I first got interested in two-way radio communications when I was approximately 8 years old which was in the year 1987. For Christmas I had received a pair of Fisher Price Sky Talker walkie talkies. As far as toy walkie talkies go these were the top of the line model at that time. I was with my family at my grandmother’s house in Auburn, Massachusetts for the holiday. When I turned on the walkie talkies I found that a young girl my age down the street had received a pair of walkie talkies and we talked to each other for a good 2 hours. I lived many miles away in the next town over called Worcester and didn’t go to my grandmother’s house very often. I never spoke with that young lady again, however that one instance lit a fire for me that 30+ years later is still burning strong. After Christmas passed by I used those Sky Talker walkie talkies frequently with my sister and our friends. At some point in the next year or two the novelty of these walkie talkies wore off and I moved onto other things. I put the walkie talkies away in my closet and forgot about them. One summer day around the age of 12 in the year 1991 I was cleaning out my closet and came across the pair of walkie talkies which I had put away due to focusing on other pass times. I grabbed a 9-volt battery and installed it in one of the walkie talkies. I turned it on and vaguely heard someone in the distance. It was intelligible, however I left it on and I placed the walkie talkie in my windowsill. I continued to clean out my closet and grabbed something heavy out of my closet, which I don’t remember what exactly it was, but I placed it in the windowsill and it laid against the walkie talkie, bending the antenna of the walkie talkie along the frame of the screen window. Suddenly I was picking up several radio signals, one which seemed to be coming from a location a good 2 miles away. I was floored and continued to do that for a good year from time to time. I enjoyed listening to what I could pick up. I spent some of my allowance on batteries as needed. Thankfully the 9 volt batteries lasted for quite some time as long as I wasn't transmitting.
The next year when I was 13 in 1992 I would visit my cousin John “Jack” Nivila at his place of employment, which was the New England Science Center, now known as the Ecotarium located in Worcester, Massachusetts. Jack was in charge of the security department. In his office (a guard shack) Jack had a vintage radio communications scanner that had 4 channels and was crystal controlled. Naturally he had it programmed for the local police and fire departments. I would sit there for hours enamored with what I was listening to. Around the same time I got interested in astronomy, again at the New England Science Center. The curator of astronomy Dr. Ed Frederick invited me one evening to join a meeting of the local astronomy club, Aldrich Astronomical Society, which was temporarily meeting at the Science Center during the winter due to harsh conditions not allowing access to the observatory which was in the middle of the woods on the Holden/Rutland, Massachusetts line. Once the winter of 1991-1992 was over we began meeting again at the clubhouse on the Holden/Rutland, Massachusetts line. One of the club members Craig Cortis as well as another member John Glass had inexpensive Radio Shack CB radios in their cars. Craig never talked on it and used to just listen or as it is known in the CB world as “sandbagging.” John Glass would occasionally talk on the radio using the handle “Stargazer”. Every Friday night the club would meet and quite frequently either John or Craig would take the time to allow me to listen to the CB radio in their vehicles. Over the next year I really became interested in getting a CB radio of my own. I begged my parents to purchase one for me. When December came around my parents told me that for Christmas they would pick me up an inexpensive CB radio, and that they would take me to go pick one out. Naturally I wanted one that I could take with me everywhere. I chose a GE 3-5979c handheld CB radio, which at the time was one of the nicest handheld CB radios that you could find on the market. You can still find them new in box on eBay. These walkie talkies had 3 power settings, 40 channels, and a 57” telescoping antenna. After I picked it out it seemed like the following week crawled by at a snails pace while I waited for Christmas Day to come so I could open up the box and use my new CB Radio.
