Radio related - but semi-off topic

[drgrant]

In the event of a true emergency/crisis situation, could a CB be somehow "bridged over" to ham radio? It could be through electronics, but it could also be as simple as a taped on microphone next to a speaker. This would GREATLY amplify and enhance the utility of both systems.

While certainly possible there are severe technical and logistical problems that make the whole idea insanely dumb. For starters CBs use AM and most 2M/440 ops use FM... and you have to deal with squelching issues. There's no selcall/PL on the CB side either. (Well, you can do it, but finding a CB with selcall/tone squelch equipment in it is like finding a Glock 7... not happening. ) What you're suggesting is like mounting a mower deck on a dirtbike, thinking that you could mow the lawn really fast with it. You could do it but the result will nearly always be worthless.

I'm ignoring the legal issues because in an emergency none of that really matters.

-Mike

 

[Coyote33]

Thanks (I guess) for the feedback. Actually, I was thinking it was more like taping from a record player to a boombox as my analogy, but I get the point. Anyhow, I don't think CB's are quite as dead as some people do or want them to be. Then again, the days of popular songs about CB's probably isn't coming back any time soon.

 

[KMS]

Get both,we need more CBers out there.

The Northeast is a little low on CB activity atm,it picks up during the winter.In 2006 my wife and I went from NH to Washington state then from Washington State to Louisiana then back up the Eastern Seaboard.I used the CB for traffic and weather and general chit chat.You would be amazed at the amount of traffic on the radio outside major cities.

From 1990 to about 2001 the CB was in full use it has dropped off a bit around here.

Don't use me as an example as I am very lucky,I have no problem reaching Sunapee,Rochester NH,as far as Lewiston ME.Basicly I have a talk radius from Sunapee NH to Woonsocket RI.Can I hear everyone out there?..no but if you have a good set up and some height I will hear you...hopefully next weekend I will be back up and running.That's all AM,SSB is a different story.(I can't hear at all to the west due to Mt.Monadnock)

If you have had a Base Set up in the past 15-20 years in Northern MA or Southern NH,I have talked with you no doubt.

 

[Coyote33]

Again, I will say we should have an NES practice time, where we all choose a channel and time and see who can reach who. Maybe play a game of "telephone", where we pass a message along and see how far it goes and how accurate the message remains.

How to Play Telephone
Chinese whispers
Remember the Telephone Game?

 

[ARV]

A lot of trucking companies are switching to commercial UHF radios, so fairly soon you will also lose those few resources for traffic info.
CBs are more of a novelty today. They're fun to mess around with, but have few practical applications.

I disagree. A good chunk of the truckers I work with have CB's. The company doesnt provide them, as they are useless for dispatch purposes. Then again many of the drivers go from here to Boston, CT, RI, NY, and Pa. Cell phones obviously are the best choice. A good number of them, maybe 85% buy their own and move them from truck to truck. Many of the over the road guys have them too so they can talk to other random drivers regardless of where they are. CB's are relativity inexpensive, and for use in a truck have acceptable range. If a truck is driving down the road and say his trailer door comes open, unless his cell # is plastered down the side of the trailer Ch. 19 is your best bet to get ahold of him. They use them for directions, recommendations for places to eat, police warnings, or just BS'ing with each other. Some of our guys switch to a upper channel when they are driving to NJ etc so they don't burn through cell minutes, or violate cell phone laws (case in point, CT)

I have a CB within arms reach right now on my desk, and both Receiving departments have one in the office to call drivers up to doors for the holding pad if they prefer to be contacted that way. You would actually be surprised as how many of them don't have a cell phone. And cell batteries go dead & lose service, the CB will work as long as the vehicle is running and theres someone in range to hear you. I hear from some of the long haul guys that they dont bother keeping it on up in the north east because A) mountains limit range severely, and B) there isn't as much radio traffic worth listening to / they get harassed (listen to Ch 19 by Springfield/Holyoke in the afternoon on the Pike). Out in the mid-west / down south apparently its a somewhat different story because its so much flatter.

As HAM Radio is way over my head right now, I was thinking about getting a handheld CB radio to keep in the car for a few reasons.

