagation and use. The only channels I hear anything on now is 19 and ch. 8. The rest is dead. Why not give it back to the amateurs. !0 meters is open occasionally. 11 would work a little. Technology has left 11 meters behind. I gave up cb for good in 92' after KD4RNC came in the mail and have'nt looked back. What I hear on ch. 8 is the same thing I heard in the late 70's and 80's, noise and ignorant operators. After being a ham these 17 years, I finally realized what good operating practice means.....sorry

 

[4dude]

The only thing i hate about 11 meters are the scumbuckets that dont care what they sound like and run dirty amps resulting in SPLASH all over the band!!

 

[flytrap]

I don't have a CB anymore, but I still hear one occasionally come blasting out of my stereo when someone keys up in front of my house. It does't happen that often anymore.

anyway, when I had CB back in the 80's I never could understand what anyone was saying. They usually all talked like idiots. And one thing I've noticed, If you give someone a microphone or a two-way radio, they always yell into it like it was a string with a tin cup. The excessives 10-4 good buddies, and "whats yer 20" "Afirmative" and "We gone" stuff was corny then and still is. Just speak English for Petes sake. I heard someone on a walkie talkie in Wal-Mart the other day saying "whats your 20" to another employee. Just say "where you at?"
another thing that drove me crazy about CB is that when you first took them out of the box they sounded fine, but these idiots would go out and get an amplified microphone and turn it all the way up and the distortion would be so bad you couldn't understand a word. the echo boxes and the beeping or music that played everytime they pressed the mic also drove me nuts. I also remember some people had horrible feedback, like were listening to themselves on a speaker when they talked and all you could hear was squealing in the background. Its hard to believe that people were that stupid, that they had to ruin a perfectly good radio communication.

 

[4dude]

I have been told that the idiotic ways on 11 meters are spreading to the other bands..... 80 Meters has alot of idiots on it,and some other bands also....

What happend to the control that used to be out there? (When they went after trouble makers)

 

[FredRichards]

What happend to the control that used to be out there? (When they went after trouble makers)

Short answer, the F.C.C. has been gutted to a shell of what it once was. Like not having a sheriff in the county, the guys who hide behind their mics causing mayhem know they can get away with it because there is a). no attempts to track them down, and b). the F.C.C. doesn't have the time to mess with them.

The sad thing about this is that some of these people actually do great harm, as when some goofus was jamming the Hurricane net on 14.230 several years back.

And yes, 80 meters can be an embarrassment to most hams. However, in some ways, given the way our society is in general, is 80 meters just a reflection of what our society sees as being OK? How do you tell some 50 year old guy that dropping the f-bomb is inappropriate, yet kids will use it in normal conversation. Yeah, I know it's the law, but it seems like society has changed it's benchmark for what is good and bad.

For myself, I just work CW or digital, then I don't have to listen to all the rif-raf.

 

[LibertyNT]

I have never heard much on the CB band here..
Ive only heard a strong signal ONCE.
CB here is certainly dead....

Dallas Area

 

[Blackroc]

I have been told that the idiotic ways on 11 meters are spreading to the other bands.....

.
I don't think anything could be that bad.
On the rare occasions when I tune through the band I dont hear much at all. I don't follow the manufacturing end of things much. Does Uniden still put out a full line of radios?
I would think that the telephone and I-nt will start affecting amatuer numbers in a big way soon. I heard they were thinking of dumping the code requirement in response but even if they do/have, I would still expect numbers to wane badly.

 

[Basnya]

I have been told that the idiotic ways on 11 meters are spreading to the other bands.....

.
I don't think anything could be that bad.
On the rare occasions when I tune through the band I dont hear much at all. I don't follow the manufacturing end of things much. Does Uniden still put out a full line of radios?
I would think that the telephone and I-nt will start affecting amatuer numbers in a big way soon. I heard they were thinking of dumping the code requirement in response but even if they do/have, I would still expect numbers to wane badly.

Uniden still makes radios, but their assembly has moved to Taiwan I think... The ones made in the Philipenes were great.

I believe the FCC dropped the code requirement for all classes of amateur licenses earlier this year.

Most of the old-timers are silent keys now, and there really hasn't been much in the way of young people to take over the hobby.

