Coast To Coast Am

Discussion in 'The Hangout' started by F22 Simpilot, Jan 10, 2019.

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  1. F22 Simpilot

    F22 Simpilot Master Survivalist
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    I listen to an AM station called Coast to Coast. I used to listen on my AM radio, but now I listen on my spy tap, aka, the Amazon Echo Dot through iHeartRadio. This is an alternative radio program that talks aboutg all kinds of things, especially the paranormal, UFOs and aliens. Well tonight they were talking about the threat of a Carrington event and an EMP. Very interesting stuff. Especially about what would happen with this country's 120 nuclear power plants.

    The issue is grave, and it's a matter of if rather than when. I think I'll send the President a letter to address this. The guest on the show tonight (who's name I can't remember) indicated that he knows some people at the White House and that the President is aware of the situation, but has it on the back burner.

    https://www.coasttocoastam.com/
     
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  2. TexDanm

    TexDanm Shadow Dancer
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    I used to listen to a lot of the old radio shows and loved them. art Bell was always good for some laughs and thoughts. There used to be a lot of AM super-stations that ran talk shows all night. These were 10,ooo watt stations and most big cities had one. Even today AM radio is the place to find talk radio. FM is nearly all music. These big AM stations broadcast sports, talk and news. Most are gone now. I think that cable TV killed them. When I was young after midnight there was no TV. There were no places open to go to so if you were a Night Owl you listened to the radio and/or talked on a radio. I ran a CB base station and had a lot of night friends. From midnight on that was about all there was to do.
     
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  3. watcherchris

    watcherchris Legendary Survivalist
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    Yeah....I liked Art Bell...

    He too was a Ham Radio Operator and I picked him up once on the airways within his group on the long wave HF bands. He was operating within a group or network of people meeting on a schedule.

    I am not into UFOs or such ..but am interested in certain technologies and advancements which find their way down into our every day lives.

    A lot of AM stations ..at night...tended to crank their power up..so it is not unusual to hear stations at night from out in the corn belts having all night talk shows. These are the super stations ...some 10,000 to 50,000 watts.

    Cable TV and such may have killed them off but I am a shortwave listener to this day and often tune in on my ham radio..which will pick up both the AM broadcasting band as well as the FM broadcasting band.

    I too ran a CB base station and did a lot of Pirate radio operations in those days before getting my ham ticket.
    Ironic now that my Ham rigs will pick up and transmit much further and on more frequencies than ever did my CB..but it was fun back then..on the CB radio.

    Used to have an olde AM radio I would listen to at night and keep it turned down low....and pick up far away stations from half way across the United States. Lots of fun listening in back then.


    Thanks,
    Watcherchris
    Not an Ishmaelite
     
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  4. TexDanm

    TexDanm Shadow Dancer
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    What I liked about running CB both on my cars, trucks and in my house was that I got to know a lot of other people that worked or lived the night life. I got friendly with several of them to the point that several of us would meet out at the local truck stop and cafe at night to visit and drink coffee or eat. This was back in the late 70s and there just wasn't much to do at night. I was pretty well known and more than once did go between between someone in trouble and the police. This was before cell phones and if you had troubles back then contacting a base station was the best you could do if you were on the road and had a problem or wreck.
     
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  5. F22 Simpilot

    F22 Simpilot Master Survivalist
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    I'm into the radio communications hobby myself, though no as much as I used to. Back in the mid 90's I had a few CBs and a nice Radio Shack digital hand held that I connected to a half wave horizontal dipole. My hand held literally blew away anyone North and South of me all due to that half wave length dipole.

    I studied an old ham radio study book off and on and thought I could pass the Novice and Technician tests. Well, flash forward a year and when my friend and I were at a ham radio convention I paid my $12 I think it was and took the test. Failed the first time and failed the second time which they allow you to do. At least back then. I have been meaning to study again to take the test, and I found a website to study for it, signed up and read some stuff, but never pursued it much. One day I just have to sit down and tackle it.

