Can't speak for Canada. The CB is great for traveling with others. Also a must need in active logging areas. The weather alert on mine has proven useful. Mine is well tuned. On the road distance is an easy ten miles. Less in the woods. The frs/gmrs have very short distance despite the advertising. Trucker language is bad. The truckers are useful during an accident. If the chatter mentions an accident ahead I'm looking to reroute.
DodgeVoltage wrote: You won't hear much out of channel 9 as it is supposed to be the emergency channel. No one uses it though. 19 is the standard.
Not on Vancouver Island, and lower mainland. Truckers in these areas could be found on channel 1. Don't know why, unless they were all trying to stay away from the chatter of 19. I know from Kamloops north and east to Alberta 19 is/was the trucker channel. Now, however, Vancouver Island truckers run LADD 1, which is 154.100MHz.
Funny story about channel 9. I have a Realistic TR-485 SSB radio. Had it for years, bought it from a lightkeeper. Was using it one night to talk to said lightkeeper. He mentioned to me my sideband signal sounded horrible, but AM was fine. About that time my neighbor phoned, complaining she could hear me in her computer speakers. Hmmm.....
Took the radio to a friend who knows how to tune these radios. Turns out the modulation was way out to lunch, as were a couple other settings. He gets everything back the way it should and sends me on my way.
I get home, re-install radio on base, and call my lightkeeper friend on channel 9. Keep in mind we are in Canada, where the rules for channel 9 on the CB are slightly different than US rules. I call him, he says AM signal just awesome, go Lower. So we do, same channel. He says, signal again awesome, about 2 seconds before some twit keys up on 9 Lower and literally wipes my friend off the channel!! Guy claims he's calling from the Mohave Desert and that I'm violating FCC rules. I tell him to get stuffed, I'm a Canadian, in Canada, following Industry Canada rules. He says I am regulated by the FCC. Ummm....no I'm not. Last I checked, Industry Canada regulated me (an my lightkeeper friend). Mohave keeps repeating the same thing, to the point I think he's using a tape recorder. So I contact my friend on the ham, and tell him to go another channel where Mohave won't hear us. BTW, the lightkeeper was at Cape Beale, I am in Ucluelet, a distance, across water, of about 20 nautical miles. Buddy from the Mohave was either in Neah Bay (about 40nm from me) or in the Mohave Desert, something like 2000 miles, or more. And he had a stronger signal, in fact he registered 30+ on the radio's meter! Yikes!
wcjeep wrote: Can't speak for Canada. The CB is great for traveling with others. Also a must need in active logging areas. The weather alert on mine has proven useful. Mine is well tuned. On the road distance is an easy ten miles. Less in the woods. The frs/gmrs have very short distance despite the advertising. Trucker language is bad. The truckers are useful during an accident. If the chatter mentions an accident ahead I'm looking to reroute.
Have used CB in convoys many times. Works pretty good out to 10 miles. Sometimes more if conditions are right.
Not sure where you are, but CB is useless here in British Columbia for being in/around active logging areas. I travel the back roads semi-often and everything is VHF now. Other areas of Canada might be different, though. Here on Vancouver Island I don't think ANY logging truck has a CB in it. Just the VHF radio. Heck, even in the 80's when I lived in Alberta they used VHF radios on the logging roads. I know, as my Dad had one in his truck, a big Motorola radio where only the display, controls, speaker, and mic were up front. The radio itself was mounted behind the seat.
Yes, FRS/GMRS is very short range. Did communications for an annual marathon out here a couple years ago. One of the comms organizers wanted to use FRS, despite the length of the course. I told him it wouldn't work. He didn't listen...... Let's just say that if it hadn't been for a half-dozen ham operators (me included) race comms would've been a disaster. We now use ham radio for the marathon.
That said, FRS/GMRS does have its uses. Like, going into Walmart where the wife goes one way and I go another.
I think truckers are universal in their language. It used to be the CB slang (10-4 good buddy), now they sometimes make a platoon of sailors blush! But yes, truckers are often an excellent source of traffic information. I usually pass to them what I've encountered as well so they know what to expect.
You know, I've had some very heated debates about the different radio systems (CB, FRS/GMRS, Amateur, Commercial, etc) with my friends about each systems' usefulness in different circumstances. My belief is that every system has a use, and you should pick your system based on what you wish to accomplish.
ve7prt wrote: ...You know, I've had some very heated debates about the different radio systems (CB, FRS/GMRS, Amateur, Commercial, etc) with my friends about each systems' usefulness in different circumstances. My belief is that every system has a use, and you should pick your system based on what you wish to accomplish.
Well said, Mike. The only thing I would add is the understanding of how propagation affects each of the different radio systems or services, which is something a lot of folks overlook when choosing a system. Your incident with the guy in the Mohave Desert is a good example of how propagation can negatively affect the CB radio service.
ve7prt wrote: ...You know, I've had some very heated debates about the different radio systems (CB, FRS/GMRS, Amateur, Commercial, etc) with my friends about each systems' usefulness in different circumstances. My belief is that every system has a use, and you should pick your system based on what you wish to accomplish.
Well said, Mike. The only thing I would add is the understanding of how propagation affects each of the different radio systems or services, which is something a lot of folks overlook when choosing a system. Your incident with the guy in the Mohave Desert is a good example of how propagation can negatively affect the CB radio service.
Jim
WD5BKO
You bet. Even in my current day job, propagation plays a big part in whether we talk to ships or not. In marine VHF land we often hear stations from as far south as San Diego in the summer. And on cold January night we often hear places like Perth Australia on 2182KHz. Right now I'm listening to a couple tugs yacking on 4125KHz, I think they're up in Alaska somewhere, or one is around Prince Rupert. For the record, our MF/HF receivers are located at the lighthouse at Estevan Point (west coast of Vancouver Island).
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