Illegal CB Radio Operators Hunted Down & Fined!
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Considering the amount of radio heads in this comment thread, can anybody tell me if using a Midland X-Talker T61 is illegal in Australia?
Hoping someone can help this guy
Probably... Everything is illegal in Austrailia. heh
Are FRS radio Illegal in Australia? Not hard to get on Goolge and look up laws and Regulations in your country .
Gorra loicense for that, mate?
40 channel 477 MHz FM UHF cb radio doesn’t need a licence and is fully legal in Australia 🇦🇺🦘
(Australian company GME manufactures some of their CB radios in Australia)
a bunch of us scattered around Minneapolis used to use cb radio to communicate due to most of us not having a landline, and cellphones did not exist, none of us ever had any run ins with the FCC, the only time the FCC ever became involved was when "Et" as he called himself was modulating with a very illegally high output and bled over the pa system in the Metrodome during a vikings game
When I was a CBer, before I got into ham radio (a LONG time ago!), I was a member of a CB club. We paid annual dues and had a 501(c)3 non-profit certification. We were like a ham radio club in that the club had technical standards and a set of bylaws, and a Class B radio technician was one of the club officers. The membership chairman also processed license applications at our monthly meetings (this was back when CBers had to obtain a GMRS Class D license to legally transmit). The club also had a REACT affiliation.
It was a good experience for me, and my stepping stone into ham radio. A couple members were also hams. One of them helped me prepare for my Novice license by asking questions from the question pool and helping me with my Morse Code.
🤣
It's because the us government gave citizens access to a frequency for general purpose use.
It's only illegal on CB in America, when used in a dangerous or threatening manner.
And because it's a public frequency, it can still be regulated by local law enforcement agencies. This would only be done if requested by more than one CB user. Especially if the violator is intentionally harassing or targeting certain CB users.
And the emergency CB frequency is listen to by many highway patrol officers, as to help during emergencies.
I've had my ham radio license before I had a driver's license. And when I got my CDL, I always kept a ham radio in my rig. As I could easily reach emergency services in the mountains, where you didn't have cell service, or line of sight for CB.
@@shawntilton9170 CB radios must have FCC certificates. Any modification in use or function violates the cert, and is illegal.
@@erzahler1930 I know Morse code really well but have never actually used it,🥺
Never underestimate an engineer with an unlimited budget.
MartyI Sit back.
"I just needa get this train upta 88 MPH, them We REALLY go!
Next stop, Planet Vulcan 2099" !
and no life.
zogengineer
Radio triangulation is not as difficult as one would think. Your cell phone does it quickly to determine you location on earth. It is no different with the FCC hunting you.
When an owner/captain brought his commercial fishing boat to our marina for work, my dad noticed something he hadn't seen in a long time. The wife of the captain didn't like not being able to talk to her husband for a month every time he was out fishing. So they could talk every day this genius captain somehow got his hands on a pair of military radios and antennas that had been in Huey helicopters. My dad knew what they were because he was an avionics engineer during the Vietnam War. My dad warned him that it was a bad idea and especially risky due to their proximity to the AFB. The captain didn't listen and used it anyway. He thought that if he didn't use any personal information, he wouldn't be caught. When he returned home from his first fishing trip using the radios, he was met by local and federal authorities. I don't think he ended up doing any time, but he did have to pay a huge fine. I can't remember if it was $15k or $50k. Either way, that was a lot of money 40 years ago.
I was in the Navy in the mid 1990s in Norfolk Virginia. I knew many CB operators. Loud mouth, 212, Ronnie 72, lady Godiva, lady midnight, pearl doctor and Cajun to name a few. We had fox hunt get togethers and breakfast meet and greets. It was a good time. I went by the handle Big Red. Thanks to everyone who got me into radio. I still love it today. I operate sideband mostly today and go by 426 Big Red. Cheers !
awesome I'll have to look you up.
dirty white boy PA moonshiner waving lol
Do you have a license now? I like to have my own little radio station
All those names sound like pornstars
I too was one of those high power transmitters in the 1990s. With little more than a ten year old base station from JC Penney, a 400 watt linear amplifier and a 40 foot antenna.
This was in the sparsely populated area of the Mojave desert where every weekend a group of us called the Saturday Night Sidebanders got on the air to talk to each other. Think of it as an early version of a chat group.
You might be surprised what ended it for us. This was the early 1990s and the vast Mojave Desert where illegal meth labs were frequently raided. With each bust, deputies were finding CB radios with amplifiers. It seems this was the new way of meth dealers to talk to one another. I guess their paranoia made them think their landlines were being wire-tapped, so they started using CB radios.
None of us wanted to get caught up in that mess, the Saturday Night Sidebanders called it quits
@@markpitts5194 Interesting. I had no idea they shared a frequency. But it makes sense.
Were people also going to 50kW back then too? I know some people are going that high now, and of course with horrific filtering and harmonics.
heh same had a base station rig then a rig in my monte. At home I never used anything high powered just a mod'd HR-2510 with I think was a 50W? upgrade/tuning/mod feeding into an Antron 99.
My car now that was another story... had a Galaxy 959 to a 1kw class B amp (and a beefed up alternator) into a 102inch steel whip. oh how it was fun to see those who dared to grab that thing while I was key'd up. And yes had a few tried while hanging out at the K-mart on Rt.1 in Langhorne.
I used to run skip on ssb but also above the 'normal' channels but not as high as 10m... so 'pirate' radio, CB never used high power no need. But one thing that I still have from back those days is my D104 Silver Eagle and still havent had the heart to tear it down to make it work for my computer for a mic.
one thing I dont get is why ppl think tracking down radio sources is so hard eg. numbers radio, we use to play 'CB tag' doing exactly that.
"Hey, our phone lines might be tapped, let's use CB radios to communicate. ABSOLUTELY NOBODY will be able to hear us then!"
-meth-head logic
My grandpa was a ham operator back in the day and tells stories of some CBers he knew that did this back in the 70s. He also has some interesting stories about tracing a few pirate stations on FM and short wave. Another story I've heard is that our local electrical inspector for the town was busted by the FCC back in the 70s for broadcasting without a license. He was broadcasting, as the guy in Blues Brothers said: "both kinds of music: country AND western!"
Country-Western! Lol
@@TNTMusic5757 - Its only one catagory... Redneck
This brought back some latent nightmares. In the late 60's everyone in town (I was living in the New England area at the time) used handles. Most illegal stuff had to do with antenna height above the roof (no way you'd get away with a 60 ft. tower), linear amps (not all that powerful, most of 'em were in the 75-100w range) or non-approved frequencies. At the time of the 23 channel synthesis radios we had access to channels 22a and 22b. The most popular channels were 2, 8, 10, 11, 14, 16 (ssb), and 22. The adults mostly hung out below ch.10 (which at that time was used by truckers), while the teenagers-young adults were on everything above 10 (except ch.14 where the 100mw kids hung out). There were quite a few "scares" during that period, and if you turned your CB on and only heard folks using their legal callsigns, it was a good bet that "Uncle Charlie" (i.e. the FCC) was in town. It only took 1 or 2 phone calls to verify that the dreaded plain white FCC van was in the area, busting people left and right. Infractions ranged from the smallest (not using a station-to-station channel, abiding the callsign ID time or chitchat type conversations) up to the most severe - Linears and/or antennas too high. All it took was an FCC bust or two, and the whole town became very silent, with limited transmissions using callsigns. Back then, an FCC van seemed to have a directional loop on it, and it's whereabouts were relayed via hardwire (phones). I recall one instance where I noticed only "legal" activity when I powered my base station up and the phone rang. It was a friend of mine who said an FCC van was parked near my house. I dropped to the floor, crept to the window, and peeked out one blade of the window shade to find a white van with a directional loop parked along the curb, in front of the church across the street. Recalling my conversations over the air the previous night, I figured my goose was cooked and when my Dad found out... well, I shudder still at what may have happened. It turned out their attention was focused up the street, about 1/4 mile from me, where they busted one of my neighbors who had a too-tall free standing tower, a linear, and a modified Tram Titan II. I don't remember his fine, but it was over $1k and under $5k. After a few days, the "all clear" signal was relayed by phone and we'd resume our normal communications. And now, I have to get a towel to wipe the stream of cold sweat running down my back...
