CB radio in 2024 worth it

Ixon

Ixon

Ixon

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Joined
30 Apr 2003
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Wigan
Back in the early 90s I use to have a CB as did my mates and probably everybody else back then to, so been thinking recently of picking one up again for nostalgia reasons, to see if anybody still on the airways to use in the car.

So has anybody used one recently and is there still plenty of People using them?
 
Probably depends upon your location. There's still a few operators in the Liverpool area, who knows Wigan might be a hotspot. Do you have the ability to receive at all?
 
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I used to have 2 hand held units back in the day, and a base unit,


This was back in the 1992-1997 or 1998 era i think,

My family used to use CB back in the 80s early 90s, then it sparked an interest with me when my friend used to get in to it (sparked from his dad)

I was only young at the time, we used to ride around on the bikes talking on CB radios, then i managed to get a base unit hooked up to my bedroom with a 12ft antenna on the roof .
 
We're pretty much at the peak of cycle 25 so once we get out of the summer doldrums, you'll be able to to talk to the world on 27,555.000 kHz without much effort for a couple of years.
 
I used to talk to some locals, there was a few i picked up in the same town as me, few truckers i used to pick up as we lived near the M4, think a couple of times i used to hit somewhere in the midlands and i think the further i got was apparently someone from scotland, how true that is i don't know. It was a very faint signal but I could hear him, this was on an extremely sunny day. I could tell it was not local as most of the local signals were pretty strong and you could hear them with clarity

We came up with codenames for the channels.

I installed a roger beep that i couldnt turn off, that annoyed a lot of people


And another funny one, as i was living with parents at the time, i freaked one of them out as one of the rents had one of these touch lamps (touch it and the lamp would turn up, touch it again and it would turn on brighter etc, touch it again it would turn off)

I remember getting my first base unit and the big antenna, totally scared the crap out of them when they had the lamp plugged in one time as i was upstairs and the lamp downstairs kept turning up, then off. They thought they were being possessed - It was just me transmitting.
 
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Never had one myself, but I did use a friend's CB back in 1995. "Knock it up to channel 10" etc :-)

Slightly off-topic, but if you played music or any sort of sound recording using mikes back in the 90s, did you notice that the mikes would sometimes pick up a radio station? You don't hear it while recording, it's when you play the tape back to yourself when you realise it.
 
DJMK4 said:
I remember getting my first base unit and the big antenna, totally scared the crap out of them when they had the lamp plugged in one time as i was upstairs and the lamp downstairs kept turning up, then off. They thought they were being possessed - It was just me transmitting.
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Did you fix it for them?
 
Feek said:
Did you fix it for them?
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Nope, just kept annoying them :) I think they eventually shoved the lamp in a cupboard.

Trying to remember what the manufacturer of the base unit was.

I know i had a handheld was something like a midland - Looking at google images it looked something like a Midland Alan - I had a normal antenna, a slightly larger one, and i got a suction mount for when i went on car journeys in the back.


The base unit, I cant remember the make, it was a sort of mid range, wasnt a cheap but wasnt an expensive one.

The 12ft antenna either had spikes out the bottom, or maybe not, deffo was 12ft and at the top im sure it had like a metal ball at the top.

I had swr meter too
 
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DJMK4 said:
Nope, just kept annoying them :) I think they eventually shoved the lamp in a cupboard.
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And that's the difference between CB and amateur radio. No technical knowledge is required, anyone can do anything and it's just a laugh if you do something irresponsible and cause interference to a third party.

If I were knowingly causing problems like that, I'd be all over it to put it right for them.
 
Feek said:
And that's the difference between CB and amateur radio. No technical knowledge is required, anyone can do anything and it's just a laugh if you do something irresponsible and cause interference to a third party.

If I were knowingly causing problems like that, I'd be all over it to put it right for them.
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I was quite young, i think if i had a setup these days, i would be more in to the technical aspects

At the time i was still quite young and wasnt fully apprciative of the technical aspect. Although i did like trying to reach out as far as I could, and chatting to people.

Understood the concepts of channels and frequencies
 
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ODuffer said:
Probably depends upon your location. There's still a few operators in the Liverpool area, who knows Wigan might be a hotspot. Do you have the ability to receive at all?
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There used to be CB Antenna everywhere in Wigan even with just a mag mount in the attic you could pick up quite a lot back then, there are still one or two large antennas knocking about on houses which is surprising, but from what I've gathered the people that sill use CB are mainly on SSB these day's & are radio enthusiast's.

The only way to find out really how active it is round here is to pick up a cheap mobile CB kit from the rain forest, if the airwaves are dead then it's easy to return.
 
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