1) Listen in to find out about any traffic jams
2) Weather - I found some CB radios with NOAA weather channels
3) If the SHTF; I could utilize it for communications
4) Get a charger so I can keep the radio charged wherever I go
5) Mobility - thus the handheld version of the CB


Does anyone else have CB radios in their vehicles? If so, why? If not, why not & do you have some other type of mobile communications (besides cell phone)?

Thanks.

Just to answer this, I had a cheap radio shack CB in my last car, but its impossible to run the wire into the trunk (mag mount) in this car, and its a convertible so mounting is a problem anyway. I have a handheld, but they aren't so great. Even with the cloth top (or top down) my friend cant pick me up at the end of the street. I have a Midland 75-822 that I tried to use. I like it because I could use AA's, rechargeable AA's, and an adapter to plug in in the car & use the small antenna or a mounted one. Problem is I have one with a common problem for the model. With the adapter on, all you hear is a feedback squeal. Haven't bothered to try and fix it because the signal doesn't make it out of the car anyway. Only good thing about it, is you can make a simple mod to it and change what channels it has. hi-low and European channels, but that's of no use for me. Maybe i'll dig it out and screw with it to see if I can get it to work right.

 

[KMS]

If you look at the variety of CB radios still available today,there is still a good market for them otherwise CB would have all but vanished by now,has it changed hell yes,with how easy it is to get a tech license now, has pulled alot of people into that direction,I have a few close friends that started on CB and have moved to HAM and have never looked back.

There is even a market for old CBs people scoff them up,I don't know how much I made selling old "junk to me" stuff and people paid big money for.I sold a mint palomar vc-100 with box and papers for $175 bucks,I paid 30 bucks for it in the 90s at a flea market.

 

[KMS]

Again, I will say we should have an NES practice time, where we all choose a channel and time and see who can reach who. Maybe play a game of "telephone", where we pass a message along and see how far it goes and how accurate the message remains.

How to Play Telephone
Chinese whispers
Remember the Telephone Game?

I posted last week in the green member section to get people together that enjoy the hobby,but I have issues in one of my coax lengths so I didn't get on,my coax should be here this week.

 

[cockpitbob]

CB QSO?

Anyone interested in exercising their CB gear?
At NEARFest I picked up an old CB. I finally replaced the cut power wires and tuned it up on my 100' wire antenna. It put out the full 4W but I couldn't hear much CB traffic. I'm in Topsfield and would like to know how far it will reach.

{If you're going to ask about polarization, the wire's first 20' is vertical, then it slopes at about 30deg to the top of a tree.}

 

[drgrant]

CB QSO?

Anyone interested in exercising their CB gear?
At NEARFest I picked up an old CB. I finally replaced the cut power wires and tuned it up on my 100' wire antenna. It put out the full 4W but I couldn't hear much CB traffic. I'm in Topsfield and would like to know how far it will reach.

{If you're going to ask about polarization, the wire's first 20' is vertical, then it slopes at about 30deg to the top of a tree.}

If you are near Topsfield you might be able to work the Boston/North shore guys on 38 or 39 LSB. For AM ch 31 (27.315) used to have some traffic locally, lowell, lawrence, Haverhill... etc area. say hi to Meatball/331 for me. If you can't get a hold of him you're running a dummy load, he's up around Tyngsburrah area on some huge hill, he covers about a quarter of the state easy with his base. He'd probably hear you if you only ran a watt or two. I'd try to work you but the pot grow lamp noise on AM I have is tough. Even with my 7600's NB sometimes it still sucks up the bottom noise floor of the receiver.

There's also DX/skywave running frequently especially on SSB... the spots must be right. The other day on 27.385 LSB I heard the dude that runs Jo Gunn atennas on coming in from TX.... ill see if I can find the clip from my 7600.... he was banging it 10-30 db /9, such a nice, clean sounding, on frequency signal. I think he was running an 8EL yagi or something.