On December 25, 1992 I opened up the box of my new CB radio that I had picked out about a week before. It was like I was looking at a pot of gold. I wish I could have seen the look on my face when a year of anticipation of owning my own CB Radio came to fruition. I would soon find out that my radio was a toy compared to what most people in the area had, but to me it was like I had won the lottery. I took that radio with me everywhere I went including when I was running errands with my family, to the astronomy meetings, and even brought it with me to school to listen to during study period and when I ate lunch. I decided to use the handle “717” which is my birthday. Keep in mind the astronomy meetings I attended were held about 25 minutes from Worcester in the middle of nowhere, so only the strongest stations out of Worcester were able to reach the meeting site, as Worcester is built around a handful of large hills. I was under the impression that there weren’t many people using the CB radio in the area, but I wanted one anyway. I lived on top of one of the largest hills in Worcester. So on Christmas of 1992 after opening the box I plugged in the power adapter of my walkie talkie and extended the 57 inch antenna. Upon turning on the CB radio I found that most of the channels were quiet, mostly due to it being Christmas. There were conversations going on on two channels periodically throughout the day. I spent every minute that day listening to the radio. I never keyed up to attempt to speak to anyone as I wanted to soak in everything that I could to prepare me to fit in with the locals. I didn't want to be overzealous and alienate any potential CB radio friends by acting like a fool. I have to admit I was very disappointed that day as the band was very quiet, but at the time I hadn’t realized it was because of the holiday.
On December 26, 1992 I woke up and the first thing I did was make myself a bowl of cereal in the kitchen and ran into the TV room which was on the backside of the house which looked out towards the city. When I turned that walkie talkie on I was beyond floored. Every last one of the 40 channels had conversations present. You heard right, every last one of them. It wasn’t even skip booming in either. It was all locals. It seems I joined the CB world during the year where many others had as well which only added on to the hundreds already active on air in the local area. I spent most of the day listening in on conversations in order to attempt to grasp some of the jargon being used and to learn proper radio etiquette. I remember calling out for a few radio checks which we responded to by locals. After the radio check I simply thanked the person who answered me without introducing myself. I did the same thing for a few days as I continued to learn the basics of the craft.
Over the next few months I started introducing myself to the locals. If it weren’t for the elevation of my residence I wouldn’t have gotten out very far due to the fact that I was operating a walkie talkie, but I managed to hit the majority of the city from my unobscured location high up on the hill. I kept track of everyone I talked to in a logbook and at the time I had made a list of about 250 people during my first several months on the radio. I didn’t necessarily talk to them all, however if I heard people stating their location on the air while listening to conversations I wrote it down. I must have rewritten that list countless times as I attempted to keep it in alphabetical order. CB radio was booming at that time in my area. I seemed to have lived on that little CB radio for quite some time. The first thing I did when I came home from school was do my homework while listening to the CB radio and then I would spend the rest of the evening chatting it up with the locals. I even had a set schedule where I would be on certain channels at certain times on certain days to chew the rag with various groups of people. One day I was talking to someone who I hadn’t talked to before and I recognized his voice. I would come to find out that he was in my music class at Burncoat Middle School. His name was Nicholas Beane and he used the handle Big Dog. His best friend also had a CB radio. I don’t recall his friends’ real name, noting that I never met his friend, but his handle was Tails which I believe he took from the Sonic The Hedgehog video game. I remember Tails had some sort of voice synthesizer on his electronic musical keyboard and he used to play around with it using people’s handles. I thought it was so cool. He would cruise the band and give people a little musical performance using their handle on the synthesizer. Thankfully the adults were welcoming of us youngsters into their circles and put up with our sometimes immature behavior.
Big Dog, whom eventually changed his handle to “HB”, short for home boy, and his friend Tails started the nightly “Worcester Area Radio Network”. I don’t recall which channel it was held on, but every evening beginning around 7pm people would check in on the channel and hold conversations or move to a different channel to have a conversation. The group quickly grew and had at least 100 members. I don’t believe the group lasted longer than a year as Nicholas lost interest in CB radio, but I loved the short lived group. It was the highlight of my evening every night. It made me feel like I was a part of something bigger than me. I remember a few times I ran the radio net for him during its peak when both he and Tails were unable to do so.
I remember every night around 830pm I would tune to channel 25 and speak to about 3 or 4 older gentleman about the latest news and I would school them about what was going on in the field of astronomy. I don’t recall any of their handles, but I enjoyed talking to them more than anyone else. These older gentlemen welcomed me into their little circle and I couldn’t have been happier.
