May 20, 2009 • 22 mins
Citizens' Band (CB) radio isn't exactly up-and-coming technology, but it still keeps people connected. Explore the fascinating history of CB radio in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with
tech Stuff from how stuff works dot Com. Join Josh
and Chuck, the guys who bring you stuff you should know,
as they take a trip around the world to help
you get smarter in a topsy turv economy. Check out
(00:20):
the all new super Stuff Guide to the Economy from
how stuff Works dot Com, available now exclusively on iTunes.
Breaker Breaker one nine this year's tech Stuff Okay, ancer,
my fame is Chris Paul Adam, an editor here at
how stuff works dot com, and with me as usual
and looking a little disprentled senior writer Johnson Strickland ten four.
(00:44):
Smokey's on my tail. So, as you can probably guess,
we're going to talk about citizens Band radio. Yeah. Actually
we have an email from a listener that that sort
of feeds us into this, So if you don't mind,
I'd like to start off with a little listener me. Okay,
(01:06):
now you're punishing me, aren't you. Yes, it's all your fault. So,
Dear Chris and Jonathan, I love your podcast, although it
makes me feel like a geek sometimes joined the club.
There's an old communication technology called c B radio. It
used to be really popular way back then. It is
(01:26):
still used by truckers and bus drivers. I was wondering,
how do CB radio's work. Can you still buy them
these days? Can you build a CB radio? And last,
but not least, do you need a license for a
CB radio? Thanks for your time and for the great podcast.
I wish you the best of luck, Sincerely, cush Um.
First of all, when you say way back then in
an old communication technology, you're making pallette and I feel
(01:50):
a little decrepit since I was old enough to remember
when Convoy came out, and I have used a CB
radio before. So yeah, okay, So moving on now that
we've gotten past that little, a little hurdle. As as
Chris pointed out, CB radio it stands for citizens Band Radio,
(02:10):
So one thing we can get all the way right
off the top. You do not need a license to
operate one. That's true, although I believe you might have
a long time ago, back when they were popular or
more popular, because one of the dinosaurs roamed the highways
like me and you. You know the listeners right though,
because CBS actually had their genesis and then forties started
(02:34):
in seven when the Federal Communications Commission opened up the
uh F frequencies of four or sixty two four or
seventy Mega hurts. And uh, I didn't realize, you know,
because I was around in the seventies, and I do
remember when they were so popular. Um you know, I
I wouldn't have imagined that they were that old that
(02:55):
they were being used back then, but yeah, they were. Yeah.
It really does seem like something that's really fits in
the era of the seventies. I mean that's when I
think CB radio, I think traveling down the highway on
you know, something like that. Um So, but they're radios.
They are their radios, and it's it's the Citizens Band
(03:15):
Radio Service. This is quoting directly from the FCC. It's
a private two way voice communications service for use in
personal and business activities of the general public. It's communications
range is from one to five miles and um the
band spans between twenty six point nine six five Mega
(03:36):
hurts and twenty seven point four zero five Mega hurts.
So that's your that's your basic range of frequencies that
these radios work on. UH And, as I mentioned, a
private two way voice communication service This is one of
those things where you can't really you can't both talk
and listen at the same time. You're either talking or
you're listening. You can't do both at the same time.
(03:57):
You see where I'm going here. So if you get
multiple people on a single channel, these these frequencies are
divided into channels, forty of them in fact, um, then
it gets really complicated. You you start to have people
drop out. So you know, preferably you're listening. You might
be listening in on a conversation, but you're not necessarily
interjecting because you don't want to, you know, screw up
(04:19):
and and accidentally cover up what someone else is trying
to say. Especially if it's something that's really important. Um.
But you don't need a license to to use these today. Uh,
they again quoting from the SEC. Licensed documents are neither
needed nor issued, and there are no age or citizenship
requirements as long as you use only an unmodified f
(04:41):
c C certificated c B unit. So that answers another question.
Can you build your own No, not legally. Uh, you
could probably figure out how to do it. I mean,
we even have an article on the side about how
CB Antenna's work, and you can see how the antenna,
you know, how how long you would need to make
(05:02):
the antenna in order to capture these frequencies at the
most efficient rate possible. UM. And you know what it
is the antenna does in relation to the radio, and
we'll probably get into a little bit of that later.
But you can't legally make one of these and use
it as a as a citizens band radio, well not
in uh, not to avoid prosecution if you get caught
(05:22):
using it, right, and you know there are different reasons
for that. For one thing, you might end up broadcasting
outside of the approved range and that's a bad thing. Yeah,
that's the thing about CB radios to UM. There's a
lot more information on the FCC's website about it. Uh.
