Australians seem to be avid mobile CBers, I'm assuming you've got big areas without cell coverage.

Probably a few different things going on there.... Yup we have large areas
with minimal coverage. Although if you stay on the beaten track you'll have some level of coverage almost anywhere you go.

We do have large "stations" read ranch/farm out in the middle of nowhere
which tend to use radios for communications. We have also had a lot of "Grey Nomads" retirees who snarf a caravan or camper and hit the road, they tend to chat amongst themselves on the road. Still got the truckers of course...
they too chat amongst themselves, and swear at ratbag drivers. Some years
back up to the early 90s somewhere we had plenty of "kids" with CB's too,
some of them are probably still kicking around. But these days you don't
need a license and the airwaves are full of ratbags anyway. Then of course yoou've also got the 4WD crowd, they tend to carry them also, in case of problem, or group communication. I don't think to many of these groups
inhabit the same channels or talk to each other much.

Spec


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On 29 Jul 2023 at 07:55a, poindexter FORTRAN pondered and said...

I almost bought a small Uniden 40 channel car CB for $20 a few weeks
ago. I have no practical use for it, but I do drives on I-80 in
California, and it used to be interesting to listen to truckers. They'd
use channels 17 and 19.

cool, what model did you get?

Australians seem to be avid mobile CBers, I'm assuming you've got big
areas without cell coverage.

cell coverage is pretty good across the country but in light of some recent weather related events in the North Island when cell went down and people we perplexed about how to chat with each other in a non online world (ha!) I started to think about how it would be good to get some radio comms setup between our house and one of our cars...

On a recent trip, I didn't see very many trucks with CB antennas,
wonder how they're handling the broadcast aspects of CB.

I think there's still 'life' in USA CB (I think) only in that in the limited research I've done so far I can see there's a reasonable range of models out there. I'm not sure all of them would work here though. I'd need to check the band plans.

I grew up in the late '70s when CB radio was huge. People had them in
cars and used them for emergencies, as a kid I had a little 1/2 watt 3
channel model and friends of mine and I would use them constantly.

I was the same in the early 80's they were widespread, I had a base station at home and would chat with other locals around the city I lived in, used a handheld while out tramping etc... the latter helped me when I got in trouble once while on a 3 day tramp and needed to call in search/rescue to carry me off a mountain after I developed hypothermia... this was well before cell phones... I still highly rate radio as a communications solution... some may view it as old school but I see it as resilient.

Kerr Avon [Blake's 7] 'I'm not expendable, I'm not stupid and I'm not going' avon[at]bbs.nz | bbs.nz | fsxnet.nz

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