I got this email from Midland and it made me think about my CB. Has anybody seen any CB activity since we have all be sheltered in place?
CK5
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Midland Radios - any CB activity with all of us being shut in?
- Thread starter Chief Brody
- Start date
I haven't heard much on mine even driving on the interstate. That was a couple weeks before the shutdown though. I'll drive the truck tomorrow and check again.
In my neck of the woods, I haven’t noticed an increase in local chitchat on AM. There’s a small group on 28 in the evenings. On SSB there’s definitely an uptick in people on the air.
FRS channel 1 has been a bit busier with kids and families messing around for the most part. I rarely hear any activity on other channels. My rooftop 2m/70cm base antenna doubles as my scanner antenna and even with all of that gain I rarely hear much on FRS.
A couple local ham clubs have taken meeting nights to 2m repeaters. One does a Zoom chat while simultaneously taking commentary on 2m and 20m.
FRS channel 1 has been a bit busier with kids and families messing around for the most part. I rarely hear any activity on other channels. My rooftop 2m/70cm base antenna doubles as my scanner antenna and even with all of that gain I rarely hear much on FRS.
A couple local ham clubs have taken meeting nights to 2m repeaters. One does a Zoom chat while simultaneously taking commentary on 2m and 20m.
I quit using my CB 4 years ago. When even the truckers don't use the redneck innernet why bother. Just a waste of space on my dash.
I have a handful of cheap Baofeng radios in the garage dual watching. Crickets when I've been in the garage.
I have a handful of cheap Baofeng radios in the garage dual watching. Crickets when I've been in the garage.
Any value to CB if the SHTF scenario? How are they still selling them if there is nobody on? I bought a new one for my Blazer and was disappointed when I found nothing but crickets.
It really depends on the area.
A) Near a major interstate or urban area, you’ll likely find truckers and/or locals on base stations. Some truck terminals or large distributors have talk-in channels as well, but generally only for incoming drivers.
B) Way out in the sticks, like my area, there’s also steady (sometimes busy) activity from both bases and mobiles. Local hardware stores and even one mom and pop general store sell CBs and accessories. There are towns where I’d say over 50 percent of vehicles have CB antennae. Urban dwellers may not realize that there are still parts of the US where cell phone service can be nonexistent for hours or hundreds of miles of driving. Amateur radio is also very popular in such places. I once helped a motorist with an emergency via a 2m repeater as his cell phone had no service. Tons of husbands and wives get tech licenses just for peace of mind— I meet them at the local hamfests all the time and they are good people even if the HF crowd frowns upon them.
I'd get one of the cheap Baofeng radios as well. You can illegally use them for UHF and VHF. I have Midland handheld CBs for SHTF. Cops still monitor channel 9. Plenty of granpappy attics full of them. I think it'd be wise to have multiple forms of communication, including CB, stowed away in your Big Igloo.
I live and drive on I94 on Michigan to and from work every day. 22 miles of passing semis twice a day. I want to say by 2014ish CB was pretty well done as the oldtimers wandered off to the 18 wheeler Elysian fields. By 2017 I just left it in my center console. I don't even have a fixed mount antenna anymore.
I quit living in the UP of Michigan circa 2008. Even by then it was pretty dead up there. You'd hear them once in a while but most everyone had gone to 2m by then due to the relaxation of the HAM.
I actually don't bother with any of it really anymore. I have a pile of Baofeng UHF/VHF radios and a giant pile of Baofeng 888S in Harbor Freight Apache boxes for SHTF communications. Otherwise it largely goes unused. I think I'd probably use it more if the people that are on it weren't such assholes. There are 17,000 people in my ZIP code and we have a tower with backup power... and there are only twelve people in the amateur radio club.
I still have a cb in my 89 Jimmy, and a 102 inch whip, mostly because I just think it looks cool and period correct. But I also like to hop on it when I pass a sweet rig on the interstate and tell them nice truck, and there is still plenty of chatter on it in traffic jams. All of the cool old (and new) Peterbilt and Kenworth semi's still have cb's. It's mostly just the new generic day cab trucks that don't, like you'd see pulling a Walmart trailer or something, that also have an automatic transmission and a horn button on the steering wheel.
Drove my K5 to work with my HAM monitoring 446.030 MHz with supposedly is a known prepper frequency. Had my CB scanning all 40 channels and even flipped to the upper and lower sidebands and not a blip on anything. I wasn't surprised in the morning as it was 6:30am and not much traffic out on the road. Plus I'm a few miles off the interstate and end up 50+ miles from I-25. I left the shop at 12:30 and had both radios on, no action. I did go out in the afternoon and took a drive into the wildlife area around our local reservoir. Same results.
First point as far as the HAM goes, I was only monitoring 1 frequency. I'm still new to it and am on hold to get my license since they aren't doing any testing at the time due to the 'rona. So I'm pretty new to HAM and don't have a lot of frequencies programmed into my radio or know which specific ones to monitor. I was not listening on any of the local repeaters either. HAM has better range than CB does but going simplex (radio to radio, no repeater) the range might be 8-10 miles. So if nobody is within my range on that exact frequency I'm not going to hear them. CB might get 2-3 miles if you have your antenna tuned and have line of sight with no obstructions. Typically in an urban setting range will be less due to the obstructions. What it means is you must have another radio within earshot to have a chance. With less and less out there using CB's the channels are really silent most of the time.
