CB Radio For Preppers pt. 1

[00:00:00] CB Radio has played an essential role in the evolution of wireless communications, especially

[00:00:05] in local and mobile applications.

[00:00:08] Originally developed in the 1940s, CB Radio quickly became a favorite of long haul truckers,

[00:00:13] hobbyists, and emergency responders, offering them a reliable way to communicate over short

[00:00:17] and sometimes long distances.

[00:00:20] In this series we'll dive deep into the history of CB Radio, who will examine its

[00:00:24] technological innovations like the 11 meter band and the use of AM single side band

[00:00:29] and now FM modes.

[00:00:31] We'll also discuss its cultural impact.

[00:00:33] Join us as we explore how CB Radio still holds value in a world dominated by smart phones,

[00:00:38] internet based communication systems.

[00:00:41] But we're going to talk about how this can especially apply to those in the preparedness

[00:00:44] community.

[00:00:45] Let's go y'all.

[00:00:54] Welcome back into the Prep Comms podcast.

[00:00:57] Caleb Nelson here, K-Force CDN.

[00:00:59] And as I alluded to, actually through a CB Radio.

[00:01:04] That was done via an AM CB Radio.

[00:01:08] We'll talk about that in the technology a little bit later.

[00:01:11] But as I said, this series here we're going to kick off is about CB Radio.

[00:01:17] Now I mentioned at the last time through that we were going to be talking down

[00:01:19] that road and of course we've talked about listening as much as we can.

[00:01:25] I'll hit this real quick.

[00:01:26] I got a call the other day from a local friend and he said, man, I've got some

[00:01:30] stuff here and I've listened to your show.

[00:01:32] And I've got some stuff there.

[00:01:33] And I just realized how little I have in regards to listening.

[00:01:38] There's still holes in my listening and it's okay.

[00:01:41] I mean, you don't have to have everything.

[00:01:43] You don't have to have a garage full of equipment.

[00:01:47] I mean, unless you're just that guy.

[00:01:49] But I mean, I may have a garage full of equipment, but not everybody has to.

[00:01:54] And that's okay.

[00:01:55] So don't think that because you don't have everything that you're just

[00:02:00] lost and there's no need, there's no use, nothing that don't think that

[00:02:04] because it's very important that you have what you do have because

[00:02:09] anything that you've done is placed you in the top half 1%.

[00:02:15] OK, so you're getting there.

[00:02:18] You're learning is going to be amazing.

[00:02:19] All right.

[00:02:20] So, yeah, CB Radio is one of my absolute favorite topics.

[00:02:24] And as I've been thinking about CB Radio here for the Prepcoms podcast,

[00:02:29] I really struggled with how deep I want to go into CB Radio because here's the thing,

[00:02:35] I've been a CB Radio user for nearly 45 years.

[00:02:40] That blows my mind, honestly.

[00:02:42] And I mean, how how much of a CB Radio user can a six year old really be?

[00:02:48] Or, you know, how do you quantify that?

[00:02:50] Well, I mean, I talked on a CB when I was six years old.

[00:02:53] I had one in my bedroom.

[00:02:55] I had it connected to an antenna outside and would play with it from here,

[00:02:59] you know, from time to time and loved it.

[00:03:01] So I mean, at some level, I've been a CB Radio operator since six years old.

[00:03:05] And that's almost 45 years ago.

[00:03:09] So I've been around this stuff a lot.

[00:03:12] And maybe we'll talk about the depths.

[00:03:14] I went into the actual end of CB and whatnot.

[00:03:16] But but right now, let's just talk about what is CB Radio and where it came from.

[00:03:21] Because a lot of people, especially the younger generations,

[00:03:25] they missed the heyday of CB radios.

[00:03:28] But even though I enjoyed the heyday of the CB radio and the hobby

[00:03:33] and the camaraderie that we had back in the day,

[00:03:36] it was it was in the late 80s, early 90s for me.

[00:03:39] So it was a second revival, which was probably the third revival of CB in

[00:03:45] you know, hobby and fun type communications back in the day.

[00:03:50] Truckers have used it forever.

[00:03:51] But we're going to talk about even where it came from because it really

[00:03:53] we need to understand some of that stuff.

[00:03:55] So it starts making sense for us why this may be an option for Preppers.

[00:04:01] Now I've written an ebook.

[00:04:02] It's free if you haven't gotten your copy.

[00:04:04] There'll be a link in the show notes.

[00:04:06] You can click the button subscribe to the newsletter and I'll send you

[00:04:09] a PDF of the CB radio for Preppers, how to get on the air before the

[00:04:14] apocalypse or something like that is the title.

