Posted: 9/9/2014 9:50:50 PM EDT
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I was on a long trip and decided to have a CB with me as well as the Yaesu 8900 just to have an alternative comm option. I remember having a CB in the car in the mid 70's and having a lot of fun.
Long story short . . . Anyone want a lightly used and only puked on once Cobra? 
I'm headed to Walmart for some intelligent conversation. 
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It wouldn't be so bad if the FCC hadn't stopped enforcement. If they'd just shut down anyone running over 100W even it'd be a huge
improvement -- during the day the noise level is so high from the guys in the southern US screaming "sue-eee!" as to make CB almost completely unusable nationwide. A bunch of idiots with just five watts and terrible antennas... not that bad. A few hundred inbred folks running over 1 KW into splattermaster amps... ruins it for everyone in the country. The few dozen "watergate" bozos running 70 KW... well, seriously, WTF. |
| Thus the reason why the 20 year old mobile unit I bought in the Navy is still sitting on the shelf. I found it a few months ago and turned it on. Just like in the movie Crocodile Dundee when he turns on the TV and sees I Love Lucy. Same old crap. Channel 9 is totally unusable due to non english speaking "operators". 19 is nothing but religious rants, and guys saying baba booey over and over.. |
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Thus the reason why the 20 year old mobile unit I bought in the Navy is still sitting on the shelf. I found it a few months ago and turned it on. Just like in the movie Crocodile Dundee when he turns on the TV and sees I Love Lucy. Same old crap. Channel 9 is totally unusable due to non english speaking "operators". 19 is nothing but religious rants, and guys saying baba booey over and over.. Pretty much this. If the FCC would slap a couple hundred $10K fines out on those clowns it would clean right up pretty quickly. Then it could go back to being a useful tool again. |
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I took mine on my commute this week to see if it was working for a CL sale.
The problem was I need a translation of the language. I am pretty sure it was some form of English. I would describe it as drunk retard cajun English, with no punctuation. It sounded somewhat like this. "Ahh10-4watchmybackwatchmyback5by5jibjabjibjabstateboyzaheadHaHawhothef*ckyouthinkyouarewatchmybackwatchmyback" 15 minutes and a headache was all I could take. Some channels were spanish only. |
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I'm pretty sure that everyone using CB is named Skippy. At least that's who one idiot called for over and over and a lot of people answered. There was a Skippy in FL, another one in AL, and several in MS. I wonder if they're all related.
Yeah, somewhere in the stream of babble there a few English words, but not many. I need to find one of those 1970's reverb amps.
Now that I'm back in St. Louis at least I recognize some of the meth-induced-slur words. The CB can now come out of the vehicle and take it's rightful place on the shelf beside the lava lamp. |
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Thus the reason why the 20 year old mobile unit I bought in the Navy is still sitting on the shelf. I found it a few months ago and turned it on. Just like in the movie Crocodile Dundee when he turns on the TV and sees I Love Lucy. Same old crap. Channel 9 is totally unusable due to non english speaking "operators". 19 is nothing but religious rants, and guys saying baba booey over and over.. 
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And to think I was considering adding a CB to the shack as another method to communicate. What the hell was I thinking? Yeah, I've got two -- a mini AM rig and a full SSB rig -- that sit in ammo cans in case I need them. About once I year I plug them in, hook up my vertical to them, and convince myself they're worthless in about five minutes. I just did that again last night, and listened to three guys working each other -- Texas, Arizona, and Hawaii -- on channel 12, using AM. I seriously doubt any were putting out a legally compliant 4 watts. Channel 19 was a soo-eeeey fest, and a bunch of the lower channels were all spanish comms. There's nothing CB can do that FRS can't, other than make your ears bleed and make you lose faith in humankind, that is. |
Yeah no. I have a BC510 around here somewhere a guy gave me because he said it sounded like crap. I accepted it only for the opportunity to satisfy my curiosity as to how he could tell . But (and it has been 13 years) I have never fired it up. But I'm sure the fellow who gave it to me is right, that it sounds like crap.
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I've got 6 or 8 of them around here. Two of them converted to 10 meters, Cobra 148 and a RS TRC-465 SSB units.
Nothing wrong with keeping one around. Useful on trail rides with non-hams or getting info on the highway. That is, when you get away from the big cities and have your B.S. filter turned on. |
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I've got 6 or 8 of them around here. Two of them converted to 10 meters, Cobra 148 and a RS TRC-465 SSB units. Nothing wrong with keeping one around. Useful on trail rides with non-hams or getting info on the highway. That is, when you get away from the big cities and have your B.S. filter turned on. The only reason my Jeep has one...almost everyone I go riding with is too ignorant to know there is something better. A few of them are getting their ham licenses though and beginning to see the garanteed communication factor. When I went from a F150 to a Trailblazer, I officially pulled my 25 out and made room for a FT-2900 (which may be coming out here soon for a VX-5000). I later put the 25 in the Jeep on a Larsen NMO27... If I get a project vehicle I'm looking at (another trail rig...per say) it will only have a UHF radio in it. |
| I still have a Uniden Grant in my truck. I like it when driving on the freeway. When accidents happen you get enough notice on the radio to get of the freeway and go around rather than get stuck in traffic for an hour or more. Some times I here if there is an accident on the ham radio but not very often. Also when out playing in the woods or hunting need the CB because others in the group don't have ham radio. |
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I still have a Uniden Grant in my truck. I like it when driving on the freeway. When accidents happen you get enough notice on the radio to get of the freeway and go around rather than get stuck in traffic for an hour or more. Some times I here if there is an accident on the ham radio but not very often. Also when out playing in the woods or hunting need the CB because others in the group don't have ham radio. How the hell do you decipher that there is an accident ahead from the sewage that comes out of the CB? For the life of me I know they are speaking English but I don't understand a word of it. |
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Quoted: My old man had a 3x3 call sign. :) |
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My father had a 4x4 in the KAGH-xxxx series. They had run out of 3x4's by the time he got his license. I applied for mine when I turned 18 and got KBRB-xxxx. Of course they were all voided when the FCC dropped the licensing requirement. Those style calls are now used with GMRS. A neighbor kid had a call KMC-36xx which often reminded me of the Emergency! callsign KMG-365. Quoted:
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My old man had a 3x3 call sign. :) The 4x3's are also used in commercial licenses. Kinda funny, this thread popped up after a similar thread on a different forum… What Two Truckers Think of CB |
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I always find these threads fascinating, and by that I mean completely baffling. I'm a truck driver and as such I use CB every day without much trouble. I've done this all over the lower 48, much of Canada and parts of Mexico.