Last time I drove to Denver with the K5 was over a month ago. I didn't have the HAM radio setup, but I did keep the CB scanning all the channels as I drove. Half the drive home was off the interstate and the waves were quiet. The second half was on I-25 from Colorado Springs to Pueblo, 55 miles or so. There's a truck stop on the north end of the Springs, one in Fountain south of the Springs and one on the north end of Pueblo. I really only heard a little chatter when I was within sight of the truck stops. I did catch a couple of guys talking on one of the upper side band channels while I was in the Springs and it was obvious they were radio nerds because they were talking about their setups. I was following a semi for the majority of the way and made attempts to call him on 19 to see if he was listening, but never got a response.
First point as far as the HAM goes, I was only monitoring 1 frequency. I'm still new to it and am on hold to get my license since they aren't doing any testing at the time due to the 'rona. So I'm pretty new to HAM and don't have a lot of frequencies programmed into my radio or know which specific ones to monitor. I was not listening on any of the local repeaters either. HAM has better range than CB does but going simplex (radio to radio, no repeater) the range might be 8-10 miles. So if nobody is within my range on that exact frequency I'm not going to hear them. CB might get 2-3 miles if you have your antenna tuned and have line of sight with no obstructions. Typically in an urban setting range will be less due to the obstructions. What it means is you must have another radio within earshot to have a chance. With less and less out there using CB's the channels are really silent most of the time.
Last time I drove to Denver with the K5 was over a month ago. I didn't have the HAM radio setup, but I did keep the CB scanning all the channels as I drove. Half the drive home was off the interstate and the waves were quiet. The second half was on I-25 from Colorado Springs to Pueblo, 55 miles or so. There's a truck stop on the north end of the Springs, one in Fountain south of the Springs and one on the north end of Pueblo. I really only heard a little chatter when I was within sight of the truck stops. I did catch a couple of guys talking on one of the upper side band channels while I was in the Springs and it was obvious they were radio nerds because they were talking about their setups. I was following a semi for the majority of the way and made attempts to call him on 19 to see if he was listening, but never got a response.
I also have my CB in because it is period correct plus, apparently I am very nostalgic...In 2012 we had an F5 tornado come through and took down the main feeder lines from Brown's Ferry Nuclear Plant. That was as close to a SHTF scenario in a small bubble. The cell phone wouldn't work because the system became overloaded. I had a copper land line at the time and it did work. Nobody was taking cards and you couldn't buy without cash. For some unknown reason I happened to take a few hundred out of the ATM the day before and I was one of the lucky ones. The Grocery stores sold out in a couple hours, with no power they were only accepting cash. No cell phones worked. No traffic signals in the entire three county and adjacent. Power was down for a few weeks for some, 10 days for us. I immediately went when the power grid first went down and hit the grocery store and the batteries Plus store. By the end of the week I went to te battery store again and I thought someone was going to get shot over the batteries that were left. People were not nice...they were were getting violent quickly with their language...that situation was nothing like what this current situation feels like right now.
Anyway, I did not have my CB in the Blazer yet, as it was not even back together yet, but I wonder if people were using them to communicate during that time when the grid was down.
What's to become of the Citizen's Band? Is it wasted bandwidth? I had so much fun as a teen talking on the CB...I guess I was expecting it to all still be there. Maybe I need to look into ham whatever this 2m is that was spoken of earlier.
Anyway, I did not have my CB in the Blazer yet, as it was not even back together yet, but I wonder if people were using them to communicate during that time when the grid was down.
What's to become of the Citizen's Band? Is it wasted bandwidth? I had so much fun as a teen talking on the CB...I guess I was expecting it to all still be there. Maybe I need to look into ham whatever this 2m is that was spoken of earlier.
The point I was trying to make in the last post was that when the SHTF and the grid goes down, cell phones don't work.
When SHTF scenario comes you bet the airwaves will be flooded with increased traffic due to cell networks going down. Problem is, if you didn't already have a radio (CB, FRS/GMRS, HAM, ect) then you probably won't be able to get one with the systems being down. Those that were smart enough to get some kind of radio prior to the incident will probably be on the airwaves. But in general, not everybody will be smart enough to have another form of communication on standby and will be trying to play catch up when it's too late.
CB is quiet for sure. But it is useful if you have family or friends traveling together in separate cars and cell coverage is spotty. Guys wheeling together typically use CB to stay in touch as a group, but as I've found it's limited on range. At Blazer Bash last year we got spread out pretty good and due to the terrain, the leaders couldn't reach the guys in the back. The message got relayed from the front to the back eventually, but it illustrated a point to me that I'd like to have better range on the trail.
