CB radio

[pumpman]

How many CB radio enthusiasts do we have in here?

[jonnys_spirit]

We're looking to get a ham setup. Maybe a couple handhelds to start then a car and home station..

CB would be cool as well but I did a bunch of CB when I was younger. We used to swap the RX/TX crystals for comms on unauth'd freq's (started young with the rule breaking)...

Cheers!
-j

[Big River]

CB would be cool as well but I did a bunch of CB when I was younger. We used to swap the RX/TX crystals for comms on unauth'd freq's (started young with the rule breaking)...

Ahh the memories of cb world and big tubes.

[Bradster68]

I'm currently looking for 1 for my truck. These came from factory with an antenna buried in the roof panel for cb's. My dad never owned a vehicle without one.(he was a life long truck driver).now me and my son are looking into the ham radio gig.
When shit goes down we'll still be communicating.

[stillanoob]

Ham radio here. Still have some tube rigs too. No CB around here, too far from any highway. Although these days I am sure the long skip is in more often since the solar cycle is on the upswing.

[Yonder]

CB! Wow, that brings back memories! Haven’t touched one since the late 70’s on the way to Ft Benning. They still make ‘em?

[Yummyrum]

Curious whats CB on in the states ?

Down under it used to be on 27Mhz AM , then they stuck it on 477MHz FM

[HDNB]

cb is still 27, the FM stuff is called "family radio system" here

[Ben]

I've got a couple used for jeeps and trucks, bumped up to 10w (2 is supposed to be legal limit here without licensing). Since UHF got so cheap I just run that, the handhelds go further than a vehicle mounted CB did.

[Knife_man]

I was a few years back but the CB frequencies around here were dead.

Much more happening on the PMR and business frequencies but even those are moving over to encrypted now.

I did pick up some foreign chatter once but once I'd got past the initial "oh listen I've picked up another country!" Excitement and realised I couldn't understand a word . That was rather dull .

[jonnys_spirit]

Looking for recommendations on starter ham handhelds if anyone has good/bad experiences. Will get licensed but would like to purchase soonest. Some I've seen cover various frequencies for FRS, GMRS, HAM, CB, etc...

I'll probably eventually build a home base station but a couple nice handhelds would be perfect for now

I mean when the internet get's shut down we can still trade stillin recipes, tips, tricks, and techniques - globally... Not asking for any call-signs here but we can still connect up on the other side..

Cheers!
-jonny

[shadylane]

I have my old CB license hanging on the wall with my extra class ham license.
Bet there was a lot more CB radios sold during the 1970's than there was license issued.

[cob]

Looking for recommendations on starter ham handhelds if anyone has good/bad experiences. Will get licensed but would like to purchase soonest. Some I've seen cover various frequencies for FRS, GMRS, HAM, CB, etc...

I'll probably eventually build a home base station but a couple nice handhelds would be perfect for now

I mean when the internet get's shut down we can still trade stillin recipes, tips, tricks, and techniques - globally... Not asking for any call-signs here but we can still connect up on the other side..

Cheers!
-jonny

baofeng uv-5r has been on my radar and seems to review well. but I don't see any real use for it at this time for me.

[Hoosier Shine9]

Back in the day I bought a Uniden HR2510, 10 meter mobile that had been "Modified" to cover 11meter CB band.
That led me to get my Ham License about 5 years later.
Did a LOT of DX chasing with it.

as far as Hand Held I had an older Heath HW24HT 2M (146 mhz) & 70CM (440 mhz) that was showing it's age & needed to be replaced.
I bought Puxing HT's, ordered online.

They were very inexpensive. I think about $35 each. but that was 15+ years ago.
I have had absolutely ZERO problems with them.
They have a MUCH wider tx/rx range than the Ham Frequency range. VHF136-174 UHF 400-470Mhz 5W
When I received them they were gift wrapped & labeled "Toys".

[Knife_man]

baofeng uv-5r has been on my radar and seems to review well. but I don't see any real use for it at this time for me.

I have a couple of these and they are a great little radio.

Only get used once in a blue moon though.

[Yummyrum]

Was ZL3TMJ way back in UnZud … like 30 +years ago

Anyway .

Ham ( Actually Ham is abbreviation for Amateur …. Fuck knows why … but curious )radio and CB were totally different things then .

Amateurs were mostly a bunch of what we would now class as “ Autistics” that understood and felt comfortable with the whole Amateur radio system .

Whereas , CB was used by the general public for day to day communications .