You can use them essentially anywhere, but they point out
that if you take it outside the United States and
(05:44):
use it, if the government of whatever country you're in
restricts those frequencies, you can get yourself in trouble. Um.
And the reason that that CB radios uh, you know
work so well doing what they do, UM, you know,
used for business and personal communications, that's because those frequencies
are specifically set open for that purpose. Nobody can own
(06:06):
any of those frequencies. They are for the public all
except well sort of channel nine. Yeah, well we can
get to that in a minute too. But yeah, now,
the f CC will say that you can technically use
the CB radio anywhere in the world. You just have
to be aware of the local laws because, as Pletts said,
if if they they set aside those frequencies for something else,
(06:29):
obviously you would be interfering with that operation if you
were to try and use your CB radio tuned to
that frequency. So, you know, just one of those things
like if you're traveling around the world with your CB
radio uh and twenty foot antenna, then you might want
to look into the local laws before you fire that
puppy up. You also can't amplify the signal. No, that's true,
you definitely cannot do that. That that one to five
(06:55):
to eight kilometers. Thank you. I'm so sorry that I
had left off the kilometer conversion one point six to
eight kilometers. And it might it might seem like a
fairly short range, especially if you think about the quintessential
nineteen seventies trucker on the highway thing like the documentary
film Smokey and the Bandit exactly. Uh, and Smokey and
(07:17):
the bandit to Smokey is the bandit? Yeah, yeah, I'm
starting to think that maybe the range of those communications
may have been exaggerated somewhat. Um, you know, just going
on my memory of that, or my pretend memory, I
never saw any of those. Um, you are missing out, Poulette.
We are having a movie night. You need to catch
(07:38):
up on your documentaries. Yes, my documentaries. Um. But yeah,
if you, if you, if you amplify the signal to
extend the range, you are you're violating the certification of
your your CB radio. And there you know there are
still CB radios. Yes you can buy them, Yes you can.
(07:59):
And I know some people who use them as a
form of entertainment. Whenever they're going on a long road trip,
they like to turn on the CB radio and just
hear what the chatter is up and down the highway.
You you may have heard some of the interesting little
idiosyncratic things that about CB radio people who use them. Uh,
people tend to adopt a nickname, which you know, it's
(08:21):
more commonly referred to as a handle. Um. So you
know you might have a handle specific to you that
that has some meaning to you, or maybe it's a
little you know, joke on your name or just a
reference to something you like. Uh. And you know, that's
what you go by when you're on the radio, and
eventually you could build up a reputation. People would know
(08:41):
you by your handle. So when you got on the
radio and said, hey, this here is blah blah blah,
people say, hey, I know that guy, even though they
don't even know your real name. It's kind of an
interesting thing. It's very similar to the way that you know,
chat lines started up on the Internet. I was going
to say, it kind of reminds me of IRC back
in see I can you're telling that chat room days
(09:02):
or bitnet relay, which is were the one I'm more
familiar with, right, and and there are plenty of message
boards out there now where people still you, I mean,
peop'll use handles on our on our blogs to comment.
So you know, this is something that kind of grew
out of the same sort of uh stuff you'd see
on the CB radio frequencies. What's fun And the government
doesn't regulate that either, So you can call yourself whatever
(09:24):
you like, whatever you want. Yeah, as long as you
I mean, if you if you pick a name that
someone else already has that's usually considered bad form. Um.
The best story about CB radio handles I've ever heard
was James Earl Jones. You know he got a CB radio. Um,
And I don't know. You know, James Earl Jones, he
used to have a speech impediment and he he um
(09:46):
would he took speech classes and practice very hard to
get rid of the speech impediment. And he found the
CB radio to be a good tool to communicate with people.
And you know, there was no stress or pressure because
there was no face to face. So guess what handle
he adopted. I have no idea. Darth Vader serious, yes, yes, yes,
(10:09):
I saw the interview and he would say, like you
get on the the CVS like this is Darth Vader
and like everything we go quiet. And someone was like,
cheez man, that sounds just like him. So uh yeah, yeah,
this is an hour simba I am your father. Um.