There are 40 channels on a CB, if one channel is busy there are usually at least a dozen that are empty, dead, silent, no one there. There's also a nifty feature on CB's called squelch. I know this is a strange concept to Hams but most of us that use A CB for communicating don't spend all our time trying to find the most distant signal . With proper use of the squelch knob you can actually tune out conversations off in the distance. Most CB users are mobile and their rigs are lucky to get out more than a couple miles. The guys running high power rigs generally congregate on a few channels trying to out asshat each other which generally makes it pretty easy to avoid them. I'm also a ham, I've carried a 2 meter rig on my truck and have never actually gotten useful traffic or directional information. I've never failed to get directions or information on my CB when I needed it. You guys can bad mouth CB and those of us that use it all you want but until Hams start actually talking to each other instead of just "making contacts" Ham will not come anywhere close to the usefulness of CB on the road. |
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That's a Big 10-4! <a href="http://s299.photobucket.com/user/carpdiver/media/cbonbike.jpg.html" target="_blank">http://i299.photobucket.com/albums/mm291/carpdiver/cbonbike.jpg</a> Liquor cycle with an attitude. |
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I'm pretty sure that everyone using CB is named Skippy. At least that's who one idiot called for over and over and a lot of people answered. There was a Skippy in FL, another one in AL, and several in MS. I wonder if they're all related.
Yeah, somewhere in the stream of babble there a few English words, but not many. I need to find one of those 1970's reverb amps.
Now that I'm back in St. Louis at least I recognize some of the meth-induced-slur words. The CB can now come out of the vehicle and take it's rightful place on the shelf beside the lava lamp. I thought I was the only one who can't understand the CB dialect. They are 100 times worse than pilots. Cussing on See Bee is a worldwide phenomenon. I was listening to CB channels when I was in Chezh Republic ( near German border) earlier this year. I don't speak Chezh but some Germans were cussing profusely. Russians were even worse when I listened to a CB in Russia. Russian profanity is like another language and they use it a lot, even on HAM bands.  
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I haven't had a CB since around 1997, but have actually been wanting to add a CB in my truck for a couple of years. The purpose is for one thing only: logging road traffic. I spend a lot of time in the forests, and here in WA state CB is often used for logging traffic. As you drive in, there will be a sign that will say something along the lines of "Logging CB 12". In some instances, numbered signs will be posted or spray painted on trees on the route in. The radio traffic will sound something like "outbound marker 8". If you are close, you pull to the side and stop, instead of chancing meeting a full logging truck in a blind curve.
...I just haven't taken the time to figure out where I would put the radio or another antenna on my vehicle. |
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So if everyone just wants a CB to monitor stuff every now and then why not pick up just about any old analog scanner and keep it in the glove box? My objective was to have comms in addition to ham while traveling. I didn't want to just listen, I wanted to converse. I found the ham repeaters along the route nearly dead, and the CB conversations unbelievably unintelligent. I'll keep the CB just in case it's ever needed, but I'm not going to use it otherwise. Years ago I used to be quite active on CB, and I do recall it being friendly and useful. On this one trip -- not so much. Y'all keep the hammer down, the sunny side up, and I'll see you on the flip side, good buddy. 
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Because Scanners are typically FM and CB is AM Quoted:
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So if everyone just wants a CB to monitor stuff every now and then why not pick up just about any old analog scanner and keep it in the glove box? Because Scanners are typically FM and CB is AM I have a half dozen radio shack yard sale specials that have am and cover 11m |
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I always find these threads fascinating, and by that I mean completely baffling. I'm a truck driver and as such I use CB every day without much trouble. I've done this all over the lower 48, much of Canada and parts of Mexico. There are 40 channels on a CB, if one channel is busy there are usually at least a dozen that are empty, dead, silent, no one there. There's also a nifty feature on CB's called squelch. I know this is a strange concept to Hams but most of us that use A CB for communicating don't spend all our time trying to find the most distant signal . With proper use of the squelch knob you can actually tune out conversations off in the distance. Most CB users are mobile and their rigs are lucky to get out more than a couple miles. The guys running high power rigs generally congregate on a few channels trying to out asshat each other which generally makes it pretty easy to avoid them. I'm also a ham, I've carried a 2 meter rig on my truck and have never actually gotten useful traffic or directional information. I've never failed to get directions or information on my CB when I needed it. You guys can bad mouth CB and those of us that use it all you want but until Hams start actually talking to each other instead of just "making contacts" Ham will not come anywhere close to the usefulness of CB on the road. Pretty much nails it. I use the RF gain control instead of the squelch but to each his own.  CB's near the big cities are like GD on loony pills. CB out on the "open road" is the best source of local (a few miles) info.
Way back in the day, I used to commute a lot on I-70 between Columbus OH and Wheeling WVA. Lots of truck traffic and the "Smokey" couldn't hide from the truckers. |