[00:04:16] And it's a it's a hundred pages.

[00:04:18] I mean, there's a lot of stuff to read there.

[00:04:20] Break it down, make it simple.

[00:04:22] But this podcast here is not necessarily the the the ebook in verbal form.

[00:04:29] But we're going to talk about some of the history about it.

[00:04:31] I'll cover there as well as some of my personal experiences with CB radio.

[00:04:35] So CB radio actually came from the military.

[00:04:39] Like you'll probably find a lot of the communications tools that we'll talk about

[00:04:44] here and even those that we enjoy as just a society, the internet for real.

[00:04:50] It all comes from the money that was spent in the military industrial complex

[00:04:55] and CB radio is really no different.

[00:04:58] So back in the 1940s, they had Telegraph, which was wired communication

[00:05:03] station to station.

[00:05:05] They had the poles with the telegraph wires and whatnot.

[00:05:07] It's a great way to communicate across the country.

[00:05:10] And then they started working with with transmitting energy and signals

[00:05:16] via the airwaves and radio was birthed.

[00:05:19] And then we come in the World War Two and we're running telegraph lines

[00:05:23] all over the place, which is great unless the line gets cut or God forbid

[00:05:28] one of the enemies taps into the line and they can hear the transmissions

[00:05:32] from your you know, from the field back to the back to the operating

[00:05:36] bases or whatever.

[00:05:37] So they looked for an option and they discovered that they could use the

[00:05:42] 27 megahertz band, 28 megahertz band as a short slash medium range

[00:05:49] communications tool that could be packaged in a utility of a body

[00:05:55] that was small enough if you were a monster of a man that you could

[00:05:59] strap to your back and take out into the field or it could be placed

[00:06:02] in a half track or a tank or a Jeep or whatever.

[00:06:05] And they could have communications within that battle sphere, that area.

[00:06:11] So I'm not a military guy.

[00:06:12] I know there's a lot of right terms to use here.

[00:06:14] I'm not going to use any of them because I didn't serve.

[00:06:17] So if you did, thank you for your service, but please excuse

[00:06:19] my ignorance and what to actually call it.

[00:06:21] So they needed a way to communicate that was not going to be hampered

[00:06:26] by wires and the 11 meter band was born.

[00:06:30] That's what we'll call it.

[00:06:32] And CB radio actually showed up in the war.

[00:06:37] Back then they called it mobile radio and you can go back and see

[00:06:40] pictures of some of these guys with packs and you can see them

[00:06:44] mounted in trucks and tracks and all these different things.

[00:06:47] It just really helped get over the need for copper.

[00:06:52] And it's, you know, our phones are still copper based.

[00:06:57] Really everything's copper based except the radio because we're doing it

[00:07:00] with, you know, just over the air.

[00:07:02] So they started using these frequencies in World War Two after the war.

[00:07:07] Of course, what do we have?

[00:07:09] Well, the military industrial complex made a bunch of really cool

[00:07:12] stuff that now nobody needs because the Nazis and the Japanese are defeated.

[00:07:16] And we're all starting the Cold War now.

[00:07:19] So they have all this surplus equipment that the guys that were

[00:07:22] in the war kind of enjoyed using.

[00:07:24] So they brought it home with them, kind of became a hobby.

[00:07:28] And back in 1945, the FCC actually allocated some frequencies

[00:07:32] for a personal radio service.

[00:07:35] And this is where CB, our citizens ban radio came from.

[00:07:39] During the 1950s, CB radio was still kind of a niche hobby.

[00:07:43] It was kind of a tool for small business operators.

[00:07:46] Maybe think back, wow, can you go back in your mind far enough

[00:07:48] to know what an oil delivery truck was?

[00:07:51] That's how a lot of homes used to and some still do.

[00:07:54] Heated their houses and they would dispatch their trucks through CB radios.

[00:07:58] And then even some communities, you know, would have CB radio

[00:08:02] enclaves where their buddies would talk.

[00:08:04] Now we're still living in some of that nowadays, but that's how that

[00:08:07] kind of came about.

[00:08:09] They it was a practical use.

[00:08:10] They that goes from war to a practical civilian use.

[00:08:14] And then in 1958, the FCC actually kind of formalized

[00:08:18] the CB radio for public communications and they established

[00:08:21] a Class D radio license and they gave them 23 channels,

[00:08:27] channelized frequencies.

[00:08:29] And it made it, of course, easier for folks to use because then

[00:08:33] the manufacturers could make a radio that actually had those particular

[00:08:36] 23 channels in them.

