In article , "Dwight Stewart"
writes:

"N2EY" wrote:

Are they the model we hams should follow, or should
we take them as a cautionary tale of what could happen
to us?

I wasn't offering CB as a model.

OK, fine.

In fact, because of its rather unique
history, I don't think one can use CB as a model for much of anything. CB
went to h*ll in a hand basket after Hollywood associated it with the illegal
activities shown in several movies of the time (Convoy, Smokey & the Bandit,
and so on).

I disagree.

Those movies came out *after* wholesale disregard for the rules was already
very common on 27. (Although I've never been a cb user, I have listened there
since the mid-'60s and known many cb users).

At least in the areas where I've lived, regard for the rules was pretty much
tossed away by the mid-to-late 1960s. FCC tried to enforce the rules, but their
forces were simply too few.

The movie, Smokey & the Bandit, was almost classroom instruction on how to
use a CB radio, with Bert Renolds ("Bandit") showing Sally Fields ("Frog")
what buttons to push and what to say. As you may remember, this movie was
about a trucker moving illegal cargo across the country as quickly as
possible, while "Bandit" (with "Frog" riding along) distracted police away
from the truck using his faster car. CB radios were used throughout the
movie.

Never saw the whole thing. This was in the era of antihero movies like "Bonnie
and Clyde", "Dirty Mary Crazy Larry" and such.

Obviously, movies like these attracted people with the same "outlaw"
mentality to CB Radio. Today, these people attract others like themselves to
CB Radio.

That mentality was already in place before the movies were made.

However, if Hollywood had used Ham Radio in those movies instead,
perhaps these same people would have been attracted to Ham Radio and Ham
Radio would have the problems today instead of CB Radio.

But ham radio did not have that "outlaw" mentality. And, back then, such
activities would have brought down tremendous peer opposition by the rest of
the ham community. For example, trying to operate without callsigns on a ham
band would get you DFed and reported to FCC. Not so on 27.

Also, the complexity and cost of amateur equipment at the time meant a serious
investment was needed just to get started.

But, as it is, Ham
Radio does not offer the same attractions for these people (the "outlaw"
image, anonymous operation, and so on).

Only because *existing* hams have the *tradition* of not tolerating such
behavior.

Because of that, most of these
people have no interested in Ham Radio. The few who are interested in Ham
Radio are attracted for what Ham Radio has to offer, not what CB has to
offer. Therefore, these people are not likely to display the same CB-like
behavior in the Ham Radio frequencies. The fact that a good number, perhaps
the majority, of today's Ham Operators owned a CB radio sometime in the past
(or present) supports this conclusion.

Yet in my experience there has been a longstanding problem with the cb "outlaw"
culture trying to migrate to amateur radio. In this area, at least, we have had
serious problems on VHF/UHF repeaters from newcomers who saw 2 meters as a
noise-free version of cb. When their behavior (cussing, failure to ID, refusing
to share the repeater, threats to those who disagreed with them, etc.) was
challenged by other hams, they said "We did this things on 11 and there's
nobody going to stop us from doing them here. We don't care what your stupid
rules say, we're gonna have our fun and if you don't like it, go away". (Almost
verbatim quote.)

The only ace-in-the-hole we had was the ability to shut down the repeater. Even
that did not always work because these folks would sometimes guess the codes.

Now which is the better deal?

My message was an attempt to undermine Bruce's many posts trashing
Technicians (he is the one constantly bringing up the CB nonsense), not to
make any real comparisons between CB and Ham Radio (or CB'ers and
Technicians).

You don't really take Bruce seriously, do you, Dwight? I don't.

He's just another version of Len. In fact the two of them are, philosophically,
exactly the same.

73 de Jim, N2EY