HAM’s are happy spending hours and hours doing CQ CQ CQ DX …………………………………… waiting ……………………….

Hams are Hams because they like radio coms ……. Not the communication , but when it happens . Its all about the …….what the fuck ……. Tropospheric ducting ….etc


CB is different . Its citizen Band communication .
“I want to talk to to this person now “…..like on a phone but via radio


I guess my main bitch here is that I believe (and I hope I’m totally wrong ) is that folk are jumping on the Ham radio band Wagon thinking that its an easy way to gain world comms


It’s not .


If you want to chat , CB is the way

[Chauncey]

Breaker breaker one nine this is ol Chauncey headed east on the 110, smokeys by exit 9 proceed with caution do you copy?

[Bushman]

I have my old CB license hanging on the wall with my extra class ham license.
Bet there was a lot more CB radios sold during the 1970's than there was license issued.

Yep, me being one of them.

[jonnys_spirit]

Ordered a baofeng uv-5r for experimenting with 2m and 70cm bands. $23. We’ll go from there

Cheers!
-j

[Ben]

The baofang is good bang for the buck. Easy to program, easy to find common use channels on, good range with a small antenna upgrade.

[Hoosier Shine9]

Was ZL3TMJ way back in UnZud … like 30 +years ago

Anyway .

Ham ( Actually Ham is abbreviation for Amateur …. Fuck knows why … but curious )radio and CB were totally different things then .

Amateurs were mostly a bunch of what we would now class as “ Autistics” that understood and felt comfortable with the whole Amateur radio system .

Whereas , CB was used by the general public for day to day communications .

HAM’s are happy spending hours and hours doing CQ CQ CQ DX …………………………………… waiting ……………………….

Hams are Hams because they like radio coms ……. Not the communication , but when it happens . Its all about the …….what the fuck ……. Tropospheric ducting ….etc


CB is different . Its citizen Band communication .
“I want to talk to to this person now “…..like on a phone but via radio


I guess my main bitch here is that I believe (and I hope I’m totally wrong ) is that folk are jumping on the Ham radio band Wagon thinking that its an easy way to gain world comms


It’s not .


If you want to chat , CB is the way

Yummy.
All that you said has merit.
I do not know what Frequencies are allocated in ZL, In W, N & K land We have VHF&UHF, as well as HF.
The Higher frequencies 144mhz, 222mhz, 420mhz, 902mhz, 1240mhz typically have a much shorter distance for communications.
That is why on those Frequencies they use Repeaters most of the time. Repeaters have the ability to cover larger areas due to the height of the tower.
There was a man in Indiana that had 7 repeaters that were interconnected. You could talk to people throughout 2/3 of the state with a 3watt hand held. most of the communication on there was very similar to CB.

Not every Ham is interested in DX chasing on the HF bands. I did it for a while but got tired of it & moved to VHF/UHF.
I have a 2m HT with me 90+% of the time.

[stillanoob]

Looking for recommendations on starter ham handhelds if anyone has good/bad experiences. Will get licensed but would like to purchase soonest. Some I've seen cover various frequencies for FRS, GMRS, HAM, CB, etc...

I'll probably eventually build a home base station but a couple nice handhelds would be perfect for now

I mean when the internet get's shut down we can still trade stillin recipes, tips, tricks, and techniques - globally... Not asking for any call-signs here but we can still connect up on the other side..

Cheers!
-jonny

While the Baofengs are cheap they have QC issues. Some work great, some don't. Recently they have been coming without the broadcast FM capability they are supposed to have due to chip shortages. Baofeng being Baofeng they don't wait for stock or change the specifications, they just ship 'em out.

A much better choice is a Yaesu FT-65. A little more money but a much better radio. It actually has a front end and so doesn't pick up as much scratch so you can leave the squelch lower than a Baofeng. My current favorite handheld is a Yaesu FT-60. That is a real radio, heavy but an excellent performer with a reasonable price considering the quality. The FT-65 can be opened up via software. The FT-60 you have to open it up and perform surgery. One thing to remember about ham radios is that while you can open them up most don't perform well ojn GMRS or FRS bands. The antennas are cut wrong and the front end is insensitive at the higher frequencies. Baofengs are the worst at this. You will often find that a purpose built 2 watt FRS radio will do better than a 5 watt ham transceiver that has been opened up.

[stillanoob]

Was ZL3TMJ way back in UnZud … like 30 +years ago

Anyway .

