When I was a kid and we got our first C.B. radio, the FCC was still issuing licenses. My Dad dutifully filed the application and paid the small fee. I thought I remembered the number correctly, and I did. He stenciled it on the back of the radio with an engraving pen. I have that 23 channel Radio Shack transceiver in my garage, and it still works. We had one in each car, and a base station with a roof top antenna on the house. We could talk to our Dad on the way home from work as soon as he got on the Charter Oak Bridge and crossed into East Hartford. I don't remember what channel we used, but I know it wasn't 19.
Thursday, February 10, 2022
#TBT - KAMJ-8574
5 comments:
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In Virgina you will still see cars driving down the road with the call sign license plates.
ReplyDelete@Bigus Macus: Those are HAM radio operators. Those licenses have always had stringent qualifications to get, where a C.B. license just required payment. I believe they are allowed to use their call signs as a vanity plate in every state.
DeleteI still have a CB in my truck. About the only time I use it when traveling with my trailer on is truckers and once off the beaten path talking to farmers and rural country folk.
ReplyDeleteI have been a ham since 1972, so I filled out the paperwork for a CB license and got it for my brother, in order to keep him running legal. I still remember his old callsign as well. KADN8880.
ReplyDeleteI am now of a license that lets you use voice, but back in '72, I could only use CW,(morse code). I made a lot of contacts on that mode, from all over Canada, to Maryland, to Peru with a U.S. Army guy stationed there. Not bad when using only 3.5 watts of power.
Back then people who had my license class called Novice were only allowed to use up to 25 watts of power, I think. But 3.5 watts in morse code into a very well designed antenna is plenty of power, to make contacts.
One year, I was able to work aboard the USS Silversides, a submarine from WWII. It is stationed here in my city, that has transformed it into a museum, that scouts can overnight camp on, and that on the one day of the year that holds a nationwide submarine ham radio contest.
At least in Michigan, in order to use your ham radio in your vehicle, you had to have a personalized license plate with your call sign on it.
They stopped that when the cost of radios became so expensive. Gone are to days of building your own radios as the norm, it seems. I built the first couple of my own rigs. I would not do it now, unless it were a kit. They have to compete against just to many well designed factory built units that operate so very good, at such reasonable costs compared to the old units.
I had a CB back in the 1970s. I stopped when I got tired of my car getting broken into. Recently I decided to get one again and put it in my car so I could listen for road conditions (I do a fair amount of interstate driving).
ReplyDeleteI was amazed at how crude speech was compared to back when I first had one. I might as well be listening to a bunch of drunks throwing out sexual and racial slurs in a low end dive. Worse, it was clear that some of them were using rigs with massive amplified wattage, and they were stepping on everybody else. It was pretty useless for the purpose I bought it for.