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does anyone still use CB?

The truck stop CB shops are one of the best locations for hams to get antenna hardware, and many of the other common things that are not available any more at Radio Shack. THe line cords, Mics, mic hangers etc are pretty good.
Bilco AKA WB0KSW
 
Theres some regulars here in NJ especially on 19,channel 38 USB,11,6,they get on and talk most of the day.Cb is alive and well.I went on vacation and the truckers chat and talk about traffic mostly.
Georgia,is full of CBers!Just wait til the sunspot cycle peaks in 2013.
 
magicjellybeans said:
Theres some regulars here in NJ especially on 19,channel 38 USB,11,6,they get on and talk most of the day.Cb is alive and well.I went on vacation and the truckers chat and talk about traffic mostly.
Georgia,is full of CBers!Just wait til the sunspot cycle peaks in 2013.
Click to expand...

You may live near an area that has a truck stop, or near a highway which is logical why you hear transmissions on the CB airwaves. But back into the 70's when CB's , that crept into suburbs,and became the mainstream... all you had to tune in was one channel out of 23, and you would be entertained for the rest of the evening. It was the audio version of Facebook, My space, chat lines, dating services, GPS directions, or just a hobby all in one. I would turn on my walkie -talkie that was crystalled to CH. 14 and it was interesting enough to listen. What's gone are the chat lines , the CB neighborhood canary clubs, the fights, the bratty kids and the squishers. After the 70's , activity declined, and by the early- mid 90's, the complete band went back to the truckers.
 
Well, around these parts you still do (often) get fights,bratty kids and drunkards, but it's nothing like what I've read and heard it was like in the 1970s.

Or from what I have heard from that era, for that matter--I recently discovered, at my neighbour's house, several reel to reel tapes, two of which were taped off his CB when he was living in Seattle and Spokane "back in the day". My guess is he took his CB's line-out and connected it to the line-in of the tape deck and walked away from it for a few hours. Certainly doesn't sound like that today! Kind of an interesting "time capsule" of an era gone by.

And call letters--seems you'd be hard pressed to hear calls being announced over the air these days, except from a few old-timers and those, like me, who do it as a legacy/heritage thing. (My handle's "KDMC 8-1-0 Jr.", or to some folks just shortened to "Zero Junior", where KDMC810 was my late Grandfather's call. The last three letters were also cleverly worked into the name of a short-lived record label some friends of mine and I started in high school, to release tapes of our Electronica experiments.)
 
What about MURS?
Five channels, two watts on VHF, no antenna limit, and no mode restriction.
Just no interconnect or repeating.
 
MURS is like HD radio. It's Failing. The problem is MUR is expensive, it cost like 200.00 a unit.
Certain industries or warehouse uses them. Mostly used for business even though you can use them like a CB radio.
 
Starbucks said:
It's Failing.
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Same thing happened about a quarter century ago with Japan's "personal radio service".
A self trunking system on which the radios found each other on the clearest of seventy nine channels and told each other where to go on a data channel. No channel knob, users just entered the ID of the station to be called or "CQ mode" and the radios did the rest. Land mobile interests kept it out of North America.
 
Funny to find this thread...a couple of months ago I found a Realistic 23 channel CB the TRC-67 just like the one i had in the car back in the '70's. This week I finally hooked it up and it seems to work just fine. I may put it in the car if I can find a good spot to mount it and a good CB antenna.

I have lots of Ham gear, HF, VHF, UHF 900mhz and DStar. Why I want a CB radio or even some of the Ham stuff is beyond me! Talk about being well connected!
 
cb here is a s*ithole. nothing left but idiots.

the good people who used to use cb here, ether sold all the cb crap, or got the ticket and went ham.
 
kd8hho said:
cb here is a s*ithole. nothing left but idiots.

the good people who used to use cb here, ether sold all the cb crap, or got the ticket and went ham.
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Seems here that some of those idiots became the hams!People shutting off repeaters,keying up on fellow hams,people cursing and not Id'ing,
old farts not welcoming new hams are a few common complaints.Most older hams despise new blood,they think its an invasion of their beloved hobby,most base that on some hams not knowing code but some hams know more theory and can fix radios so why base an opinion on that?Cb is ok,not the greatest thing but its handy when traveling,ham is not going to tell you where the smokies are!LOL
 
magicjellybeans said:
Most older hams despise new blood,they think its an invasion of their beloved hobby,
Click to expand...

I would suggest that statement is an exaggeration. Unfortunately, it's not *entirely* without merit though.

I think the overall attitude towards licensees who haven't taken a Morse test has softened considerably. For two, probably equally common, reasons:

- many of the most vehement anti-no-code hams have died off...
- the no-code licensees have proven to be at least as much a benefit to the amateur service as their coded predecessors. They have *not* proven to be the lawless idiots altogether too many hams felt they would be.

Personally, I've long felt applicants for upgrades within amateur radio should be allowed to trade off technical ability against operating ability. One could earn an Extra either by passing a 20wpm Morse test and a technical exam just tough enough to prove the ability to understand the regulations, or by passing a difficult theory exam and no Morse at all.

