Cell phone Ad on Twitter

[poltergeisty]

I saw on Twitter a cell phone Ad, could have been Sprint show an old CB crystal Realistic handheld with the theme of being a "nerd."

Not exactly sure what demographic they are trying to lure in, but it seems perhaps it's the ones who are into radio or something. Most people are not. Most people probably don't even know what ... --- ... means.

 

[KB4MSZ]

I guess I'm one of those nerds. As a kid I had just about all of the CB handhelds they sold from the late 60's to the late 70's.

 

[poltergeisty]

I had a few Radio Shack models myself. I used to swap the RX and TX crystals and transmit on a different frequency. Thought I was the only one able to do that and have my own private channel until the kid behind me managed to find the same channel I was using and also swamped RX and TX crystals. I was like the F! Of all 40 damn channels and the RX and TX swamp this chump managed to find my private channel. Then one day I head someone on my frequency. Latter on I learned that they sold CBs that TXed out of band so that's why he was on my "private channel."

I also had a very nice and expensive digital Radio Shack CB handheld that I used on a 1/4 wave horizontal dipole facing North and South. I was told I blew everyone away on that one damn handheld. LOL! Dipoles are pretty good antennas. I bet a vertical polarized dipole on a mast would work a lot better than some expensive CB antenna you can buy. I'm willing to put coin on that bet.

I also made my own "private communication scheme" with a couple of Kenwood UHF radios. I reprogrammed them with a set of 15 channels that had staggered RX and TX sides. So one moment when you pressed the PTT you were on one frequency and then with the next PTT you were on another frequency. It worked pretty slick but adding more channels made a long pause where the RX radio had to pick up on the carrier. So 15 channels in a staggered RX and TX environment was pretty much the max you could do unless you wanted to hold the PTT for at least 2 seconds before you could speak and the receiving person could hear you. You had to do that to create a carrier so that the RXing radio could pick up on your channel you moved to.

Now a days I just use the ol' Nextel cellphones that have a direct talk feature. This uses DHSS in the 900 MHz band with a VSLEP vocoder and if you wanted to really secure it you can add a 10 digit phone number for one to one private communications. I have 4 of these call phones and chargers I bought on eBay. Though one day the batteries aren't going to be any good and a replacement may not be had on eBay so I'll have to come up with my own homemade battery pack one day I suppose. The cell phones put out like 800 mW or somewhere around there and in town I got out about 10 blocks.