The Down Low on CB Radio

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. 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,

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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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

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 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. 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

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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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. 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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, 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. 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 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 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,

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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,

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,

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

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