Before Cell Phones.....

Status
Not open for further replies.

Seven-Delta-FortyOne

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Apr 24, 2014
Messages
236
Location
The Emerald Triangle
I'm sure this has been discussed 100,000 times here, but I'm not privy to them, so.......

Before cell phones were ubiquitous, was ham, and even CB, used more often for more useful purposes?

What I mean is, if you were driving around, and saw an auto accident, would you call it in with phone patch, or ask someone on a base station to call it in?

I remember sending people to phone booths, (which were ubiquitous) to call for help, but I'm wondering if radios played a larger part in that sort of thing.


Delta
 

robertmac

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Jun 6, 2005
Messages
2,290
I wasn't an amateur radio operator before the days of cell phones. However, I did have a CB. And we lived in a town along side a major highway. A couple of families in the town left their radios on 24/7/365 and we did have to deal with vehicle accidents. Now this was back in the good days of CB in the 1960s and 1970s. We did public service events and halloween patrols [requested by the local RCMP and Fire Departments because of vandalism and arsons]. As well, we were volunteer fire fighters and CB was a way of contacting others for a fire. We even had highway signs stating what frequency was monitored [didn't listen on channel 9 as at the time there was no official emergency channel]. Of course, after it was taken over by the over powered stations and truck drivers, the monitoring for emergencies stopped as it just was not worthwhile to listen. Even channel 9 was not monitorable, especially during the day. This lead to missed calls. I then got out of CB because of all the "junk" going on in the 1980s and then cell phones came along anyhow.
 

wyShack

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Nov 18, 2008
Messages
453
Location
Campbell County, Wyoming
Yes, I used my radio more 'back then' to get help where phone service was not available. There was also more opportunity to provide communications for things like parades, walkathons, bikeathons ect. These activities still are part of the hobby, although the need has been reduced somewhat.

73
 

ab5r

Member
Joined
Jun 7, 2007
Messages
555
Phone patch WAS common back then; if not someone usually was listening.
 

MTS2000des

5B2_BEE00 Czar
Joined
Jul 12, 2008
Messages
5,173
Location
Cobb County, GA Stadium Crime Zone
I remember back in the early 1990s (1990-1994) many people got their tech tickets just to talk to their wives/husbands, and of course the "phone patch" hams.

We actually used to have a high site ham repeater in downtown Atlanta on 147.0 that was exclusively for phone patches. During drive times the QSO timer was short, 30 seconds, so ragchewers would not "interfere" with those wanting to make phone patches.

The system also used an ACC RC-850 repeater controller with an audio delay board and was programmed with a cover tone so only the landline (base) side of the audio went out. When a mobile transmitted, you'd hear a beeper.

The repeater was owned by a broadcast engineer and from what I heard he charged a small fee to use it.

When the telecom cartels started offering low cost cellular service and "free" phones, repeaters like this became unused.

It's been at least 10 years since I've heard anyone make a phone patch on a ham repeater!
 

W8RMH

Feed Provider Since 2012
Joined
Jan 4, 2009
Messages
8,110
Location
Grove City, OH (A Bearcat not a Buckeye)
We had CBs in the police cruisers and often handled emergency calls. (and of course all the donut shops had a phone we could use). REACT was popular then too and handled emergency CB calls.

There were also mobile phones used by some business and private users however they required operator assistance.
 

AK9R

Lead Wiki Manager and almost an Awesome Moderator
Super Moderator
Joined
Jul 18, 2004
Messages
9,290
Location
Central Indiana
I'm treasurer for a group that maintains 4 repeaters in the Indianapolis area. We still have one 2m repeater that has a phone patch. The thinking is that if some major disaster happens, the cell phone towers will get overloaded before we lose the land-line at the repeater site (and it is a POTS land-line). So, by having the phone patch, we can still place important phone calls if need be. That said, the phone patch is almost never used. Consequently, some of our board members occasionally question the monthly charge from AT&T to maintain that phone line.
 

zz0468

QRT
Banned
Joined
Feb 6, 2007
Messages
6,034
There is a 2m repeater in Southern California that is dedicated to emergency traffic. It's been one the air in some form or another for about 50 years. Before cellphones, it was THE place to go to get emergency traffic handled. Now, it's just there.
 

