Subj : Re: CB
To   : poindexter FORTRAN
From : Avon
Date : Sun Jul 30 2023 01:34 pm

On 29 Jul 2023 at 07:55a, poindexter FORTRAN pondered and said...
 
 pF>  I almost bought a small Uniden 40 channel car CB for $20 a few weeks
 pF>  ago. I have no practical use for it, but I do drives on I-80 in
 pF>  California, and it used to be interesting to listen to truckers. They'd
 pF>  use channels 17 and 19.

cool, what model did you get?

 pF>  Australians seem to be avid mobile CBers, I'm assuming you've got big
 pF>  areas without cell coverage.

cell coverage is pretty good across the country but in light of some recent weather related events in the North Island when cell went down and people we perplexed about how to chat with each other in a non online world (ha!) I started to think about how it would be good to get some radio comms setup between our house and one of our cars...

 pF>  On a recent trip, I didn't see very many trucks with CB antennas,
 pF>  wonder how they're handling the broadcast aspects of CB.
 
I think there's still 'life' in USA CB (I think) only in that in the limited research I've done so far I can see there's a reasonable range of models out there. I'm not sure all of them would work here though. I'd need to check the band plans.

 pF>  I grew up in the late '70s when CB radio was huge. People had them in
 pF>  cars and used them for emergencies, as a kid I had a little 1/2 watt 3
 pF>  channel model and friends of mine and I would use them constantly.

I was the same in the early 80's they were widespread, I had a base station at home and would chat with other locals around the city I lived in, used a handheld while out tramping etc... the latter helped me when I got in trouble once while on a 3 day tramp and needed to call in search/rescue to carry me off a mountain after I developed hypothermia... this was well before cell phones... I still highly rate radio as a communications solution... some may view it as old school but I see it as resilient.

Kerr Avon [Blake's 7] 'I'm not expendable, I'm not stupid and I'm not going'
avon[at]bbs.nz | bbs.nz | fsxnet.nz 

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