On Mon, 12 Mar 2007 01:48:31 -0400, William Warren
""w_warren_nonoise\"@comcast(William Warren).net" wrote:

William Warren wrote:

The Ranger II added Six meters in place of Eleven. It was introduced at
about the same time as the Class D citizen's band, IIRC about 1964. At
the time, Six meter AM was very popular, since technicians had full
privileges on the band, so six meters was a good "mid life kicker" and
the Ranger II was produced for several more years.

I stand corrected: according to http://www.radioing.com/museum/tx4.html,
the Ranger II was made from 1961 to 1965. I didn't know the class D
citizen's band was that old.
The creation of the CB band was at the expense of the old ham 11 meter
band (not that anyone used that band very much. The original Ranger
was able to tune 11 meters and the VFO did have calibrations there.
Eleven meters was eliminanted for ham use in the late 50's.

The Citizen's band WAS that old, I would guess +/- a couple years
around 1960. It was not initially very popular and it was intended for
some low level commercial use...companies dispatching trucks and the
like at the local level. (Remember tube radios were still the rule and
were quite bulky.) It took until the mid-1970's when cheap
transistorized transceivers were introduced for the CB band and were
adopted by over-the-road truckers. I would suspect that some popular
folk idioms such as the then-popular Country-Western song "Convoy" and
a couple of really stinkin' movies with CB featured in them captured
the imagination of ordinary folks and a lot of people who really had
utterly no need for a two way radio could get a CB to put in their car
for about $50 or so. This caused so much bedlam on the band that the
radios were functionally useless in metropolitan areas (I live in the
Washington DC/Baltimore area) and didn't serve much purpose until you
got out on the open road. It did make something of a cult though of CB
and certain folks tried to use CB in more of a ham mode including long
distance comms ("skip talking") and power escalation with (illegal)
high powered amplifiers, many the adaptation of the ten meter portion
of legitimate ham amps. This caused the nearly 30 year prohibition of
the sale of amps capable of working in the CB band which of course
meant any ham amp with ten meters on it. The little I listened to CB
(my carpool mate had one in his car) sort of revealed that the chief
purpose of the CB for most folks was to spot speed traps. "Smokey Bear
is hiding in the bush under the I-95 overpass." My car pool guy took
his out of the car after a couple months. In less populated areas
where interference wasn't so pervasive they did serve some purpose. I
recoiled in horror when my father had one in his car in my small
Wisconsin hometown and took on the personna of "Diamond Don"
Sheesh!!!! "Diamond Don, Diamond Don, got your ears up??" All my
efforts to get my dad into ham radio when I was a teen were shot to
Hell. (I wanted Dad to become a ham with the obvious ulterior motive
of financing my hobby...a 13 year old's allowance didn't go very far
when trying to buy rigs.) When dad died, I inherited his three CB
radios which I promptly donated to Goodwill. The CB boom was long over
by then and even Dad didn't have one in his car anymore. I haven't
bothered to listen up there in years.

Jon W3JT

William

(Filter noise from my address for direct replies)

Jon Teske wrote:
The Citizen's band WAS that old, I would guess +/- a couple years
around 1960. It was not initially very popular and it was intended for
some low level commercial use...companies dispatching trucks and the
like at the local level. (Remember tube radios were still the rule and
were quite bulky.) It took until the mid-1970's when cheap
transistorized transceivers were introduced for the CB band and were
adopted by over-the-road truckers.

Actually CB was quite popular by the late 1960's and there were several
organizations founded to provide assistance to travelers and similar
functions provided by hams.

It was populated by pleasant. well mannered people until the trucker's
strike (1976?) when almost overnight it took on it's current form.

Geoff.

--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel N3OWJ/4X1GM
IL Voice: (07)-7424-1667 Fax ONLY: 972-2-648-1443 U.S. Voice: 1-215-821-1838
Visit my 'blog at http://geoffstechno.livejournal.com/

On Mon, 12 Mar 2007 18:14:04 +0000 (UTC), (Geoffrey
S. Mendelson) wrote:

Jon Teske wrote:
The Citizen's band WAS that old, I would guess +/- a couple years
around 1960. It was not initially very popular and it was intended for
some low level commercial use...companies dispatching trucks and the
like at the local level. (Remember tube radios were still the rule and
were quite bulky.) It took until the mid-1970's when cheap
transistorized transceivers were introduced for the CB band and were
adopted by over-the-road truckers.