JD21960

Active Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Oct 31, 2007
Messages
1,368
Location
ILL-annoyed
I had a small CB and called in several accidents/emergencies in the late 70s.. Police were very good about it. I used it mainly to listen for Truckers spotting speed traps on the Interstates, I listened more and didn't talk much. It was like everything else new or fun...."folks" abused it and it lost it's usefulness for me.
 

n5ims

Member
Joined
Jul 25, 2004
Messages
3,993
Many clubs at the time provided instruction on how to handle a call to the authorities using the autopatch during emergencies. Generally this included clearly stating that the contact is made using a radio connection to the phone so the call taker knew not to talk when the caller was talking, etc. Clubs also often worked with the call takers to help train them on taking calls over the autopatch.

Often there were multiple codes programmed into the repeater to allow the ham to place a call to the correct agency (this was generally pre-911 days where it was difficult, if not impossible, for them to transfer calls to other agencies). Even if normal autopatch use was restricted, emergency calls were often freely available using the emergency code or codes.
 

w2txb

Member
Joined
Sep 22, 2006
Messages
193
Location
Central Upstate NY
In my area, phone autopatches are obsolete and totally gone. Until the 1990's, they were popular and received some use. There seemed to be a lot more people on the 2-meter and 450-mHz ham bands back then, too, so help was almost always available.
 

n0nhp

Member
Joined
Dec 1, 2005
Messages
773
Location
Grand Junction
Just this last week, a member of our group was traveling through the Navajo Nation in northern AZ and another amateur traveling the same route came across an accident. The Amateur repeater system is all that saved a young girl's life. There are still many areas in the US South-West that have no cell coverage. A good high power repeater and mobile radio is literally a life saver while traveling.

Bruce
 

902

Member
Joined
Nov 7, 2003
Messages
2,620
Location
Downsouthsomewhere
I'm sure this has been discussed 100,000 times here, but I'm not privy to them, so.......

Before cell phones were ubiquitous, was ham, and even CB, used more often for more useful purposes?

What I mean is, if you were driving around, and saw an auto accident, would you call it in with phone patch, or ask someone on a base station to call it in?

I remember sending people to phone booths, (which were ubiquitous) to call for help, but I'm wondering if radios played a larger part in that sort of thing.


Delta
Oh, let me tell you, the answer is a resounding YES!

I got my first "real" CB (aside from the 100 mW Channel 14 toys) around 1974 and a little while later, got to hearing "KAAT1936, Hudson County Monitor" who was this official station on CB channel 9, He would sit on the radio getting calls for accidents and breakdowns along Manhattan's West Side Highway, which was across the Hudson River from Guttenberg, NJ.

I finally got to meet "Hudson County Monitor" who turned out to be another kid who was a year older than me. I think I was 12 and he was 13. Over a friendship spanning several decades, revolving around radios, volunteer activities, work, and relationships with various women, we would frequently reflect back on CB radio and how important the kid version of himself played in the region. He grew up to be a police lieutenant and an extra class ham, (and my best man and the person I named my younger son after...) and died in the World Trade Center 14 years ago. Up until his death, he still kept a CB radio and would occasionally guard channel 9 in case anyone needed help.

After I became a ham in 1978, I joined the local repeater club. It had an autopatch, which was a very big deal. These were the days of IMTS phones, which only "very important people" had. To be able to make a telephone call from your car or HT framed someone in a different light (it also impressed the girls, but that's another story). Along with that unique ability came the social responsibility of calling in stuff when you came across it. It wasn't soon after that this club, one of the larger organizations in the New York City area, appointed an "emergency coordinator." That person was a New York City EMS EMT (and later paramedic). In the days before 9-1-1, he dug up all of the communications center back numbers and they were programmed into speed dial. You could bring up the autopatch, then hit the speed dial and instantly ring into the dispatcher for NYPD, and a number of other surrounding towns in New Jersey, Westchester, and Nassau Counties. There was a learning curve, though. I remember the training session where we were encouraged to explain, "I am a ham radio operator making a radio telephone call. I can't hear you when I'm speaking, so you have to wait until I stop talking before you can talk..."

