Anybody listening to CB lately?

[nokones]

On 9/27/2025 at 9:00 AM, marcspaz said:

 

I think if you key-up your CB and all of your neighbors can hear your voice coming through their refrigerator, microwave, TV, clock radio, birds are falling from the sky and at least 1 car starts by itself, you probably need a visit from the fed boys. LoL

And turning on the street lights.

[nokones]

9 hours ago, wayoverthere said:

i've got a 40 channel radio shack CB in the garage that gets turned on occasionally (with a mag mount antenna stuck on my vw), but it doesn't hear much.  also have a newer am/fm Presdent (Bill II, I think) that gets thrown in the truck for road trips.  

Actually have another trip coming up this weekend (Pacificon-bound), and I'll probably have the little Anytone and the CB on board with a couple of mag mounts on the roof.

I still have a brand new, still in the box, Radio Shack TRC-24 23-Channel CB Radio. This is the model with the blank channel between channels 22 and 23, which was known as channel 22A back then, today that channel is the same channel as channel 24.  Back in the day, all you had to do was snip the black wire on the back of the channel switch and you had a private channel that other brand CBs didn't have.

[Lscott]

15 minutes ago, nokones said:

And turning on the street lights.

If it switched traffic lights from red to green I’d buy one.

[amaff]

10 minutes ago, Lscott said:

If it switched traffic lights from red to green I’d buy one.

 

I'm a driver's ed instructor. I had a kid a few weeks ago go "Did you know there are some traffic lights that have sensors for firetrucks and ambulances?"
"Yep, that's definitely a thing," I reply.
"Yeah! And if you flash your headlights really fast, it'll trigger the sensor!"
"Well...you were half way right at least"
 

[radioruck]

9 minutes ago, amaff said:

"Yeah! And if you flash your headlights really fast, it'll trigger the sensor!"

It also triggers if you scream “weeee oooooo weeee oooooooo” out of your car window.

[Lscott]

15 minutes ago, amaff said:

 

I'm a driver's ed instructor. I had a kid a few weeks ago go "Did you know there are some traffic lights that have sensors for firetrucks and ambulances?"
 

That's true. One article I read some years back said the traffic lights had an infrared optical sensor that would respond to a coded signal from a sending unit that switched the traffic signal from red to green.   

[amaff]

1 minute ago, Lscott said:

That's true. One article I read some years back said the traffic lights had an infrared optical sensor that would respond to a coded signal from a sending unit that switched the traffic signal from red to green.   

Like I said...they were half right.

Flashing your headlights isn't going to trigger the IR sensor that's looking for a particular strobe signal / code from the EV.

[HHD1]

What is "The Skip"?

[SteveShannon]

16 minutes ago, HHD1 said:

What is "The Skip"?

Bouncing a signal off the ionosphere to get greater range. Hams also call it “skywave”.

[WRUU653]

4 hours ago, radioruck said:

It also triggers if you scream “weeee oooooo weeee oooooooo” out of your car window.

Please could you film yourself demonstrating the proper technique for this. Thank you

[WRYZ926]

1 hour ago, WRUU653 said:

Please could you film yourself demonstrating the proper technique for this. Thank you

I can see it now.

[WRYZ926]

On a more serious note. We use to have fun when the band was open and skip was good with our CBs back in high school. We could talk to the east and west coasts from Missouri with just 4 watts.

And I have to agree that the ID10Ts running dirty amps that turn everyone's appliances on and off, or hearing you through their appliances, etc, etc, should be tarred and feathered.

PS: I should have given a warning that I am not responsible for drinks being spit onto monitors, keyboards, phones, or tablets when I made my last post 

[wayoverthere]

16 hours ago, nokones said:

I still have a brand new, still in the box, Radio Shack TRC-24 23-Channel CB Radio. This is the model with the blank channel between channels 22 and 23, which was known as channel 22A back then, today that channel is the same channel as channel 24.  Back in the day, all you had to do was snip the black wire on the back of the channel switch and you had a private channel that other brand CBs didn't have.

I'll have to look at whether mine even still has a model number on it...it's got to be from either the late 90's or very early 2000's, as i remember tucking the mag mount antenna into the roof rack on my VW for trips (before i bought a truck, and road tripped that instead)

[nokones]

7 hours ago, wayoverthere said:

I'll have to look at whether mine even still has a model number on it...it's got to be from either the late 90's or very early 2000's, as i remember tucking the mag mount antenna into the roof rack on my VW for trips (before i bought a truck, and road tripped that instead)

The TRC-24 CB would be during the late 60s/early 70s. I believe the 40 channel CBs came out during the mid to late 70s.

[WRYZ926]

From what I could find, 40 channel radios came out around 1977.

[nokones]

19 hours ago, WRYZ926 said:

From what I could find, 40 channel radios came out around 1977.

That sounds about right. My guess would have been 1978

[Northcutt114]

On 10/8/2025 at 9:00 PM, WRYZ926 said:

And I have to agree that the ID10Ts running dirty amps that turn everyone's appliances on and off, or hearing you through their appliances, etc, etc, should be tarred and feathered.

