Does anyone use CB radios?

[colinw1]

Does anyone use CB radios while they are out n about with their caravans.
I know that they dont have the appeal they once had - but I'm interested to know if anyone uses them to chat to other drivers to get round traffic jams or get advice on which roads are suitable for caravans/motor homes

I know that most satnav's have traffic reporting facilities now. but even armed with these and my phone loaded with various apps to monitor traffic and road conditions etc. There's no getting away from local or personal knowledge from those who work driving top to bottom of this country - truck drivers.
I know that there are specific satnavs for HGV/caravan/motorhome users - but these are still too pricey for me - plus I bought a new tomtom unit a couple of months before they launched the GO LIVE Camper & Caravan.

Just thought I'd ask..

 

[Gybe]

I know through off roading friends that a few of the 4x4 mud plugger brigade still play with CB. A friend who is a truck driver found his old CB when he moved house last year. Still in working order when he connected it he spent a few hours on air and found nobody and over a few days in his cab there were only very few on air. Mainly he found truckers just keeping in touch with their company work mates, road building types may be.

 

[Parksy]

According to the TomTom website the new TomTom EU45 campervan and caravan map will be available to buy on an SD card in the near future

 

[colin-yorkshire1]

hi colin,
NO not any more mate, still got a old Rotel 240 in the shed though, but stopped using it when a few private hire taxis started using them
and besides the truckers that were on air were very clique orentated if they did not recognise your handle they would not talk to you,

 

[Steve L]

I used to be on air back in the late 70's early 80's. Found it to be quite entertaining how people used to reckon they'd seen me in multiple locations dozens of miles apart. I must of had half a dozen double gangers out there. Or was it just mischief making

My set got the heave ho when I tied the knot.

With the advent of mobile phones, the usefullness of CB radio was soon eroded, especially as the transport manager could ring the mobile and speak to the driver virtually anywhere in the uk.

I have even discovered that marine radio's are now not as much of a must have for the small yacht owner, as mobile phones will normally suffice for upto 5 miles from land. Your more likely to make contact by dialing 999 as the majority of coastguard lookout's have been retired due to cost cutting. Now before anyone jumps on me for making the statement, any responsible boater always makes a safety plan by telling someone where they are heading and their return or arrival time, plus contact details, so that if they are not where they say they should be, the alarm can be raised.

The mobile phone has a lot to answer for. Oh! and so does satnav.

One bloke even bought a boat off fleabay and tried to navigate the Thames estuary with a tom tom and an AA map.

The only help a satnav can be is for position and general heading ie N, S, E, West.

So there we have it. Technological break through's come and go but good old chatter stays the best comunication tool.

That is unless someone else knows morse code or semafore.

 

[Surfer]

A CB radio wil work where many mobile phones will not. I think they also have a greater range in miles than any cell phone.

 

[JonnyG]

A CB radio wil work where many mobile phones will not. I think they also have a greater range in miles than any cell phone.

i am not sure if thats also true the otherway around as decent networks work almost everywhere where as a cb might need 10 metres of antena sticking out of car roof to get out of a valley terain...and of course somebody needs to be listening too

 

[Gybe]

The mobile phone has a lot to answer for. Oh! and so does satnav.

One bloke even bought a boat off fleabay and tried to navigate the Thames estuary with a tom tom and an AA map.

The only help a satnav can be is for position and general heading ie N, S, E, West.
So there we have it. Technological break through's come and go but good old chatter stays the best comunication tool.
That is unless someone else knows morse code or semafore.