[00:08:39] And you could buy those at the store.

[00:08:42] Sears, my dad had a sears, my granddad had a Johnson.

[00:08:46] I think there's an RCA in there somewhere.

[00:08:48] So they were kind of used to the 60s, you know, the 60s at Vietnam War.

[00:08:53] And then we had the whole U.S. lost his mind and free love and whatnot.

[00:08:59] So it was kind of weird, mainly just used for the hobbyist

[00:09:02] as well as the the business end of things.

[00:09:06] But then in the 1970s, a lot of things changed in the U.S.

[00:09:10] It gave rise to the vast popularity of CB radio.

[00:09:16] And one of those things that caused that was the oil crisis.

[00:09:20] Another was the national speed limit.

[00:09:24] And, of course, CB radio is used in trucker movies from the 70s.

[00:09:29] And I mean, I could stop here and talk about smoking the bandit

[00:09:32] for the next 30 minutes and I won't.

[00:09:35] It's not a movie you watch with your kids, but if you've never watched

[00:09:38] Smoke in the Bandit, I can't believe you're listening to this program,

[00:09:41] honestly. But if you have it, I want to encourage you to not

[00:09:44] watch it with your children. But check it out.

[00:09:46] Jackie Gleason, Bert Reynolds, many of the best comedy from the 70s ever.

[00:09:52] And it surrounds the whole film basically relies on CB radios.

[00:09:57] It's amazing. So back in the 70s, I'm barely old enough to remember this

[00:10:01] as the oil crisis was kicking off about the year I was born.

[00:10:05] But CB radios were huge back during that time because gas

[00:10:09] sorry, gas was hard to find.

[00:10:11] And you had truckers trying to, you know, traverse the US

[00:10:16] with this new speed limit to keep everybody safe in air quotes.

[00:10:21] And so a couple of different things happened.

[00:10:24] They could locate fuel talking back and forth on the CBs

[00:10:27] as well as they could talk about the smoky bears, which

[00:10:31] would be the police officers who were running old school radar back in the day

[00:10:35] and they would tip each other off to the potential of

[00:10:41] you know, the police running radar or what not trying to catch the trucker

[00:10:46] speeding as well as just there was a new community that was growing

[00:10:51] there with the CBs and the guys in the trucks were talking and having a blast.

[00:10:56] I mean, it was a lot of fun. Trust me, I lived it.

[00:11:00] It was a blast. And of course, the gas crisis was it.

[00:11:04] But CB radios in the 70s were awesome.

[00:11:07] In the 80s, there were a lot of fun too.

[00:11:08] So of course, smoke in the band.

[00:11:11] Then there was a show moving on and then you had B.J.

[00:11:14] and the Bear. These were television shows in the 1980s

[00:11:17] that revolved around truckers and how they communicated on the CBs.

[00:11:22] And you know, they talked for nine million miles, which is not realistic.

[00:11:25] But in the TV show, it worked.

[00:11:26] And as kids, we thought it was fantastic.

[00:11:29] But as the 70s wore on, technology continued to change.

[00:11:32] And like anything else, you'll find that it's not what it used to be.

[00:11:39] And although it's like it's like a phenomenon,

[00:11:42] like everybody had a CB in their Ford Maverick when the Maverick was a car

[00:11:46] or their Nova from Chevrolet or their pickup truck.

[00:11:51] And I mean, everybody had a handle, the licensing thing.

[00:11:54] Everybody had a call sign back then.

[00:11:56] And it was it was pretty hilarious and it worked.

[00:12:00] And folks can stay in touch with each other all over the place, all over the time.

[00:12:05] And it was a pretty cheap, affordable, reliable way for, you know,

[00:12:09] to be traveling down the highway and you would know where the police were

[00:12:12] so you could slow down in these particular areas.

[00:12:15] And or maybe you broke down on the side of the road because cars back then,

[00:12:19] although they were amazing, they didn't last for four and five hundred thousand miles.

[00:12:23] So a lot of breakdowns and whatnot.

[00:12:25] You could call for help or even ask, you know, someone if they needed help.

[00:12:29] Back then there were also groups that started out that amateur radio was

[00:12:33] was entrenched and it was really hard to get a license back in the day.

[00:12:37] You had to know Morris code and all these different things.

[00:12:39] Well, CB gave the folks who didn't want to do that or couldn't do that

[00:12:43] an opportunity to be able to communicate wirelessly from their cars

[00:12:47] or even from their homes with other people.