If that freaked you out, then you would not have wanted to be with me and another kid, barely in our teens, being pursued by sled, SC law enforcement division, with a pack of blood hounds and then swimming broad river. Now that's a adrenaline rush!
Those were the days, weren't they? One of the things which would attract their attention initially was not simply the power or antenna, by that time they had tuned into you. One of the best way to attract their attention was by overdriving your audio with an amplifying microphone. You see, this would clip the audio and result in a squared wave RF signal being created which would generate all odd harmonics. Not only did your audio sound very loud but very crappy, but your RF signal would be going all up and down the bands bleeding into and over all kinds of radio bands and functions across the spectrum. THAT needed to get cleaned up and attracted their attention fast. Will do the same even today.
nowdays the FCC doesn't have the resources to do that, and if they did, there's a good chance they might get shot at. Different times. Right now unless you're jamming radio frequencies you're at best going to get a nasty "please stop doing that and play nice!" letter. That's only after years of complaints and someone actually has to figure out who and where you are. In the U.S. , even in the 70's i don't think you required a callsign.
Way back when (circa 1969) I was a Navy electronics technician stationed on the USS Norton Sound (AVM-1) moored in Port Hueneme, CA. One of the radiomen had gotten bit by the CB bug which was all the rage at the time. He asked for a little help, and one evening we set him up on one of our two AN/URC-32 500-watt (as I recall) transceivers. He had no trouble reaching who he wanted and one guy responded, "You must be right next door to me." The next morning, we see a big white FCC truck pull up on the pier in front of the ship. We figured it might be for us and the mechanical counter tuning display on the AN/URC-32 was still showing something like 27.135. I scurried up to the compartment with the transceivers and changed the frequency setting and even changed the power amp tuning. We never heard a thing about it. And a couple of times on Midway Island while working at the transmitter site we helped out the local Ham club (they had a nice Collins S Line setup) by putting up a 10kW transmitter on a very nice rotatable log periodic antenna. They were in the Air Force hanger but an audio line came from them to our patch panel at the transmitter site. Not much risk of an FCC truck driving to Midway Island.
10kW transmitter ? That's twice WKRP
@@davidmacphee3549 The 10 kW transmitter was an AN/FRT-39 made by Technical Materiel Corporation (civilian nomenclature GPT-10K). The also made a 40 kW version by adding on one more stage as the AN/FRT-40 (GPT-40K). It was a 2 to 30 MHz single side band capable transmitter with a synthesized exciter. We had a couple that were used for just voice (AM modulation), but most were used for teletype, which was 16 tones multiplexed for the upper sideband, 16 tones multiplexed for the lower sideband, and a 20 dB suppressed carrier. Therefore, each transmitter handled the traffic for 32 teletypes. They were state of the art in the 1960's and the TMC engineers had done a lot of the pioneering work in single sideband design. So, true, more power than WKRP, but just not nearly as funny. ('As God is my witness - I thought turkeys could fly.")
Mua ha
I grew up in Long Beach CA. My grandpa was a HAM operator and I took up CB. It was our Facebook in the 80's. I had a base station with an Astro-Beam on a rotor, and an extremely 10-8 mobile rig in my Chevy Van. We enjoyed the K-40 magna-mounts back then. Met my first wife on my CB. Basically lived in my van on top of Signal Hill between the oil pumps and shot DX all over the world. Tried getting back into it, as I still have all of my original equipment, but the CB and upper/lower freqs are nothing but Spanish speaking. They have no toleration for clean audio. They run full mod swings to complete distortion that bleeds 8-10 channels in either direction. 20 minutes of trying to do anything that resembles communications ends up in a migraine headache, so it all got boxed back up. At least I have my memories. It was the Wild West back then and those memories make me smile.
If you have a radio with single side band try lower 38.
Lots of skip right now, it’s pretty fun.
that problem is not just in long beach. i gave up on cb decades back. as many would have a kicker and put rubber bands on there key switch. as a truck driver it just made it impossible to do anything for four up and four down.
I want your astro beam!!...59 and still at it
Perhaps you met K6MVH, who edited 73 Magazine.
I grew up in the San Fernando Valley. I got into CB in 1972 (Licensed as KHS 7807) and started with Pace that used the car's antenna! Then got a Robin - was a nice little 23 channel job, but it was stolen out of the car within a month! Then when I got another car, I installed my first Cobra,
a 29, then upgraded to a 140 GTL, which I had "Tweaked" (Still have it - but now in my private radio museum). Though, I also had a few base stations - but they just used a steel whip on the roof, as I lived on top of a hill.
We (with friends) would drive up to Contractor's Point by the Ham radio repeaters above Sylmar at around 6,000' and the transmission range would reach from South Bay to Long beach to the South, and from Santa Barbara to Edwards AFB to the North - on AM, and into San Diego and Riverside on SSB. Though via the "Tweaks" I was able to do a QSL with South Africa, Australia and Halifax!
On a clear day, we could see over the Santa Monica's at 1,200' and see Catalina. The CB'ers on Mulholland would claim they were "on the top of the world" - HAHAHAHA !!
That interest got me into DX'ing everything, starting with a Hallicrafters S-107 to a RS DX300 to being a 'Radioman' in the NAVY, then later into Ham starting with a Novice class and been a Tech for almost 40 years. I keep saying I'm gonna get my General, "Some day". . .
In 1982 in the UK I was a pirate using the AM band on a Cobra 148dx with a Star-duster aerial using the handle Rough Rider breaking on channel 14. Back then, for a very brief moment in time, CB radio in the UK was huge but it died a death when it all became legal 😁
Bought a legal FM 148DX in 82, switches didnt work unless flicked a certain switch, went down to almost 26meg and up to short of 28meg, had 8 blocks plus the legal. Still got me Sommerkamp 26 - 30meg multimode, swapped it from a Yaesu 2M multimode.
Used to mount a 3 ele beam to my van or farmers gate, cops used to stop under the beam overhanging the road and a short chat and move on.
@@hunglikeadonkeybutnotassmelly We would collect old TV tubes and keep the ferrite rings and wrapped them with coax, that method worked perfecty for curing tvi.The good old days.
Here in the US in 1982 those Cobra 148 DX's were new and popular.
"Smokey and the bandit" killed CB
@@jimjungle1397 I got my hands on an American Radio Shack catalog in about 1988. In Canada, Our prices at Radio shack were double. Is that fair?
I too was one of the CB regulars back in the early 90's on Long Island. I would say a small group of us about 10 or so would be on every night. One of the people I met on CB is still my friend to this day. It was great back then it was the cell phone or internet of the day. Many of us had elaborate rigs including beam antennas. I didnt get that elaborate just a Wilson 1000 antenna and a HR2510 modified to broadcast on CB and peaked to about 35 watts. One of the games we liked playing was one of us would take a car and hide somewhere in our town and others would drive around tracking the signal strength to find us. Me and a friend got creative and hid on the top of a parking garage at the train station. After a while of people looking one goes "Im coming up there." Fun times back then!
We called that 'RABBIT
Yet today, you can provide the fcc with and exact address of a guy like Mike Sherman who spews 5000 watts on cb channel 19 and they do nothing. Multiple ham clubs across the country have reported this guy over the years. He has single handedly pissed off every truck driver in the US, rendering their cbs useless to monitor traffic conditions.
snip snip snip
@@PatrickDickey52761 naa man... pin the coax.. way more effective at taking him off the air for a good long time.
He's one that should be shut down for sure. His station is clean though. I don't hear him bleeding other channels but certainly a nuisance to drivers in need of road reports. I believe it's Mark Sherman though. If he quit plugging up 19 he would hardly be known.
Highways and Byways, lol
@@codyway7424 That's him, lol
The introduction of the President HR 2510 and the Ranger RCI 2950 in the early 90's really made the CB out band commonplace. These super CB's were so common, everybody had one. Where I live in Canada, the government generally left you alone as long as you were not running lots of power and causing TV interference. I used a TVI filter and never used a "boot" so I never had a problem.