Ham ( Actually Ham is abbreviation for Amateur …. Fuck knows why … but curious )radio and CB were totally different things then .

Amateurs were mostly a bunch of what we would now class as “ Autistics” that understood and felt comfortable with the whole Amateur radio system .

Whereas , CB was used by the general public for day to day communications .

HAM’s are happy spending hours and hours doing CQ CQ CQ DX …………………………………… waiting ……………………….

Hams are Hams because they like radio coms ……. Not the communication , but when it happens . Its all about the …….what the fuck ……. Tropospheric ducting ….etc


CB is different . Its citizen Band communication .
“I want to talk to to this person now “…..like on a phone but via radio


I guess my main bitch here is that I believe (and I hope I’m totally wrong ) is that folk are jumping on the Ham radio band Wagon thinking that its an easy way to gain world comms


It’s not .


If you want to chat , CB is the way

Gonna have to disagree with quite a bit here yummy...

Firstly, ham is not an abbreviation of amateur. It comes from "ham fisted" or at least the majority think so. In the beginning of radio, most wireless telegraph operators came from the wired telegraph service and were proficient Morse code operators. They sneered at the new amateur operators poor skills and the pejorative "ham fisted" was born. Later it was adopted by the amateur community as a badge of honor, much like the song Yankee Doodle was originally a derisive ditty by the British and then adopted by Americans with pride.

CB radio is very dependent on ionospheric conditions. When the E layer is in good shape the signal can travel a long ways. Otherwise it is restricted to very local communications. It terms of relaibility of communications, since hams have access to many bands one can use the band that is working for what you need it to do and thus achieve much more reliable comms. This isn't to say that it is always and everywhere but you have a much, much better chancing of contacting the desired station. CB is definitly not "I want to talk to this person now" unless they are very close. And at that range hams have frequencies that are just above CB and can do the same thing, as well as access to VHF/UHF, repeaters, much, much more power and so on. So ham radio does everything that CB does, times 1000. Or more.

Autisitics? Not at all. There is a large social element to ham radio. Nerds yes. Much technology has been innovated by the ham radio community. I work with developmentally disabled folks and can tell you that autism and ham radio are not synonymous.

Ham radio is not about calling CQ. A percentage enjoys that and it can be fun. Me, I use ham radio out in my adventure van for example. I can send and receive emails or text messages from pretty much anywhere on earth. I talk to my buddies back home from all over the southwest and to my radio friends all over the country. You can't do that with CB. Then there are all sorts of things you can do with ham radio. I once talked to a cosmonaut on the ISS!

So maybe check out ham radio a little more and consider getting a license. It can be very fun and is much more than calling CQ.

[Yummyrum]

Gonna have to disagree with quite a bit here yummy...

Yup and fair call stillanoob.

Thanks for the explanation on where the nam Ham come from . LOL I guess if I read the foreword in my ARRL handbook , I’d probably have found out .

Yes you ate right about the Autism statement . I was wrong . I think my comments come from those Hams I new which were quite a strange bunch . They were obsessed with collecting QSL cards in the same way as a Train spotter is obsessed with with trains and railway timetables …..but as you say , not everyone is like that .


My time as a Ham was back in the Eighties where most were on HF bands and VHF and repeaters was fairly new .
Most of us were modifying two way radios . Rewinding coils and changing crystals etc .
It was a very hands on approach .I guess is like home distilling ten years ago . Most would build gear rather than buy .

Back then , to get the full licence to use the HF bands , you had to be proficient at Morse and be tested at 12 words a minute . I sucked at it bad and only ever git the “technical” license to use VHF and above which totally suited me as that was more of interest to me .
I built a 4x10element stacked array on a rotator on 2m . Had finally upgraded and lashed out on an Icom all mode 2m rig but made my own valve linear fir it .
That was fun but my interest moved to building tracker for the Amsat satellites . IIRC we used 2m downlink and 70cm uplink with circular polarisation .Most of it was functional except I was still low on up power and was building a 70cm linear using a 4CX250b tube in a caverty resonator . Alas I never finished it before I moved to Aussie and it all got sold .
I do miss it a bit .

Everyone had to do the radio theory exam and thats what most found the hardest . That was the easy bit for me .
I believe they have dropped the morse test now days so maybe it is easier to get a full Ham license .

So maybe things have changed . I was basing my comments on the way things were back when I was doing it .my perception's may be a bit dated

[shadylane]

I'm fumbuzald how cheap vhf and uhf gear is these days.
It's been a while since I was on the air and ham radio ran off and left me in the dust.
Never chased DX much, the majority of my time was rag chewing on 75 meters. Or working CW on 40, 20 and 15mtrs with home brew gear.