But no, they can't believe it. It was a really
(10:31):
cool interview. I wish I could remember. It was on
some day daytime talk show while I was you know,
playing hook while I was really really sick. But anyway, yeah,
so they don't regulate the handles, you can pick whatever
you like. They also you may have heard a lot
of the you know, I said ten for at the
beginning of the podcast, which essentially means I have heard
and understood what you have just said. Yeah, yeah, But
(10:55):
the the ten codes, you know, there's lots and lots
of them. There's not it's not just ten full are
But those also are not regulated by the FCC. So
although they are, they are generally sort of standardized the
agencies that use them, Otherwise they wouldn't mean anything to anybody. Yeah,
there there are a ton of them. I've only got
you know, like ten four would be message received. Ten
forty three is traffic congestion. Ten ten is is transmission complete,
(11:20):
as an I am done talking to you. That's also
an important one because the FCC regulates how long you
should speak on these to any particular person. Yeah, no,
more than five minutes, right, because they don't want you
to hold up that entire channel, you know, for for
more than five minutes. And uh, I guess they could
also just you know, irritate the heck out of someone
(11:41):
who wants to really chat with somebody else, and all
the other channels are taken so no filibustering. No filibustering
over the CB radio, and you have to once you're done,
you have to wait one minute before you start talking again. Right, Yeah, yeah,
you're not supposed to become a chatterbox. So well, let's
see what else. So I guess we could talk a
little bit about the the antenna's that I mentioned before.
(12:02):
So I just wondered why they were so long. It's,
you know, up until the point where we were researching
the boadcast because I didn't I honestly didn't know ginormous antenna's.
Apparently it doesn't actually even matter how tall they are
on your car or if you have a portable CB,
although it does matter if you haven't mounted on the
side of a house. Um. Yeah, they're actually from from
(12:23):
what I understand from reading our article on the website. Um,
it has to do with the frequencies on which CB
radio is transmit. Yes, they're they're they're to sort of
optimize standing on particular frequencies, and of course each frequency
transmits it a slightly different size wavelength. Um. Now, somebody's
gonna call in or right in and correct me on that.
(12:45):
I'm sure. Okay, good, because the wavelength does. But but
that and that's the thing is that the antenna UM
is sort of an approximation, so it's going to have
sort of a sweet spot on you know, a channel
or two, and then sort of do reasonably well for
the other channels. UM. So it's usually you aim for
(13:05):
the middle of the band and you get the outliers
as well, so you're getting what one and then everything else.
The idea here is that um that ideally your antenna
would be the same length as the wavelength of the
you're using, but that would be problematic because these wavelengths
(13:28):
are pretty long. So most antenna's end up being a
fraction of that wavelength, and it's a fraction that's easy
to deal with, like one half or one quarter or
even one eighth. Again, the reason for that is not
just because you know, the antennas are detecting signals, but
because they're also having to radiate signals. I mean, this
is this is a two way radio, so you're it's
(13:50):
both it's got both a receiver and a transmitter. It's
a transceiver, it's a transceiver exactly. So in this case,
your antenna has to be able to emit the these
radio frequencies, and it can't be any taller than twenty
feet over the top of your house or the tree
that has mounted to unless you're nearer an airport, less
than two miles from an airport. It has to be
even shorter than that. Yeah, I think I would be
(14:12):
irritated to see a tall like not not twenty ft tall,
but a a tower that was twenty taller than the
house next to it. That would that would I would
find a little bit of an isore, I think. Um,
and I let a lot slide maybe yeah, but uh yeah,
So so what do these antenna do is you know,
(14:32):
if if you're receiving a signal, it receives the signal,
it converts that to electricity since it to the receiver,
and then the processes were reversed when you're transmitting. The
transmitter sends electric an electric signal to the UM to
the antenna, which is then converted into the radio frequency
and then that's emitted out into the ether and uh
goes the one to five miles away. There you go.
(14:54):
So I guess that pretty much covers the mechanics behind
CB radio use. UM. I was gonna talk a little
bit about some of the CB radio lingo that we
talked to. You know, we we kind of got into
there a little bit. Um. So yeah, if you ever
listen in on a CB radio conversation, it could be
very entertaining and it can also be very cryptic because
(15:17):
there are a lot of a lot of slang terms
that are thrown around that if you're not familiar with them,
you eventually are going to say, what the heck does
this mean? But it's it's just like any other, you know,
culture that has its own kind of slang. So for example,
the carne culture, if you're with it and for it,
then you know what I'm talking about. Um if or
(15:37):
even diners. You know, if you want to eighty six
the catchup on your burger, you know that that means
one thing in a diner and may not mean anything
to you. The same thing with the CB radio. So
here's some of the stuff that uh that you might hear.
If you hear any talk about bears, they're probably not
talking about the large mammal that could eat you and
frighten Stephen Colbert that that is a grizzly thought. Nah,
(16:02):
I think you just polarized our audience. So, um, bears
are police. Yes, that's that would be the the cops,
the cop. Um smoky also police. Uh so you know
Smokey the bear has a hat that's very similar to
state patrol hats. So that would be kind of where
(16:26):
that came from. Um in the bear in the air,
that would be like a helicopter. You might also hear astronaut.
That is often another term for that kind of thing. Um.
Bear in the bushes would be, you know, a cop
that's kind of laying in wait with a speed trap.
Um bear baiting. That would be someone who is driving erratically.