 

[Info-warrior]

I realize that the original question that started this post is probaby a dead matter by now, but what type of antenna was being used on the scanner? If the original poster was using the whip antenna or rubber ducky, CB reception is going to be pretty bad. Also, the mode could have been wrong. CB operates mostly on AM, some single sideband activity occurs, usually on channels 30 to 40.

As for CB being alive, here in CT there's a good amount of activity on Channel 19 along I-91 and I-95. There's still local activity on channel 15 and some Long Island base stations on one of the channels past 20; the number eludes me right now.

Yet as others mentioned, CB is dying. A lot of the folks hear have either given up radio altogether or have moved to HAM radio. When my antenna fails, I don't know if I'll bother replacing it.

 

[RFLA]

But where has the CB gone:
DX - Still not allowed by the FCC - but the band is dead. So those that are licensed have moved to amateur radio.
Local - Almost all moved to FRS/GMRS. FRS is being used by almost everyone.
Truckers - Cell phones and laptops - have you been to a truck stop lately

John

I live in Louisiana and here is where it's gone

Freeband- Most of the locals who rag chew have gone to the channels that are illegal above and below the Cb band to capitalize on the low noise to talk local and when conditions are right, to make contacts and confirm as many countries as most hams do (some people have contacted 150 different countries on cb I've met)

locals- the ones who used to run portables for say hunting use FRS radios, fishermen still use it for backup to the marine vhf

truckers- my area still has a lot of truckers using cb .. not to the extent of say 10 years ago before Nextel (between nextel and the cell phone companies running unlimited mobile to mobile it's cut down Cb traffic in half) however my area uses a lot of short haul truckers that need to coordinate between escorts and trucks and use those a lot.. but yep cell phones have killed many a cb user in the past.

local government- Don't laugh.. one of the New Orleans area local governments installed cb radios in all of the parish vehicles to have a backup if their 800 mhz digital trunk system goes out again.. however they still hold licenses for the VHF frequencies they moved from ??? and never put radios back in from... and with being on the coast, the sunspots are going to come up and during a hurricane (which the radios were purchased for mainly) we will have government trying to fight Central American stations running 1,000 watt liners and echo mics.. : ;D

Oh what fun

RFLA

 

[desertskies]

I realize that the original question that started this post is probaby a dead matter by now, but what type of antenna was being used on the scanner? If the original poster was using the whip antenna or rubber ducky, CB reception is going to be pretty bad.

Warrior, I was using the stock rubber ducky supplied when I purchased the radio.
I since went and replaced it with a mobile antenna that seems to have taken care of the problem.
My original post reported I had lost the CB bands upon the cloning, I was mistaken.
I do hear some activity, but for the most part, it's skip and not from any local location.

I would find a directional aggie (sp?) and mount it 30-50 feet in the air, but since I live in an apt. complex, management frowns on such projects.
Go figure ???.

 

[Black_Shire]

It's a Yagi directional antenna. It was developed by a Professor Uda in Japan, but it was first written about in English-language radio engineering literature by an English-speaking Japanese associate of his whose last name was Yagi, and his name became associated with the antenna. It is not uncommonly referred to as the "Yagi-Uda antenna" in radio engineering publications.

If you live in an upper story apartment and have a wood floor (or some other kind of non-conducting floor), a "stealth" yagi antenna whose elements are made of wire could be fabricated on the underside of a large throw rug. A CB yagi is a bit large for such a hidden antenna project (you might have to limit it to a 2-element or 3-element beam), but hams have successfully used hidden "rug yagi" antennas on the upper ham bands for many years.


-- Black Shire

I realize that the original question that started this post is probaby a dead matter by now, but what type of antenna was being used on the scanner? If the original poster was using the whip antenna or rubber ducky, CB reception is going to be pretty bad.

Warrior, I was using the stock rubber ducky supplied when I purchased the radio.
I since went and replaced it with a mobile antenna that seems to have taken care of the problem.
My original post reported I had lost the CB bands upon the cloning, I was mistaken.
I do hear some activity, but for the most part, it's skip and not from any local location.

I would find a directional aggie (sp?) and mount it 30-50 feet in the air, but since I live in an apt. complex, management frowns on such projects.
Go figure ???.