One contact will always stick in my mind. I heard a Ham in Perth Australia on 20mtr USB talking to a sailboat west of him. I politely butted in. The Auzzy and I could communicate, but the sailboat couldn't hear me. That's the closest I came to truly talking around the world. If I drilled a hole Straight down, it would have popped out where the sailboat was.

[stillanoob]

So maybe things have changed . I was basing my comments on the way things were back when I was doing it .my perception's may be a bit dated

Ah, so you do know ham radio! I tried to get my license in 1976 and again in 1977 at the tender age of 11 and 12. I was a shortwave radio freak and had been building and modifying radios and there was nothing cooler than being a ham in my book. Alas and alack, I couldn't master the code. Back then you had to read schematics and draw some and I aced all of the technical stuff but blew the code. We had to drive about 50 miles to take the test and the second time I cried on the way home and gave up.

I still run tube (valve) gear, I have a Collins KWM2 that is warming up the shack right now and a couple of tube linears. I also have a couple of Telefunken tube rigs for listening to broadcast radio, one in the house and one in the shop. I even have an all tube black and white TV to watch old stuff on. I got hooked on radio around age 7 when I got a Radio Shack crystal radio and had my mind blown that something with no battery could make sound. That set me on a path of building many crystal sets and then powered radios and when I found shortwave I was in heaven. It was my internet, instead of the one local radio station I could hear news from around the world. Suddenly I had a use for the atlas and it made the wide worl real for me.


Anyway, I ramble. Ham radio has changed, some for the better and some for the worse. I still have a lot of fun with it and out in the boondocks it is a lifeline. I have no need for an expensive sat phone because I know I can get help through the radio. And I still just plain love pulling a voice out of the ether.

Shady, fun contact! It is neat to think of your radio waves skipping off the ionosphere, making it all the way around the world. Just think, electrical pulses in a brain moved lips and a diaphragm which sent waves through the air to be turned back into electrical impulses by a microphone which were then used to modulate a radio wave which traveled around the world, were caught by an antenna, demodulated, used to bounce a speaker around which turned it back into soundwaves which struck an ear which turned it back into electrical impulses and you were understood. Pretty freaking awesome!

[NormandieStill]

Please stop. The last thing I need is another new hobby full of weird kit.

[Runt]

I've got a couple used for jeeps and trucks, bumped up to 10w (2 is supposed to be legal limit here without licensing). Since UHF got so cheap I just run that, the handhelds go further than a vehicle mounted CB did.

Living in Colorado 4 watts is the legal limit. But who only has 4 watts?
You had a ground issue on Your vehicle or an antenna problem. I talked to New Zealand from my Aurora mobile on (27.325) am not ssb.
I'm just glad to know I'm not the only one that plays radio while running a batch.

[Runt]

I was a few years back but the CB frequencies around here were dead.

Much more happening on the PMR and business frequencies but even those are moving over to encrypted now.

I did pick up some foreign chatter once but once I'd got past the initial "oh listen I've picked up another country!" Excitement and realised I couldn't understand a word . That was rather dull .

I speak English to the foreign conversations and still try to talk to them. Some of them understand English and will reply. That is really kool when they do, but i get it You can't understand the back story. I talked to new Zealand from my Colorado mobile. I think that is as far away as You can get without a spaceship.
I'm just glad to know I'm not the only one that plays radio while running a batch.

[Runt]

Back in the day I bought a Uniden HR2510, 10 meter mobile that had been "Modified" to cover 11meter CB band.
That led me to get my Ham License about 5 years later.
Did a LOT of DX chasing with it.

as far as Hand Held I had an older Heath HW24HT 2M (146 mhz) & 70CM (440 mhz) that was showing it's age & needed to be replaced.
I bought Puxing HT's, ordered online.

They were very inexpensive. I think about $35 each. but that was 15+ years ago.
I have had absolutely ZERO problems with them.
They have a MUCH wider tx/rx range than the Ham Frequency range. VHF136-174 UHF 400-470Mhz 5W
When I received them they were gift wrapped & labeled "Toys".

The HR2510 was used as a mobile or a base but would be great for the apocalypse or whatever may happen because it has 10, 11, and 12 meter bands. You could talk 2 different ham bands or CB, which means more possible connections to licensed and unlicensed operators.