You know, it's they're just they're just asking to get
(16:48):
pulled over, you know. Um, if you were to uh,
if you were to say that you were checking my
eyelids for pinholes, it means you're tired. Because the idea
here is that your you know, your eyes are rooping,
you're starting to nod off and oh no, no, I'm
not really closing my eyes. I was just checking my
eyelids for pinholes. That's a serious problem. Yeah, I know.
If that happens, you need to pull over and get
(17:09):
a little sleep. If you if you drop the hammer down,
that means you're putting the pell to the metal baby,
which means you're pressing the accelerator. It means you are
burning rubber, you're peeling out, is what if you are?
If you say that you that there's a cheese wagon
up ahead, you know what that is. I think I
(17:31):
did it one time, but I don't remember. It's a
school bus because um so if if a school bus
is a cheese wagon, what do you think an ambulance
would be. I don't know, meat wagon? That's pleasant. Also,
bone box. If you see shredded tires along the side
(17:51):
the road, you might you might report that you saw
some gator guts. Uh if um. If you receive a
driving award, that's a speeding ticket. So there are lots
of these, these cute little phrases that uh that exists
out there, tons and tons and tons of them. Their
entire websites dedicated to explaining CB slang. Slang is fun
(18:14):
no matter what you're doing. Yeah, Because for one thing,
it makes you feel like you're part of an exclusive group. Right.
It makes you feel like you know you are included
within this group and other people are excluded. Therefore you
are special. So that's why I happen to know a
lot about slang because special. I like to feel special.
I have no pretense about being special, no, I but
(18:37):
I'm able to live with that because I can partition
my brain. All Right, all right, I I think I've
I think I've completely exhausted my knowledge of CB radios.
But I want to say, if you have any other
technologies like this, um, things that we don't normally talk about.
I mean, there's only so many conversations we can have
about Twitter. Yes, Um, this was a lot of fun
(18:57):
to research because, you know, something that we were both
familiar with, but I didn't know you know, the ins
and outs of of CBS and you know, well, frankly,
I guess I still don't. But it was fun to
really get into it and look into the culture and
some of the stuff. And uh yeah, so so please
right right to us at tech Stuff at how stuff
works dot com. Yeah, that'd be great because this was
a lot of fun. It was. I agree, I totally agree. Yeah,
(19:18):
if you guys have any other like, there's just this
this technology that everyone used to use no one does now,
but I kind of want to know how it works,
let us know, because that we love to learn about
stuff like that. Yeah, or you know I can have
another Amiga podcast and talk about that for another hour
and a half. Yeah, which is cool because I don't
even have to show up that day. But you know
what that brings us to listener. You thought you were
(19:44):
going to get away with just one Yeah, No, so
here we go. Hey guys, I just finished listening to
your podcast regarding how nine one one technology works. Last week,
I also listened to your podcast regarding GPS games that
it reminded me of a humorous story that I read
about several years ago when I was kind of getting
into geo cashing. There's a famous or perhaps infamous story
(20:07):
about a guy who was geo cashing in a swampy
area near his community when he became lost. This guy
forgot to mark his vehicle as a waypoint on his
GPS receiver so that he would be able to find
his car after locating his cash. This is particularly important
when you are cashing in an undeveloped area with no
discernible trails or pathways, as it can be easy to
get turned around and lose track of where you are
(20:29):
part anyway, after a few unsuccessful hours of trying to
find his vehicle, he resorted to his last resort of
using his cell phone to call nine one. As Geo
cashing lore would have it, he reported his emergency by
saying that he was lost, but he knew exactly where
he was. I guess the fire department came and were
able to locate him with the latitude and longitude coordinates
(20:51):
that he gave the nine one one operator, and he
was successfully rescued. Anyway, I thought this was a humorous
story that tied in two of your recent podcasts and
thought your other listeners might get a kick of the story.
Tony from Lincoln, Nebraska, Well, thanks a lot, Tony, I
gotta kick out of that. I love it sounds like
something I would say on nearly a daily basis. I'm lost,
(21:12):
but I know exactly where I am. And it seems
like the kind of thing that it would be really
easy to do because you got the GPS and you figure, well,
i'm safe, I know exactly where I am, and then
you realize that you know you're lost. So it's shows
shows what happens when we rely too much on technology
and not enough uncommon sense or you know, a simple compass. Right. Yeah, Well,
(21:37):
thanks a lot, Tony. That was a great email. If
you guys want to send us, as Splet mentioned, if
you want to send us an email about old technologies
or new ones as well, but you want to hear
about that would be tech stuff at how stuff works
dot com. Remember, we have blogs. You can access those
at how stuff works dot com. Look on the right
hand side. You'll see the links there, and we will
talk to you again really soon. For more on this
(21:59):
and thousands of other topics, visit how staff works dot com.