Actually CB was quite popular by the late 1960's and there were several
organizations founded to provide assistance to travelers and similar
functions provided by hams.

It was populated by pleasant. well mannered people until the trucker's
strike (1976?) when almost overnight it took on it's current form.

Interesting...I had forgotten that. The time frame seems about right.
I was aware that there was CB activity in the late 60's and many towns
even had little signs that said a local club was monitoring some
channel (other than 19) to provide help. That probably coincided with
the first all transistor tranceivers which made a CB rig practical and
small enough to mount in a car. But in the mid-70's when it really
took off things were pretty much bedlam. Even DX pile-ups were kids'
play compared to trying to communcate on a CB radio for a while. When
my carpool guy had one, he only made one conversation and that was
with a car that was directly in front of us. I'm not sure how the
legal ramifications of this worked, but our carpool passed over I-95
between Washington DC and Baltimore. The Maryland State Police
Barracks located on that highway had a lady passing out traffic info
to truckers. She clearly had a much higher powered station for she was
clearly readable. She seemed to become semi-legendary and it appeared
that every trucker going up and down the East coast knew her by her
first name. The other think CB was used for during commuting hours was
during the two gasoline supply crisies (1973/4 and 1978) many mobile
CBers were on trying to spot gas stations that had supplies and no
long lines. In the latter crisis, one of the radio station helicopter
spotters flew over the tank farms and noted that all the tanks were
filled to the top...the gas companies had created an artificial
shortage and were hoarding gas to drive the price up. When this news
got out the crisis subsided immediately. I have not trusted the
petroleum companies ever since.

Jon W3JT

Geoff.

Geoffrey S. Mendelson ) writes:

Actually CB was quite popular by the late 1960's


The sunspot peak of 1968-69 helped a lot. The band was pretty dead
(thankfully) due to low MUF during the early 1960s.

.... Martin VE3OAT

Martin Potter wrote:

The sunspot peak of 1968-69 helped a lot. The band was pretty dead
(thankfully) due to low MUF during the early 1960s.

When I said popular, I was refering to the operation within the U.S.
law (which was and is very different than the rest of the world) which
prohibits "skip" operation.

Most of the useage at that time was still families keeping in touch,
aid to motorists, etc. Almost overnight during the truker's strike it
became the home of what seems like a bunch of 12 year old's with
walkie-talkies.

At one time there was a reasonable license fee (about $10 a year). Then
the FCC raised it to $25 to help keep usage low. Someone sued complaining
that it was unreasonable and won. The FCC then started issuing free licenses
as compensation for their overcharging. Then they started allowing
temporary call signs ("K" your initials and your zip code) so mine would
have been at the time "KGSM19120",

I even had a license with a real call sign, but I've long since lost it
and forgoten the call. I wonder if there are CB callbooks from the
1970's and 1980s? I'm no longer in the U.S. anyway but I believe if you
were issued a call, you can still use it if you want to.

Eventually, it became too much trouble and expense to issue free licenses
to people who never used them anyway, so they issued a blanket license
to anyone on U.S. soil.

Possibly someone else can fill in the exact time line.

As for outside of the U.S. it still flourishes as a no-code no-test
amateur radio service. In the E.U., there are few restrictions on
what you can do, including less limitations on transmitters, FM,
and packet operation.

There are even a few European websites devoted to using CB to "improve
the radio art" e.g. experimental antennas.

The U.K. had a 927 mHz CB service which was canceled when the frequencies
were assigned to GSM cell phones.

Geoff.
--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel N3OWJ/4X1GM
IL Voice: (07)-7424-1667 Fax ONLY: 972-2-648-1443 U.S. Voice: 1-215-821-1838
Visit my 'blog at http://geoffstechno.livejournal.com/

In article ,
Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote:
Martin Potter wrote:

The sunspot peak of 1968-69 helped a lot. The band was pretty dead
(thankfully) due to low MUF during the early 1960s.

When I said popular, I was refering to the operation within the U.S.
law (which was and is very different than the rest of the world) which
prohibits "skip" operation.