My sister Amy took interest in the CB radio and began to use it frequently under the handle Blue Heron and then later on Owl. She was very interested in birds at the time and wanted to become an ornithologist. Her interest in using my CB radio didn’t last longer than 6 months or so. She hasn’t used a CB Radio in the 25 years since then.
I recall using that walkie talkie for approximately a year. I believe it was Christmas of 1993 when my parents picked me up a Radio Shack TRC-501 mobile CB radio from the local Radio Shack along with a cheap mobile antenna.
After spending some time mounting that antenna on a metal musical record box in the attic of the house my cousin Jack made for me a mounting plate and attached it to the side of the house outside of my 2nd story bedroom window so I could mount the magnetic mount antenna outside of the house. Albeit it was bottom of the line equipment (my family was in great financial difficulty) it gave me a mile or two more of range and better audio output and receive than my walkie talkie. Sure the walkie talkie used to come with me everywhere, but that mobile CB radio was always with me on a power supply in the house and in the car running off of the cigarette lighter. I was able to talk to more people and I recall my list of handles reached to over 400. I changed my handle with the new CB radio and began using “Enterprise” as I was (and still am) a big Star Trek fan. I should say I am still a huge Star Trek fan. More than anything else I loved taking long car rides with that mobile CB radio. My dad humored me and would do this for me. Gas prices were not even a buck a gallon at the time so it was no worry to him and he enjoyed having father son time. He never spoke on the CB radio himself however he enjoyed listening to my conversations.
I remember one day in particular where I dragged the mobile CB radio and antenna up to my grandmother’s house on the top of Jerome Ave (Packachoag Hill) in Auburn, MA. I set up the radio on the second floor and put the antenna in the attic. The magnetic mount wasn’t grounded and I can only imagine how poor the SWR was. I recall my cousin Christopher and I tuned to channel 24 which is where “Spaz”, whom lived on Belmont Hill in Worcester, and her group of friends used to hang out. She was a bit of an egotist, at least in my mind, and my cousin and I started keying up making all kinds of a ruckus. Being a cheap radio shack setup and the fact that we were a good half dozen miles (as the crow flies) from Spaz we didn’t cause enough noise to keep her from having her conversation, but we made enough noise to annoy the hell out of her. I recall at the time Spaz was in her early 20’s and had a bit of a CB attitude because she was the Queen of Belmont Hill, meaning she had the loudest CB radio setup and everyone in her age group seemed to worship her. I rarely acted like a fool on the CB radio, however this was one of the very few times. It usually occurred when I had an occasional friend over and wanted to have what I thought was fun at my young age.
The people with the most elaborate cb radio stations at the time in the Worcester, Massachusetts area hung out on channels 30 and 33. I remember conversing with the likes of SL, Mama Sweets, Sleazy Easy, T-Bone, Tuna, Triple S, and a special needs kid who used the handle Bluejay. He used a cheap mobile CB radio set up like me but he had it in his basement with the antenna on a washing machine. He had a 1 mile range at best, but due to the city being inundated with CBers he had enough people to talk to to keep him happy and many people would talk to him. I also remember talking to “Grave Digger” whom ran the local CB radio shop in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts across the street from Flynn's Truck Stop. Digger closed the shop up for good sometime during 2005. I kid you not when I say at most times during the day and early to middle evening every frequency always had decent conversations going on. The amount of CBers in and around Worcester was just amazing.
When I was 15 I picked up an under the table job working for my Uncle (who my Aunt divorced in the mid 1990s), whose name was Rich. He owned a one man painting and wallpapering outfit. I just worked with him that summer of 1994, but I saved up enough money to purchase a Realistic Navaho TRC-492 base station CB radio.
