From: billn@hpcvaac.cv.hp.com (bill nelson)
Subject: Re: Geeks on the Air
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Company, Corvallis, Oregon USA
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1992 19:44:13 GMT

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.  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.

Then, pray tell, why are you posting here?

: 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.  Their AIR CONDITIONER actually had CB
: voice signals coming through it.  Eventually, these geeks were evicted, but
: it's just part of the problem.

Uh, huh! Be definition, TVI is interference to television, ONLY. They could
be causing RFI to other radio frequency reception devices. If there was a
signal being heard on the Air Conditioner, then I would either suspect ghosts
or a bad internal short that was dangerous.

By the way, it does not require high power to have TVI or RFI problems. Many
of the televisions and radio receivers on the market are so poorly designed
that a 100 mw unlicensed walkie-talkie can cause interference.

:  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.  She had a very powerful

So, what is so hellish about a plain old run-of-the mill 5/8ths wavelength
antenna? They are a dime-a-dozen and are nothing special.

: Browning Golden Eagle base unit as well as a linear.  She would dominate the

Contrary to popular myth - the Browning GE is no more powerful than any other
CB base station. She might have had a linear, but that has nothing to do with
her tranceiver.

: 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.

And, just how did she dominate the airwaves? She could only transmit on one
band. Also, anyone sitting close to her could easily retaliate by transmitting
on a channel adjacent to the one she was using. Just because she could make
noise does not mean she can hear any better than anyone else.

:  Turns out that someone in this town later put a pin in her coax, they were so
: tired of her.  The FCC wasn't doing much - the CB bands, as far as I was able
: to tell were more or less unpoliced and people were running roughshod.

Surprisingly, in many cases, a pin in the coax will not hurt the transmitter.
It might cause the coax to fry, but most tranceivers will just shut down before
the finals are damaged.

It is true that the FCC has pretty much given up on the band. They have done
much the same on some of the Ham bands - have you listened to 160M or 2M
lately?

:  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".  He ended up firing up his 2KW linear and aimed his enormous Yagi at
: their house and probably vaporized the morons equipment.  Vigilante justice in
: the HAM bands isn't justified, but this was the first incident I had ever seen
: where we ended up applauding the HAM.  Face it - many of these CB geeks are
: using the veil of anonymity to act like juvenile idjits.  

This story abounds. It is also totally false - due to it being impossible
inless the antennas were a few feet away from each other. The first time I
heard the story was over 30 years ago - back in the infancy of CB.

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

Sigh, it is too bad that you are simply propogating a bunch of urban myth
instead  of spending your time  constructively. Maybe if you would spend
some time studying, you could learn enough actual fact and theory to become
an advanced ham licensee yourself.

Bill