Technical Discussions and Participation

[Dawn]

Yesterday, I spent some time looking through past postings in the archives. I originally began to paricipated here primarly because of a resurgence of people willing to pay a reasonable bench rate for restorations. That's changed with time.

Truthfully, I find this board frustrating. There's a small core of posters and for the most part, the rest are "drive bys" asking the same endless questions that a search would answer and vanishing. The other disconcerting thing about this board is the number of views a topic gets vs the participation. I've never seen such a disparity on other boards unless these are all bots and not viewers.

There's obviously many on here that are technically inclined. I also understand that CB radio is more a turnkey end user medium then one used by technically oriented users as amateur radio would be. Judging from the user base and topics, many of you guys are not young and pretty much fit into the same age group as myself and many have moved on to amateur radio, but still retain a fondness for where we started. There's a charm and lure about some of these older boxes and new ones, that just doesn't equate with the near Detroit obsolescence of the amateur market where thousands in dollars are rolled over ever few years on the latest and greatest. CB is an amazing medium considering it's constrained to a handfull of channels, a small amount of users essentially making it difficult for everyone else, restrictions, and marketed to mass price point. Amazing alone that companies still even bother to continue let alone innovate as we've seen with the recent President/Bearcats.

The archives were eye opening though. Apparently at one time, there was a tremendous amount of technically oriented individuals that you could feel the palpable frustration in the postings as the attempted patiently to help someone troubleshoot a malfunctioning radio with hardly a clue what they were doing. Yet these old timers like I fully understood that this is how we learned, not from textbooks or training. I can easily see why many of these guys gave up here and that mentality of the drive by's still is pretty much the same and thankless. They only want to listen to what they want to hear and have a preconceived notion based on what someone else told them or nonsense based on rumor.

I'm finding myself at that crossroad. There's some very nice folks here, especially some that PM often in the back channel. I've gotten more genial PM's and regular exchanges here then any board I've been on. There's also a lot of eyes on this board that for whatever reason seem to decline to participate. Just look at the numbers and they're sobering showing how many are viewing at any given time and how many reads a topic gets.

Take from this what you will. There's no reason whatsoever given the popularity of this website as a whole that this can't be a dynamic board. The viewers are there. The topics and postings aren't.

Why?

 

[WB4CS]

There's no reason whatsoever given the popularity of this website as a whole that this can't be a dynamic board. The viewers are there. The topics and postings aren't.

Why?

I'm assuming you're asking why the CB forums aren't very active on RR? I would take a guess that it's a combination of two things:

First, the decline of CB (or radio in general) as a hobby. Let's not kid ourselves, with easy access to worldwide communication on demand from almost any laptop, tablet, cell phone, and computer, there has been a huge decline in the need and desire to use two way radio as a means of communication or as a hobby. While I'm not on CB, I can certainly say that I've seen this decline of activity in the amateur bands.

CB, Amateur, Shortwave, and radio in general does not have the same magical appeal to youngsters it did 20 years ago. When I was a kid, shortwave radio was amazing! You mean I can pick up radio stations from Russia? WOW! Ask a 15 year old today what they think of that and they will pull out their smartphone and begin listening to streaming audio from a variety of radio stations across the world - in crystal clear quality. 20 years ago the idea of communicating with someone new across town or across the world via radio was an amazing concept. Today, there are chat rooms, Skype, Facebook, and Twitter (to name a few) that provide real time mass communication between friends and strangers from all across the world.

There's still a good bit of interest out there for radio as a hobby and we will continue to see new people join the ranks of scanners, CB, and Amateur Radio. There are still technologically inclined people that are drawn to radio as a hobby because it's in their blood. Someone on this forum once said that radio is "in your DNA." I agree with that. We'll also continue to see interest in these hobbies as the Preppers and Doomsday Believers latch on to CB (and Ham) as a means to communicate once zombies take over or after the collapse of civilization as we know it because another black president (or Democrat) is elected. What we won't see again is the numbers of interest in radio that there was 20 or 30 years ago.

Second, you have to realize the primary purpose of this website. This website is a scanner hobbyist website, for people looking to program in scanner frequencies and get help with their scanner. The CB, Amateur, and other forums of this site have grown out of the other interests of the people who use this forum. Most people who are scanner enthusiasts have other hobbies such as radio, shortwave, satellite, CB, and ham. I imagine that if someone were a CB hobbyist, they would first choose a web forum that is dedicated to CB radio instead of a scanner website. Myself, being an amateur radio operator, spend a good bit of time on this forum but when I want information specific to amateur radio I will usually check QRZ forums first before I come to Radio Reference.

To some degree I feel your pain. While I love all aspects of radio as a hobby, I am quite tired of the same discussions over and over. The same arguments. It does get old and tiresome fast. I've considered dropping online forums and just enjoying the hobby. I've decided to stay because I have met some good online friends here, and I want to continue to be a resource to people who also share the interest in radio as a hobby.

I say, if you have the time and patience to put up with the drive by's and beaten to death arguments, you should stick around. From the few posts I've read from you, it seems as though you have a good bit of knowledge that could be a great resource for those precious few that actually have an interest in learning something.

Good luck!