I had the same antenna but I definitely had better audio transmission and receive with that CB radio. The higher quality speaker and noise filters allowed me to pull out weaker signals from the background noise. I couldn’t talk to the people behind the weaker signals, but I took great joy in listening to them. I began experimenting with my magnetic mount antenna around the outside of the house to see where I got the best reception. I kept a running log of radio checks to a handful of people and asked them to rate how I sounded on a scale of one to ten. I managed to mount it on top of one of the metal chimneys on the house, which is where I seemed to get the best performance. It only gave me an extra half to full mile at best depending on the direction, but I gladly took that boost in range. I ended up getting that list of CB radio operator handles to a good 500 strong. I now wish that I had kept that list for nostalgic reasons but I tossed it when I moved out of the house around the age of 17 1/2 which I will get into further in just a moment. Anyway, I absolutely was in love with CB radio operation and I spent almost every free minute engaged in the hobby. With the purchase of my new CB radio base station I once again changed my handle with the new radio to “Stargazer” which John Glass no longer used as he was no longer actively using his CB radio and he had told me he didn’t mind if I used it. Besides, when he was semi active on the CB radio he only spoke to a small group of people in the Paxton area and my CB radio station had no chance of transmitting that far away as the largest hill in the area known as Airport Hill was between me and Paxton.
I remember at the time single sideband (SSB) wasn’t too big yet in the Worcester area and I vaguely knew what it was, but one day in particular when I was approximately 16 I remember talking to T-Bone and he asked if I wanted to hear his impression of Donald Duck. I said yes and he (I didn’t know it immediately) switched over to single sideband and started talking. When he switched back over I asked what he had done and he started telling me about single sideband. Well I decided that I had to have a CB radio capable of single sideband. I had some money in the bank as I was working part time at McDonalds. I went to Radio Shack and picked out the Realistic TRC-485.
It opened a whole new realm for me and doubled my enjoyment of the hobby. With the switch to sideband my output signal jumped from 4 watts to 12 watts which greatly extended my range locally. I was able to hit some of the smaller nearby towns. I continued to use the handle Stargazer as people within the range of my CB radio station were not using alphanumerical call signs. I do remember one day in particular I was on the roof of my mother’s house with my walkie talkie and skip was flying all over. I knew that I had virtually no chance of talking long distance as I was using cheap equipment and CB radio was so popular that the channels were inundated with CBers. I started calling out general calls and low and behold someone answered me. At first I thought it was a local pulling my chain, but it was someone from Chicago, Illinois. I don’t recall his handle but I was in heaven. It was my first skip contact, and believe it or not it was on a walkie talkie. This is a somewhat rare feat for a walkie talkie to shoot skip using a stock antenna, but it can be done under the right conditions. I don’t think I slept that night, and it was all I talked about for weeks. In 2010 or 2011 I had purchased a Magnum 1012 walkie talkie with a high gain antenna which is the greatest walkie talkie on the market. It even has side band. I was able to talk skip on it a few times from the peak of Mt. Wachusett in Princeton, Massachusetts. Albeit rare, walkie talkies can manage to make contact across the country if your location and conditions permit. I had a top of the line high gain antenna installed on that walkie talkie which definitely help my attempts at long distance communications. I still attempt to make DX contacts using that walkie talkie, but now do it from Mt. Washington in Sargent’s Purchase, New Hampshire at an altitude of 6288 feet.
As a teenager my CB radio hobby continued until I was approximately 17 1/2 years old when I moved in with my girlfriend at the time. My home life was volatile and I had to get out. I was in dire straights one week and hunger drove me to pawn off all my CB radios for chump change just so I could afford to eat. Having a girlfriend at the time I had gotten away from using my CB radios as I had other more pressing interests at that age *wink wink*. At the same time I stopped attending the astronomy club meetings as well because I didn’t have a ride there anymore and I couldn’t begin to afford a car. No one in the club lived remotely anywhere near me so I couldn’t carpool. Life took me into a new direction and I didn’t get back into the CB radio world until sometime in 2002.
It was 2002 I was living with my dad, and had been since 1999 after my relationship with my fiancee at the time had ended. I was at odds with myself trying to find a 2nd hobby. I had taken up bodybuilding and loved it, but that only takes up so much time. I was working as a supervisor for a corporate security & safety company at the time and we had just upgraded our radio repeater system. I was reading the technical manual for our repeater and got back to thinking about my old CB radio hobby which I hadn’t thought much about in years. I thought back to how much fun I had playing around with CB radios in my younger years. My job permitted me to use CB radios in the mobile vehicle and from the roof of the office building overlooking downtown Worcester. At that time I decided to search around the internet for information about the latest CB radios and came across the CB Radio Forum. I posted in the forum detailing what my intentions were with the hobby, as well as my budget, and asked for recommendations from the members pertaining to which radio might be best for me. I decided, with their help, on a Galaxy 959 mobile CB radio.
