I was bored this evening here in the old radio shack, and with nothing much drawing my interest on the ham bands, I decided to tune my IC-746PRO down thru the old CB band.
The band had some skip activity present, but I tuned past that. I was looking for locals, and I was not disappointed.
On Channel 39 I found some folks talking. One was talking very excitedly about — of all things — emergency communications!
I spent some time monitoring, just trying to figure out the context of the conversation.
The guy doing most of the talking was very excited about organizing for the purpose of helping emergency communications. I found out that he was referring explicitly to REACT, the old CB group.
At its peak 30 years ago, REACT was only a minor success. My community had a REACT team, and members of my family were part of it. We monitored Channel 9 and we had “coffee breaks” — we set up near the interstate and invited folks to come by our little booth on wheels for free coffee and a doughnut. It was a great deal of fun.
REACT members locally also helped travelers with directions and called police for help. In the era before everyone had a cellphone, CB had more of a purpose for calling for help out on the highway.
Well, the guy talking on the CB tonight wasn't talking in the context of how much help he and a group might provide. His conversation — and his excitement — was about the radios he could install in his car, and the “coolness” of what it would be like to be on the same par as firefighters and other emergency workers.
He went on to tell his friend how that he would have the “right” to put emergency lights on his vehicle as a REACT member, and that in an emergency, he and his group would get to use ham radio frequencies. After all, all of his group had export CB radios with illegal access to the amateur 10-meter band — they could use those frequencies for emergency use!
And this guy also had a 2-meter radio he could use — although he didn't have a license for it. Yeah, and he and his group could also get approval to have amateur radio or EMA license plates on their vehicles.
Oh, and don't forget the official IDs they would carry — with these, he explained that he and the group could get past police roadblocks since they would identified as “the good guys.”
Other benefits include running scanners mobile without impunity, and the use of all the public service frequencies. Heck, this guy knows a guy with an old 100-watt police radio — I'll bet we could run that mobile and use the stake bed hole in his pickup truck bed for an antenna mount. Or maybe they could get an old ambulance for the gear.
The funniest part was the guy he was talking too. The fellow talking would go on for a bit, and then unkey the microphone. His buddy only would key the mike and respond with a slow “10-4”, or “Ten-dash-four” or “42 roger,” or some other version of that. He was listening, but didn't know what to say most of the time.
Clearly this guy is a whacker — a guy who wants to play cop. His conversation centered on how cool it would be and how it would raise eyebrows for he and his crew to be “official.” After all, he's betting that the Red Cross and the police are just dying for free help from willing volunteers!
His enthusiasm was interesting, but he clearly had little interest in much beyond uniforms, badges and equipment.
They are having an organizational meeting in December, and I'm tempted to just show up. Not that I want to squelch any real volunteers, but these guys' interpretation of the rules leaves a lot to be desired. And frankly, there's been someone using our repeater to call someone, and both callsigns are bogus. I strongly suspect the individual who was talking tonight is the guy who was using the bogus calls on the repeater. The pirate has called a number of times on the repeater, though only one transmission at a time, with no response. I'm going to keep monitoring and I feel strongly we'll get his admission to illegal use of the 2-meter band.
One of our club member is an Official Observer, so I may bring his attention to it too. The pirate 2-meter user has apparently been hitting all the area repeaters.
—-
In eBay action, my Vibroplex Original De Luxe in the case arrived and it was indeed as beautiful as it looked in the auction. What a jewel!
I've been playing with the latest Cedar Rapids bug I received via eBay, and it's a honey.
Well, that's about all for now. 73 es CUL de KY4Z dit …. dit ….