Seems to me there was a news story out this week suggesting CB has been replaced by smartphones as a means of avoiding the "Smokies"...
 
I also have heard the same unwelcoming comments from some old ham farts chasing off new recruits, when monitoring the ham bands. Is it an FCC requirement that one must have a 'countryfied redneck accent', conservative opinions and major health problems, in order to obtain a ham license? It is very rare that I hear 'normal' people carrying on a conversation, other than the usual ham net CQ contests.
 
1st of 5 said:
I also have heard the same unwelcoming comments from some old ham farts chasing off new recruits, when monitoring the ham bands. Is it an FCC requirement that one must have a 'countryfied redneck accent', conservative opinions and major health problems, in order to obtain a ham license? It is very rare that I hear 'normal' people carrying on a conversation, other than the usual ham net CQ contests.
Click to expand...

A sad carryover of the old days is that conversations on HF bands are very specifically not supposed to have any
potentially disagreeable/contentious/argumentative content.

So we get, "how's the weather, just ate dinner, my lumbago's acting up.. these prescriptioon prices! ..grandkids are over ..hi hi."

Great way to keep young people out....make the place sound like "God's waiting room".

Back when the FCC authorized amateur services, it was a real concern that HF did not respect borders.
Seems kinda silly now, but that's why you seldom hear anything that sounds like a real conversation.
 
First things I found about instant messenger servuces is that it is an open world of topics as opposed to talking about ham radio on ham radio and that all genders, nationalities, ages, interests are discussed including religeon, philosophy, and social systems. Now, if we can just master some realtime language translation software, maybe future generations will be less likely to tolerate their governments agressive tendancies.
 
bilco said:
The truck stop CB shops are one of the best locations for hams to get antenna hardware, and many of the other common things that are not available any more at Radio Shack. THe line cords, Mics, mic hangers etc are pretty good.
Bilco AKA WB0KSW
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Yup. A week ago I completed a road trip from New York to Phoenix and back to New York to visit my brother. Stopped in MANY Truckstops America and Pilot Truckstops - all of them have a pretty decent selection of radios and accessories. Some of the stuff is fairly expensive, but then....it's gotten to be pretty specialist stuff, unfortunately.

One really old-school truckstop (affiliated with Pilot/Flying J) even had a counter in the back - with a guy busy repairing radios.

I have a base station at home (no antenna for it, though). Nothing in the car yet, but hopefully....someday.... I think it's easier and more straighforward to use than 2-meter radio ::)
 
While I ahhaven't gotten my CB out of storage yet to look at the band, I have noticed a LOT of CB antennas on vehicles here in NM. The antennas are not on old vehicles either. They were installed lately. So CB may be still be active here.
 
The long distances and high desert make CB radio a viable and more effective alternative to cell phones when an emergency calls.

There were areas in Arizona and New Mexico - between these little one-horse/one-car towns up in the hills where NOTHING came in on the cellphone. Totally dead.
 
One of the reasons I carry an HT and a repeater guide. No matter where you are (with some exceptions, like some of the valleys in the high Sierra) there is always seems to be a 2m/440 repeater.
 
"[A sad carryover of the old days is that conversations on HF bands are very specifically not supposed to have any
potentially disagreeable/contentious/argumentative content."
I've got to differ from that one. Sure, there are lot's of older folks talking about what interests them, but I find as many talking about sports, politics, sight seeing and other subjects. People talk about what interests them. I've had discussions on airplanes, photography, search and rescue, broadcast engineering (my profession) and dozens of other subjects as well as learning a lot about new subjects, and Yes I have talked about my health with other diabetics and those who have had the type of leg surgeries I've had but that is a small part of my overall participation. 67 years old and a ham for well over 30 years now I find as much interesting on the HF bands as I do in chat rooms, internet reflectors and plain old face to face meetings.
Bilco AKA WB0KSW
 
It took a few decades but I finally got my base station set up. After being 'out' of CB for many, many years I wasn't real sure what would be found on the old 11m band but was very curious to find out.

Not a lot of surprises really. Channels 6 and 11 are pretty much the same as they ever were except that power levels seem to have increased exponentially. Perhaps I'm being a bit presumptuous but I've never quite understood how it's possible that some of the most powerful stations in the country originate in some of poorest places. Given that a lot of equipment seems to be custom-built it can't be cheap. I mean seriously... When the power levels in your Suburban require Heliax cable and five Leece-Neville alternators isn't that bit excessive? How do they afford this stuff anyway?

Locally there isn't a whole lot going on. I live about 10 miles from a section of I-40 in Arizona so there is the truck traffic on 19 to listen to. 38 LSB is fairly active as is 21 AM. A lot of Mexico rolls in on the upper frequencies, mostly USB.

It's nice when the band opens up though. Managed to bag Venezuela and Trinidad the other day. In the evenings there is no problem talking to Needles or Fresno... that's a lot of fun.

Probably the best thing is that while there are still a fair amount of idiots and agitators out there it seems to be less than there used to be.
 
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