I purchased a power supply for the CB radio so I could use it in my house as well as my dad’s car. For some time I just used with a Penetrator mobile magnetic mount antenna which I had mounted on the railing outside of the front door of the house.
Once again I was back on the air and chose the handle “Extreme” which my old pro wrestling persona was known as. I am a former professional wrestler and fitness clothing model, and Extreme was my stage name. In addition Extreme would eventually become my legal last name in 2011.
I once again spent all of my free time on the CB radio. Even using a mobile antenna mounted on a railing in one of the lowest areas of Worcester I still was able to make contact with some people. However I was sad to find though that unlike the past where all 40 channels were packed with CBers, there were no more than 15 or so locals still on the radio. You heard me right, 15 compared to at least 500 only a handful of years earlier. The reason for this was the popularity of cell phones and online social media forums & chat programs.
It turns out that several people bought some heavy wattage amplifiers and were acting like little children and did nothing but prevent people from having the conversations. Over time most of the local CB radio operators became so frustrated that their equipment either collected dust or the operators sold their equipment and got away from the hobby all together. In fact in 2006 there were still a few troublemakers, known as sh*tstainers, but they are different people than the ones whom had done it years before. There was a guy in his 50’s, whom had obvious mental issues. He liked to go on channel 19 and play some gun and missile noises off of a kids toy he had. He talked nonsense and just pissed people off. There is also a guy whom drove through the city in his car and would park at Kelly Square near the RT 290 overpass. The guy never has an intelligent conversation and does nothing but repeats “Bababooey” and “bump the boey” over and over again in different speeds and fashion. He used to be a taxi driver and was permanently injured by an Airborne Express van in a car accident. He decided he would pay back the driver by making it difficult for people to talk on channel 19 by using a 1000 watt amp and shouting nonsense all day. Many years later the state police caught up to him when he was running his mouth and covering up a conversation they were having with a driver in distress on that channel. There was another clown whom went around whispering that he has no socks or panties on. There was another guy whom had some echo microphone and he would say “goodbye” in a fast weird manner and echoes it rapid fire for long periods of time. As I update this on Monday, October 1, 2012 I find that the last guy mentioned is still around doing the same thing. I had just taken a road trip down to south central Pennsylvania with my girlfriend and heard him doing it down there which lead me to believe it was a transient trucker doing this. The sad thing is it isn’t kids with toys doing this but grown adults. I can say the panties guys didn’t try and cover up conversations when the did his childish games, but the guy in his 50’s, the bababooey guy, and the “goodbye” guy did. I know where the gun guy lived as I was driving through his area on the Rt 190 one day and he keyed up, and looking up the hill I could see a house with a CB radio antenna on it. I am harmless, but others weren’t and I remember that one day he had upset the wrong person, and they went up to his house and cut his antenna coax and tore down his antenna. He mounted a new antenna and continued his antics. A group of local truckers got together and once again tore down his antenna. They confronted him about his behavior and the guy got the picture and stopped acting up.
Anyway, back to 2002. I heard all kinds of DX (long distance communication) rolling, but with my limited equipment I was unable to shoot skip (DX) myself. I decided that it was time to upgrade my CB radio station antenna. I purchased a Spectrum 1600 5/8 wave lambda aerial antenna and had it installed by Ron aka Digger (the guy who ran the CB shop in Shrewsbury on RT 20.
With my new found antenna I was once again in heaven. I enjoyed shooting skip so much due to the fact that there was little local talk on the radio (short of channel 19 which is usually packed due to a half dozen major roads passing through the area). However the lack of local banter didn’t seem to bother me very much. I found maybe 2 or 3 people still around from the old days, but even their usage of the CB was sporadic at best. Looking for a recognizable call sign I joined the American Eagle SSB CBers Club and the Sierra Fox DX Club where I picked up the call signs AE813 and 2SF1701. In 2006 I ended up taking over American Eagle SSB CBers Club as Director of Operations as the few guys that had been running the group has either moved away or were no longer active in the CB radio hobby.