My group of wheeling buddies is moving up to the GMRS bands which allow higher watt output than CB's 4watts which helps provide better range. We were able to make a solid 10-mile contact with one of my buddy's Midland GMRS unit, My radio on GMRS and another one on a Baofeng handheld. There was some difference in elevation, and houses on one end and the signal was very clear.
To really reach out though one really has to move to the HAM frequencies to be able to communicate via higher-powered repeater stations. This is how HAM operators can reach out hundreds of miles out as they get their message out to a repeater and it re-sends the message at a much higher power out from there. Another way they get out is by skipping the signal off of the atmosphere when conditions are right. Sometimes you can do this on CB or if you have a CB with SSB (single side band) capability. My CB has SSB and I was screwing around with it one night and made contact with a dude in Oklahoma over 200 miles away. It was a complete fluke on my part, but it was pretty cool none the less.
I haven't turned my CB's on in quite a while..but I'm not going to get rid of them either,in case there is a situation where cell phones and landlines go down..
Often when SHTF the only ones able to communicate with the rest of the world are the ham radio operators..its sad there isn't many of them around like there was years ago..
The 40 channel SSB base station I have ,would be able to talk to others on SSB up to 40+ miles away in good conditions pretty consistently..all I had was an Antron 99 antenna then,which has since been destroyed by several Nor'easters...
I put a Shakespear 9 foot fiberglass whip on the 30 foot mast after that,just so I could still use it,and overall,it works almost as good as the Antron 99 did..
I have a Turner 3+3 power mike and though I do have a Pyramid 100 watt linear,I don't use it,it just over modulates so bad no one could understand what I was saying..
It has upper & lower channels too,someone modified it before I owned it,and I have talked to a friend years ago when he was in NC every morning when the skip was coming in,he had a Ranger radio with SSB and FM,that had no amp or "peaking" done to it...we used channel 38 upper sideband..
When skip was "in" during high sunspot activity years ago,I was able to make contact with many far off places,including Barbados Islands!..
I do not have a frequency counter,so I do not know just what frequencies it gets with the modifications done to it--but those channels were the ones that had the most skip shooters on SSB ..
AM doesn't have much range on a CB,maybe 10 miles if your terrain is pretty level,more if its on a mountain top or a boat on open water,then you may get up to 50 miles..SSB goes quite a bit further..
I probably have a dozen "mobile" AM only CB's of various makes and some are very old 23 channel ones,and a few that only had 3 or 5 channels that used crystals,collecting dust in my garage..
The old 23 channel ones were often more powerful than the later 40 channel ones..
Years ago the CB airwaves were so crowded you couldn't get a word in edgewise,even on SSB here...now its pretty much silent on all channels,a few die hards are still out there with Galaxy base stations with SSB and FM,and power mikes,linear amps...some were so into the hobby they had a "shack" in the back yard for all their radios and put up telephone poles to mount big "Moonraker" antennas on with a rotator..
Now a CB is actually useful again seeing there is no "traffic" to speak of on those bands now..but cell phones and 144 mghz ham radios have pretty much made them obsolete..till the day comes when they are needed again..
Often when SHTF the only ones able to communicate with the rest of the world are the ham radio operators..its sad there isn't many of them around like there was years ago..
The 40 channel SSB base station I have ,would be able to talk to others on SSB up to 40+ miles away in good conditions pretty consistently..all I had was an Antron 99 antenna then,which has since been destroyed by several Nor'easters...
I put a Shakespear 9 foot fiberglass whip on the 30 foot mast after that,just so I could still use it,and overall,it works almost as good as the Antron 99 did..
I have a Turner 3+3 power mike and though I do have a Pyramid 100 watt linear,I don't use it,it just over modulates so bad no one could understand what I was saying..
It has upper & lower channels too,someone modified it before I owned it,and I have talked to a friend years ago when he was in NC every morning when the skip was coming in,he had a Ranger radio with SSB and FM,that had no amp or "peaking" done to it...we used channel 38 upper sideband..
When skip was "in" during high sunspot activity years ago,I was able to make contact with many far off places,including Barbados Islands!..
I do not have a frequency counter,so I do not know just what frequencies it gets with the modifications done to it--but those channels were the ones that had the most skip shooters on SSB ..
AM doesn't have much range on a CB,maybe 10 miles if your terrain is pretty level,more if its on a mountain top or a boat on open water,then you may get up to 50 miles..SSB goes quite a bit further..
I probably have a dozen "mobile" AM only CB's of various makes and some are very old 23 channel ones,and a few that only had 3 or 5 channels that used crystals,collecting dust in my garage..
The old 23 channel ones were often more powerful than the later 40 channel ones..
Years ago the CB airwaves were so crowded you couldn't get a word in edgewise,even on SSB here...now its pretty much silent on all channels,a few die hards are still out there with Galaxy base stations with SSB and FM,and power mikes,linear amps...some were so into the hobby they had a "shack" in the back yard for all their radios and put up telephone poles to mount big "Moonraker" antennas on with a rotator..
Now a CB is actually useful again seeing there is no "traffic" to speak of on those bands now..but cell phones and 144 mghz ham radios have pretty much made them obsolete..till the day comes when they are needed again..