Not long after, I went to work in EMS, myself, and put up my own repeater with autopatch. We had a notoriously bad "telemetry" radio system (the UHF MED channels) before it was all centralized. My partner and I were "working up" a patient with ALS (advanced life support). I went through a protocol up to the point where I needed to speak with the doctor. The APCOR was as useful as a wheel chock. No telephone near by. I had my IC-4AT in my back pocket and was able to hit the repeater. I called the medical control physician by autopatch and was able to get the order to go further in treating the patient. When I transferred over to NJ, I was able to do that a few more times. Some of the other guys I worked with also got their ham licenses and did it when, for whatever reason, everything else didn't work.

I was also on a fire department and found autopatch very useful in having to speak with a foreman from the electric utility during an emergency.

So, yeah, ham radio and even CB made a big difference in the past. Not to mention, CB and ham radio repeaters were the original social media of the time. Friends, current and former co-workers, and various strays all kept each other company in their comings-and-goings, and into the wee hours solving international problems (it was a time of Hostages and the Cold War), sharing technical tips, talking about the new computer fad, and generally hanging out.

I took a job in the Midwest and moved out in 1996. At some point our careers turn us into migrant workers if we're not fortunate to work a "keeper" job close to home. The repeater stayed up past 2001, maybe into 2003, but people drifted off, married off, or died off and things changed.

I bought my first cellphone in 1991 (it was a Motorola brickphone, and eventually I scaled down to a thinner brickphone). I was cautious, because in 1982 I was a subscriber on a manual operator-assisted phone system and racked up a $300 bill just by playing big shot and calling my friends. Unlike now, phone calls cost big money back in the day. My friend, the former "Hudson County Monitor" got his first cell phone around 1994. I suppose my last autopatch call was in 1996 just before I moved. I still have that controller (it was actually two controllers - a Connect Systems, Inc. and an RC-96), and it's still set up with speed dials to the various police departments (a carryover from my first ham club days) and to each others' homes and girlfriends at the time.

Thanks for making me think of happy times.

A place far in the future
And faces from the past
And children reading history books
Their faces light and laugh
It all seems so primitive
How did you survive?
It all seemed so different then
How did you stay alive?
-- Primitive Cool, Mick Jagger
 

Seven-Delta-FortyOne

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Apr 24, 2014
Messages
236
Location
The Emerald Triangle
902, thanks for posting that. That was pretty cool.

Here in Northern Cali, we still have large areas without cell coverage. We have a linked repeater system with Auto-patch. I just need to join in order to get the codes.


Delta
 

SCPD

QRT
Joined
Feb 24, 2001
Messages
0
Location
Virginia
We had CBs in the police cruisers and often handled emergency calls. (and of course all the donut shops had a phone we could use). REACT was popular then too and handled emergency CB calls.

There were also mobile phones used by some business and private users however they required operator assistance.

I don't see many with CBS in cruisers anymore. Maybe a select few. Even highway to state police. It is nice to see a unit with a cb still on highway.
 

SCPD

QRT
Joined
Feb 24, 2001
Messages
0
Location
Virginia
I noticed Penn SP keep a traditional department. Nice to see then utilizing cb comms. It's also handy for them in a to advantage for them as well as public service and aide. I recall many years ago a Arizona HP had one and was communicating with truckers about a roll over. He was first on scene and it in end saved lives. Helicopter was flown in and both persons lived. It may not seem like much or happen much but any form of mutual aide communications matters in situations. Most NMSP is half and half about cb. There's a few who are into communications and also cb and ham. They do monitor as well as ham those group. MTD most have CBs but stuck to 19 listening to see if the speed traps have been broadcasted.
 

TheSpaceMann

Member
Joined
Apr 3, 2014
Messages
1,333
When hurricane Sandy came in and took out the electricity, landlines, internet and cell phone towers, CB radios were once again the only reliable communications that the general public had access to.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top