For many years every summer I had gone on vacation to the White Mountains in New Hampshire and spend much of my time on top of Mt Washington and Mt Kancamagus. As a kid with my cheap walkie talkie I loved bringing it up to the mountain tops including the aforementioned mountains and Loon Mountain, Atttitash Mountain, and Wildcat Mountain to see how far I could reach. I just had to have a walkie talkie again. I ended up picking up a Cobra 38WXST. For some odd reason I also picked up a Cobra 37ST which I never actually used.
Someone found a Uniden Pro 340XL in the parking lot at work and after 30 days my boss gave it to me. I never used the thing, but I just added it to my collection.
I ended up becoming a couch potato due to some severe depression and didn’t shoot skip as much. I spent more time just sandbagging on channel 19 which was busy with chatter from sunrise to well after the sun went down. I would often help drivers find their destination. You will notice a large gap in my DX log where I didn’t make any contacts.
In May 2004 my dad and I realized we had to sell the house and move for financial reasons. The house just needed too much work and expenses were rising, which my dad couldn’t afford. In June 2004 we decided to move to a co-op in Auburn, MA. When I reading the bylaws of the park I was very disappointed to read that antenna’s were not permitted. Not being able to have a CB radio base station I knew that just having a mobile would depress me, being unable to have a base at that point in my life, so I sold off all of my equipment. I ended up getting very involved with the local pro-wrestling scene again (I used to be a pro wrestler until I retired in 2006 due to chronic illness) as a security guy and bodyguard to pass the time as well as rejoining the astronomy club now that I had my newly purchased 2004 Corolla, which was my first vehicle.
In early 2006 my dad was walking around one of the lower streets of the co-op which we never really went down to (it’s a big park with over 100 houses on 4 streets.) During his walk he noticed a few houses had decent sized antennas. He mentioned it to me, and I thought hey, I would love to get back into CB radio again more than anything. I missed being involved with the hobby greatly. So I spoke to the co-op manager and low and behold even though it was in the bylaws that we couldn’t have one, I was told I could have an antenna on my roof. He told me it was written into the bylaws about 25 years earlier, but current management didn’t mind antennas at all. I told him of the dimensions of the Spectrum 1600 antenna (21 ½ feet tall with 8 feet wide radials) and he told me it wouldn’t be a problem as long as it didn’t interfere with anyone. I asked him to put it in writing because it was against the bylaws, and he did within the next few days.
I quickly went out and bought a mobile Galaxy 959 as well as another Spectrum 1600 antenna. I found out that Grave Digger had closed up his CB shop in 2005 and I had to have an antenna installer come and install the antenna for me as I lack the skills to do so. The installer had no idea how to tune the antenna, so I picked up a crude SWR meter and did the best that I could myself. I hooked up the Galaxy mobile radio to a small power pack so I could run it inside the house.
Once again I was back on the air using the handle “Extreme” on AM and 717 Central Massachusetts, 2AE813, and 2SF1701 on sideband.
In addition I picked up a Predator 10k antenna for my vehicle. I wanted the antenna properly tuned so I found a CB shop called Joe’s Electronics aka CB Whiz over an hour away in West Bridgewater. I took a drive down there and CB Whiz himself properly tuned my antenna for me with a fancy SWR meter.
I quickly fell in love with my new equipment, but skip conditions were horrible as you will note in my log as I had very few skip contacts. We were on the lower end of the sunspot cycle which directly influences long distance communications. If you wish to learn more about that please visit the “CB Radio Band” section of my website after finishing this page. Anyway, I spent most of my time sandbagging on channel 19 AM and talking on 38 lower single sideband. I began again, like I did back in the day, monitoring channel 19 AM when I went to sleep.