A little off the mark here, I never remebered those various stories including a Tom Tom / Satnav
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/7640622/Aspiring-sailor-trying-to-sail-round-the-UK-circles-the-Isle-of-Sheppey-instead.html
http://www.itv.com/news/anglia/update/2012-07-02/sailor-goes-to-sea-with-a-road-map/

A car sat nav (tom tom type) will pin point your position to with a few feet anywhere in the world, it will not have detailed mapping for the whole world but it can tell you exactly where you are and shows coastline and main highways with no detail. Floating in the middle of the worlds oceans with a satellite phone, compass and satnav you could talk to whoever you like and they'd still not know where you were. The compass would be of limited use unless you had good navigation by the stars skills. The satnav will give you your position to witin a few feet and show land wherever you were and enable you to head in the right direction.
Anyone that Caravans in Europe can try their satnav on a ferry. It shows exectly where the ferry is and shows most harbour walls and breakwaters such as Calais and Dover.
A HOG (Harley Davidson) group holiday run to Spain last year went OK for a friend until he had to cut the trip short and return alone to the UK. He'd been ridng follow my leader style for ten days. Only when he switched on his own satnav did he realise that he'd taken his wifes satnav that only had UK mapping. With a little knowledge of Spain and France he was still able to easily navigate back to Calais without a map as the satnav shows position and main artery roads.
He actually could have used his phone for navigation but didn't want to rack up a roaming data charge

 

[GrahamDerby]

I used to us a CB a lot when it was AM, then the government made that illegal and made FM legal and that only had a very short range. As soon as that happened every school kid got one for xmas and in was a nightmare. They were great for getting traffic reports plus home based CB used for emergencys and giving lorry drivers updates. I still have my multimode 2 but its very quiet when i swithed on a few months ago. RIP CB

 

[colin-yorkshire1]

A CB radio wil work where many mobile phones will not. I think they also have a greater range in miles than any cell phone.

i am not sure if thats also true the otherway around as decent networks work almost everywhere where as a cb might need 10 metres of antena sticking out of car roof to get out of a valley terain...and of course somebody needs to be listening too

I don't think that is strictly true either Jonny!!! in the good old CB days I was talking to a guy for about an hour one night,but he kept fading in and out?? so I asked him his "20" ie location "Boston" he said oh I see thats why!!! your about 90miles away, and it is quite flat in lincolnshire,
"NO" he said "BOSTON" Massachusetts"" and sent me his "QSL" card to prove it.

 

[Surfer]

In about 1978 using SSB we were able to talk to a person in Germany . At the time we were based in Southern Africa! Quite often we coudl pick up Spanish CB'ers due to freaky "hot spots". Sometimes even the local TV signal would be blocked out and we could watch Spanish TV and that was in the days before satellite communication! Granted the local TV VHF trasmitter was about 50 miles away but for a TV signal travelling thousands of miles to block it out was very unusual.

 

[colin-yorkshire1]

interesting observation there Surfer, it is a phenomenon known a skip where radio waves bounce off the "Ionoshere" during sunspot activity combined with high atmospheric water content that affects the earths magnetic corona, the radio waves skip across the underside and are reflected back down again,
sometimes many thousands of miles away from their original location even though the power output may have been quite small.
it was more common than one would have thought especialy while using upper sidebands, so in a way it was sattelite communication "the atmosphere being the sattelite" but being a proffesor you knew this allready,
I suppose this could be said to be the original SKY brocasting? what!!

 

[JonnyG]

A CB radio wil work where many mobile phones will not. I think they also have a greater range in miles than any cell phone.

i am not sure if thats also true the otherway around as decent networks work almost everywhere where as a cb might need 10 metres of antena sticking out of car roof to get out of a valley terain...and of course somebody needs to be listening too

I don't think that is strictly true either Jonny!!! in the good old CB days I was talking to a guy for about an hour one night,but he kept fading in and out?? so I asked him his "20" ie location "Boston" he said oh I see thats why!!! your about 90miles away, and it is quite flat in lincolnshire,
"NO" he said "BOSTON" Massachusetts"" and sent me his "QSL" card to prove it.

hi colin i dont doubt any of that and was never a big fan of cb's as when it became legal or something like that in the early 80s were they not more restricted? the range shortened greatly.. FM i believe... that was my comparison to the phone the legal ones you could use in your car.....

 

[colinw1]

He He He.. Love it when a topic goes wild..

Thanks guys - I think I'd already set my expectations quite low.. But it was worth a stab at asking the question anyway...

 

[Surfer]

He He He.. Love it when a topic goes wild..

Thanks guys - I think I'd already set my expectations quite low.. But it was worth a stab at asking the question anyway...