434 Ont WAVIN a hand EH !!
Those aren't CB's but are modified to have CB frequencies
I still have both radios which, while they were amazing at the time, seem like child's play compared to what I run these days. I'm a ham now, but in the 90s I was a teen and had an absolute blast on the CB. I remember these days well and all the talk of the FCC being in the neighborhood and busting people. While I had an impressive setup, I luckily wasn't running anything over a 100 watts which kept me off the FCC's radar.
@@budgreen4x4 They were technically advertised as 10 meter radios yet a child could modify them for CB. Anyhow, I think he knew they weren't CBs and was just calling them "Super CBs" because of their capabilities.
I had the RCI 2950 and the RCI 2970. The RCI 2970 was well liked cause of it's built in high power amp the was good alone and a very good driver for a higher power amp that takes high input. I mainly used the RCI 2950 and a 350 watt amp. I do remember the HR 2510 it had a bit lower reach of 25Mgz while the RCI would reach a bit higher at 32Mghz RCI range was 26-32Mgz HR was 28.69-25Mgz if not mistaken off memory.
In 1960 I talked on a legal CB radio mounted in my car to a ship in the Gulf of Mexico while I was on top of the downtown tunnel bridge headed to Portsmouth. We had met months earlier when the ship was tied up next to the tunnel bridge. He confirmed he got me clear and then I entered the tunnel.
at that distance, you were not legal,,,,cb is to be limited in range
@@bill45colt what was the actual range limit?. I forget. I loved talking skip, stock! Talk to Europe from Canada with a Horizontal, quarter wave dipole, reflect the signal off the ground and up she goes.
@@davidmacphee3549 cb range limit originally was 25 miles, max wattage 5, no music allowed
im sure you did all sorts of illegal fun, i didnt say you didnt have fun, all i did was remind you that the original idea included rules, not that you necessarily obeyed. Hey i exceed the speed limit daily also rarely stop at stop signs, and have been known to romance a married woman in time of need also..
@@bill45colt I thought it was 40 miles allowing talk between city's or large communities like Toronto and Hamilton or from Buffalo NY to its surrounding townships.
(Toronto and Buffalo are like close brothers from early television networks.)
You needed a pretty good setup to talk 40 Miles though and low S units were normal like a 3. It was exciting when you did it.
I had a half wave 40 feet up and a Famous 'Johnny One' 5 channel Radio. The really cool thing about that Radio is it's amazing audio quality and smooth sensitivity and warm squelch control not choppy at all.
It was originally designed as a small business Radio but then adapted to 10 Meters Ham at about 40 watts output. CB users always used it with the housing off so they could manually switch crystals for more than 5 channels.
That info was soon shared that in just a few seconds you do pull a hell of a stunt on people.
Each time you double your output, you gain an S-Unit or 3 DB.
With the Famous Johnson Messenger Viking One, you could pull yourself out of the mud and go from a 3 to a 6!
"WTF did you just do! I hear you loud and clear now"
The nicest thing is that it seemed to have a similar effect on the receive. I could hear them better too! I didn't want to get busted though for running high power (40 watts)
The D.O.C. was always listening. It was always great to switch the final for a laugh!
DOC is like FCC
Now that analog TV is dead in the States, I don't understand why the FCC didn't bump up the legal limit for CB when they added FM privileges. Had they bumped up the wattage, you would have seen the more legitimate manufacturers bringing cleaner amplifiers to the market, which likely would have weeded out most of the dirty amps currently on the market. It might have also breathed new life into CB- at least moreso than just the addition of FM.
I'm not sure about the US, but in Australia, the analog TV spectrum was snapped up by mobile carriers.
@@djbassaus Same in the US. A big chunk of it went to cell carriers for "5G". The propagation characteristics of the band that made it great for television will really help with cell use too.
CB radio is dead. Even truckers no longer use CB radio. I used to work at a truck stop and would chat with them about CBs. Most of them said that they use cell phones now instead of a CB radio.
@@cooldudicus7668 It's not dead if people are still using it. Granted, I don't hear anywhere near the trucker traffic that it once had, but on any given day I can turn on my CB and not have a shortage of people to talk to.
You answered your own question lol
My friend had a Datong ADF... we DESTROYED our radio club fox hunt... him driving and me calling the direction reading. Continuous automatic DF
Another fun & informative production. The U.S. still has plenty of freebanders. Since then the FCC has shut down many local field engineering offices.
@@aliensporebomb I think apps have replaced the transmitters now a days. Group chats and encrypted chats have really killed the pirates. I think that is a good thing? 😁
In Australia CBers were low priority, radio inspectors were tracking people transmitting on police bands.
The priority was in protecting commercial licencees from those who interfered with their frequencies.
But RIs are now abolished so I don’t know how the airwaves are being policed.
I remember an amateur repeater was held open by a crane controller 24/7. The crane controller can be set to use another frequency but after a few weeks defaulted to the repeater frequency and the amateurs had to suck it up or change the crane controller again.
The FCC has monitoring capabilities via SDR and internet access all over the country. No need for the local offices.
Back in 1960s, pilots could use the CB freq on their HF radio. That changed.
NOW! If they could find the guys on channel 9 and six running 3 kilowatts and covering 3 channels at a time spouting crazy talk day and night that would be interesting. I SPOKE TO Connecticut today on 12 watts ssb on 27.395mhz but was wiped out by a Virginia station running 600 watts
The research you've done on these is incredible.
Loving these latest videos, really interesting and informative. Love the depth of knowledge you find on the topics.
I was the wire solderer for my dad and all his radio buddies. Presidents, Yazous and modified Cobra 140’s were the radios of choice in the 80’s. They would turn on their “footwarmers” and talk all over the world. They had a list of frequencies that they would use and knew which ones not to use. Putting up an antennae was like an Amish barn raising in those days with everyone coming to help. I often wonder how those guys would have taken to the internet had they lived that long.
Interesting video! My grandad had a cb back in the day I was fascinated by it and its probably why I got into radio later on down the line. Keep up the great work Ringway your channel is starting to blow up 😁
Back in 1995, I was messing around with an old 23 channel base station that I had bought from Lafayette electronics in about 1970. I ran a copper wire around the base boards at the ceiling in a "gamma match" configuration. Driving a linear amplifier, I said: Hello skipland. Any skip out there? Skipland, skipland, skipland... and I would do this occasionally for throughout the week. One afternoon, I was standing on my veranda, when a neighbor in the complex on the ground floor--a nice kid, maybe in his twenties--shouted up to me: Hey...are you SKIPLAND? Well, I said no, I wasn't. But I shut down my radio after that--who knows how much tvi, and other interference I may have been chucking!
Love the tech geek speak. I'm a programmer and I think a lot on technical things because they're fascinating as I think this is here. Thanks for presenting it
Never forget my dad got into CB about 1976 and bought all expensive Johnson equipment… base rig, mobile rig and roof antenna. He got stopped by “Uncle Charlie” monitoring in an unmarked FCC Ford LTD in the KC suburbs operating without a license. Nothing happened… but scared him to death and threw everything in the basement. His CB days were over as fast as they started.
Those Johnson Base Stations were a hot commodity.
Back then, the price of a CB license was cheap.
In the early 1970s, the price for a CB license was $20, but, in March of 1975, it was reduced to $4.00!!!
A bit of history: Back then (and before) the "law" required that a person use their call number (license).
But people started using made up "handles." While "TECHNICALLY" illegal, the FCC really didn't come down on people for using handles.
I have no idea if they are butt hurt about that nowadays.
As for your dad just putting everything in the basement, he could have just paid the $4.00 for the license and carried on without a problem.
ESPECIALLY if that Johnson was a model with Sideband. Those radios were so nice.
Love that I can picture it myself doing that stuff memories love them. Great story mate 😂
"...find their approximate location...." And this was in 1990. In WW2 Europe, both the British and US Armies developed a paranoia that German direction finding was so accurate that using a tactical radio transmitter could be a death sentence. A single message transmission would bring down artillery Armageddon on your location. When a field battalion or company CP was devastated by shellfire, this was taken as clear proof of the effectiveness of DF. Troops at the Anzio (Italy) landings, Jan 1944, were even forbidden access to any form of non-approved radio receiver because German DF could accurately pinpoint the local oscillator signal radiated from a superhet receiver. Allegedly, for this reason, the 'Foxhole Radio' - a sort of razor blade crystal set (whose exact mode of operation is still controversial) was invented.
