Prep Comms - CB Radio For Preppers pt. 1

Episode Date: September 7, 2024

**TLDR Summary:**  New Series: CB Radio for Preppers - Part 1  - Citizen's Band (CB) Radio has a rich history, rooted in the mid-20th century as a form of local communication.   - This episode will explore how CB radio grew in popularity, especially among truckers, hobbyists, and emergency responders.   - We’ll discuss how the technology of CB radio evolved and its lasting legacy in modern communication.   - Topics will cover its uses, limitations, and role in the preppers plans. Citizen's Band (CB) Radio has played an essential role in the evolution of wireless communication, especially in local, mobile applications. Originally developed in the 1940s, CB radio quickly became a favorite of long-haul truckers, hobbyists, and emergency responders, offering a reliable way to communicate over short distances. In this series, we will dive deep into the history of CB radio, examine its technological innovations—like the 11-meter band and the use of AM and SSB modes—and discuss its cultural impact. Join us as we explore how CB radio still holds value in a world dominated by smartphones and internet-based communication especially for the preparedness community. Free CB Radio for Preppers - eBook: LINK Many of you just want to know what to buy, ok...here you go: Small Mobile (inside your vehicle) Base Station (inside your home or safe space) Random List of CB's I Like (mostly mobiles) Antennas (antennas and cables) Power Supplies (12v power from your home) Make sure to visit Hub City Mercantile for any Water Filtration Need You Have (comms solutions there too!) thanks for listening and sharing! Caleb/K4CDN   Printable PDF of CB Radio Frequencies        

CB radio has played an essential role in the evolution of wireless communications, especially in local and mobile applications. Originally developed in the 1940s, CB radio quickly became a favorite of long-haul truckers, hobbyists, and emergency responders, offering them a reliable way to communicate over short and sometimes long distances. In this series, we'll dive deep into the history of CB radio. We'll examine its technological innovations like the 11-meter band and the use of AM, single-side band, and now FM modes. We'll also discuss its cultural impact. Join us as we explore how CB radio still holds value in a world dominated by smartphones and Internet-based communication systems. But we're going to talk about how this can especially apply to those in the preparedness community let's go y'all welcome back in to the prep comms podcast caleb nelson here k4 cdn and as i alluded to actually through a cb radio That was done via an AM CB radio.

We'll talk about that and the technology a little bit later. But as I said, this series here we're going to kick off is about CB radio. Now, I mentioned it the last time through that we were going to be talking down that road. And, of course, we've talked about listening as much as we can. I'll hit this real quick. I got a call the other day from a local friend and he said, man, I've got some stuff here and I've listened to your show and I've got some stuff there. And I just realized how little I have in regards to listening. There's still holes in my listening and it's okay. I mean, you don't have to have everything. You don't have to have a garage full

of equipment. I mean, unless you're just that guy, but I mean, I may have a garage full of equipment, but not everybody has to. And that's okay. So don't think that because you don't have everything that you're just lost and there's no need, There's no use. Don't think that because it's very important that you have what you do have because anything that you've done has placed you in the top half one percent. Okay, so you're getting there. You're learning. It's going to be amazing. All right, so yeah, CB radio is one of my absolute favorite topics. And as I've been thinking about CB radio here for the PrepComs podcast, I've really struggled with how deep I want to go into CB radio. Because here's the thing. I've been a CB radio user for nearly 45 years.

That blows my mind, honestly. And, I mean, how much of a CB radio user can a six-year-old really be? How do you quantify that? Well, I mean, I talked on a CB when I was six years old. I had one in my bedroom. I had it connected to an antenna outside and would play with it from time to time and loved it. So, I mean, at some level, I've been a CB radio operator since six years old, and that's almost 45 years ago. So I've been around this stuff a lot. And maybe we'll talk

about the depths I went into the actual end of CB and whatnot. But right now, let's just talk about what is CB radio and where it came from. Because a lot of people, especially the younger generations, they missed the heyday of CB radios. But even though I enjoyed the heyday of the CB radio and the hobby and the camaraderie that we had back in the day, it was in the late 80s, early 90s for me. So it was a second revival, which was probably the third revival of CB in, you know, hobby and fun type communications back in the day. Truckers have used it forever, but we're going to talk about even where it came from because really we need to understand some of that stuff. So it starts making sense for us why this may be an option for preppers. Now I've written an ebook. It's free.

