CB Radio. What's the appeal?

Heh, only talking about this with my mates recently.

Used to have handheld for a while but kept my home basestation CB Radio which I used to get some good DX's - got Sweeden and Denmark a few times, quite cool really!

Foxhunts were the best - used to have a bunch of cars with CB radios and the idea was to track them down, the better the signal strength the closer you were.

Some rather odd individuals on there though, others were really useful to know and certainly helped me and a mate out of a few scrapes!

Boxman was my CB handle too :)
 
CB radio was great before Satnavs and mobile phones with data. I used to do about 50,000 miles and used my CB to get info on traffic jams, detours etc

It also filled time in chattting to people. Used to have an illegal overpowered one and a full length whip on my car so could reach 200 miles.
 
I have a full ham licence. I'm more interested in the technical bit than chatting with people though. I design antennas for a living and being able to reach foreign countries, completely on equipment that you've made yourself, is a fantastic achievement :)
 
Morbius said:
I have a full ham licence. I'm more interested in the technical bit than chatting with people though. I design antennas for a living and being able to reach foreign countries, completely on equipment that you've made yourself, is a fantastic achievement :)
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When ever I was monitoring HAM Relay stations on the internet a lot of the time the people that where chatting over them where chatting about the technical side anyway. So I think its the same with most people, and of course trying to break the barriers and call as far as possible.

I wouldnt mind getting a little set-up maybe for the car, maybe when I have got £70 to blow :)

Here is the UK/Euro 80 Channel I found on the bay for £50 odd

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/MIDLAND-98-PL...ecialistRadioEquipment_SM&hash=item45fb3a2ce6
 
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DJMK4 said:
Here is the UK/Euro 80 Channel I found on the bay for £50 odd
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When I was into CB there were only the UK-40 channels, not long after mid-band was allowed. Others had the real oldschool 'President Lincoln' - like gold dust they were, they had sideband if I recall!

@Greenbo - I used to have a burner as well, was good in the car but had a pretty powerful one in the house and used to interfere with our TV signal!

Parents allowed me to have a 20' scaffold pole on the side of the house with a 20' arial with groundplanes on it, swr'd in perfectly it had island-wide coverage!

Ahh, Uniden PC 404:
85985292-27mc-uniden-pc-404-40-ch-pr-incl-verz-kost.jpg
 
ham operator myself but still like to chat on 11m, as for 2m its becomming the new muppets band. shame really was good before the idiots got on there unlicenced.
 
Justin said:
So what do you do once you've contact random men on a HAM radio? What do you talk about? I can't see the appeal. :confused:
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Same thing you would probably converse about in GD or any other part of the OcUK forums, anything, but mainly I found that they talk and compare their set-ups, what kit they have, what they have achieved, how far they have communicated, tips, modifications to their systems, jokes about the wife, what they get up to on the weekends.
 
Had both a Cobra 148 GTL and a President Lincoln. The Cobra had been heavily modded to 8W (from memory 4w was the legal limit). It had SSB and coupled with a 300W burner and a 9 foot whip on the roof of my car I was sorted!
 
marv said:
ham operator myself but still like to chat on 11m, as for 2m its becomming the new muppets band. shame really was good before the idiots got on there unlicenced.
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You'll find the foundation license is just too easy to get. Then when you buy some kit 2m stuff is normally the cheapest doesn't require a huge antenna and is usually more than 10W.
 
Sometimes my PC speakers interfere with CB chatter to the point I can literally hear the conversations thru my speakers, this only happens when I have the volume very low :confused:
 
Dutch Guy said:
Sometimes my PC speakers interfere with CB chatter to the point I can literally hear the conversations thru my speakers, this only happens when I have the volume very low :confused:
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Do they have a gain control? I remember on my failed DIY guitar amp attempt i could use that to 'tune' to hear voices, i could never make them out though.
 
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