In fact, none of this was true and German DF was no better than anybody else's. Above about 40km distance, the signal arrives by ionospheric 'hops' and accurate DF is rarely possible even in the day and impossible at night ('night effect'). At frequencies above about 1.5 MHz (ie, HF/VHF) there is no 'ground wave' signal propagation or any line of sight reception - meaning that nothing is heard at all, closer than 40km EXCEPT very close to the transmitter (a few hundred meters) when a small directional antenna can be used. However, in all cases, it was shown that Allied CPs were accurately hit by artillery because they were in VISUAL range of German gunnery observers NOT because of the use of DF. The best DF could do then - and now - at any distance was accuracy within 2-4 sq kilometers. Nothing better.
And those brave SOE spies in occupied France - attic antenna, B2 suitcase set, colleague on stairs with Sten gun, all ready to pack up and flee within 10 minutes? They were caught because the German radio-security service (not the Gestapo as commonly believed) first located the SOE transmitter to within a km or two and then flooded the area with mobile agents using covert receivers with loop DF antennas (often concealed in a brief case or in a vehicle) who would home in as a pack whilst watching for antenna wires and likely transmitter locations. It was much harder to do this in a city/town centre crowded with buildings and apartments. The radio security guys were also adept at cutting the mains electricity to known parts of the area concerned, in turn, to see if the spy transmission abruptly cut off. SOE sets were usually run off the mains electricity rather than batteries.
Even now, radio direction finding is FAR less accurate than people imagine.
Oh, yeah, I forgot. Since the location of a field HQ was so easily visually detected - coming and going of personnel, vehicles etc - most Allied tactical radio sets made after the start of WW2 incorporated a provision for remote operation. The 19 set could be used as much as half a mile from the antenna and the radio set itself and the control circuitry also permitted the integration of (wired) field telephones, too.
Even in the last years, radio direction finding has become MUCH more advanced than you think.
With MIMO and mesh network based modern stage tech, it's possible to locate a "misplaced" wireless microphone within 5m, as long as it's somewhere between the nodes.
Similar with locating individual phones without access to the cell network backbone, as shown with locating British SIM cards used in Ukraine.
@@pteppig wireless microphone such as Shure??
Let's not forget that radio signals can reflect. You could easily end up chasing a reflection.
In WW2 the DF location time was 1 second.
Imagine today....
Just for the fun of it, here is a much more interesting story about using a frequency, not in the user's legal list. Somewhere offshore a marine SSB station desiring to speak to a fellow fisherman about a special spot where the fish were showing up, he told his friend to go to all 5S or 5.555 mhs and made his call when another station came in telling him he was a pilot with 228 souls on his plane asking the fishermen to stand by while he contacted Atlanta International airport to land his plane. The FCC did cite this radio operator with a fine of $2500.00.
I find this difficult to believe. Airlines only use HF for trans-oceanic routes. Atlanta approach is on VHF frequencies, specifically 127.9 or 128.0 MHz
Back in the 70’s, my cousin built a CB linear amplifier. He was working at a Radio Shack at the time and supposedly found a huge vacuum tube in the back of the stock room and used that to build his amplifier.
Back in the 80’s, I can remember that the DJ’s audio equipment in my favorite nightclub would occasionally pick up CB radio chatter during the middle of a dance track. I often wondered if that was illegal equipment causing that interference.
Yeah, it very well could cause that type of interference. But, not necessarily from the amount of power, but my a high SWR (standing wave ratio) in the antenna system. If the antenna system, consisting of the antenna and the feedline (coax) are not properly tuned for the operating frequency, the antenna is less efficient. SWR, in essence is the signal ratio between the intended output and the reflected output power. If the reflected is high, spurious emissions from that radio will get into everything. Even a wire telephone line.
We used to joke that the guy on our block had radios so powerful that you could see his face on the television when he keyed up.
Could be, but probably not. Every wire in a piece of radio equipment is a small antenna, even PCB traces. There is literally no way to say for sure, even if you know a guy who was next door with illegal equipment. Title 47 section 15 of the Code of Federal Regulations states that (1) a device may not cause harmful interference, and (2) a device MUST accept ANY interference received, including interference that may cause undesired operation."
The CB transmitter didn't need illegal power. Until Nixon imposed the 55MPH speed limit in the 70s and created the CB boom
most electronic equipment had little or no shielding or interference filtering. The bell at a Catholic church near where i lived
was electronic and when CB's were operated near it they would be heard on the bell.. Most home broadcast radios and many
TVs picked up close CB signals.
@@RobertHallIV they'll regularly and easily come in on commercial am car radio when a trucker uses a booster and keys down on the mic.
06:15 - Incredibly, the offending CB rig was transmitting at 11.079 GHz.
nasty home made linear amplifiers will do it every time
@@TexasPrisonStories im gonna make a spark gap transmitter with a 4 foot long spark set up. I want no i demand to be heard across the whole spectrum and every working toaster 😬
@@spankthemonkey3437 you can just buy a class c cb amp for that and your good to go
@@TexasPrisonStories I got an rm Italy amp its not dirty enough
just a little bleed over.. nothing to see here..
I had a neighbor who had a radio, that would come through the TV, radio, even a cassette player! I could hear his conversations, he was talking to ppl over 3k+ miles away, sometimes I believe i could almost make out what the other person was saying, when on the am bands, that was long ago. Being I used cassette tapes!!..
Hi Lewis. These videos are always interesting and well presented. Thank you for your efforts.
Nice to see that Dave Tong, an old friend of mine, made the kit they used.
I think his first project was the famous morse trainer, which soon after was joined by filters, and a compressor.
Back in the day just about every new class A licencee had used the trainer.
I noticed the Datong kit, but Lewis illustrates his videos with stock images that, more often than not, don't relate directly to the content.
Yeah it’s hard when there’s no material relating to a story. That Datong shot was taken from an Ofcom internal film. It was mounted in a car circa 2000
I knew a guy in the 90's that had a 1kw mobile amp with a RCI 2950 mobile unit modded for the CB band. He could pull up to the local grocery store and come in on the PA system and even screw with the registers when transmitting. I had the same radio and would talk to the Krystal drive thru employees on 32 MHz. on their headsets while in the parking lot. Man those employees and customers never knew and would go at it back in forth with confusion. Fun times, glad we never got caught.
Haha. I remember being in the drive through at a Burger King and was talking on my set. I was talking a "little far away" if you know what I mean. Anyway once I was in eyesight of the gal in the window, when I keyed up, she looked at me each time with a surprised look. I was a frequent customer, so she knew my voice. So I ASSume that I was "coming over". I stopped once I realized what was happening.
I used to be one of those violators... had many 2510's and 2950's with modulators running a kilowatt or better... talked all around the world for years. Those were the good ole days
Dislike
Back in the late '80s or early 90's myself and two friends had access to some high power/high tech cb equipment and a super wiz-bang antenna at an electronics store. Twice a week my friend performed the "king of the radio" show for about 15 minutes after the store closed, on channel 19, pissing off a LOT of truckers. Was one of the funniest things I've witnessed. After a couple weeks we noticed a state trooper and an unmarked sedan a few stores up from us just before getting ready to start the show. We never did it again.
There was one guy in Oklahoma City who walked on everybody in that area for a long time...FCC shut him down finally....
@@joejacobs3537 must be reffering to the "Panty Man" Bam Bam!
@Scott Mckinney Yep...Klaus Kramer...He died about 3 years ago...
I ran all 48 for many years you could hear the panty man all the time if the skip wasn’t to bad this was at night of course
@Jack Smith He's a cb legend in my area of Oklahoma...He died about 3 years ago...
Fining illegal CB operators is like "handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500"😁
A pal of mine worked for the FCC and operated one of these DF cars. I got to ride in it, and it was incredible how efficiently it could pinpoint a transmitter location. He and his team referred to these vehicles as "James Bond" cars.
Great story, I'd like to hear more of this. Cheers from the States
i believe the fcc now only has about 5 to 6 detections vehicles in the entire usa
They use SDR tech accessible via internet. Once they find a problem then a field team is sent out to verify it and track it down.