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve cameray.
It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with
tech Stuff from how stuff works dot Com. Join Josh
and Chuck, the guys who bring you stuff you should know,
as they take a trip around the world to help
you get smarter in a topsy turv economy. Check out
(00:20):
the all new super Stuff Guide to the Economy from
how stuff Works dot Com, available now exclusively on iTunes.
Breaker Breaker one nine this year's tech Stuff Okay, ancer,
my fame is Chris Paul Adam, an editor here at
how stuff works dot com, and with me as usual
and looking a little disprentled senior writer Johnson Strickland ten four.
(00:44):
Smokey's on my tail. So, as you can probably guess,
we're going to talk about citizens Band radio. Yeah. Actually
we have an email from a listener that that sort
of feeds us into this, So if you don't mind,
I'd like to start off with a little listener me. Okay,
(01:06):
now you're punishing me, aren't you. Yes, it's all your fault. So,
Dear Chris and Jonathan, I love your podcast, although it
makes me feel like a geek sometimes joined the club.
There's an old communication technology called c B radio. It
used to be really popular way back then. It is
(01:26):
still used by truckers and bus drivers. I was wondering,
how do CB radio's work. Can you still buy them
these days? Can you build a CB radio? And last,
but not least, do you need a license for a
CB radio? Thanks for your time and for the great podcast.
I wish you the best of luck, Sincerely, cush Um.
First of all, when you say way back then in
an old communication technology, you're making pallette and I feel
(01:50):
a little decrepit since I was old enough to remember
when Convoy came out, and I have used a CB
radio before. So yeah, okay, So moving on now that
we've gotten past that little, a little hurdle. As as
Chris pointed out, CB radio it stands for citizens Band Radio,
(02:10):
So one thing we can get all the way right
off the top. You do not need a license to
operate one. That's true, although I believe you might have
a long time ago, back when they were popular or
more popular, because one of the dinosaurs roamed the highways
like me and you. You know the listeners right though,
because CBS actually had their genesis and then forties started
(02:34):
in seven when the Federal Communications Commission opened up the
uh F frequencies of four or sixty two four or
seventy Mega hurts. And uh, I didn't realize, you know,
because I was around in the seventies, and I do
remember when they were so popular. Um you know, I
I wouldn't have imagined that they were that old that
(02:55):
they were being used back then, but yeah, they were. Yeah.
It really does seem like something that's really fits in
the era of the seventies. I mean that's when I
think CB radio, I think traveling down the highway on
you know, something like that. Um So, but they're radios.
They are their radios, and it's it's the Citizens Band
(03:15):
Radio Service. This is quoting directly from the FCC. It's
a private two way voice communications service for use in
personal and business activities of the general public. It's communications
range is from one to five miles and um the
band spans between twenty six point nine six five Mega
(03:36):
hurts and twenty seven point four zero five Mega hurts.
So that's your that's your basic range of frequencies that
these radios work on. UH And, as I mentioned, a
private two way voice communication service This is one of
those things where you can't really you can't both talk
and listen at the same time. You're either talking or
you're listening. You can't do both at the same time.
(03:57):
You see where I'm going here. So if you get
multiple people on a single channel, these these frequencies are
divided into channels, forty of them in fact, um, then
it gets really complicated. You you start to have people
drop out. So you know, preferably you're listening. You might
be listening in on a conversation, but you're not necessarily
interjecting because you don't want to, you know, screw up
(04:19):
and and accidentally cover up what someone else is trying
to say. Especially if it's something that's really important. Um.
But you don't need a license to to use these today. Uh,
they again quoting from the SEC. Licensed documents are neither
needed nor issued, and there are no age or citizenship
requirements as long as you use only an unmodified f
(04:41):
c C certificated c B unit. So that answers another question.
Can you build your own No, not legally. Uh, you
could probably figure out how to do it. I mean,
we even have an article on the side about how
CB Antenna's work, and you can see how the antenna,
you know, how how long you would need to make
(05:02):
the antenna in order to capture these frequencies at the
most efficient rate possible. UM. And you know what it
is the antenna does in relation to the radio, and
we'll probably get into a little bit of that later.
But you can't legally make one of these and use
it as a as a citizens band radio, well not
in uh, not to avoid prosecution if you get caught
(05:22):
using it, right, and you know there are different reasons
for that. For one thing, you might end up broadcasting
outside of the approved range and that's a bad thing. Yeah,
that's the thing about CB radios to UM. There's a
lot more information on the FCC's website about it. Uh.
You can use them essentially anywhere, but they point out
that if you take it outside the United States and
(05:44):
use it, if the government of whatever country you're in
restricts those frequencies, you can get yourself in trouble. Um.
