CB'ers

[Bill Coleman]

On 11/22/01 12:06 PM, Carl Menne at cmenne at SEIDATA.COM wrote:

>Locally
>in the 70s , CB radios were sold by just about every hardware, electronics,
>and department store; one of the drugstores was a big provider of CB radios,
>amplifiers,etc. All were respected businessmen whose only desire was making
>a quick dollar or two hundred. Where was the ARRL and other ham radio groups
>getting the word out to the public ??

Actually, that's pretty much revisionist history.

Yes, there's some animosity between hams and CBers. Much of it originated
with the fact that hams LOST a ham band in order to create CB radio.
Initially, CB radio didn't make much of an impact. However, the release
of "Convoy" launched the CB craze.

During the late 70's, ham groups DID make concerted efforts to recruit CB
enthusiasts to their ranks. Of course, this was LONG before the Novice
Enhancement of 1987 or the Codeless Tech of the early 90s. Indeed, during
this time, the FCC was debating a licensing structure that would include
a codeless license class.

Due in part to the CB craze, there was a lot of short-sighted
anti-Codeless backlash in this period. The ARRL reversed their position
on the FCC proposal, and soundly defeated the codeless idea in the early
80s. This really pissed the FCC off, since the ARRL originally proposed
the idea. It's part of the reason the FCC got out of the ham exam
business.

Just a few years later, the ARRL came crawling back with proposals that
lead to the Novice Enhancement, and later the Codeless Tech.

If you examine most of the hams that were licensed in the late 70's to
mid-80's, I think you'd find that the vast majority are ex-CB in some
way. Many got started there, but got disallusioned with the QRM and bad
manners. Now they have 20 wpm Extra class licenses and see the same
behavior on 75m.... <grin>



Bill Coleman, AA4LR, PP-ASEL        Mail: aa4lr at arrl.net
Quote: "Not within a thousand years will man ever fly!"
            -- Wilbur Wright, 1901

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