Very interesting, Martin. Thanks.
Martin McCormick wrote:
> I've been kind of busy with work so sorry for the late reply.
> Chip Johnson writes:
>   
>>     In the US, as I recall, it's 150 miles. I used to operate on 11
>> meters and always wondered why, if we weren't supposed to talk over 150
>> miles, we were allocated a group of frequencies where it was quite easy
>> to do so a good deal of the time. Guess that's government for ya.
>>     
>
> Well, not really. It's technology and government's attempts to
> make the best of a not so good situation.
>
> 	CB in the United States started in 1958 after about ten
> years of planning. Keep in mind that about ten years means 1948.
>
> 	The idea was to have a low-cost low-power radio service
> for private citizens to use for personal communications or small
> business applications. Oh yes and it would be nice if they
> actually worked.
>
> 	What became the CB frequencies was about the highest
> frequency one could build consumer radio gear that would
> transmit and receive efficiently enough to barely qualify as
> useful.
>
> 	There was an article in "Popular Electronics" around
> 1965 or so that described the history of CB in the United States
> and it may have included the words "Big Brash Band," but I may
> also be mistaken.
>
> 	There were some pilot projects across the US in the
> early to mid fifties but 26.965 to 27.something was still the
> Eleven-meter ham band for most people. It also had something
> else on it that made it undesirable for hams. It had ISM or
> Industrial Scientific and Medical frequencies in it. Those are
> usually heaters for drying lumber or other industrial heating
> applications plus medical diathermy gear such as what your
> doctor might connect to a sore muscle in your back or leg. These
> were bad-boy transmitters that had no filtered power supplies
> and either ran straight AC on the plates of their tubes or used
> a half-wave rectifier so what you heard was a drifty loud buzz
> at 60 HZ in North America or 50 HZ from some parts of South
> America and most of the rest of the world.
>
> 	Eleven meters was a waste land full of a few hams and
> lots of diathermy which is why we lost it as a ham band.
>
> 	An old-timer told me that there were a different class
> of CB channels in the UHF range around 450 MHZ and they were
> absolutely useless. No output power and regenerative receivers.
>
> 	My own personal opinion is that eleven-meter CB should
> go away and the band returned to amateur use all over the world.
> We can make use of the skip and do so legally. Commercial uses
> of those frequencies would be hampered by the variable
> propagation characteristics.
>
> 	The FRS radios in the 462 and 467 MHZ ranges are exactly
> the kind of low-cost communications that were envisioned in the
> forties and the lack of skip means much more consistent
> operation.
>
> Martin McCormick WB5AGZ  Stillwater, OK 
> Systems Engineer
> OSU Information Technology Department Telecommunications Services Group
>
>