The CB Rules span from 95.401 to 95.428.
Another interesting license-free service is called Family Radio Service (FRS) referring to the walkie-talkie type hand-held radios which have many practical uses, unless people just use their cell phones instead.
The FRS Rules are 95.191 to 85.194, and 95.626, which specifies 14 channels between 462.5625 and 467.7125 mHz.
Has anyone used FRS?
I have a set of those and I and the xyl use them during camping trips.
RFB
To Artisan Radio, thanks for the info on CB
channels 6 and 11. (I am a ham, and love
ten meters, by the way.)
Thanks to Carl and RFB, too.
Yup, I must have 10 FRS radios. They were
a big fad
before cell phones became used by just
about everybody. Then friends just started
giving me FRS radios, because they didn't
use them anymore.
FRS is excellent for short range radio work
up to 1000 to 1500 feet I would say. The radios
are small and the antennas are very short, so the
radios are very practical to carry with you. Metal
buildings can be a big problem, though.
I have been disappointed by the performance of
some FRS radios. My parents have a house in
Jamestown, RI, which is situated on Narragansett Bay,
which is not too far from the Atlantic Ocean. When
my dad had a boat, we tried using FRS for house to
boat communication. We are talking line of sight,
and some FRS radios did not make the grade, even
though we could see the shore from the boat, a mile
out. 500 milliwatts should make the mile trip line of
sight. On shore, however, we did hear boats on the
FRS channels that we could not see.
The claim that some of the FRS radios can go
10 miles, or 20 miles, or 25 miles is absolute garbage.
Terrain will limit range to 1/4 to 1/2 mile.
I only know of one documented FRS radio DX. A hiker
was injured climbing Mount Hood in Washington
State. He called for help and was heard by some children
playing in their front yard 90 miles away. The man was
then rescued. Those must have been good FRS radios.
And maybe there was some tropospheric bending involved.
Thanks again for all of the info.
Bruce, 90.9, 88.3
I have a couple cheap ones bought on clearance at Radio Shack.
Hand held at ground level we maintained a conversation over a 2 miles distance. There are plenty of obstructions and foliage in the path too.
I would guess used on a lake they'd easily cover 3 or 4 miles.
MRAM, that's neat! Maybe the units I had/have
employ lousy receiver circuitry.
Bruce, 90.9, 88.3
P.S. a secret message to CARL BLARE. LPH 49 was great!
Dear MICRO 1700 sludge radio
Your secret messages are of great value to me, as I alone know what they mean.
So I say.
What is that Dog Radio Guy trying to say.
Oh, am I still on?
Cut my mic.
Cut it right now.
If you set up your CB, you
might find it to be a very
interesting curiosity, especially
when the skip starts happening
in the fall(?)
This sunspot cycle is really cruddy,
but I think that's when the skip is
supposed to happen. (??)
Bruce, SBS, THE SLUDGE BROADCASTING SYSTEM
i have lots of old CB's.
one is a 30+ y/o stock motorola SSB base with OEM desk mic and a 5/8 wave Base antenna.
People need to take greater advantage of the technology available, including CB.
If every car was equipped with CB, we could invent a handy LED screen for the rear of a car so you could notify a tail-gater "15!!!", which would let them know you were on channel 15, where the driver in the back could explain why they are in such a rush, such as, "I am late for work, would you mind letting me go by?"
This could be a very civil way of traffic handling itself using CB.
Big drawback is when skip totally wipes out the entire band and you can't even hear someone from across town, but you can hear everyone else from across the country.
Then there are the 1K pushers splattering 8 channels above and below the channel they are on.
Next, these days not too many neighborhoods are skipppy de do da happy about some large moonraker beam floating above their roofs making the sky look ugly and HOA's a bit miffed.
It's quite useful out on the road. Makes an excellent backup for communications when the camp site is out of reach of the cell sites.
Like some here, I scan those frequencies often and hear absolutely nothing. I am less than 1/2 block away from I-25 and the only time I hear the truckers are when they tell another trucker or their convoy to pull off at Sinclare Truck Stop.
None of the chit chat that used to be on the channels every day. No trucker jibber jabber, with the exception of the rare smokey report (it's amazing those little radar detectors/laser detectors and jammers).
CB still has a little life left in it.
RFB
i know of plenty hams running stuff like yaesu ft1000mp with beams and 5/8 waves and use ssb exclusively pn 36-40 & sometimes on the freeband. mostly down south. they talk very clean like hams and aren't splattering across the band
There is a reason why the CB has fallen out of favor. Far better ways these days to communicate with a device that fits in the shirt pocket, makes phone calls, sends photos and short videos, tunes in radio stations and internet streams, text messaging and all that other neat stuff.
Like other things, CB turned into a specialty for those who really want to go through the trouble of antennas and towers and amps and static, just like the dedicated SW listeners, hams etc. Those are a very tiny small piece of the whole. When CB was all there was next to getting a ham license, there was little choice. But today, try to convince a non-technically minded public to give up their flip a phone for a bulky noisy CB.
Good luck!
Even with that, I bet a lot of you will still use your cell phones more than those CB's. :p
RFB
Well, this is really me just going
back into the nostalgic past...
I have really enjoyed the responses.
Robert's 30 year old SSB CB rig sounds
very interesting.
It's funny - the first communications
thing I did in my life was TV DXing, at
age 7. I have usually thought of SWLing
and AM BCB dxing as being the next things
I tried. But CB radio was in there heavily
from age 11 to age 15. Part 15 radio started
at age 14. When my friend built his first
Part 15 studio in his basement, and we started
to try to get a signal out on the AM BCB, CB
when to the back seat at that time.
I had some fun with it in the 70s, and then
everything else took over. I still love those
old radios, though.
You can't go back. But you can "sort of"
go back.
Thanks again,
Bruce, 90.9, 88.3
You mean those 5 pound metal walkie talkies I have (that take 10 AA batteries) will no longer come back into fashion? LOL!
I play around with CB a bit in the hamshack as well. I have a Comet CHA-250 vertical antenna that is continuously tuned across HF - it's a compromise, I know, but it eliminates the need for antenna tuners and it's also quite stealthy. I use it primarily on 40 meters, where I am most active as an amateur radio operator. Not so great on 80, and so so on 15 and 17 (I use SSB). But it actually does quite well on CB frequencies.
I use an old Hallicrafters type tube transceiver, probably from the late 50s or early 60s, that has a total of 6 - get that - 6 channels. It's a lot of fun to operate that blast from the past, even if it's only listening in once in a while. I think it was meant to be mobile as well - it has a mobile mounting adapter - but then, cars were much bigger back in those days. I even think it has a built in vibrator power supply, but I don't have the appropriate cable, even if I wanted to attempt to wedge it in my vehicle.
Sure, CB, and amateur radio, and even Part 15 radio is not needed these days. But it's a lot of fun.
I have a couple of those bricks, Realistic model TRC-101A CB walkie talkies. They still work fairly well. The RX sensitivity isn't great but the TX is good as ever.