Every now and then something comes along that reminds me of other hobbies that I have pursued as well as music and motorcycling and I was reminded the other day of my one-time passion for CB radio.
For the benefit of those whose memories don’t reach back that far, CB, or Citizens Band, radio was an outgrowth of the Amateur, or “Ham” radio movement of the late post-war era. Ham radio allowed private operators to talk to people all over the world through their radio units at home and it was very much a “niche” market. Ham operators were often seen as the geeks of their day, spending hours out in their radio shacks trying to find a frequency on which they could converse to someone on the other side of the world. Tandy Electronics (remember them?) used Radio Shack as their in-house brand.
Now I don’t understand the science involved, but I do know that the propagation of “skip,” the characteristics of radio waves to go up into the upper atmosphere then bounce back to earth somewhere a long way away, is dependent on the sun-spot cycle and this cycle is cyclic (hence the name) and can be predicted pretty accurately. Ham radio relied on the high propagation of “skip” and this is what enabled a person in Sydney to talk to someone in Cape Town in South Africa, for example.
But ham radio had its limitations. It was highly controlled, you had to pass some stringent tests (including being able to use Morse Code) and get a licence before you could get on the air. The governmental authorities monitored amateur radio activity (remember this was in the Cold War period) traffic and radio inspectors regularly buzzed the suburbs seeking out illegal and unlicensed operators.
Onto this scene, then, came CB radio. It operated on the 27Mhz waveband and a limited number of frequencies within this band were available for CB radio usage, so it was still controlled to an extent. But there was no exam, no licence and anyone could get on the air as long as they had a set, a microphone attached and an antenna. Unsurprisingly, the greatly enhanced sun-spot cycle of the 1970’s meant that CB operators all around the world jumped on the bandwagon and started having conversations with people on the other side of the world.
And so did I. Remember that the internet hadn’t been invented yet. Person to person communications were by landline telephones only, snail mail or, if it had to be quick, telegrams (remember them?) and ham radio seemed to us to be far too “geeky”; images of middle aged men in beige cardigans and coke-bottle thick glasses,still living at home with mum and running their ham setups in the garden shed just was so un-cool that they didn’t even bear thinking about.
And, as well as being largely unregulated, CB had another advantage. It was portable. Ham radios were yesterday’s technology; big, bulky units that relied for their efficiency on a huge antenna meant that you were tied to a fixed location. The invention of the transistor and the miniaturisation of electronic components meant that, with CB, you could take your radio with you on the road. All you needed was a little antenna and you could roll. Remember the classic “Smokey and the Bandit”movie? A perfect example of how CB radio revolutionised communications.
So I bought my first CB, a GE 40 channel set in about 1977, I guess. It lived in the car and was always used when we travelled.
As soon as you became a part of the CB fraternity you started to find out that there were all sorts of things that you could do with them apart from just monitoring the truckies and their communications out on the highway and find out where the “smokies” were (when the police started using mobile speed cameras they were known as “Kojak with a Kodak). You could, if you attached the set to a better antenna, talk to people in other parts of Australia and other countries. Of course, it goes without saying that, the moment you became a member of the “club” expenses started to rise. New, better antennae were needed, better microphones and the obligatory “extra channels” so that you could (illegally) catch the skip with people who were also using these extra frequencies. A cottage industry in CB radio modification quickly sprang up and CB magazines (no internet, remember) proliferated where you could read up about, and buy the latest and greatest gadgets. Power amplifiers to make your signal stronger, compression microphones to clarify your voice and make it louder SWR meters so that you could “tune” your antenna to exactly the right length and etc, etc, etc.
As the sun-spot cycle hit its peak, CB radio communications over long distance became easier and easier. A good mate who was leaving Canberra gave me a President Grant CB (a VERY expensive rig at the time). A young guy who lived at home in the basement of his mum’s home in Lyons converted it to multi-channel operation so that it had almost unlimited channels as well as something called “clarify transmit” which, if I recall, meant that when you adjusted the dial on the front to hear the other person the most clearly, it also did the same with YOUR signal so that hey heard YOU more clearly.
All of this stuff was strictly illegal, of course and an “underground” network of CB radio enthusiasts worked hard to keep this activity away from the notice of the radio inspectors who still roamed the suburbs seeking out illegal activity.
Long-distance CB communications was a world of its own as well, with terminology designed to confuse the outsiders and language that showed whether you were an “insider” or not. Much of this was a carry-over from the old two-way and ham radio days but it was “hipper”. The whole 10 whatever lexicon was established and everyone on the inside knew what a 10-100 was, for example. You didn’t ask where someone lived, you asked for their 10-20. The world of “skip” led to clubs being established. You could confirm an on-air communication with someone in Chile by sending them a QSL card (like a postcard) with your details on it and the details of when the communication happened; it became an all-consuming hobby. I had a regular communication with three CB’ers who lived in and around Benoni, a town in South Africa. Every afternoon around 1700, (0900 their time) I would talk to them and did so for several years. Two of them later visited Australia and came to my house where we put faces to “handles” and swapped stories.
But, like all good stories, it had to come to an end. By the late 70’s the sun-spot cycle was waning and international communications were getting harder to find and harder to keep. The radio waves weren’t “skipping” up and back as they used to and those who could see the writing on the wall switched to the new UHF network, crystal clear communications through the use of “repeater” stations, but useless for any long distance work. The faithful soldiered on until the whole thing died. My two radios with all their associated paraphernalia lingered in milk crates in my garage though several moves of house until they finally went to the tip. I found my Canard Radio Club QSL cards the other day but now I can’t remember where I put them.
There has been another sun-spot cycle since then but it wasn’t as intense (or so I’m told) Some old die-hards dragged out their 27Mhz sets and went chasing skip again but it died out again around 2013 and I can’t even be bothered to find out when the next cycle will be. The internet does everything that CB radio did and heaps more so I can’t see the point.
But was it fun? Hell, yes, it was a a hoot. 10-4 good buddy. I’d be interested to hear your stories of the CB days if you have some.