The FCC has plenty of vehicles. They aren't just used for CB radio, but for all of the radio services. The most interesting part of them is their fiberglass roof, that mimics the original steel roof and has antennas under it.
@@jimjungle1397 i just watched an enitire long presentation by the FCC director saying they have five vehicles spread out antion wide
I believe they rely on tips from the public and it's years before they take any action, if ever. I was told there are hundreds of pirate stations transmitting on the commercial FM band. Including one in my area that plays African music. They actually appear to be a legitimate business to some including a sign in the window. They constantly reappear on different frequencies. Seems to me that interfering with commercial radio would take a higher priority than out of band CB operators. I'd think there would be complaints from the engineering departments of commercial stations on adjacent frequencies forcing FCC to take swift action.
@@acoustic61 oh yeah, those are the pirates they do chase. there are many NAL's handed out non stop in New York, L.A. and Miami for FM broadcast band pirates. they are basically the only places they catch them all though are a few others caught in other places.
I wonder if they are cracking down simply because they wish to dissuade or hamper any real ability for us to communicate long-range, you know, like in a national emergency?
Most parts of the world there is absolutely no "cracking down" on anything in the CB band and a few people keep ruining the CB band for everyone with high power dirty amps blocking several channels and disturbing everyone, and they do it for years with no one knocking on their door...
It the 90s I used a 4000 watt tube amplifier to skip my signal around the world. We talked to people all over this planet. Fun times.
Another great informative video from ring way Manchester. Here in the United States now the FCC cares not about CB radio operators. Used to be you had to worry about them but now they are far too busy with other things to worry about 11 m operators
Its all down in 2 meter ham band thanks to boefeng radios🤣
@@spankthemonkey3437 don't shit on them, that little affordable radio finally convinced me to get my ham ticket
@@ktanner11doesn't make it a good radio.
Fascinating! My next door neighbor was a FAA Vortac technician years ago and he told me how the FCC used to triangulate the signals (with 3 or more cars) to bust the perps. I had no idea that the detection technology had advanced so much. Great video!-John in Texas
I think to date, there are 13 variously located FCC monitoring stations throughout the country. If you're an amateur radio operator, you are restricted to how much wattage you use in proximity to one. If two can detect your signal, they can pin you within about a mile. If 3 can pin you, they can get you within several hundred feet.
We used to have a cb group and used to play radio tag (hide and seek with cbs in our cars. One car used to go hide and key up and talk non stop and until they were found. It was a fun game unless the cops found us first.
I was amazed, as an amateur radio operator,
that even 30 years ago the FCC would go
after out of band CB operators, as licensing
had previously ended by the 1980's.
I have heard non ham operators in the
Freeband between CB band and the 10 M
amateur band.
I have talked all over the world on those out of band frequencies.
Freeband forever lol
They enforce the rules because there are other services that use those "Freeband" frequencies.
@@burnstudios
Yep ,, me too . I honestly doubt the FCC will come knocking unless you’re just blatantly interfering with emergency services . With todays modern tv’s , hardly any landline phones , even running a couple thousand watts on CB , if it’s setup well , grounded good , I’d say neighbors would never hear anything . That’s been my experience anyway
@@spaceflight1019 The issue is most definitely related to misuse and abuse of frequencies. Guard bands between service bands and frequencies are there to be left empty to avoid interference.
I was involved in US CB radio from the early 1970s into the early 1980s, and serviced many types of gear both as a hobby and later licensed to do so. I cannot count how many rigs had been misaligned, modified, or butchered trying to get more power, modulation, or extra channels. Cut a diode to disconnect the modulation limiter? Sure, who cares if you bleed over across 10 or 20 channels. I've seen a rig so poorly "tuned up" that the RF of an unmodulated carrier wasn't a clean sine wave, it had a peak but also a shelf or plateau on the side. Amazing how much better it sounded after proper alignment.
Well, enough ranting on my part. Thanks for the video, hopefully people will watch and learn not to abuse the airwaves.
Tracking and triangulating a base station is much easier than finding a mobile unit. We used export radios that went above and below the standard CB frequencies. Some used bigger power, but I only used a Texas Star 350 which actually dead keyed maybe 200 watts. That was about all our trucks could handle in terms of power supply. Then when the truck manufacturers started making cabs out of fiberglass and other composites, the ability to find a good ground for the antenna became an issue. But we were able to play the skip game and bounce a signal 2000 miles or so. We got to know other truckers in other parts of the country that were doing the same thing. Lots of fun and we tried not to bleed over on someone's TV or sermon.
The memories this video brought back. We had a Golden Eagle base station back in the 60s. Dad would radio in that he was off work and coming home. Good 'ol 23 channel power houses. It really helped when dad put an antenna on top of one of our fir trees. Talk about reaching out! We kept expecting a visit from "Uncle Charlie " but it never happened.
I'm a truck driver I've been a truck driver for 40 years I remember years ago I used to hear a guy out of Texas on the CB no matter where I was in the United States I would hear this guy he went by Papa Smurf he would take guys from Texas down to Mexico to the brothels I could hear him anywhere I was in the United States even Canada back then I ran a Galaxy 88 with two Wilson 2000 antennas and I had the radio tuned in peak I could get out in 20 to 30 miles that's without putting my linear on it with a linear it won't States I think anything over seven or eight Watts you have to be licensed I had a 200 watt linear
Do you perhaps remember, driving through OKC or Norman Oklahoma, late 90s-2000, the operator to the east of Interstate 35 with the constant loop on 19: "I got my nightgown on, my pretty red panties on, and I-ma ready for bed!" , in a male voice no doubt!!!!! ??
@@wildcard9724 dude wtf
@@wildcard9724 the infamous i ain't got no panties on 😂😂😂
Yeah, they got busted years ago. Cadillac Man, Diamond Jim, Pa Pa Smurf. 6 Pack and a a shot of Tequilla, meet the girls at the cantina.
Great vid. 👍 I remember getting caught in the 80s. Ahhh memories
This August marks the 50th anniversary of the huge FCC raid on the Pittsburgh area. A lot of people never got back on and things were never the same. My parents took what they did with the FCC to their graves, but they believed in me and I had a great career in Electronics. The worst part is that I blame myself. Maybe if I hadn't screwed around with the Civil Air Patrol the FCC would not have been called in.
I don't do ham radio or CBs. Haven't heard shortwave since I was a child. Far from a hobbyist.
However since I stumbled across this channel a few months ago, I'm hooked. I couldn't imagine that I would find this all as fascinating as I do. I also didn't think you could make this topic visually engaging but it is.
I guess I'm trying to give you kudos to this channel and your efforts and joys in the work you do here. Thank you RM.
As an aside, I used to live down the street from that FCC station in the 90s. It was still active then. (Diamond Springs Rd in Va Beach.) I believe it had a radio tower to the left of the bldg then. No matter, it was just to cool see something I was familiar with. 😊
Thanks again for the content, bud!
I love all your historical stuff!
I was a CB operater for many years in Virginia Beach Virginia and people are very rude and foul mouthed they figure since they are not regulated by the FCC they can do and say what they want and the public has to hear all that trash
My CB handle back then was Red Ruddie
I listen now in NY I am on a island though and can pick up many guys on boats that still use them. I occasionally get people from as far as Pittsburgh and the Carolinas that in my head I'm thinking they have to be pumping some serious wattage. I am at 110feet above sea level with a standard magmount from Walmart and a 90s cobra 40 CB I fixed from a thrift store buy. My mag mount is posted 15 feet up on a field tripod stand with a 3x3ft sheet of steel kind of like to simulate a car roof. I have a 380 to 420ish foot hill to my south and mostly clear shot off to the north where I get most boats but these guys are coming from the south in the Carolinas and Virginia I hear them clear as day. Pittsburgh is far but it's weak and I only get him late at night so he could be legally transmitting with a well built high gain antenna. I don't know about the guys to the south though.
I find that most use 500 watt amplifiers with Wilson 1000 antennas
Its not like anyone uses the cb lmao except dirty truckers so it doesn't matter
@@rexjolles You would be very wrong. Lots of nice people all over the world still using the cb bands. I just talked to a fellow in Portugal. I live in fla, and was not using more than 50 watts.
