[russell_w_b]

My memories are mostly of illegal CB, through which I made some life-long friends and had a great time going off on road-outings ice-skating, dancing and other social events. CB radio was the glue that held us together. Being impecunious, I sported an imitation red Firestik, but the DV27 was a better antenna. Of course, this all happened at the peak of a sunspot cycle and it was not unisual to hear stations from the U.S. booming in.

One day I was sitting in my drive, nattering away, 'talking the talk' and I stopped dead. 'What's all this about, then?' I asked myself. From that moment on I moved into amateur radio and joined the Solway Radio Club, the illegal CB being the catalyst, as it was for many. Thereafter I took up radio as a career.

In 1984, Legal CBs were being sold off very cheaply so I bought a Midland 40-channel in Dixon's for a tenner. I never used it until I owned my first house in '87, where a few of us set up a system called 'drink-link' with an NE567-based (as I recall) tone-controlled squelch. Basically, a system to see who was going out for a pint that evening. A couple of years later I fitted it with a South Midlands Communications converter strip and used it on ten metres, wortking cross-band on two metres.

I had acquired two or three more sets by then: junk-shop fodder 'because they were there' and from time-to-time I would feel the urge, but never really used them - there just wasn't the interest in Legal CB apart from being a 'sweary band' for some hauliers. I gave my sets away to a group who organised convoys to take food, clothes, etc... to Rumania. My pals from the illegal days had moved on, we'd all grown up, acquired commitments, moved away... It was 'of its time' - the Facebook of the day.

Nowadays? It seems to be popular with farmers doing collective work in the field, and 'tin-tenters' who form convoys heading off on holiday, but apart from the odd antenna on a truck here and there, I thinkit's settled down into what it was originally designed for and is being used quite sensibly.

Ironic that back in the days of illegal CB radio, we all campaigned for it to be legalised and went on protest marches and wrote to the newspapers, but when it was legalised, we lost interest and never used it!