    I'm more into scanners these days, often called "police scanners" which I hate that term because a scanner can pick up more than just the police. Like aviation, railroad, fire/EMS, buses, taxis, utilities , military and all kinds of things. Now a days a great majority of the country has moved on to /\/\otorola digital P25, and with that the push for encryption is an ever increasing threat to us who use it to stay abreast of ongoing situations. Their excuse is officer safety which I think is bunk seen as how in large part police were not encrypted before and had little if any trouble with those that monitored them. Would you believe the fire department of Bismark North Dakota of all places went full blown encryption?

    A FIRE DEPARTMENT!

    NORTH DAKOTA!!!

    Unreal.

    Anyway... have dabbled with SDR some and thought about getting a HackRF and an AirSpy. I saw someone used an AirSpy and SDR# and some kind of scanning plugin and was able to scan the whole swath of the air band in like a second. Being impressed with that capability I've been meaning to do the same thing myself.
     
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  6. F22 Simpilot

    F22 Simpilot Master Survivalist
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    Oh! I said in my OP that there were 120 nuke plants. There are actually 60 in the U.S.

    Never the less, a Carrington event or EMP would cause major widespread fall out.

    Looks like Russia has 39.
     
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  7. watcherchris

    watcherchris Legendary Survivalist
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    Was on my ham radio last night in my Man Cave/Radio Room....speaking with my friend once again out some 400 miles west of me in Tennessee. We chatted on 75 meters...for about 20 minutes before I shut down and monitored the weather station.

    Cold and windy here in Virginia today. Fortunately and unlike much of the nation we have not gotten any snow. People around here have difficulty driving in the rain...much less...snow!! People around here get very stupid in the rain and the level of stupidity is amplified when it snows.



    All my HF ham rigs run and or have been modified to work on the CB bands. This was a feature I had specifically modified into them as they did not originally come this way.

    I will often tune them along with my antenna to the CB bands and say hello there to people I still know.


    Yeah....the police around here have had encryption for years on their radio. Fire and EMT....no.

    The problem in many areas is that the two legged wildlife have gotten more stupid and uncivilized and are even interfering with Fire, Police, and EMT.

    And many of the "two legged wildlife " have learned to listen to police scanners...even trunking set ups.

    Hence digital encryption is to what many PD's turned for a solution.

    I reckon it cost many cities big bucks for such an system.

    Those professional Motorola and Kenwood walkie talkies are very expensive each...much less a whole system.



    Study for your ham test F22 Simpilot...

    Today at least you don't have to know the Morse Code like back in the olde days.

    I took five tests to get to where I am today..plus the Morse Code.

    It does not hurt a prepper to know the bands and how to access them...the layout of the bands and the radios and frequency layout per band.
    In a SHTF or such you will be well ahead of most people knowing this.

    One of the things I learned/taught myself...on the CB/11 meter bands is the actual frequencies of each channel....plus the RC frequencies...all five of them.

    One of the things we would occasionally do on CB is operate on the RC/Radio Controlled frequencies between channels 3&4. 7&8, 11&12, 15&16, 19&20. But most of the time we would operate above or below the CB bands as we learned certain city services were running on the radio controlled frequencies.

    It was irritating each year after Christmas as so many parents would get their kids radio controlled cars and trucks and they would block up the RC frequencies until their parents got tired of buying batteries or they broke these toys.
    Sometimes we would tune into the RC channels and stop their cars mid stride by keying our microphones but mostly waited for the batteries to run out.

    The hams I ran into when I was still on CB taught me how to build my own antennas...mostly dipoles but I built an 11 meter yagi beam.

    When I got my ham ticked I was successful in building J pole antennas for VHF/UHF frequencies. Also built a Quad four element beam.

    My long wire HF band antenna is a wire loop.....500 feet of black insulated 12 gauge wire from a roll bought at Lowes. Keep a spare roll in my garage if needed for repairs or replacement. Fed by ladder line.

    I am ever grateful to the olde timers for this skill and knowledge.

    IN a SHTF /TEOTWAWKI...making/fabricating a resonant transmitting antenna for a specific band/bands will be a skill in demand. So too might be morse code.



    I keep a battery operated ShortWave set here and another like it at work in my locker.