[00:12:49] And there were groups that sprung up all over the place

[00:12:51] that utilized CB radio is kind of like a ham club.

[00:12:55] And a lot of them would do set up on Channel 9 and have these react groups.

[00:12:59] And I mean, there were CB radio clubs.

[00:13:02] We had one of those back in the day in the 19 early 1990s here locally.

[00:13:06] I mean, it was just a great way for people to get out and touch each other

[00:13:11] and not their cell phones really didn't exist for the local, you know,

[00:13:16] everyday Joe citizens.

[00:13:17] But anyway, you get into the 1980s and it just kind of it kind of flops.

[00:13:22] But there was a revival, a small revival I was a part of back in the late 1980s

[00:13:26] right before the 1990s and the introduction of Nextail, which was amazing,

[00:13:31] which is one of my favorite communication methods of all times.

[00:13:34] But CB radios have been a phenomenal choice for local and short range

[00:13:39] and sometimes even medium range communications.

[00:13:42] Now granted they can be modified.

[00:13:44] You can modify the radio.

[00:13:46] You can add amplifiers to it.

[00:13:48] All that's illegal matter of fact.

[00:13:49] And I have to say that, but it can be done.

[00:13:52] It has been done.

[00:13:52] I may have done it in the past, but it's been a long time ago.

[00:13:55] And that kind of thing will allow you to talk thousands of miles

[00:13:59] because although it's not the greatest radio band,

[00:14:04] it still has the same characteristics of a lot of the other bands

[00:14:07] we'll talk about when we get to ham radio

[00:14:09] and that gives you the opportunity to DX or to talk long distances

[00:14:14] and you know, use the honest fear as your friend or your enemy

[00:14:17] to help the signal get along.

[00:14:18] So when we talk about prepping and we talk about survival

[00:14:24] and we talk about radio and comms methods and whatnot,

[00:14:29] CB Radio man is a great tool if you are a prepper.

[00:14:35] And we're going to talk about that as we continue the program.

[00:14:40] It's not what it was because times have changed so much

[00:14:46] but it doesn't make it a terrible choice.

[00:14:49] And we'll be talking about how the FCC has allowed the manufacturers

[00:14:53] to add a new mode into the CB radios,

[00:14:56] which really increases the sound quality.

[00:14:59] Earlier when I opened the program that was AM

[00:15:01] and maybe the next show I'll open with FM

[00:15:04] which is a little more crystal clear

[00:15:06] because of the way that the modulation works.

[00:15:09] The most CB radios out there nowadays

[00:15:13] that have been manufactured in the last three or four years,

[00:15:16] they are FM capable.

[00:15:18] But previous to that it was only AM and single sideband

[00:15:22] and we've talked about single sideband

[00:15:24] and how those frequencies when they're used with that mode

[00:15:27] the signal will travel further than it will just a simple AM

[00:15:31] or FM carrier.

[00:15:33] We talked about that in the shortwave episodes

[00:15:34] and really guys this is exactly the same thing.

[00:15:37] It all works the same way.

[00:15:39] Radio is radio and it is kind of magic.

[00:15:43] Sometimes and sometimes you just want to throw it all out in the yard

[00:15:45] because you can't make it work.

[00:15:47] So in regards to preparedness, that's one of the things

[00:15:50] that we'll be talking about is do we need to throw this thing out in the yard

[00:15:54] because it's not going to work

[00:15:55] or is there a place for the prepper to have a CB radio?

[00:16:00] I think we can make a case for that

[00:16:02] but I will just say up front that I don't think it is what it used to be.

[00:16:08] I don't think that it is the best choice

[00:16:11] but it's a great place to start

[00:16:14] and next time on the show we're going to talk about that.

[00:16:18] Hey thanks for listening.

[00:16:19] Remember if you need anything in regards to water, water filtration

[00:16:22] if you need filters for your Berkey I've got all that stuff

[00:16:26] at Hub City Mercantile.

[00:16:27] The show spots are here of Prepcom's podcast.

[00:16:30] My wife and I have been in business for well over 25 years

[00:16:32] and the British Berkfield Water Filter Systems

[00:16:36] are one of our latest additions to our business.

[00:16:38] You can find us at hubcitymercantile.com

[00:16:40] The show notes also will have a link to get you there

[00:16:43] and we're going to keep talking about CB radios for preppers the next time.

[00:16:48] Hey thank you so much for listening.

[00:16:49] Again remember to check us out online at prepcoms.com

[00:16:52] Till then, we'll see you.

[00:16:54] 73 y'all, God bless.