CB Radio! Yipee!

Rich Hawley - 2014-06-11 9:52 PM

Are you sure it was a CB radio? $10 seems a little low. Most handheld radios these days use the FRS bands.

Years ago I was a CB'er. Had a Lafayette SSB-50 radio. Single-side band was the way to go for skip in those days. Couple that with a Wawasee Blackcat JB75A and I could easily (and this was from my pickup with co-phased 109" stainless steel whips) talk to Nova Scotia, South Africa, and British Columbia...all of this from southern Mississippi out of a Mazda B-1600 pickup.

Funny thing was, back in those days, some garage door openers operated on the AM radio band, at 13 meters. Well, CB is 11 meters and my radio had enough leakage that when I keyed it up to full power and drove down the street, not only did I bleed onto some TV sets, but I could open garage doors along the way.

I've built homemade 4 element quad antennas on a 50 ft tower for CB, that had an EFR that actually worked almost as well as using a small linear. When I coupled that with my Blackcat...I was number one in the illegal Eagle business. (My base station was a Golden Eagle with a powered reverberation microphone)

After about 4 years I realized that there was more to hobby radio than just screaming out CQ CQ CQDX...and trying to make contact with whoever was out there, trying to drown out the weaker stations and understand the voices in the static.

So one day I bought a $5 audio cassette from Radio Shack that taught you Morse Code. Then I bought a straight key and a little tone generator and started practicing. When I was up to 5 wpm, I went to New Orleans and tested for my technicians license. I could have gotten a novice class license right away with my knowledge gained from CB radio, but wanted more. I passed and was a licensed ham with the call sign of N5ESG. Later on I upgraded my call sign to KL7WI when I lived in Fairbanks (or maybe it was Anchorage) and tested and got my general class license which I still use today. For a long time I used an ICOM 746 with a 1.5KW linear, though normally I only ran a couple hundred watts of power.

These days, instead of running an illegal CB radio with hundreds of watts of power output...today I have a little QRP rig that runs only 5 watts of power. With it I have QSO cards from all over the world...the furthest away being Sweden which I worked CW using only 2 watts on 17 meters.

I don't play with my radio gear as much these days as I used to. I've scratch built several transceivers. Still have a 2 meter rig in the car with autopatch, but cellphones have pretty much eliminated the need for that as well....just as the internet has made worldwide communications pretty much instantaneous.

But amateur radio is fun and a good hobby to get involved in to learn electronics. And I still have a CB radio as well, but it is mounted in my sailboat next to the VHF rig, but it hasn't been turned on in years.

Rich Hawley - 2014-06-11 9:52 PM

Are you sure it was a CB radio? $10 seems a little low. Most handheld radios these days use the FRS bands.

Years ago I was a CB'er. Had a Lafayette SSB-50 radio. Single-side band was the way to go for skip in those days. Couple that with a Wawasee Blackcat JB75A and I could easily (and this was from my pickup with co-phased 109" stainless steel whips) talk to Nova Scotia, South Africa, and British Columbia...all of this from southern Mississippi out of a Mazda B-1600 pickup.

Funny thing was, back in those days, some garage door openers operated on the AM radio band, at 13 meters. Well, CB is 11 meters and my radio had enough leakage that when I keyed it up to full power and drove down the street, not only did I bleed onto some TV sets, but I could open garage doors along the way.

I've built homemade 4 element quad antennas on a 50 ft tower for CB, that had an EFR that actually worked almost as well as using a small linear. When I coupled that with my Blackcat...I was number one in the illegal Eagle business. (My base station was a Golden Eagle with a powered reverberation microphone)

After about 4 years I realized that there was more to hobby radio than just screaming out CQ CQ CQDX...and trying to make contact with whoever was out there, trying to drown out the weaker stations and understand the voices in the static.

So one day I bought a $5 audio cassette from Radio Shack that taught you Morse Code. Then I bought a straight key and a little tone generator and started practicing. When I was up to 5 wpm, I went to New Orleans and tested for my technicians license. I could have gotten a novice class license right away with my knowledge gained from CB radio, but wanted more. I passed and was a licensed ham with the call sign of N5ESG. Later on I upgraded my call sign to KL7WI when I lived in Fairbanks (or maybe it was Anchorage) and tested and got my general class license which I still use today. For a long time I used an ICOM 746 with a 1.5KW linear, though normally I only ran a couple hundred watts of power.

These days, instead of running an illegal CB radio with hundreds of watts of power output...today I have a little QRP rig that runs only 5 watts of power. With it I have QSO cards from all over the world...the furthest away being Sweden which I worked CW using only 2 watts on 17 meters.

I don't play with my radio gear as much these days as I used to. I've scratch built several transceivers. Still have a 2 meter rig in the car with autopatch, but cellphones have pretty much eliminated the need for that as well....just as the internet has made worldwide communications pretty much instantaneous.

But amateur radio is fun and a good hobby to get involved in to learn electronics. And I still have a CB radio as well, but it is mounted in my sailboat next to the VHF rig, but it hasn't been turned on in years.

stingraze - 2014-06-15 9:57 AM



do you know what means this in our code?

.. - .. ?