From: jbs@ee.egr.duke.edu
Newsgroups: rec.radio.cb
Subject: Re: Geeks on the Air
Date: 11 Sep 92 14:35:31 GMT
Organization: Joe's Bar and Grill
Originator: jbs@ee.egr.duke.edu

In article <8375@orbit.cts.com> tmadson@pnet51.orb.mn.org (Todd Madson) writes:

>I dropped out of the CB world just because of the "idiot" types.  I could give
>you a dozen interesting stories on some really amazing individuals.

Why would you want to do that? If you dropped out of the CB world, why are
you even here?

>  It seems
>to me that a lot of them, as described, really are "white trash" types. 
>People who don't work.  People who sit and play with echo boxes.

It seems to me that you must live in a particularly bad area. All of the
CBers I've met, and I've probably met a couple of hundred, either work or
have a (usually male) spouse who works, or they're disabled. You're right
about the echo boxes, though.

>A friend of mine lived in an apartment and they decided they were going to be
>"CB Good Buddies".  They ended up getting a hellacious rig that was
>undoubtedly running high power.  They lashed their antenna mast to my friends'
>balcony.  Then, their high power transmissions constantly was giving the
>friends TVI problems - unbelievable.  They'd get on the air and use an "echo"
>unit to "whistle" on the air to let their "friends" know they were on the air.
> Everything was permeated with TVI.

TVI, by definition, only exists in televisions.

>  Their AIR CONDITIONER actually had CB
>voice signals coming through it.

Uh-huh. Yoooobetcha.

> During my last year of CB operation, there was a woman here in town who had
>some ridiculous 5/8th wave base antenna from hell.

A 5/8 wave antenna is quite ordinary. Why do you think it was "ridiculous"
and "from hell?"

>  She had a very powerful
>Browning Golden Eagle base unit as well as a linear.  She would dominate the
>airwaves around here and if you attempted to talk on "her" frequencies she
>would literally key up and let her dog bark through the mic until you wisely
>turned your unit off and went to your HAM manuals to get on some real radio.

So, what's your callsign, Mr. Ham?

> The best incident I can think of was a guy who we were talking with late one
>night.  His  signal seemed almost too smooth for CB - very nice signal quality
>and my friend asked him what kind of rig he had.  He replied "Yaesu".  What
>had happened was there was a HAM who was getting lots of 11 meter interference
>from some CB geeks down the block with a 200 watt linear amplifier.  Plenty of
>splatter and the HAM couldn't even use his equipment effectively.  So he fired
>up on 11 meters, and was attempting to tell them to "knock their whistling
>off".

This ham broke several laws:
   Transmitting on CB with non-type-accepted equipment
   Transmitting on CB with more than 4 watts
   Intentionally causing interference
   Probably using an antenna that was higher than CB rules allow


>  He ended up firing up his 2KW linear and aimed his enormous Yagi at
>their house and probably vaporized the morons equipment.

You don't know much about radio, do you?

> Sigh.  It's too bad.  I can remember a time when it was kind of fun to be on
>CB.

Too bad you let the bastards get you down. The rest of us are still having
fun, and providing public service, with CB.

   -joe
-- 
                You spend the night
            Like you were spending a dime

                   - Lyle Lovett

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