Considering the fact that radio direction finding has been around for more years than CB's, you can't say too many positive things about the lack of intelligence it takes to operate a non-moving, fixed in one spot illegal radio station. Those operators might as well have had a huge neon sign on their roof announcing "Here I am, come and get me". Ignorance like that deserves to be busted.
I haven't been busted yet🤷
@@HerbertTowers I had peanas reduction its like a little clint now🤷
FWIW, operating a mobile rig with a clean signal is a much safer route than a home rig. Not that I would do either-I stick to restoring vintage AM radio receivers:)-John in Texas
501,,,,Unit 501, South Western Buckeye State,,,,,breaking,,,and standing by.
I was eat up with this stuff before I got my drivers license! (Late 1970’s). My Grandpa drove a truck and was a Robin radio distributor. Dad enjoyed this a lot also and we had radios in all our vehicles. There was a ground plane, Moon Rakers, and whatever the three pole antennas were so we could go on the “flat side” all on the roof of our house at the same time. We went 4 channels below one and 38 above forty on our nicest radio and ran SSB at times. We had a tube type Sonar radio that pushed 8watts out of the back as well. For a while we had the Browning set with the separate receiver/transmitters, loved the ping! Full set of large meters and several different linears. I don’t remember the wattage but one of them was particularly dirty and would talk over the audio of the neighbors TV. Good memories and fun stuff at the time. We had a PO Box we used to swap Qcards and had a wall of ones we had received from people we had talked to. I wasn’t supposed to use a linear if Dad wasn’t home so most of my contacts were skip, using the Sonar. I’d key the D104 and slide it a few inches across the desk with the Robin on and it made a cool quick feedback whistle at the beginning of an open call.
When I was a kid in the early 1970's CB's were super popular. Lots of people were pushing lots of power. I remember going up in the foothills in San Jose California. Up by the observatories with a group of my father's employees. We would set up in a parking area looking out over the city and shoot skip with CB radios equipped with linear amplifiers. The channels were full of people talking to each other from local to around the country. Laughing, talking and sound effects, eating pizza, just having a great time. It was what free Americans chose to do and did it. Regardless it was an awesome time in history and full of great memories. Nobody worried about the FCC. I never even heard the name come up. Somehow America survived.
Actually. If you read the FCC actions reports youll find they do care , not only helping with Amateur operations ( violators ) but also CB operating on frequencies assigned to other services. Yes there is enforcement. And there is violations published every month. Frequencies above channel 40 of Class D. CB are not assigned to that service. No matter what someone told you
EXACTLY!
But sadly, some people do believe that they are above the law... OH DON'T WE SEE THAT IN A BIG WAY THESE DAYS!!??
But if someone had a radio with those "extra" capabilities, the law doesn't stop a person from listening to those frequencies.
Just transmitting on them.
I used to love CB.... a long LONG time ago. I had quite the setup back then. All vehicles had SSB radios and the house and Lab had base stations, also SSB. None of those radios were designed to access out-of-bounds frequencies.
However, there was a hack for a couple of the radios that I just had to test to see if in fact they'd function on THOSE frequencies. LOL (cough).... they did. But, not wanting to lose everything, I just removed the hacks (which were nothing more than a diode, capacitor, resistor and switch (I think it was... something like that). I also never had a linear amp either.
But one thing that was a lot of fun was the CB club and we had our monthly "transmitter" hunts. THOSE WERE FUN.
Some of us got very creative on hiding to not be found easily AND when doing the hunt, we built neat little devices to help us triangulate the prey! LOL GOOD TIMES....
LOL
I remember working with a CB nut a long time ago who claimed to be using some Frankenstein's monster of a linear amp and the power lines outside his home as his antenna. He reckoned there was pretty much nowhere on the planet he couldn't be heard. He was also full of tish so who knows. If anyone deserved a visit it would've been him though... friggin nutcase.
Spending 10k’s of dollars to issue a 1k fine. That’s govt for you.
"The FCC won't let me be there trying to shut me down on mtv" ....so go the lyrics from a famous us rapper and the same for the alternative cb band users in the US 30 years ago ...I wonder what the situation is today over there....the last uk prosecution for 11m was 2003
Great video as ever Lewis x
The very first time I heard that song, I was just waking up after spending the night at this girls place in a trailer park. Her neighbor friend had just woke us up by jumping into bed and snuggling up to me just joking around with both of us. The guy on the radio introduced the song as I lay there with two trailer park girls, 'round me outside. I'm not even kidding. Aww to be young again!
@@Brett_S_420 Big lol from uk brett
Yes oh to be young eh?
@@boilerroombob Indeed!
SO their great effort was 27 years ago. Now it is selling bandwidth at auctions as a primary business, and collecting license fees from users. It would be easy low hanging fruit if they decided to go after illegal operators again. But maybe most of the ops are poor from spending all their money on gear and collecting the fines is more expensive than the fines. Anyway it is a horrible zoo on the airwaves here now, and no action seems to be taken unless some important user raises h3ll about it.
Too many bad users. The problem is always that you can only arrest or fine or investigate so many people in so much time. When cracking down on CB didn't clean up the airwaves, and things never got any better, they abandoned it as beyond hope. There are literally thousands upon thousands of terrible CB users, and if you crack down on a dozen of them, and the other 20,000 don't change their practice or even show that they are afraid, you have done nothing.
It was abandoned as unfixable.
CB is mostly dead around me in the North East and hams are very far and few between. You maybe able to have a convo here and there with someone a distance away from me but not many people on the airwaves. I know of a handful of hams in about a 50 mile radius and the radio is usually very quiet.
These stories are fascinating! Thank you!
Very interesting story, Lewis! All the best, Rob in Switzerland
Amateur radio operators do a lot of the spectrum policing in the US, particularly in the ham bands where non-hams are operating illegally, and with poor practices - way too much power, signal splatter across the spectrum, etc. I knew some hams back in the mid 70s who didn't bother reporting illegal CB operators to the FCC. They'd triangulate the signal and locate the station, in a more cost effective version of the tax funded
FCC method depicted in this video. When the station was off, they'd push a stick pin through the coax, snip off the ends of the pin, and pinch the coax jacket to hide the pin holes. The next time the illegal 2000 watts went down the coax, the final drive tubes in the linear amp would blow. It was difficult for CB operators to locate the problem. It took the fun right out of their illegal radio operation.
They responded more quickly and harshly to anyone operating illegally in the ham bands with profanity, broadcasting music, whistling, or malicious interference.
There don't seem to be as many illegal radio operators these days. I think these misanthropic sociopaths have mostly moved on to being internet trolls where they can aggravate more people.
The “sad hams” that take enforcement into their own hands are about equal to Internet trolls.
@@414s4 yea I got something special for anyone who comes on my property to do damage to something that could cause a fire to my home, thanks to castle law I can defend my home😃
I remember this. I was in High School and it was just before I was a licensed Amateur Radio Operator. I was one of those people experimenting with linear amplifiers on 11M to see how high I could go. I knew the FCC was looking for people so I took dozens of car batteries and loaded up my car and went mobile. You could tell when I keyed up for blocks because it would wipe out everyones television signals and every radio would hum. The induced current would even light florescent bulbs! And that was only a 1KW amplifier! LOL Man I miss those days.
I had a Davemade 4 pill linear in my Ford Super duty 97 which even with 2 batteries running it would not only set off home security systems of the time, it would kill the diesel from so much current draw, if you were idling at a stoplight. 3 Kw of raw power. Batteries wired in series for 24V 4ga wire. Still have it, but unused since i got a new truck. Talked worldwide on the outlaw channels.
@wildcard9724 which antenna did you use?
On a level closer to home, way back in 86 or 87, I remember a DX Sat night link on CB whilst on Bullbarrow Hill, Dorset late at night when the DTI arrived out of the blue and we thought we were in trouble. We had the bog standard set-up for DXing on CB back then - a Harrier CBX with 50w linear, mag-mount antenna and nothing else. The amp was employed only when we were TXing 2 or less or getting out limited distances. Anyhow, the DTI nicked the people who'd set up what looked a mighty station and we sneaked off the other way out. I do miss those capers, it was like the wild west. We had some great contacts on the most basic gear.