Also running joke- you can use 11M as a DX spotting tool. Turn on ch 6 (27.025, AKA, the superbowl.... ) if those bowl guys are hitting you S6 or better, the band is open (and 10M is probably open too). If they're over S9 the band is REALLY open.... Same with the 27.285 AM crowd too.

 

[VetteGirlMA]

I have an older handheld CB radio that was originally sold as emergency radio communications. It's old as the hills but still works. I've turned it on and it just turned into lowest common denominator so don't expect much. I have a pair of handheld GMRS radios in the Jeep and they work great, no complaints. But to give an example, I can tune into a repeater on top of Mount Tom with my Humble little Yaesu handheld ham radio and listen to a radio net call in the car while driving down 91 south and I'm still listening when I'm in downtown Hartford. That's what Ham brings to the table.

I honestly have a hard time keeping up with the latest happenings in ham radio handhelds, it's insane how much progress has been made in the last few years especially with respect to digital radio.

To be honest, I still haven't found any traffic problems service better than the iPhone and either apple maps or google maps. Plus with google I can snap a portion of a map and keep it on my phone as cache. So when I use directions on the phone it's running from the cache and very fast. The google maps app will keep the data refreshed automatically every so many days.

But I also want to point out that NWS channels are frequencies that can be easily programmed into any handheld. My yaseau has NWS northeast weather and alerts frequency, MA state police, local police, fire, emergency services, the railroad depot in Palmer, Westover air force base, Logan air traffic frequency, etc. I sometimes just set it to scan and listen to all the communications that are happening all around that I never knew existed before. I have all of the marine channels programmed into it as well and when I'm in RI I frequently listen to ship to shore communications. What blows my mind is listening to storm alert on my local 2m repeater and getting raw weather data from all over being fed live right to the NWS. You can't get any closer to raw weather data and weather events than that. I knew about twister touchdowns long before they could even hit the news or phone alert.

 

[Coyote33]

Plus with google I can snap a portion of a map and keep it on my phone as cache. So when I use directions on the phone it's running from the cache and very fast

How do you do that on the fly? I think I can do it ahead of time, but even that I rarely do because I mostly am in decent reception areas. Where it matters is on the outer Cape and in Vermont and the White Mountains and Maine. FWIW, I use Waze a lot for maps, because it tells you about road hazards, including police radar traps.

 

[ToddDubya]

How do you do that on the fly? I think I can do it ahead of time, but even that I rarely do because I mostly am in decent reception areas. Where it matters is on the outer Cape and in Vermont and the White Mountains and Maine. FWIW, I use Waze a lot for maps, because it tells you about road hazards, including police radar traps.

The google maps will use cached maps to generate directions, but you can't see the maps. I learned that the hard way on a dirt road in East Bumblast and I just wanted to see where the hell I was and which direction was out. In the grand scheme I was northeast of home, so I ended up pointing the bike toward the less dark portion of the sky and using as much throttle as my horrible headlight would allow.

 

[VetteGirlMA]

How do you do that on the fly? I think I can do it ahead of time, but even that I rarely do because I mostly am in decent reception areas. Where it matters is on the outer Cape and in Vermont and the White Mountains and Maine. FWIW, I use Waze a lot for maps, because it tells you about road hazards, including police radar traps.

You do it ahead of time. I have an offline cache of all of New England stored on my phone. It uses up several hundred megabytes of storage but since I'm not using that much storage anyways I might as well fill it up with something. One advantage to offline maps is that it doesn't use the data plan on the phone, it's using the local cache on the phone itself. Click on the google icon for your account and one of the options is offline maps. Once there you can select as much or as little of the map as you want. The larger offline map (Map 1) is all of new england and that requires 542MB of storage. Best part is the map will work perfectly with no service. All it needs is GPS.

 

[VetteGirlMA]

The google maps will use cached maps to generate directions, but you can't see the maps. I learned that the hard way on a dirt road in East Bumblast and I just wanted to see where the hell I was and which direction was out. In the grand scheme I was northeast of home, so I ended up pointing the bike toward the less dark portion of the sky and using as much throttle as my horrible headlight would allow.

OnxOffroad is the app for anything offroad whether it's 4 wheeling or hiking.