This new President CB that I'm running has something that they call "Automatic Squelch Control." And that's usually where I have the squelch dialed in. I guess it must have a relatively low floor to letting in TX because lately, I can't seem to find but a few channels where this isn't DX coming in. I've had to run the manual squelch up to get rid of all the background stuff. Assumedly from said ID10Ts.

[WRYZ926]

I sometimes hear a Puerto Rican station on Channel 9 running high power to the point he sounds like he is sitting right next to me and yelling in my ear. I sometimes hear stations on channel 6 than bleed over 1-2 channels above and below where they are transmitting.

I have some modded radios that work on CB but I doubt that I will put one in my vehicle. 

[HHD1]

On Channel 6 here today, I was picking up some dude calling himself, "The real Black Man".  He was rambling a mile a minute, often repeating himself, about pride in his race.  "Black Flag! Black Flag!" he said. He even called his broadcast a "talk show".  There were a couple others talking too.  A lot of times they were walking all over each other.  Just a mess.  Made me laugh though.

[wayoverthere]

took a little drive yesterday, ~3.5 hours (unplanned detour) on state highways and interstates.  other than the mess on Ch 6, and what was probably LSB on Ch 38 (garbled, and my radio doesn't do SSB), there was basically no traffic.  even tried calling on Ch 19 a few times, and nada. 

Didn't bother setting it up again for the trip back today, just left it in my duffel with the antenna on the floor in the back.

 

[RoadApple]

1 hour ago, HHD1 said:

On Channel 6 here today, I was picking up some dude calling himself, "The real Black Man".  He was rambling a mile a minute, often repeating himself, about pride in his race.  "Black Flag! Black Flag!" he said. He even called his broadcast a "talk show".  There were a couple others talking too.  A lot of times they were walking all over each other.  Just a mess.  Made me laugh though.

Sounds like channel 6 just like it was in the late 70's

[Northcutt114]

8 hours ago, HHD1 said:

On Channel 6 here today, I was picking up some dude calling himself, "The real Black Man".  He was rambling a mile a minute, often repeating himself, about pride in his race.  "Black Flag! Black Flag!" he said. He even called his broadcast a "talk show".  There were a couple others talking too.  A lot of times they were walking all over each other.  Just a mess.  Made me laugh though.

I've heard that guy, too. Funny.

 

[warthog74]

I’ve always had a CB in every vehicle, and a base station at home, since the 80’s. Locally we still have a few nets and some regulars chatting away. I recently did a 2100 mile round trip from WI to MS and back. My travel vehicle has a Uniden 885 CB/Police Scanner combo in it. Between the 2 services that radio offers it was never quiet. Bigger cities always had drivers on it, either giving traffic, scale, smokey reports, or chewing each other out. Late at night in the middle of nowhere there were a few guys trying to strike up conversations, even if it was with themselves.

The weird thing is 2m, 70cm, and GMRS are all but dead around here. At least with 11 meter (CB) there is always something going on (mostly on SSB). Don’t ask for a radio check on 19. Nobody will respond to that. Most drivers that are still allowed to have CB’s only really care about road reports and will ignore anything else. Or if you really want somebody on 19 to respond, start ranting about politics. The dumber you sound, the better. That’s a sure fire way to get a few wound up and ripping you a new bunghole. That’s how you get a radio check. 

[Lscott]

9 hours ago, warthog74 said:

Or if you really want somebody on 19 to respond, start ranting about politics. The dumber you sound, the better. That’s a sure fire way to get a few wound up and ripping you a new bunghole. That’s how you get a radio check. 

I once told an 18 wheeler driver on 19 the only exorcise his fat a*s got was lifting the coffee mug from the cup holder to his lips. Yeah, that got a response. In fact he wanted to pull over and duke it on on the side of the road.  

[Thanatos]

On 10/9/2025 at 11:42 AM, WRYZ926 said:

From what I could find, 40 channel radios came out around 1977.

That's pretty close to correct, but they weren't really in widespread usage until around 1980.  When they went to 40 channel, the FCC dropped the max wattage down to 4 watts, and a lot of us hung onto our 23-channel radios as long as we could to get the wee bit of extra power...then I went to 40 channels with a 500 watt linear amp...lol  My FAVORITE thing to do with the linear, was when my neighbor decided to listen to his TV or stereo at his "11" volume, was to go out to my Bronco (which my assigned parking spot was in front of his patio), fire up the linear, and completely screw up his TV or stereo when I keyed up.  I haven't used a CB in at least a couple of decades though...too much of a circus on it most of the time.

What I do think is funny is that I can still remember my CB callsign (from back when you had to have a license), as well as my first 16-digit driver's license number, yet I can't remember what I freakin' ate yesterday!!!  Great how the human mind works, isn't it.  I think the big difference is that now, we have SO many numbers floating around in our heads (PINs, passwords, phone numbers, and all the other daily crap), when back then there wasn't nearly as much we had to keep in our heads from day to day.  Information overload.