    I keep the batteries in my pocket....six AA type batteries...four for my radio and two spares for my mag lite. If you do not use the radio for awhile you do not want the batteries leaking in the rig...so I remove them before putting the radio away.

    But this radio...a Tecsun 660 will pick up the CB bands as well as shortwave and ham..even SSB traffic via a Beat Frequency Oscillator/BFO.

    A roll up antenna is a must for better reception or any kind of lengthy wire which can be attached to the telescoping antenna to give better reception.

    I have an SDR set up but never used it having this Shortwave radio.


    Thanks,
    Watcherhris
    Not an Ishmaelite
     
    Last edited: Jan 21, 2019
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  8. TexDanm

    TexDanm Shadow Dancer
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    I've thought about setting up with another CB base station. It was really handy because I had radios in all my cars and trucks and even had CB hand held radio. This was LONG before 1mobil phones and we used them a lot like people use phones now to stay in touch and even make contact in an emergency. I could contact my wife as long as she was in town and when I went fishing I carried the hand held in case I got hurt. You could contact a base station and get them to call your home and get your wife to talk to you on the radio or if you were in trouble send help. In the event of a disaster that didn't take out all electronics they might be useful in that area again. It won't take much to take our the cell phones and not much more to take the land lines down. A good CB will cover a huge area when you are talking about maybe walking distances. Information from an area about 25 miles radius would be more important immediately than info from 400 miles away. I will probably have ears on in the SW bands but not talking. Ham will be about all there will be as far as news about the world situation.
     
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  9. watcherchris

    watcherchris Legendary Survivalist
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    The advantage and even drawback of a CB is that they are simplex...radio to radio.

    The advantage and drawback of 2 meters and or 400 MHZ is that they are duplex ..or if you so set them up ..they can also do simplex.

    Duplex means operating through a repeater which can receive your signal and resend it out to another radio with more power...thus more range....and a clearer reception over further ranges.

    The drawback is that you are dependent on electricity at another location.

    At these frequencies your distance is limited in FM mode..particularly simplex. Using SSB can get you out further particularly if both simplex station have horizontally polarized directional antennas/beams. This is true on CB as well...polarization of your directional antenna.

    If power goes out ....best to have backup of any kind not dependent on the wall socket. The repeaters will go down in a power outage. Some have battery back up but not most.

    I used an olde car battery after Hurricane Isabelle way back and it worked out fine with a home made emergency antenna...on 2 meters. But I could also have used my 10/11 meter Ranger radio...and an olde CB antenna...but chose 2 meters.
    I did not operate from my vehicles here..but used a make shift base station and kept close to home. The radio was for sampling via other hams what was going on out there.

    Some kind of back up power needs to be in the mix.

    I believe out there where you are at Texdanm...most would have CBs.


    One of the most efficient antennas I had for the CB frequencies back then ..pound for pound ..was a 5/8 ground plane.
    This seemed to work noticeably better than the legendary Starduster antenna.

    I have no idea what kind of antennas are available for the CB bands now days as I use a tuner to electrically adjust my 500 foot long wire to those bands.
    The limit on my set up is that most of this antenna is horizontal...not vertical ..and most CB rigs are vertically polarized.

    Yeah...it was so as well with me..and CB ...long before cell phones were around.


    Exactly correct...which is why I had the CB bands modified into my HF Ham rigs...though I can use 75 meters locally as well and have so done. I can also use 160 meters locally and have so done but for some reason prefer the 75 meter band.

    Ironically the really long range ham bands...17 meters and 20 meters.....18.068 to 18.168 MHZ and 14.000 to 14350 MHZ are bands I prefer not to use...often too crowded for me and too many running high power and I am not particularly interested in talking to someone across the world for whom I do not know. I did enough of that as a radio pirate on the CB bands. Skip does not interest me that much.


    By the way...if SHTF or TEOTWAWKI....all bets are off...at to what frequencies to use...power too....but Operational Security will become very very important as well...no matter what frequency or band one chooses to use. Choose wisely.


    I used to have a D&A Hawk single tube amplifier...which I used to drive a 350 watt amp....on 11 meters years ago.

