Trucking time

The Movie.........................

Is it just my iPad, or does anybody else have trouble seeing that YouTube video? It is grayed out. Maybe it's got a flash component. Jobs didn't do Flash

Okay, I see the second one...

Do you remember the days when people were "DX'ing" on the CB radio band?
Using high-powered transceivers to communicate with each other over long distances?
It was like a large network of illegal ham radio operators.
It was a hoot to listen to. Some had actually taken the role of disk jockeys and were playing records and such.
I remember here in Pensacola listening to a couple of the CB "deejays" who came on every night and could be heard over the whole area.

I got my CBs for when the cell phones and telephones are toasted.

Yomama wrote:Is it just my iPad, or does anybody else have trouble seeing that YouTube video? It is grayed out. Maybe it's got a flash component. Jobs didn't do Flash

Okay, I see the second one...

Same here! I see thesecond one but not the first. I find it odd that, on my iPad, I can see some YouTube videos, but not others.

hallmarkgrad wrote:I used to play with cbss alot. You had the "extra" channels that went above and below the regular CB freq. I still have a couple of very hi powered linears. I was the 109, me brother was the rb250. I used to see Reengage post on the PNJ forums. He was a big time CBer.

I got my Ham ticket a few years back. I passed the tech and the Extra exam on the same day. I need to donate all my old gear to the Ham club in Crestview that helped me with the exams.
LOL Lots of fun and crazy stuff. Lot of guys used to meet at the "Tree" It was in the Chicken box Parking lot across from Sams beer joint.
Breaker! Break! Can Ya hear me?

Hubby and I got all caught up in the ham radio thing almost exactly a year ago. Our goal was to become weather spotters. When the big day came, we had to miss the NWS weather spotter class here in town, and they've yet to offer another.

It's probably a good thing in the long term. We didn't and still don't have the money to put into good ham radio gear, and, knowing us, we'd have been spending our food money (human food, that is - the critters never go hungry) building on the basics of ham radio. We'd have wound up with an entire weather and radio station, but we'd have been rail-thin from lack of nourishment.

Yomama wrote:Is it just my iPad, or does anybody else have trouble seeing that YouTube video? It is grayed out. Maybe it's got a flash component. Jobs didn't do Flash

Okay, I see the second one...

The first one is just a song but the last one is a movie so it might be in something other than Flash.Just guessing....

I lied.. I did not get my Extra license I got my Tech and then my General license on the same day. Dont know what i was thinking.........
I do not hold a Extra license...........
Amateur licenses now can be had with a no Morse code test. That opens the door for a lot of people who do not want to learn code. A Tech license is not very hard to obtain. Just 35 questions on basic knowledge and the rules and regulation of Radio.

The FCC Technician License exam covers basic regulations, operating practices and electronics theory, with a focus on VHF and UHF applications. Morse code is not required for this license. With a Technician Class license, you will have all ham radio privileges above 30 MHz. These privileges include the very popular 2-meter band. Many Technician licensees enjoy using small (2 meter) hand-held radios to stay in touch with other hams in their area. Technicians may operate FM voice, digital packet (computers), television, single-sideband voice and several other interesting modes. You can even make international radio contacts via satellites, using relatively simple station equipment. Technician licensees now also have additional privileges on certain HF frequencies. Technicians may also operate on the 80, 40 and 15 meter bands using CW, and on the 10 meter band using CW, voice and digital modes.

CQ CQ CQDX 901 Bikini state, first personal is Eric, over. That was me on single side band. On AM, I was Florida Viking.

My favorite linears were tube types. One was a Palomar Skipper 300 in the house, and one was a 200 watt mobile. I had two stainless 102" whips on my truck and used a 1000-watt TVI filter because one guy came onto the radio and said I came across his TV in "Technicolor".

If I forgot and left the linear turned on in the truck overnight, I had to get a new battery. Yep, killed 'em deader than a door nail.

Before cell phones, Christine and I communicated on the upper side of channel 16.

Anybody remember "this is Snowbird, bring it back"?

Yomama wrote:CQ CQ CQDX 901 Bikini state, first personal is Eric, over. That was me on single side band. On AM, I was Florida Viking.

My favorite linears were tube types. One was a Palomar Skipper 300 in the house, and one was a 200 watt mobile. I had two stainless 102" whips on my truck and used a 1000-watt TVI filter because one guy came onto the radio and said I came across his TV in "Technicolor".

