My Husband got into CB radio through a friend the late John Smith in the late 70’s…I joined him at some stage soon after, we had a good laugh but we soon moved over to the side bands,on there we were hearing other radio operators from around the World…that was a wow time for us…
all illegal, that I guess made it very much more Fun…Well it did for a while, but as time went on people were getting prosecuted, fear of having all your equipment confiscated was real.
As a group that met up regularly, we all made choices as to whether to go for an Amateur Radio License…many of us did and once got the pass and study and learn the morse we obtained our full License…Given a call sign and paid a set amount each year to the Authority concerned
All very different to CB and soon enjoyed many contacts around the World, but you do need to be aware of how you conduct yourself…follow the rules…respect other user’s if you are transmitting close to them on the same proximity hertz wise…
We had to have a license for CB radio here, bought every year from the post office. Must have been in the 1980’s.
I loved using that, spent more time than I care to remember chatting to locals, lorry drivers & even friends on it. Met some of the lorry drivers & others.
Then came the Italians, crawling all over the air waves, totally illegally but no one stopped them. It became impossible to hear or make yourself heard about the Italian skip. After that it wasn’t fun any more & we stopped using CB radio. Probably still got ours somewhere & the pole, though where I don’t know…
Happens on the Amateur bands as well, though it is not just the Italians to be fair…
When others use an excessive amount of power, to me it is very selfish as they then decide they need more and more power…Ruin’s the whole Hobby at times…I dont make use of the Hobby that much unless the propagation fires up …I get bored with just white noise if that makes sense…
Had to read Morse straight onto a typewriter . when on Cunard Ships, due to the inability to write, with a pen, at that speed, some US stations would transmit the news at 28-30 WPM! (bragging some more!)
I never really got into CB, as before CB became popular, I discovered free radio & Echo Charlie. Echo Charlie being half way between CB & Amateur Radio. And free radio is unlicenced brodcasting. I have never pirated, as I have never plundered anything, I have used unused fequncies.
I must admit the CB’ers who revelled in the illegality of it & claimed to be pirates, always amused me. Everyone I spoke to who called themselves a pirate were afraid to use Echo Charlie, as that was “REALLY” illegal. For them the term pirate was an ego thing & everyone one of them lacked the guts to really pirate.
CB is still alive & kicking & now SSB is legal & it’s licence free.
It never appealed to me but when I worked for the GPO there were several colleagues who were very much into amateur VHF TV transmission. They started off as hams but moved on to TV, occasionally they would set up aerials in the PO Tower and transmit and receive from there.
I do recall there was a big demand among amateurs for our seondhand klystrons which were no good for the GPO transmitters but worked fine for their needs