    I would lower the drive on this Hawk and set it up for audio swing..not dead carrier. Same with the bigger amp...swing ..not dead carrier.
    My radio was set up this way too..for audio AM swing not dead carrier. SSB mode was a different set up on the amp.
    This was something some of the olde timers taught me. Makes your tubes last longer too..without hard constant dead carrier being used. Tubes can get expensive.

    Me and my Friend out in Tennessee learned quickly to avoid those ridiculous head to head type of CB ers who liked to unzip to see who had the biggest one. We avoid hams like this to this day too. No use for such pubescent thinking among us. Waste of good electrons too. Tubes cost money... We both hate it when hams start acting like undisciplined CB wildlife we used to run into years ago. But there are hams out there like that.

    Fortunately for us we are both Extra Class Hams and have qualified for extra frequency privileges where most Hams do not have this class of license. This is where we go to get away from thick traffic conditions.
    We used to do the same on CB years ago but without the license privileges.
    I reckon you could say I was two legged CB wildlife back then!!!!

    Gave all those 11 meter amps away when I retooled to the ham bands...to someone I judged could think and not react....on the bands. Today ...they too have their ham license. Wonder if they still have those amps or passed them on, in like manner, to someone who could think??


    My non Ishmaelite .02,

    Watcherchris
     
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  10. watcherchris

    watcherchris Legendary Survivalist
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    Both my friend and myself...on ham and also back in the days of CB had good teachers...and we listened carefully to them.

    They taught us how to conduct ourselves as Gentlemen on the radio...

    It was not that we could not carry on as two legged wildlife...but we preferred not to so do.
    Anyone could do that.

    My friend and I have been very fortunate to have Gentlemen as teachers...both in ham radio and on the CB bands.

    And people notice things like that..who can carry themselves well and who cannot.


    There were three of us who all had Moonraker 4 directional beam antennas back in our CB days.

    Include my friend who moved to Tennessee..and that made four of us with Moonrakers...except........

    My friend back n the CB days had co phased Moonrakers....two Moonraker beams side by side. That was quite a set up....expensive and complex..but wow...would that set up would get out and was also very tight on the receive.

    Occasionally we would get people on the air who would try to interfere with us and our rigs...thinking they were doing something. You know...who had the biggest one and that sort of thing.

    We would lock up our beams between switching polarities and working the SSB function we found that we could get through most dead carriers.

    We would switch to SSB mode and use the clarifier to "Zero Beat" or "Skim " the audio signal out of the dead carrier. So few people ever figured this out. This is one of the skills the olde timers taught us and it came in handy many many times.
    Between skimming and working the polarity on our beams it was seldom that anyone could get in between us. They just never figured it out. Astonishing. People thought we were running all kinds of power and we were not. We could ...but the skill set was to be able to do it without running all kinds of power.

    It got to be fun to see if anyone could get in between us. A challenge to see if we had the "Right Stuff."

    Or as some of the olde timers would say...."Never let them see you sweat!!"


    We also learned to run what was called "Split Frequency." Many radios today are set up or have a program in them by which it can be set up to transmit on one frequency and receive on another as you key up your microphone. It automatically switches as one pushes their microphone to talk and switches to receive when you let go the push to talk.

    This also gets one away from a lot of wildlife out there.

    All my HF ham rigs can do this..."Split Frequency."

    Combine split frequency with changing polarization on your antenna and you really have something.


    And now you know the rest of the story.


    Watcherchris
    Not an Ishmaelite
     
    Last edited: Jan 21, 2019
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  11. watcherchris

    watcherchris Legendary Survivalist
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    I use this radio on 2 meters and 440 MHZ from my base station on occasion.
    It is a Wouxan 920 P dual band rig capable of putting out some 10/25/45 watts depending how one selects from the menu.

    These new rigs are menu drive type rigs and it takes some doing to get used to them...after that familiarization one is fine.

    This rig also has a scrambler in it ...a voice scrambler which is one of the features which drew me to it. My friend out in Tennessee has one too and we would use these rigs often here locally...before he moved...and mostly on 2 meters.
    Often we did fine on just 10 watts locally.