If I forgot and left the linear turned on in the truck overnight, I had to get a new battery. Yep, killed 'em deader than a door nail.

Before cell phones, Christine and I communicated on the upper side of channel 16.

Anybody remember "this is Snowbird, bring it back"?

Knowing you, somehow I could have predicted with almost absolute certainty that you were into high power CB radio back then. lol

Bob wrote:Knowing you, somehow I could have predicted with almost absolute certainty that you were into high power CB radio back then. lol

I was talking to a guy in Michigan one night. I had the beam pointed up thataway. He said I was the strongest station he had heard out of Florida in a long time.

I looked down and saw that my amp was on low power.

I used to regularly talk to people in Nova Scotia, the northern tier of states, and later in the evening Oregon, California, Texas (sometimes), and one morning I talked to guys in Belguim on legal power. I had a rare "double skip" and talked briefly with the "Koala Bear" in Australia. I talked to a guy in Tampa off the back side of my beam.

One night a guy called me and wanted me to contact his brother, who was driving in from New Orleans. On channel 19, the noise was at a full roar (S9). I swung the beam that way, thru full power on, and gave the brother a shout. Later on, the guy called me to say his brother heard me in Mississippi, but wasn't strong enough to get back to me.

My base station was one of those good old Navaho (Radio Shack) 23-channel SSBs and I was using an Astatic D-104 Lollypop mic.

I broke down at sea one night. Got on the CB and contacted some guy to phone a friend that came out and towed me in. Those were the good old days.

Eric,

I can't remember if I've told you about this in person or not.
This story goes back to when I guess I was in my mid 30's (so it now would have been almost 30 years ago).
I was buying a lot of old stuff from a jukebox operator in Atmore at the time.
And he employed this kid who was about 20 years old to be a technician.
The kid lived above Stockton, AL (north of Bay Minette) with his grandparents in a run down old country shack in the middle of nowhere.
His name was Keith Hammond. One day I went up there to buy some old audio amplifiers from him.
Way back off behind the shack he had erected a 200 ft tower in the woods that he got from salvage. And inside the shack he had built a rudimentary AM radio station also from stuff salvaged from somewhere.
Every night he was going on the air on the AM band with 1000 watts of power (similiar to any low powered commercial radio station at the time).
The kid was playing records and doing a deejay bit. And after it got rolling he was even selling commercials to small businessmen in Bay Minette.
A little later on, he moved the "studio" to a 2nd floor space above a storefront which was right across the street from the Baldwin County Courthouse square in the middle of town (Bay Minette) and he was doing a wireless relay between the studio and the transmitter in the woods outside Stockton.

His pirate radio station became so popular with the teenagers in the area that one night the legitimate AM radio station over there got a call and the manager answered the phone and it was some teenager who thought his station was Keith's and the teenager was telling him how much they liked his deejay Keith. The guy said "we don't have a deejay here named Keith" and questioned them and that's when he discovered that his station was getting it's ass kicked by Keith's "station".

Shortly after that, two FCC G-Men were knocking on the door of Keith's "studio" and when Keith came to the door, the FCC guy said "I think you've been expecting us, haven't you son?"
And that was that.

The Baldwin County Sheriff's Dept after that really got the redass for Keith. They had him charged with a crime unrelated to the pirate radio station. And according to him they gave him a choice of either leaving the county or continuing to face prosecution.
So he went to Texas. Last time I heard from him (years ago) he told me he had another pirate AM station on the air in rural Texas. lol

I have a stereo FM transmitter... a half-watt. It came with an antenna that looked like the old CB "starduster" type. I set it up in my living room here in Hoover (on the side of a mountain) and drove all over Hoover, listening to my "station". Yeah, there were a few dead spots... like when the mountain got in the way.

I got it so that I could set it up on the boat at Memorial Day and broadcast beach music to boomboxes all over the beach and we didn't have to Blast music everywhere with giant speakers. I DJ'd a Halloween party that way... big speakers and amp out back, Stereo inside tuned to the FM station, boom box in the bathroom tuned to the station.

The transmitter was so powerful that I bought a "Rubber Duckie" type antenna that is a lot less efficient. (I don't want to broadcast for miles.) There's no need to get the FCC interested, knowhatImean, Vern?