Not at all. It just mandates a certain power input to the finals.

During REALLY GOOD conditions, 4 watts will get you plenty of skip.
I don't remember 1968, but I remember 6 meter cross-country stuff
with milliwatt CW outputs in 1979. And the NEXT cycle coming up is going
to be even better.

Note that Class D wasn't all there was. There was Class C which allowed
pulse modulation in the 26 MHz range for remote control, and Class A
citizens band which was AM in the 450 MHz range. I don't recall what
Class B was.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Scott Dorsey wrote:
Not at all. It just mandates a certain power input to the finals.

At one time it DID mandate something like "local communications only".
I can't remember the exact wording, so I leave it in quotes.


Note that Class D wasn't all there was. There was Class C which allowed
pulse modulation in the 26 MHz range for remote control, and Class A
citizens band which was AM in the 450 MHz range. I don't recall what
Class B was.

I had a class C and D license. The difference was ticking a box on the
application.

Geoff.

--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel N3OWJ/4X1GM
IL Voice: (07)-7424-1667 Fax ONLY: 972-2-648-1443 U.S. Voice: 1-215-821-1838
Visit my 'blog at http://geoffstechno.livejournal.com/

On Wed, 14 Mar 2007 13:54:04 +0000 (UTC), (Geoffrey
S. Mendelson) wrote:

Scott Dorsey wrote:
Not at all. It just mandates a certain power input to the finals.

At one time it DID mandate something like "local communications only".
I can't remember the exact wording, so I leave it in quotes.


Note that Class D wasn't all there was. There was Class C which allowed
pulse modulation in the 26 MHz range for remote control, and Class A
citizens band which was AM in the 450 MHz range. I don't recall what
Class B was.

I had a class C and D license. The difference was ticking a box on the
application.

Geoff.

Since I never operated CB except for one short contact in my carpool
mate's car to show him how it worked, I was not intimately familiar
with CB rules. I seem to remember thought that there were regulation
which prohibited even attempting to make a contact of over 200 miles
(or so) even if conditions permitted this. I seem to remember that
this was one of the ways to attempt to rein in the use of powerful
amplifiers that many CBers used (of course the prohibition of the sale
of amps capable of operation in that range, including those intended
for ham use, was another FCC mandate.)

Anyone know more about that??

I don't know the licensing requirements, but I think that there is
also a frequency or frequencies at 72 MHZ available for radio control
of models in addition to 26MHz; and, 50 MHz if one is a licensed
amateur.

Anyone up on that?

Jon W3JT

In article ,
Scott Dorsey wrote:
In article ,
Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote:
Martin Potter wrote:

The sunspot peak of 1968-69 helped a lot. The band was pretty dead
(thankfully) due to low MUF during the early 1960s.

When I said popular, I was refering to the operation within the U.S.
law (which was and is very different than the rest of the world) which
prohibits "skip" operation.

Not at all. It just mandates a certain power input to the finals.

Actually the CB regs _do_ (or at least did) prohibit 'skip' operation.
Look it up. Communication between stations more than 150 (IIRC) miles
apart is expressly forbidden.

In article ,
(Geoffrey S. Mendelson) wrote:

Then they started allowing
temporary call signs ("K" your initials and your zip code) so mine would
have been at the time "KGSM19120",

When the service started up in 1959 or so, FCC issued callsigns that
began with the number of the FCC District where the licensee was, a "W"
or a "K," and 4 digits, for example, the TV shop in Detroit I worked at
as a kid had a base station callsign of something like 19W3091, and our
trucks ID'd with that call, plus Unit 1, 2, etc. I don't remember if
there was any restriction on the number of "units" that could go with a
base license. They had to scrap that callsign system as it did not
comply with ITU convention- US calls have to begin with W, K, N, AA-AL,
and not a number. This was an issue as someone apparently didn't
consider that propagation could carry CB signals across international
borders, so the ITU regs applied. The radios came with the FCC license
application form that carried a warning to not use the rig until the
license had been received. Later on, before they finally gave up on CB
entirely, the FCC issued licenses with 4 letters (properly US-prefixed)
plus 4 digits, like KBNF2675.

Chuck WV8A Detroit MI