    We also had other rigs by which we would use 2 meters SSB and turn our power down below 5 watts. We verily liked low power SSB mode of operation.

    Here ..this rig...

    https://www.amazon.com/Wouxun-KG-UV920P-Dual-Mobile-Radio/dp/B00DQNOB44





    Out in my garage I have an olde 10/11 meter rig which is more than 20 years olde and of course no longer made.

    It is a Ranger AR 3300...digital type radio with light emitting type diode displays. That tells you how olde it is.


    It will work from 26.000 to 29.999 MHZ. That is a lot of coverage for most antennas so it helps to have a good tuner...not a matcher ..but a good antenna tuner.

    This AR 3300 will work on the entirety of the CB bands and has about 10 watts of output power on AM mode...but I cut it back so as not to overdrive the solid state amplifier I have hooked up to it.
    There are no channel buttons on it so you have to know the exact frequency numbers of the channels you want to use...and put them in.
    This rig will also scan the frequencies electronically as well as do split frequency operation.

    I run it out in my garage on an olde car battery.

    https://www.rigpix.com/mischam/ranger_ar3300.htm


    Thanks,
    Watcherchris

    Not an Ishmaelite
     
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  12. TexDanm

    TexDanm Shadow Dancer
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    My base was basically a put together system with a midland mobile 4o channel radio on a slide mount. I had a 12 volt power source for it and when I put it in and plugged in my D104 Power mike it talked real well. I had an old astro plane antenna up about 40 feet with that old school coaxial cable that was as big around as my thumb. For use in an emergency I would have little interest in talking really long distance and a lot of interest in local affairs. When you are talking walking distances and such 20 miles is a LOOONG way off. With most people off the bands I suspect that they will be a lot easier to talk on than they used to be.
     
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  13. watcherchris

    watcherchris Legendary Survivalist
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    Yup..Texdanm...

    Most base station rigs for CB bands are nothing more than mobile radios in a fancy case with a built in DC power supply.

    The only CB radios I saw which were significantly different inside were the Tram D201 type tube rigs. Talk about Plate Modulation...those were talking rigs..but they were tube....audio swing on them to the max.

    The actual circuit board for most CB base stations is the same one used in most mobiles...only a few more attachments points on the board...for frequency counters , clocks etc etc. The built in bases station power supplies are marginal too. I always preferred to use my own external power supply ...10 amps and sometimes 20 amps.

    I only ever had one Base Station rig...one of the President rigs ....a Washington as I remember...AM/SSB...and modified the phase lock loop to go a lot of places above and below Channel 1 and 40. Also unlocked the clarifier...a good feature to have on occasion. This allowed you to slide at least half a channel....a good trick to know when conditions got rough and people were too stupid to catch on....just go in between channels...down 5KCs...especially on SSB mode.

    After a certain point in my CB career I never bought AM radios ..but always went the AM/SSB and or Export type radios as they had much more frequency coverage than most....and or could be significantly so modified.
    The Export Rigs often had AM/FM/SSB/and CW or Morse Code which is why I liked them.

    I remember the Astro PLane antennas. They worked well. ....40 feet is a good all round altitude for such an antenna.
    One of the olde timers here had an Astro PLane antenna and it was on top of a house with a tin roof...talk about a bleeding radio...He had one hell of a ground plane reflecting off that tin roof....a good reception as well...reflecting off the tin roof..like a satellite dish....a big roof sized satellite dish...with all that tin...great ears with that tin roof set up too.

    Towards the time I got my first ham ticket..I too got tired of talking long distances or cross country/around the world. It just got olde to me. I never got interested in WAS.....Working All States or such contests.

    I would rather QSO than QSL.


    Thanks,
    Watcherhris
     
    Last edited: Jan 23, 2019
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  14. TexDanm

    TexDanm Shadow Dancer
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    Even family band radios are good for two or three miles. I've used them several times when I was traveling with someone in a separate car. For most of my uses they will probably have as much reach as I will need for keeping in touch with family locally.
     
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