During the following years long distance communications conditions had picked up and as you will note in my log, when I had free time in my very busy schedule I was off shooting skip like the good old days. I also picked up a few more call signs including DX Outlaw 717 in the DX Outlaws Group. I picked up RF 717 from the CB Radio Forum Club, CDX717 from The Worldwide CDX Club, and QS1701 from the Quack Shack DX Club. I picked up PDX717 from the Pirates of DX’ing group. In addition I picked up OT717 from The Olde Timers CB Radio Club. Lastly I joined the Copper Electronics Forum DX Group and was assigned the call sign CE794. I also picked up a Fatboy Preamp which allowed me to improve my receive.
Having only the one Galaxy 959 mobile CB radio, I was dragging it in and out of the house to use it in my car as well. It became some what of a hassle, and I found myself not using the CB radio in the car and missing it greatly. I would take it with me on long road trips, but the daily switching between the house and car was too much. I really did miss having the CB radio in the car with me. In July 2006 I purchased a 2nd CB radio. One that can be used both as a mobile and a walkie talkie so I can take it with me when I am in hotels, on mountains, in other buildings etc. I picked up the Midland 75-822 which can be used both as a portable walkie talkie and a mobile radio in my vehicle. It has a removable battery pack and comes with a an adapter that plugs into your cigarette lighter in the car and also has a second cable that can hook up to a mobile CB radio antenna.
As of July 17, 2006 I had taken over the daily operations and reopened American Eagle SSB CBers Club which had closed down daily operations in 2003.
Due to other interests in my life I sort of got away from running a CB radio station for a few years beginning around 2008. I would continue to run the Midland 75-822 in my mobile, however my base station began to collect dust as the roof antenna had come down in during a bad ice storm, and I started having technical trouble with my Galaxy CB radio. My interest changed for a while to get some projects off of the ground.
I started getting that CB radio itch again and on October 15, 2011 I picked up a new Galaxy 959 CB radio. I found someone to install a new Spectrum 1600 roof antenna for me which was completed on 5/26/2012. I lack the skills to do it myself and a local ham radio operator installed it for me.
I had also picked up a GE 3-5979c CB Handheld Radio (my very first CB radio for nostalgic purposes.) I also picked up a pair of Pocketcom 2 channel CB radios simply because I thought that they looked cool. Everything else has been sold off over the years.
I was very active with the club that I run American Eagle SSB CBers Club. I hope that you will take the time to join and enjoy the club. You may visit the website by visiting http://www.AmericanEagleCB.com .
I stayed active in the CB world again until sometime in August 2013. I got very sick again and got away from the hobby as my fiancé moved in with me and I was very active in the professional wrestling and astronomy hobbies. I kept the Midland walkie talkie in my car for emergencies and used it very sporadically. Occasionally while on vacation in the White Mountains of New Hampshire I would fire it up to listen from the mountain tops.
In May of 2017 I made the decision to move to the White Mountains of New Hampshire in a town named North Conway and moved there on August 1, 2017. The thought of being able to drive up to the peak of a few mountains sparked my interest in the hobby again and I became more active on the air for a few months leading up to my big move. I enjoy using my several mobile units which broadcast through a 108” whip antenna mounted on the side of my car. No this is not a 102” whip with a spring, it is an actual 108” whip that can be found inexpensively on the internet. I also enjoy continuing to attempt to make DX contacts using my Magnum 1012 walkie talkie on sideband with an attached custom 1/8 wave antenna that my friend in the UK was able to get for me custom made at a ham radio shop out there.
On September 8, 2018 I took the exam for Amateur Radio technician Class. My license was granted on September 18, 2018 under the call sign KC1KHC. I took the test to upgrade to General Class on June 12, 2022, with the license being granted on June 15, 2022. I took the test to upgrade to Amateur Extra Class on June 22, 2o22, with the license being granted on June 24, 2022. I had applied on June 15, 2022 for the vanity call sign K1EXT to have the dual representation of my last name and my amateur radio license class. I was granted the K1EXT call sign on July 6, 2022. On July 6, 2022 I applied to be and was granted the authority as an ARRL accredited Volunteer Examiner to be able to proctor amateur radio exams for others. On July 20, 2022 I was approved to be an ARRL Field Examiner.
This will be updated as time goes on with stories or purchases of note as it has been since 2006 :)