And the reason that that CB radios uh, you know
work so well doing what they do, UM, you know,
used for business and personal communications, that's because those frequencies
are specifically set open for that purpose. Nobody can own
(06:06):
any of those frequencies. They are for the public all
except well sort of channel nine. Yeah, well we can
get to that in a minute too. But yeah, now,
the f CC will say that you can technically use
the CB radio anywhere in the world. You just have
to be aware of the local laws because, as Pletts said,
if if they they set aside those frequencies for something else,
(06:29):
obviously you would be interfering with that operation if you
were to try and use your CB radio tuned to
that frequency. So, you know, just one of those things
like if you're traveling around the world with your CB
radio uh and twenty foot antenna, then you might want
to look into the local laws before you fire that
puppy up. You also can't amplify the signal. No, that's true,
you definitely cannot do that. That that one to five
(06:55):
to eight kilometers. Thank you. I'm so sorry that I
had left off the kilometer conversion one point six to
eight kilometers. And it might it might seem like a
fairly short range, especially if you think about the quintessential
nineteen seventies trucker on the highway thing like the documentary
film Smokey and the Bandit exactly. Uh, and Smokey and
(07:17):
the bandit to Smokey is the bandit? Yeah, yeah, I'm
starting to think that maybe the range of those communications
may have been exaggerated somewhat. Um, you know, just going
on my memory of that, or my pretend memory, I
never saw any of those. Um, you are missing out, Poulette.
We are having a movie night. You need to catch
(07:38):
up on your documentaries. Yes, my documentaries. Um. But yeah,
if you, if you, if you amplify the signal to
extend the range, you are you're violating the certification of
your your CB radio. And there you know there are
still CB radios. Yes you can buy them, Yes you can.
(07:59):
And I know some people who use them as a
form of entertainment. Whenever they're going on a long road trip,
they like to turn on the CB radio and just
hear what the chatter is up and down the highway.
You you may have heard some of the interesting little
idiosyncratic things that about CB radio people who use them. Uh,
people tend to adopt a nickname, which you know, it's
(08:21):
more commonly referred to as a handle. Um. So you
know you might have a handle specific to you that
that has some meaning to you, or maybe it's a
little you know, joke on your name or just a
reference to something you like. Uh. And you know, that's
what you go by when you're on the radio, and
eventually you could build up a reputation. People would know
(08:41):
you by your handle. So when you got on the
radio and said, hey, this here is blah blah blah,
people say, hey, I know that guy, even though they
don't even know your real name. It's kind of an
interesting thing. It's very similar to the way that you know,
chat lines started up on the Internet. I was going
to say, it kind of reminds me of IRC back
in see I can you're telling that chat room days
(09:02):
or bitnet relay, which is were the one I'm more
familiar with, right, and and there are plenty of message
boards out there now where people still you, I mean,
peop'll use handles on our on our blogs to comment.
So you know, this is something that kind of grew
out of the same sort of uh stuff you'd see
on the CB radio frequencies. What's fun And the government
doesn't regulate that either, So you can call yourself whatever
(09:24):
you like, whatever you want. Yeah, as long as you
I mean, if you if you pick a name that
someone else already has that's usually considered bad form. Um.
The best story about CB radio handles I've ever heard
was James Earl Jones. You know he got a CB radio. Um,
And I don't know. You know, James Earl Jones, he
used to have a speech impediment and he he um
(09:46):
would he took speech classes and practice very hard to
get rid of the speech impediment. And he found the
CB radio to be a good tool to communicate with people.
And you know, there was no stress or pressure because
there was no face to face. So guess what handle
he adopted. I have no idea. Darth Vader serious, yes, yes, yes,
(10:09):
I saw the interview and he would say, like you
get on the the CVS like this is Darth Vader
and like everything we go quiet. And someone was like,
cheez man, that sounds just like him. So uh yeah, yeah,
this is an hour simba I am your father. Um.
But no, they can't believe it. It was a really
(10:31):
cool interview. I wish I could remember. It was on
some day daytime talk show while I was you know,
playing hook while I was really really sick. But anyway, yeah,
so they don't regulate the handles, you can pick whatever
you like. They also you may have heard a lot
of the you know, I said ten for at the
beginning of the podcast, which essentially means I have heard
and understood what you have just said. Yeah, yeah, But
(10:55):
the the ten codes, you know, there's lots and lots
of them. There's not it's not just ten full are
But those also are not regulated by the FCC. So
although they are, they are generally sort of standardized the
agencies that use them, Otherwise they wouldn't mean anything to anybody. Yeah,
there there are a ton of them. I've only got
you know, like ten four would be message received. Ten
forty three is traffic congestion. Ten ten is is transmission complete,
(11:20):
as an I am done talking to you. That's also
an important one because the FCC regulates how long you
should speak on these to any particular person. Yeah, no,
more than five minutes, right, because they don't want you
to hold up that entire channel, you know, for for
more than five minutes. And uh, I guess they could
also just you know, irritate the heck out of someone
(11:41):
who wants to really chat with somebody else, and all
the other channels are taken so no filibustering. No filibustering
over the CB radio, and you have to once you're done,
you have to wait one minute before you start talking again. Right, Yeah, yeah,
you're not supposed to become a chatterbox. So well, let's
see what else. So I guess we could talk a
little bit about the the antenna's that I mentioned before.