Growing up in the 60's in the rural countryside, we didn't have landline telephones. So, we used CB's to keep in touch and also to call for police. The Sheriff and local cops both monitored CB's, so if we had an emergency we called them direct. Many years later around 2010 I had the opportunity to work in a CB shop. I learned a lot about repairs and increasing signal strength through proper tuning and proper antennas. I've had a CB most of my life and I still have a couple today. I don't talk much, I just listen for traffic updates in case of a wreck.
Sporadic enforcement, just as good as tyranny.
Sporadic..... BWAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAH
I had two visits from inspectors looking for my illegally modified radios. I was EXTREMELY lucky not to be caught after one time moving all my gear out to a friend's house less than 24 hours before a visit.
Back in the mid-70s, just before I got my driver's license, my dad got a CB for his work truck and dutifully applied for and received then license (this was just after the license grant became automatic, just pay a small fee, but a year or so before First Lady Rosalyn Carter got caught transmitting with no license and FCC decided to drop licensing for CB). As soon as I got my driver's license, I was on the CB on the freshly installed unit in mom's car ('73 Gold Duster that my brother street raced several years later). Everyone there/then used handles, I used our call sign the first few times I was on, but literally never heard anyone else do so and quickly stopped myself. By the time licensing dropped, I was "Millennium Falcon" and talking to people like White Tornado, Mop Bucket (our minister and his wife) and other locals. We all had (as far as I know) legal rigs with legal power levels (5W into final stage, in those days; became 4W output when channels 24-40 were opened) and modest antennae.
Great video and that happened right here in my local area of Virginia Beach.
The only time I ever seen the FCC get involved if amateur radio operators were interfering with some sort of communications in the area.
Back in the 1980's I used to hang about with my friend and his dad gave him a CB radio. I had one too, battery operated and hand held. I loved those days. I learned so much about aerials etc. But now, I wished I learnt a lot more at the time and now wished I went to learn more at the library. I did calculations on dbm, power, cable loss, coax, transmission power, frequency, and FCC, bandwidth, and everything related. Then I used to build telemetry equipment for hospital ECG recordings. This is an art on its own. Keep up the good work.... So damn interesting!!
I was part of the mid-late 70s CB craze. I remember a few fellow CBers who had illegal "Linear Amplifiers".
They worked both on mobile units and base station units. Those of us who stayed legal found that we could extent our range & clarity just a bit with "power mics" which used 9v batteries. Also, the fiberglass antennas were far superior to the standard metal ones.
I keep hearing for mobil units the metal 102" reigns Supreme.
This was a very interesting video. I didn't know anything about this aspect of the FCC or tracking methods. So many good creators on TH-cam.
I bet the FCC loves me whenever I fire up my MOT driven Tesla coil or even noisier ZVS driven AC flyback.. Ive seen them driving round with directional antennas hunting a pirate FM Station we had 400 miles west of this stories location. Obviously found it because it's gone. Cool story thanks for sharing
The irony is, for the "price" of passing a couple of tests, they could have done the same thing legally, just a notch or two higher on the spectrum.
Absolutely not.
@@adrianspeeder You seem pretty confident. Care to tell us why you think a properly licensed amateur radio operator wouldn't be allowed to work HF bands? 😂
@@dvanomaly420 That's how they can track you easier if your licensed. I'ma make the suits in their blacked out Buick Grand Nationals work for trying to find me.
@@adrianspeeder so, you're just wrong about it being legal. You just like being illegal. Got it. There's no reason for them to look for you when being licensed removes the restrictions you'd otherwise have. Unless of course, you are using the bands for other illegal actions.
@@dvanomaly420 They will look for you if needed. That's how a conspiracy works. Them boys on the Grassy Knoll, they were dead within three hours. Unmarked graves out past Terlingua.
My family has been using C.B. radios since the 1960's and I can still remember the call numbers the F.C.C. issued my Dad.
Had one of these operators, and his signals would bleed over anything with the speaker, including my neighbors organ, my stereo and telephone. This particularly upset my mom when my grandfather was dying and she was trying to make funeral arrangements and this guy’s trash talk would be on the CB. I took my stereo speakers and blasted them out into the neighborhood. He got mad and wanted to confront me, but I told him he needed to quit with with the CB radio or this would continue. He finally agreed and stopped. Mercifully, he moved out shortly after that. The FCC was useless.
FCC has no activity in enforcing most violations on any band or any service. check 7.200 mhz in the ham bands it's the all abuse all the time frequency.
Neither do OFCOM. The BBC wouldn't exist today if they enforced the laws, they constantly lie and decieve daily on the airwaves, not to mention the foul language used.
Imagine how bad it would be if anyone could transmit on any frequency with any power. The interference would be insane.
I talked world wide never got a visit had over 400 ,qsl cards
QSL cards for CB?
@@MI7DJT yes, was really common back in the day.
@@ChoppingtonOtter I've been educated lol. Always thought that was strictly a HAM thing. Thanks :)
@@MI7DJT I had e RCI 2950 ranger I dx 26.000 to 26.9550. USB n lsb. As well FM mode
@@cam_o_style91 I remember back in the 80s my younger brother had a cb rig and he often heard stations on the East Coast of the USA and Mexico but never made contact. Was cool that he could hear that far away.
I got off the air just in time then. I used run 500 Watts extra power and was often on sideband wiping TVs out. I had a decent setup back in the day and could hear and speak to people from very far away.
I got a QSL card from someone on the Isle of Capri which just happened to be the same as the car I was driving at the time.
Good times! 😊
I think you will have more to worry about the 100K IRS agents than the 100 FCC inspectors!
Too bad the FCC doesn't seem to do much anymore. Buddy of mine told me that he and some of his friends used to DF illegal CBers and stick needles through their antenna coaxial cable. This would cause a short that would blow their transceivers and illegal amps.
Wow heros...
FUDD
Sounds like a ton of effort was used to avoid getting a relatively painless license to do it legally.
It’s not painless tho. It’s always a charge to exercise liberty here. It’s not supposed to be that way. It’s a pain in the a$$ to have deal with the fcc at all.
I had a nice cb in the 90s and since I lived in the hills I often had little trouble booming everywhere even on skip and I had no amp!, just a cb that had been tweaked by a friend to maximum transmit, I often spoke to people around the world, fcc was in the hills and somebody warned me thankfully.
The FCC should be tackling real issues. This is a waste of resources that should be used fixing the scammer number spoofing problem and hunting down scammer call centers. Great video though!
So, they were charged only for the frequency used? No mention was made of the transmitting power. What I was amazed at was the fact that these two offenders who were talking to each other lived only miles apart; a standard CB on legal frequencies and power levels can talk that far with no problem.
Y does the FCC even bother w CB? Waste of time
@@charleswest6372 Technically, they weren't bothering with CB. They were after people transmitting on unlicensed frequencies (outside the CB band).
There outta business
You're doing great with these story-telling videos, super enjoyable.
You're making me want to subscribe.
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Many of the FCC chase cars are regular unmarked 4 door sedans with the roofs replaced with fiberglass roofs, with antennas under them. They also have many vans equipped similarly.
And I bet those gov't vans look like flower, plumbing or cable trucks. 🙂
As a ham radio fan and radio in general. ,glad I found this ch. So interesting. Cheers!
An apartment manager had a 500w linear and would cuss and play music on the CB. The phone system in the apartment building was incorrectly wired. So the multipair cable zigged back and forth thru every apartment. When the manager was broadcasting you could hear him on your phone like he was in the conversation. The FCC had visited him and threw their hands up. You could not send a fax. You could not get your dial up internet to work. My brother was talking to our friend who lived in that building.. or trying to talk to him. How do we prove it's the manager. I'll call from the dial up modem line. He has to get off the air to talk on the business phone.
I said nothing when I called. Then hung up. Ring ring. He has call return on the office phone. I decided to walk to the corner market to cancel the call return. He was on the air saying. Who gave out my business number and did not say anything.
On the way to the payphone. I devised a plan..
Hi this is Frank. Friend of ray and bob. All invented. Can you give me a 1 minute air check. A what he said. Hold the transmit key down for one minute. Why what for. Oh my parteners and I brought out our radio direction finders to track you down. If you dont want to. Just keep chatting on the CB and I hung up. Calling back that payphone got a bong thank you and disconnected.