If you haven't gotten your copy, there'll be a link in the show notes. You can click the button, subscribe to the newsletter, and I'll send you a PDF of the CB radio for preppers, how to get on the air before the apocalypse or something like that is the title. And it's a, it's a hundred pages. I mean, there's a lot of stuff to read there, break it down, make it simple. But this podcast here is not necessarily the ebook in verbal form, but we're going to talk about some of the history I might not have covered there, as well as some of my personal experiences with CB radio. So CB radio actually came from the military. You'll probably find a lot of the communications tools that we'll talk about here, and even those that we enjoy as just a society, the Internet for real. It all comes from the money that was spent in the military-industrial complex.

And CB radio is really no different. So back in the 1940s, they had telegraph, which was wired communication, station to station. They had the poles with the telegraph wires and whatnot. It's a great way to communicate across the country. And then they started working with transmitting energy and signals via the airwaves and radio was birthed. And then we come into World War II and we're running telegraph lines all over the place, which is great unless the line gets cut. Or, God forbid, one of the enemies taps into the line, and they can hear the transmissions from the, 28 megahertz band as a short slash medium range communications tool that could be packaged in a utility of a body that was small enough. If you were a monster of a man that you could strap to your back and take out into the field,

or it could be placed in a half track or a tank or a Jeep or whatever. And they can have communications within that battle sphere, that area. So I'm not a military guy. I know there's a lot of right terms to use here. I'm not going to use any of them because I didn't serve. So if you did thank you for your service, but please excuse my ignorance and what to actually call it. So they needed a way to communicate that was not going to be hampered by wires. And the 11 meter band was born. That's what we'll call it. And CB radio actually showed up in the war. Back then they called it mobile radio. And you can go back and see pictures of some of these guys with packs and you can see them mounted in trucks and tracks and all these different things. It just really helped get over the need for copper. And it's, you know, our phones are still copper based. Really everything's copper based except

the radio because we're doing it with, you know, just over the air. So they started using these frequencies in World War II. After the war, of course, what do we have? Well, the military industrial complex made a bunch of really cool stuff that now nobody needs because the Nazis and the Japanese are defeated. And we're all starting the Cold War now. So they have all this surplus equipment that the guys that were in the war kind of enjoyed using. So they brought it home with them, kind of became a hobby. And back in 1945, the FCC actually allocated some frequencies for a personal radio service. And this is where CB, or Citizens Band Radio, came from. During the 1950s, CB radio was still kind of a niche hobby. It was kind of a tool for small business operators. Maybe think back, wow, can you go back a niche hobby. It was kind of a tool for small business operators.

Maybe think back, wow, can you go back in your mind far enough to know what an oil delivery truck was? That's how a lot of homes used to, and some still do, heated their houses and they would dispatch their trucks through CB radios. And then even some communities, you know, would have CB radio enclaves where their buddies would talk. Now, we're still living in some of that nowadays, but that's how that kind of came about. It was a practical use. It goes from war to a practical civilian use. And then in 1958, the FCC actually kind of formalized

the CB radio for public communications, and they established a Class D radio license, and they gave them 23 channels, channelized frequencies. And it made it of course, easier for folks to use because then the manufacturers could make a radio that actually had those particular 23 channels in them. And, uh, the, you could buy those at the store Sears. My dad had a Sears. My granddad had a Johnson. I think there was an RCA in there somewhere. So they were kind of used through the 60s. You know, the 60s had the Vietnam War.

And then we had the whole U.S. lost its mind and free love and whatnot. So it was kind of weird, mainly just used for the hobbyist as well as the business end of things. But then in the 1970s, a lot of things changed in the U.S. that gave rise to the vast popularity of CB radio. And one of those things that caused that was the oil crisis. Another was the national speed limit. And, of course, CB radios used in trucker movies from the 70s And I mean, I could stop here and talk about Smokey and the Bandit for the next 30 minutes and I won't

It's not a movie you watch with your kids But if you've never watched Smokey and the Bandit I can't believe you're listening to this program, honestly But if you haven't, I want to encourage you to not watch it with your children, but check it out. Jackie Gleason, Burt Reynolds, man, is some of the best comedy from the 70s ever, and it surrounds, the whole film basically relies on CB radios. It's amazing.

So back in the 70s, I'm barely old enough to remember this, as the old crisis was kicking off about the year I was born. But CB radios were huge back during that time because gas, sorry, gas was hard to find. And you had truckers trying to, you know, traverse the U.S. with this new speed limit to keep everybody safe, in air quotes. And so a couple of different things happened. They could locate fuel, talking back and forth on the Seabees, as well as they could talk about the Smoky Bears, which would be the police officers who were running old school radar back in the day. And they would tip each other off to the potential of the police running radar or whatnot trying to catch the truckers speeding.

