583 Duckford waving from North Dakota!
Lot of good talk on this thread. Lots of good points, so not much to even hardly add, but I'll try.
I live in depopulated nowhere, where the nearest 2 meter repeaters are 65 and 70 miles from my location. My county might still have around five licensed Ham operators. I'm enjoying CB which I really got into last year with a bunch of kit, and so far a mighty whopping TWO random truckers on my base station, and one on my mobile. The first time I got a passing trucker on my base station I was so shocked I didn't even know what to say, and after a radio check kinda thanked him and ended it, even though I think he may have wanted to talk. Yes, for local traffic you have to try hard and CQ, and be prepared to strike out a lot.
Locally, it is something that everyone, like so many other places, refers to as dead compared to the glory days.
But, being in the middle of absolute nowhere, and with good ground conductivity and living in the hills overlooking the plains, I have little electric noise and a good place to shoot skip. With some ferrites and grounding, I've got my noise to the point it won't even get above 1 S unit on 11 and 10 meter. When skip has rolled in, I've made some fun QRP contacts up to 1,000 miles away, and just made Jamaica yesterday on 38 SSB. Yes, I do also troll 10 meter with my Technician license.... but the action is always heavy on CB when the skip starts to roll!
So I think there is a valuable point about CB and Ham. I've heard others say it, and I'm doing it myself, sneaking back over to CB when the skip is hot because that's where the action is. You get sick of the some of the characters on CB and some of the antics, but you also get to enjoy some of the "unique" folks and a lot of the laid back attitude.
Otherwise, it was my choice for personal license free communication with friends and family. Doing radio tests locally, and with full size antenna, having great results, in the hills up here where cell phones don't work everywhere.....
Which is the last point I'd hit on after it has already been noted, antenna. Most poor performance is from lazy or uneducated folks who just think it is plug in and play tech. NO SWR tests. And even if they do, they want convenient little compromise antennas, and often put them on bad spots on the vehicle and castrate their performance. They take an HF frequency and use the stubbiest antenna possible and then are surprised when the RX and TX are terrible. Not their fault for not knowing. VHF/UHF wins mostly from the fact people will use a full 1/4 antenna with those bandwiths, and not for CB. Not just power limitations (which are, as we all know, completely made up and don't exist on CB).
Those of us who still run base, and back when base stations were popular, all know what those 4 little watts of carrier can do, and that CB isn't as gutless as many today seem to think.....
Lot of good talk on this thread. Lots of good points, so not much to even hardly add, but I'll try.
I live in depopulated nowhere, where the nearest 2 meter repeaters are 65 and 70 miles from my location. My county might still have around five licensed Ham operators. I'm enjoying CB which I really got into last year with a bunch of kit, and so far a mighty whopping TWO random truckers on my base station, and one on my mobile. The first time I got a passing trucker on my base station I was so shocked I didn't even know what to say, and after a radio check kinda thanked him and ended it, even though I think he may have wanted to talk. Yes, for local traffic you have to try hard and CQ, and be prepared to strike out a lot.
Locally, it is something that everyone, like so many other places, refers to as dead compared to the glory days.
But, being in the middle of absolute nowhere, and with good ground conductivity and living in the hills overlooking the plains, I have little electric noise and a good place to shoot skip. With some ferrites and grounding, I've got my noise to the point it won't even get above 1 S unit on 11 and 10 meter. When skip has rolled in, I've made some fun QRP contacts up to 1,000 miles away, and just made Jamaica yesterday on 38 SSB. Yes, I do also troll 10 meter with my Technician license.... but the action is always heavy on CB when the skip starts to roll!
So I think there is a valuable point about CB and Ham. I've heard others say it, and I'm doing it myself, sneaking back over to CB when the skip is hot because that's where the action is. You get sick of the some of the characters on CB and some of the antics, but you also get to enjoy some of the "unique" folks and a lot of the laid back attitude.
Otherwise, it was my choice for personal license free communication with friends and family. Doing radio tests locally, and with full size antenna, having great results, in the hills up here where cell phones don't work everywhere.....
Which is the last point I'd hit on after it has already been noted, antenna. Most poor performance is from lazy or uneducated folks who just think it is plug in and play tech. NO SWR tests. And even if they do, they want convenient little compromise antennas, and often put them on bad spots on the vehicle and castrate their performance. They take an HF frequency and use the stubbiest antenna possible and then are surprised when the RX and TX are terrible. Not their fault for not knowing. VHF/UHF wins mostly from the fact people will use a full 1/4 antenna with those bandwiths, and not for CB. Not just power limitations (which are, as we all know, completely made up and don't exist on CB).
Those of us who still run base, and back when base stations were popular, all know what those 4 little watts of carrier can do, and that CB isn't as gutless as many today seem to think.....