Back to my brothers place. This guy is off the rails. Who's using radio direction finders to track me down.
A little while later I called back from the pay phone . Hi. We narrowed you to the intersection of this and that. We'll be there soon. That was half a block from him. Just keep talking.
Back at my brothers. The train had not just come off the rails. All the cars were burning. I ask my friend . That's a security front door. When the buttons are pushed. Does it ring an intercom or ring the phone and dial 9 to unlock the security door. Dial 9. Back to the payphone. Hi were down at the security door . Can you dial 9 and let us in . We dont want to bust thru this nice door too. Please stand back from your apartment door we will be breaking thru that in a minute and hung up. I am 25 miles away.
He was mostly off the air after that. A while later back to the payphone. My parteners and I have been at this all day. We figure it will take us till 10am to finish all the paperwork. We all go back on duty tomorrow at 4pm see you then. Click. By 7 am he was taking down his antennas and wires. Patching and painting the holes. Thru the grape vine he accused all his friends of this. I have never met him. But I knew his name and where he worked. Over the past decades I have wanted to call his work. Have him paged to the phone. Then ask for a one minute air check. I have not done it. I figure his head would explode. I did find out later he had been in the 2 meter bands and had found a repeater for the marine combat head gear radios that prompted the navy to put up a loop recording. This is a military channel. Do not use it. We will find you and prosecute. He must have thought I was the navy or marines coming to get him. A friend not the linear guy relayed that last bit of the puzzle. He also told me of the day his wife a 976 operator grabbed his microphone and started talking dirty to the truckers on the nearby freeway. He went out on the patio and saw the truckers all pulled over to the side where their was never anybody stopped before. He ask his wife to stop before there was an accident. She finished off with the cb truckers with a big kiss .
I had a similar experience where I could hear some CBer on my landline phone, whenever I was talking to someone, usually late at night. This went on for a couple of weeks until one night I yelled into my phone, "I can hear you, get off this frequency". After that I never heard the CBer again, maybe he changed the channel he was broadcasting on, not really sure?
I could almost wonder if you are stalking me :)
I currently live very close to the monitoring station you pictured, and about the time of the picture of the RIS car lived in Leeds, very close to the street I am certain I can identify it is pictured in. Certainly in that period and part of the city illegal CB activity was fairly common. I wouldn't mind betting I had the only legal and licensed set for miles.
Hey Steve. There was an RIS office in Warrington, not to far from where I worked. During the 1980s I was involved in covert communications and the vehicles that I was kitting out were bristling with all sorts of kit, Vhf Uhf Af loops you name it. All done through specially modified Aerials and all completely invisible to even the closest inspection, no hand Mics, No Speakers, all done through Ear pieces that could monitor the Radios in the Vehicle even when you were within a certain distance from it. It opened my eyes as to just who was driving around the average city. That was in the 80s, god knows what it`s like now.
@@stephensmith4480 as someone who has used a fair number of covert vehicles, some thanks to another office in the Warrington area I can assure you even at the turn of the millennium some of the kit seemed to be out of barely believable sci-fi movies.
@@stevesmith7530 It`s one of the main reasons that some major criminals decided to look at other sources of income. A lot of the advancements that we have today is de-classified equipment that has been released for public use, so you can only imagine what is available today. The ANPR system that the Police use today had it`s origins in Northern Ireland, It was called Vengeful, The system for collating human patterns of life was called Crucible. It makes you wonder just how far can things progress in the future.
@@stephensmith4480 I never wonder about such things, the answer is always "too far for comfort" :) I live not far from the inconsequential small town that made headlines for having every single route in and out monitored unlawfully by ANPR.
The FCC does bother anyone as long as you don't bother anyone.
truth is every cb on the band is illegal from the factory. FCC will never get 2% of them all.
In the mid-late 90's, while I was in High school, we all had CB's in our cars/trucks. A handful of us had linear amps in our vehicles and were told that it was interfering with peoples TV signals that lived near the school. Sure enough, one day when we are leaving, an FCC van was parked right outside the school parking lot. Not a single one of us dared transmit anything that day! That's all we talked about for the next week. But we soon stared transmitting again, but we did wait until we were a little past the school after that scare!!
I briefly messed with a 1 kilowatt amplifier and was basically afraid to keep using it. Was cool though it would light up a 4-ft fluorescent tube at several feet away while I was holding it in my hand. Ironically the longest DX I ever had was on a measly 14 watt single Side Band with the correct meteorological conditions. Never in a million years would have expected a car without antennas sticking out all over would have been able to bust me. That was pretty interesting with the hidden antennas in the roof.
There was a serial pest in Adelaide,Australia that would get on the CB-UHF channels and abuse truckies. The truckies got some help from some ex military friends, they found the serial pest by radio direction finding equipment and introduced him to a the physical sensation of having the sh1t kicked out of him. After that the serial pest got the message and stayed off air.
Aversion therapy.
My 40w 26/27mhz Johnson Viking 4740 could operate on variable 5kc steps between upper/lower sb's, a great unit.
Back in the late 80's I owned a land mobile radio company (GE Service Station) in Kingsville, Texas. There was a HUGE FCC monitoring station just south of Kingsville and about 1/2 mile from my primary 800' tower site. I had fun from the top of my tower admiring their antenna arrays. I made a lot of friends with the staff there over the years.
Needless to say I was extra careful to not violate any of the FCC regulations! Budget cuts in the late 90's forced the FCC to close most of their monitoring stations and abandon their enforcement efforts.
And today we have offenders posting videos on youtube doing exactly this! Fred loves to show off his cb gear running at 20 times the legal limit. They really don't care about spoiling things for those who stick to the regulations.
spoiling things ? Fred is single handily responsible for the huge resurgence in the hobby, credit to the man! Oh, and i bet you never run more than 10watts on the ham bands do you ;)
@@G5STU No I don't. 7 watts max. I only use DMR through my personal hotspot. The rules are in place for many reasons, pity some tits can't stick to them.
@@G5STU It's all radio as far I concerned. Before I got my M6, I was the founder of a very large post 2000 UK 11m DX group called Tango Mike that predated Charlie Tango by some years - and also moderated an 11m forum before Facebook, ran by a Scottish guy that lived in the Outer Hebridies. The late 1970s/early 1980s CB craze spawned a load of new radio hams, and a load of the Alpha Tango's and Sugar Delta's go on 11 meters and ham bands. No bloody way do they spend £1000's on kit just to sit on 2mhz of HF called "CB"...
@@M6GOF totally agree, respect all HF ops including all the 11m net guys hill topping many nights a week, it's those DMR fisher price walkie talkie people i can't stand 🤣🤣🤣🤣
@@HerbertTowers Yes, look it up. I didn't invent the name... 🙄
Yep, I was living in the VAB area when the FCC did that crackdown. I also knew exactly where the former FCC office was in VAB because I had to drive by there on a regular basis. But anyway great video and keep up the good work. And note to all the cry babies who are whining about the use of UK footage -- like right hand driver's side vehicles -- which is clearly annotated as such in this video: "OH GROW UP!!!" As well, try having to dig up source material where there is none leaving you to use whatever source material is available to you. Then try spending the sometimes hours it takes to edit the video and audio source materials together in order to create less than 10 minutes of content. And yes, it can take hours to create less than 10 minutes of content depending on the level of complexity involved. Again, great video and keep up the good work.
Aren't you just whining about the whiners?
seriously, would you care for a crying towel and blankie?
@@9HighFlyer9 and aren't you whining about the whiners who are whining? 🤔🤣
@@MicahFunk No, I'm not whining about the whiners who are whining. I was just clarifying whether the OP was whining about the whiners
@@9HighFlyer9 that made me laugh. 😂
So, the whiners generally aren't winners, and the winners are usually not whiners. By this reasoning there sure are a lot of whining loosers.
Ranger 2950, Grant XL, Cobra 148 GTL ... ah the good ole days. Never used an amp but could catch the skip wave and talk to Little Mermaid in Kansas from Missouri. Hit Australia a few times.
JJ Freman was my parents neighbor in VA Beach for years. He gave me the CW tests when I sat for both of them. This was when the Norfolk FCC office was in the Bank of Virginia building; there were no VE's then.....