Quote:
Originally Posted by wa2ise
IIRC, on the CB band, it was around 1975 when it went to hell. There was a pop C&W song "Convoy" which featured CB radio being used by truckers to find cops in speed traps on highways. So everyone ran out and bought CB sets and soon kids started messing around on that band. ...
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That's why I gave up on CB in the early '70s and got into ham radio. Hams are much more organized, civil and everything else compared to the nuts on the Citizens Band. My Icom IC-725 100-watt ham rig has a general coverage receiver that will tune to 27 MHz. I listened there several years ago and heard some of the most goshawful nonsense I have ever heard over shortwave radio in my life--people talking over each other, dead carriers, whistling, hooting, catcalls, you name it.
CB may have begun to "go to hell", as you put it, in 1975 but the band really went haywire in 1983, the year the FCC stopped issuing CB licenses. The lifting of the licensing requirement meant that anyone with a CB radio could blast on the air and do goodness only knows what. I wouldn't be surprised if some kids, somewhere, would try to put a radio station somewhere on the frequency range that used to be the Citizens Band; hard rock, filthy language, name it. Since the FCC doesn't seem to care anymore what goes on on 27 MHz, these kids would probably get away with broadcasting trash there. Doesn't bother me a bit (I haven't owned a CB radio in decades and don't want one as a ham), but I would hope the kids and other clowns now on 27 MHz stay the heck away from the amateur bands, especially ten meters. All we would need would be a bunch of unlicensed idiots making a shambles of the latter.
However, I don't think we have much to worry about as far as ten meters being overrun by CB nuts is concerned, since the former is still an amateur band regulated by the FCC. I don't know if they will ever do it, but I think it would be an excellent idea if the FCC returned 27 MHz to the amateur radio service as the 11-meter band, as it was prior to 1958. This band is a goshawful mess as it is and must be cleaned up, sooner rather than later. I would suggest that the FCC reassign 11 meters to either the amateur radio service or to some responsible organization, but one way or another the nonsense on this band must be dealt with. The FCC has already divested (for the most part) television stations of their assignments in what used to be the VHF television band, channels 2 through 13, putting most DTV stations on UHF channels; I wish they would do something similar with 11 meters. Something must be done to stop the nonsense on what once was a very orderly Citizens Band, or else the FCC will reassign it to something else.
As overworked and understaffed as the FCC is these days, however, I don't think anything will be done about the goshawful mess that is 11 meters any time soon.