 

[Dawn]

Brandon

The frustration is not so much about the waning of the hobby and primary purpose of this board. It's the non-participation by people who are already here, and apparently interested in what's going on. This isn't a matter of declining interests as you would hypothesize and the point I'm trying to make just by the sheer volume of visitors both to the subboard and the reads of the topics themselves compared to posts (or no posts) yet racking up views sometimes over a thousand. That's some numbers Brandon for something that people have little interest in or here for scanner frequency information however much the young's disinterest or those inclined to use the net. Those are people that can be participating or not bothering to even stop by and view the CB posts if it's of no interest. If 5-10% of those lurkers would participate, this can be an informative board. I'm afraid the continuous drone of the same old, same old drive by drivel just turns them off.

 

[n5ims]

Perhaps I'm part of this perceived problem since I read through many more threads than I post on. In most cases this is due to one of two main reasons. One, the thread description is misleading or provides no hint as to what the topic is about (e.g. "Question", "Freqs needed", "Antenna ? for my xxx" and then asks how they should program their xxx to pick up their local system using some antenna). Two, the question had already been answered quite well so I could confuse the poster by giving another valid way to do the very same thing without adding any real value, simply say "Yea, what he said", or something else of very little value.

I generally do not post on threads where my input is not required to help point the poster in the correct direction, especially if they have a good answer that may not be how I would answer it. If the poster states that they didn't understand or like the original answer, I may provide mine, but otherwise why give them choices that most likely would confuse them instead of helping to clarify things for them. I also don't answer questions where I don't have a good answer for them.

Is it actually more important that I post a useless "Me too" post to make the thread needlessly long (and build my precious post count) or is it better to do what I was trained as a child, don't talk (or post in this situation) unless I have something nice (or useful) to say?

 

[MeddleMan]

lack of participation

It would seem to me that, readers are getting what they need and go about their business. Like a drive by, all they need is a green light and their gone. Not many want to change the intersection, but simply pass through. All they're doing is reading billboards.

Yet, on occasion, there are new topics, or like used cars an old subject comes along and somebody's gotta take it for a spin. Maybe you should leave the neighborhood. Take a vacation from here and cone home in a few days.

 

[Darth_vader]

What frustrates me is the drive-by users, especially on the FRS/GMRS forum, who post without bothering to read through the documents people have spent time (sometimes hours) typing up, and which the managers were good enough to make sticky. You know, about 90% of these same recurring questions would be answered right then and there. But I guess some people just can't be bothered to take five and a half minutes out of their overly-hectic lives to "read the ... manpage".

Like this one: http://forums.radioreference.com/gm...-radioreference-frs-gmrs-murs-fact-sheet.html

"When I was a kid, shortwave radio was amazing! You mean I can pick up radio services from Russia? WOW! Ask a 15 year old today what they think of that and they will pull out their cell phone and begin listening to streaming audio simulcasts from a variety of radio services across the world."

Same as when I was a kid, which isn't so strange as we were both kids during approximately the same time period. These days the "radio services from Russia" are little more than loud wideband buzzing from local switching power supplies, TRIACs, power-meter telemetry and poorly filtered (if filtered at all) compact-fluorescent/LED light sources.

Even with a CB rig, it's difficult to drive through town and not find an abundance of areas (especially the housing developments) where it doesn't sound like people are splitting atoms in their garages. The noise floor has increased over the last decade or so that shortwave has basically gone to hell. And now you know the bulk of the reason why I won't be going Extra if I get a new HAM ticket.

 

[Cunnerman]

Perhaps I'm part of this perceived problem since I read through many more threads than I post on.

I generally do not post on threads where my input is not required to help point the poster in the correct direction, especially if they have a good answer that may not be how I would answer it. If the poster states that they didn't understand or like the original answer, I may provide mine, but otherwise why give them choices that most likely would confuse them instead of helping to clarify things for them. I also don't answer questions where I don't have a good answer for them.

These two points describe me. I come here to try to learn what I can. There are SO many members here that are much more knowledgeable and experienced than I am. I am one of those who searches (or tries to) and checks the sticky's and so I rarely post at all.

 

[sdeeter19555]

I don't frequent this forum much at all because of one or two individuals that like to point out every reason why NOT to have a CB because Ham is better ten ways of Sunday. Its a waste of time to argue with them, because only they can be right...to them, RR should only be HAM and anyone into CB is second rate. That's the reason I only stop in once in a while...there will be someone looking for assistance, and three individuals telling them why they should give up CB.

Why waste my time here when there are other forums that welcome both Ham and CB?

 

[flythunderbird]

Hello all,

While I read this particular forum on a daily basis - and certainly enjoy it - the reason I don't post much on this forum is simple: I don't have the technical knowledge and experience with CB that you all do, so I don't feel I can contribute much at this point. I do have a little experience; when I was 14 years old or so, a retired gentleman got me interested in CB radio. He had a nice Royce 40-channel base, as I recall. Later, I had an old 23-channel hand-me-down mobile in my car. Never knew much about the technical side, though.

Now that I'm a older and have some time/money, I want to get back into it ... I found and picked up a CB555 at a pretty good price a few weeks ago, and I have plans to put up a tower this summer.

I do appreciate those of you who post here, as I'm learning from all of you!