As well as just there was a new community that was growing there with the CBs. And the guys in the trucks were talking and having a blast. I mean, it was a lot of fun. Trust me. I lived it. It was a blast. And, of course, the gas crisis was it. But CB radios in the seventies were awesome

in the eighties. They were a lot of fun too. So of course, Smokey and the Bandit, then there, there was a show moving on. And then you had BJ and the Bear. These were television shows in the 1980s that revolved around truckers and how they communicated on the CBs. And you know, they talked for 9 million miles, which is not realistic, but in the TV show it worked. And as kids, we thought it was fantastic. But as the 70s wore on, technology continued to change. And like anything else, you'll find that it's not what it used to be. And although it's like a phenomenon. Like everybody had a CB in their Ford Maverick when the Maverick was a car or their Nova from Chevrolet or their pickup truck. And I mean, everybody had a handle, uh, the licensing thing, everybody had a call sign

back then. And it was, it was pretty hilarious and it worked and folks can stay in touch with each other all over the place, all over the time. And, uh, it was, it was a pretty cheap, affordable, reliable way for, you know, to be traveling down the highway and you would know where the police were. So you could slow down in these particular areas and, or maybe you, you broke down on the side of the road because cars back then, although they were amazing, they didn't last for four and 500,000 miles. So a lot of breakdowns and whatnot, you could call for help or even ask you know someone if they needed help back then there were also groups that started out that amateur radio was was entrenched and it was really hard

to get a license back in the day you had to know morse code and all these different things well CB gave the the folks who didn't want to do that or couldn't do that an opportunity to be able to communicate wirelessly from their cars or even from their homes with other people. And there were groups that sprung up all over the place that utilized CB radios, kind of like a ham club. And a lot of them would do a setup on channel nine and have these react groups. And I mean, there were CB radio clubs. We had one of those back in the day in the early 1990s here locally. I mean, it was just a great way for people to get out and touch each other. And cell phones really didn't exist for the local, you know, everyday Joe citizens.

But anyway, you get into the 1980s and it just kind of flops. But there was a revival, a small revival I was a part of back in the late 1980s, right before the 1990s, and the introduction of Nextel, which was amazing, which is one of my favorite communication methods of all times. But CB radios have been a phenomenal choice for local and short-range and sometimes even medium-range communications. Now, granted, they can be modified. You can modify the radio. You can add amplifiers to it. All that's illegal, matter of fact. And I have

to say that, but it can be done. It has been done. I may have done it in the past, but it's been a long time ago. And that kind of thing will allow you to talk thousands of miles because although it's not the greatest radio band, it still has the same characteristics of a lot of the other bands we'll talk about when we get to ham radio. And that gives you the opportunity to DX or to talk long distances and, uh, you know, use a honest fear as your friend or your enemy to, to help the signal get along. So when we talk about prepping and we talk about survivals and we talk about radio and comms methods and whatnot, CB radio, man, is a great tool if you are a prepper. And we're going to talk about that as we continue the program. It's not what it was because times have changed so much, but it doesn't make it a terrible choice.

And we'll be talking about how the FCC has allowed the manufacturers to add a new mode into the CB radios, which really increases the sound quality. Earlier when I opened the program, that was AM. And maybe the next show I'll open with FM, which is a little more crystal clear because of the way that the modulation works. The most CB radios out there nowadays that have been manufactured in the last three or four years, they are FM capable. But previous to that, it was only AM and single sideband. And we've talked about single sideband and how those frequencies, when they're used with that mode, the signal will travel further than it will just a simple AM or FM carrier. We talked about that in the shortwave episodes. And really, guys, it's exactly the same thing.

It all works the same way. Radio is radio. And it is kind of magic sometimes. And sometimes you just want to throw it all out in the yard because you can't make it work. So in regards to preparedness, that's one of the things that we'll be talking about is do we need to throw this thing out in the yard because it's not going to work? Or is there a place for the prepper to have a CB radio? I think we can make a case for that, but I will just say up front that I don't think it is

what it used to be. I don't think that it is the best choice, but it's a great place to start. And next time on the show, we're going to talk about that. Hey, thanks for listening. Remember, if you need anything in regards to water, water filtration, if you need filters for your Berkey, I've got all that stuff at Hub City Mercantile, the show sponsor here of PrepCom's podcast. My wife and I have been in business for well over 25 years and the British Birkfeld water filter systems are one of our latest additions to our business. You can find us at hubcitymercantile.com. The show notes also have a link to get you there. And we're going to keep talking

about CB radios for preppers the next time. Hey, thank you so much for listening. Again, remember to check us out online at prepcoms.com. Until then, we'll see you. 73, y'all. God bless. Outro Music