(12:02):
So I just wondered why they were so long. It's,
you know, up until the point where we were researching
the boadcast because I didn't I honestly didn't know ginormous antenna's.
Apparently it doesn't actually even matter how tall they are
on your car or if you have a portable CB,
although it does matter if you haven't mounted on the
side of a house. Um. Yeah, they're actually from from
(12:23):
what I understand from reading our article on the website. Um,
it has to do with the frequencies on which CB
radio is transmit. Yes, they're they're they're to sort of
optimize standing on particular frequencies, and of course each frequency
transmits it a slightly different size wavelength. Um. Now, somebody's
gonna call in or right in and correct me on that.
(12:45):
I'm sure. Okay, good, because the wavelength does. But but
that and that's the thing is that the antenna UM
is sort of an approximation, so it's going to have
sort of a sweet spot on you know, a channel
or two, and then sort of do reasonably well for
the other channels. UM. So it's usually you aim for
(13:05):
the middle of the band and you get the outliers
as well, so you're getting what one and then everything else.
The idea here is that um that ideally your antenna
would be the same length as the wavelength of the
you're using, but that would be problematic because these wavelengths
(13:28):
are pretty long. So most antenna's end up being a
fraction of that wavelength, and it's a fraction that's easy
to deal with, like one half or one quarter or
even one eighth. Again, the reason for that is not
just because you know, the antennas are detecting signals, but
because they're also having to radiate signals. I mean, this
is this is a two way radio, so you're it's
(13:50):
both it's got both a receiver and a transmitter. It's
a transceiver, it's a transceiver exactly. So in this case,
your antenna has to be able to emit the these
radio frequencies, and it can't be any taller than twenty
feet over the top of your house or the tree
that has mounted to unless you're nearer an airport, less
than two miles from an airport. It has to be
even shorter than that. Yeah, I think I would be
(14:12):
irritated to see a tall like not not twenty ft tall,
but a a tower that was twenty taller than the
house next to it. That would that would I would
find a little bit of an isore, I think. Um,
and I let a lot slide maybe yeah, but uh yeah,
So so what do these antenna do is you know,
(14:32):
if if you're receiving a signal, it receives the signal,
it converts that to electricity since it to the receiver,
and then the processes were reversed when you're transmitting. The
transmitter sends electric an electric signal to the UM to
the antenna, which is then converted into the radio frequency
and then that's emitted out into the ether and uh
goes the one to five miles away. There you go.
(14:54):
So I guess that pretty much covers the mechanics behind
CB radio use. UM. I was gonna talk a little
bit about some of the CB radio lingo that we
talked to. You know, we we kind of got into
there a little bit. Um. So yeah, if you ever
listen in on a CB radio conversation, it could be
very entertaining and it can also be very cryptic because
(15:17):
there are a lot of a lot of slang terms
that are thrown around that if you're not familiar with them,
you eventually are going to say, what the heck does
this mean? But it's it's just like any other, you know,
culture that has its own kind of slang. So for example,
the carne culture, if you're with it and for it,
then you know what I'm talking about. Um if or
(15:37):
even diners. You know, if you want to eighty six
the catchup on your burger, you know that that means
one thing in a diner and may not mean anything
to you. The same thing with the CB radio. So
here's some of the stuff that uh that you might hear.
If you hear any talk about bears, they're probably not
talking about the large mammal that could eat you and
frighten Stephen Colbert that that is a grizzly thought. Nah,
(16:02):
I think you just polarized our audience. So, um, bears
are police. Yes, that's that would be the the cops,
the cop. Um smoky also police. Uh so you know
Smokey the bear has a hat that's very similar to
state patrol hats. So that would be kind of where
(16:26):
that came from. Um in the bear in the air,
that would be like a helicopter. You might also hear astronaut.
That is often another term for that kind of thing. Um.
Bear in the bushes would be, you know, a cop
that's kind of laying in wait with a speed trap.
Um bear baiting. That would be someone who is driving erratically.
