Channel Jumper wrote:


Then the manufacturers got the bright idea that there was more money to
be made by manufacturning solid state transceivers - since the tubes did
not last long in a mobile enviroment with the spring / solid axle trucks
and the fact that there was a million big rigs on the road and they
could make a killing by selling everyone a CB radio....

What killed CB in the US was the trucker's strike. Every trucker had one by
then and they did not want to be tacked down and prosecuted, either for using
the CB to organize their activities, or for the activities themselves, so they
started using "handles" that were not close to their name, and not their
real callsigns or names.

It became a free for all, as there was a perception that the FCC and the other
police were powerless to stop them.

The FCC responded by raising the price of a CB license to $25 per year. Someone
sued them claiming the price was excessive and won. So for a few years you
could get a CB license for free. You could get permission for up to 25
radios on your license, so everyone did.

If you had a radio and no license, in order to get on the air you could
use a temporary callsign, which I think was something like KBG and your
zip code. I don't know what they did in a big city the day after christmas
when there were hundreds of new owners. :-)

By that time no one was using their callsigns anyway, so the FCC changed
their policy that any existing licenses would be valid "indefinately",
and anyone who had a radio was licensed by posessing the radio.

Current FCC regs require you to identify yourself, but don't specify how to do
it except that if you already have an FCC issued call sign, you may, but
are not required to use it.

I recently moved, and in the process found my old CB licences, one for voice
and the other for remote control, so I have added them for nostalgia to my
signature.


Geoff.


--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, N3OWJ/4X1GM/KBUH7245/KBUW5379