Some musings on Ham Radio becoming like CB

This is something I keep running across, especially where the die-hard 'know code' crowd gathers 'round to worship their Vibroplex logos, reminesce about the bygone days of spark, and etc ad nauseaum. Dare not to mention PSK31 around these folks, gang...the reaction shall cause you much fear and loathing...

Anyway, as this crowd rubs on the Ben-Gay prior to picking up their J-38s to break the land speed record in CW, you always hear this clattertrap tossed around that "X will turn ham radio in CB"...with "X" varying as to being anything from volunteer examination to relaxing the CW requirements to the rise in Tech licensees to...well, you get the idea. "It'll be just like 11 Meters, a-yup...all those awful bad people polluting the airwaves. Just'll make me throw my KWM-1 out in the yard, yup."

Now..._is_ this plausable? Can any of these changes _really_ result in ham radio transmogrifying overnight into some hideous, squalling RF fiasco, replite with nightmarish operating practices, constant QRM, and the violation of every rule known to God, Riley, and man...including some not even practiced in this galaxy? Let's look at this, now...

First up, an embarrasing admission...well, sort of embarassing. I, once, was involved in 11M operations. Yes, that's right...I who now exult in chasing elusive VHF tropo DX while on portable operation, who tinkers with boatanchors and antennas, and who tries to be an asset to those trying to enter into amateur radio once sullied himself in the fracas known as 'CB'. This was quite some time ago, though...circa 1974-82. At that time, I was a young teen, just beginning to explore SWLing and introduced to 11M by my father, who had worked on the band around 1960-64. My next-door neighbor, also, had quite an impressive 11M setup. And this was all back in the days prior to the post-Convoy faddism that drove CB right into the ground, through to the aftermath of that period. So I been there, folksies.

What was this period like? Especially before the whole trucker-culture marketing tie-in? Well...it was sort of _odd_, actually. Yes, you had some channels where your basic radio trash would QRM each other into oblivion. You had people running serious QRO hardware, quite illegally. And there was some out-band operation, although this really hit its stride when the initial 23 (and later 40) channels degenerated into a sea of racket and heterodyned crap. But interestingly...and this especially on channel 16, where the bulk of SSB operations could be found...a good bit of what I came to know from that halcyon period actually bears something of a strong resemblance to what one finds on any VHF or UHF ragchew repeater these days. Well-mannered people, decent operating practices, and some interesting conversation. There were even nets...and protocols lifted directly from what we'd recognize to this day as 'proper practice', right down to the use of Q-sigs.

"So what happened to all of that?", you ask. Well, what happened was NOT the result of 1 million cheap CB transceivers falling off a truck. Or the sudden emergence from hidden pods of 1 million sub-LID-grade morons. No...what happened was _merchandising_.

What most of these hams forget is the whole 'trucker' phenom of the mid-70s, and how this all tied into the idea of CB being some 'link' to this then-fashionable culture. And how emulating this sort of lingo, etc etc ad nauseaum was the height of suburban 'k00l' of that period. And also, how this was marketed to death. Vide, peeps...crank the wayback to 1976. "Convoy" is on the radio, spewed forth by a couple of cash-in creeps who later on would go on to do insipid NuAge muzak as Mannheim Steamroller. On TV, you have the grizzly Claude Akins wrangling a Kenworth around in identikit plotlines on "Movin' On". And you have people rushing to get their cheapass CB sets onto the market to satisfy this demand to act just like these media examples. Even hams jumped in on this; Tom Kneitel, who edited Popular Communications magazine, previously edited CB Magazine...which was a gross offender in this 'merch 11M' craze by hyping every use of CB in anything media-oriented. And yes, he held (holds? is he SK?) a ham ticket. But many forget all of this...perhaps because this was all oriented around a fad that was perhaps one of the few things in recent pop culture that was even _more_ obnoxious than disco!

Those of us who were in the pool prior to this invasion of cannon-balling cretins weren't too enamored of having the band flooded by the rank clueless. And sure enough, by 1977, the original 23 channels had been rendered useless, necessitating the expansion of the band to 40. Granted, some of us were there already; since there's a statute of limitations (and besides, I was a juvenile at the time), I'll admit to being one of many who modified their gear to use 'outband' frequencies. In fact, some of my mods were pretty spiffy...extra crystal banks and final swaps for my Lafayette Comstat 25B, a 'flip-job', final switch, final retapping, and repeaking for an old 12-channel Sonar I used for sub-channel 1 operations, and so on. Some of it, yes, was to work a plethora of DX stations that also hung out on these outband channels, and it was there that I learned to work the vagaries of high-end HF propagation to my advantage. But a lot of the time, when the skip was down, what you'd find on these 'outband' frequencies was the local folks, run off by the people the merch craze had brought in. And _any_ idiot could work a CB radio from these times...many would seldom have more on them than a channel selector, volume, squelch, and a mike.

Now, let's stop the reminscing for a bit and fast-forward to the present day. There is no...repeat, _no_...analogue to the marketing hype frenzy that turned 11M into the toilet of HF present nor on the horizon. None. Zippo. Zilch. Add to this the fact that even the simplest amateur sets are considerably more complex than 90% of the CB radios, even from the early 70s when such classics as the Browning-Drake 'twins' were storming the band. Then there's the often-complex operating procedures needed to make amateur radio 'work', from operator protocols to the weirdnesses of propagation. Mix it all, stir, and what you get is a scenario and situation that's _very_ different from the implosion of the 11M band...even without tossing into the mix the matter of passing the exams to get ones' license! Taint th' same, folks...nope!

Now, let's look at some of that _fine_ operating practice that took CB down...the QRMing, the jamming, the rudeness, the blundering, the channel-hogging, the...damn, sounds like parts of 75 meters _now_, donnit? So who needs to worry about a flood of unwashed 5 WPMers...the enemy is _already_ inside the gates! And these people have their tickets, and are often the ones saying how 'code makes better ops'. Uh...huh. Right. And strychnine makes a fine aperitif, too.

So, let's look forward a bit. 2010. The ham fraternity is thriving again. New ops are getting onto the HF bands, the 'holy ground' of hamdom these days, and discovering the thrill of all that those frequencies have to offer. New people are checking into the nets, offering to roll out those antennas on Field Day, sending their contest results in, and so on. Will it degenerate into 'goodbuddy-ism'? Somehow, I just don't think so. The mix of elements that made 11M into the wasteland that it was just isn't present, and doesn't seem to be looming.

Oh, yeah...why didn't _I_ get off of CB and onto the ham bands. Ask the FCC examiners that administered my two tests in 1975 and 1978. Seems there was some idea that admitting 'those damned kids' back in those days was one way the ham bands would 'turn into CB', or something to that effect., so the testing...particularly on CW...was made as 'user-hostile' as seemingly possible. This moronicity has been going on an _awful_ long time, don't you think? 'Bout time it stopped...