In some towns it was quite common to meet up at the nearest rugby field and talk to one another using the CB!

If you were a bit savvy you coudl boost the signal to increase the ranger but had to make sure you weren't caught.

 

[Surfer]

He He He.. Love it when a topic goes wild..

Thanks guys - I think I'd already set my expectations quite low.. But it was worth a stab at asking the question anyway...

In some towns it was quite common to meet up at the nearest rugby field and talk to one another using the CB!

If you were a bit say you coudl boost the signal to increase the range, but had to make sure you weren't caught.

 

[Martin24]

Sorry guys to be too young and naive but what's a CB radio????

 

[Gybe]

You must be old enough to have heard of and use Google

 

[NickinFrance]

I have even discovered that marine radio's are now not as much of a must have for the small yacht owner, as mobile phones will normally suffice for upto 5 miles from land. Your more likely to make contact by dialing 999 as the majority of coastguard lookout's have been retired due to cost cutting. Now before anyone jumps on me for making the statement, any responsible boater always makes a safety plan by telling someone where they are heading and their return or arrival time, plus contact details, so that if they are not where they say they should be, the alarm can be raised.

Well I'm going to jump on you for that.
When I lived in Brixham 6 years ago, I spent 90 minutes listening (on Channel 00) to Brixham Lifeboat one night looking for a powerboat in Torbay that had broken down without VHF, they were just using a mobile phone.
Lifeboats are fitted with directional VHF Rx which would have located the VHF signal source in a few minutes, luckily no-one was injured.
I was always amazed at how few of the Birmingham Navy in Torbay had VHF fitted (or wore lifejackets)
Regards
Nick Thompson
Category C Commercial Powerboat Driver
RYA PB2 Instructor.

 

[billy2]

A group of us still use cb radio,when 2 or 3 of us travell together it is ideal for instant communication if one gets a problem,we all travell on channel 5 and with a range of 4 to 8 miles much better than a mobile phone.I have used cb since the early days of am and still work the ssb when conditions allow,though not as good now as in the late 70s early 80s when dx copys into the USA,CANADA,ITALY,GREECE were common and Austrailia and the USSR were the prize dx copys,sending QSL cards and a small gift from the UK to whoever you made contact with and getting the same back is a wonderfull hobby.Legal FM cbs are ideal for local 4to8 miles ranges and further dependant on conditions,with a big high pressure sitting over head Scotland ,N Ierland and Cornwall are not uncommon from E Anglia where i live, but may only last a short while.Do keep in mind though talking on a cb while on the move is illegal.

 

[NickinFrance]

Do keep in mind though talking on a cb while on the move is illegal.

No it's not, from https://www.askthe.police.uk/content/Q659.htm
It is an offence to use a hand held mobile phone or an "interactive communications device", but there is an exemption for a two way radio which is designed or adapted -
(i) for the purpose of transmitting and receiving spoken messages; and
(ii) operates on any frequency other than 880 MHz to 915 MHz, 925 MHz to 960 MHz, 1710 MHz to 1785 MHz, 1805 MHz to 1880 MHz, 1900 MHz to 1980 MHz or 2110 MHz to 2170 MHz.
Ofcom states that you should be transmitting CB in the 27MHz range, if you are, you come within the exception and are OK.

 

[billy2]

Well there you go thats me told,i assumed as mobile phones were ,and more being involved with talking on a cb it would be.Must say had some funny looks from the police when caught out but never bin stopped,usually hide the mike if i see them but certainly wont in future,thanks for that bit of info,just hope you are right and that is not some out of date info.

 

[Willi-Wonti]

Legal FM will skip as well as AM.
I was parked near Droitwich during the early 80s whilst my XYL was picking strawberries. Flicking round the channels I heard some one on Clows Top some 40 miles away chatting to some one.
I managed to get in on the side & confirm a good copy to Clows Top, I was told to see if the other guy could copy me. On contact I was surprised to find out that he was passing Narbonne (south west France) on his way to Spain with his family & caravan.
So it just goes to show that even FM will skip in the right conditions.
I have a QSL card to prove contact