You know, it's they're just they're just asking to get
(16:48):
pulled over, you know. Um, if you were to uh,
if you were to say that you were checking my
eyelids for pinholes, it means you're tired. Because the idea
here is that your you know, your eyes are rooping,
you're starting to nod off and oh no, no, I'm
not really closing my eyes. I was just checking my
eyelids for pinholes. That's a serious problem. Yeah, I know.
If that happens, you need to pull over and get
(17:09):
a little sleep. If you if you drop the hammer down,
that means you're putting the pell to the metal baby,
which means you're pressing the accelerator. It means you are
burning rubber, you're peeling out, is what if you are?
If you say that you that there's a cheese wagon
up ahead, you know what that is. I think I
(17:31):
did it one time, but I don't remember. It's a
school bus because um so if if a school bus
is a cheese wagon, what do you think an ambulance
would be. I don't know, meat wagon? That's pleasant. Also,
bone box. If you see shredded tires along the side
(17:51):
the road, you might you might report that you saw
some gator guts. Uh if um. If you receive a
driving award, that's a speeding ticket. So there are lots
of these, these cute little phrases that uh that exists
out there, tons and tons and tons of them. Their
entire websites dedicated to explaining CB slang. Slang is fun
(18:14):
no matter what you're doing. Yeah, Because for one thing,
it makes you feel like you're part of an exclusive group. Right.
It makes you feel like you know you are included
within this group and other people are excluded. Therefore you
are special. So that's why I happen to know a
lot about slang because special. I like to feel special.
I have no pretense about being special, no, I but
(18:37):
I'm able to live with that because I can partition
my brain. All Right, all right, I I think I've
I think I've completely exhausted my knowledge of CB radios.
But I want to say, if you have any other
technologies like this, um, things that we don't normally talk about.
I mean, there's only so many conversations we can have
about Twitter. Yes, Um, this was a lot of fun
(18:57):
to research because, you know, something that we were both
familiar with, but I didn't know you know, the ins
and outs of of CBS and you know, well, frankly,
I guess I still don't. But it was fun to
really get into it and look into the culture and
some of the stuff. And uh yeah, so so please
right right to us at tech Stuff at how stuff
works dot com. Yeah, that'd be great because this was
a lot of fun. It was. I agree, I totally agree. Yeah,
(19:18):
if you guys have any other like, there's just this
this technology that everyone used to use no one does now,
but I kind of want to know how it works,
let us know, because that we love to learn about
stuff like that. Yeah, or you know I can have
another Amiga podcast and talk about that for another hour
and a half. Yeah, which is cool because I don't
even have to show up that day. But you know
what that brings us to listener. You thought you were
(19:44):
going to get away with just one Yeah, No, so
here we go. Hey guys, I just finished listening to
your podcast regarding how nine one one technology works. Last week,
I also listened to your podcast regarding GPS games that
it reminded me of a humorous story that I read
about several years ago when I was kind of getting
into geo cashing. There's a famous or perhaps infamous story
(20:07):
about a guy who was geo cashing in a swampy
area near his community when he became lost. This guy
forgot to mark his vehicle as a waypoint on his
GPS receiver so that he would be able to find
his car after locating his cash. This is particularly important
when you are cashing in an undeveloped area with no
discernible trails or pathways, as it can be easy to
get turned around and lose track of where you are
(20:29):
part anyway, after a few unsuccessful hours of trying to
find his vehicle, he resorted to his last resort of
using his cell phone to call nine one. As Geo
cashing lore would have it, he reported his emergency by
saying that he was lost, but he knew exactly where
he was. I guess the fire department came and were
able to locate him with the latitude and longitude coordinates
(20:51):
that he gave the nine one one operator, and he
was successfully rescued. Anyway, I thought this was a humorous
story that tied in two of your recent podcasts and
thought your other listeners might get a kick of the story.
Tony from Lincoln, Nebraska, Well, thanks a lot, Tony, I
gotta kick out of that. I love it sounds like
something I would say on nearly a daily basis. I'm lost,
(21:12):
but I know exactly where I am. And it seems
like the kind of thing that it would be really
easy to do because you got the GPS and you figure, well,
i'm safe, I know exactly where I am, and then
you realize that you know you're lost. So it's shows
shows what happens when we rely too much on technology
and not enough uncommon sense or you know, a simple compass. Right. Yeah, Well,
(21:37):
thanks a lot, Tony. That was a great email. If
you guys want to send us, as Splet mentioned, if
you want to send us an email about old technologies
or new ones as well, but you want to hear
about that would be tech stuff at how stuff works
dot com. Remember, we have blogs. You can access those
at how stuff works dot com. Look on the right
hand side. You'll see the links there, and we will
talk to you again really soon. For more on this
(21:59):
and thousands of other topics, visit how staff works dot com.
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