Ham and Radio!

[Michael Alexander]

Never knew people were still into Ham Radio's...

I got to meet a lady from Ireland in the shop today, turns out they are 3 from Ireland and one from Germany that are Ham Radio enthusiasts .... and are friends with local Ham buff , Con Con..... so they came over to play a game and use his ham radio, not sure  how it all works....

Wonder if any of them have heard of SKYPE?

      

[Mike Stenson (RIP)]

Rodger... over and out.....

http://www.freewebs.com/kg4jvi/whosonhamradio.htm


http://www.freewebs.com/kg4jvi/whosonhamradio.htm

[SandyB]

Heavy stuff the  radio ham eqpt .. I remember Don Wilson  when he used to broadcast  it  would sometimes come over  peoples Hi Fi speakers ,,   his  mercedes with the aerial ,,  if you held a flourescent tube  near and he broadcast it would start glowing ..    then  another blast remember the  CB radio  craze ????

[Bob Molloy]

Citizen Band radio? Yes, that WAS a blast from the past, Sandy.

At the time I was the Science Reporter for the Cape Times and was asked to do a weekly column on the new CB craze then was sweeping the country.

The column brought me into contact with the "good buddies" as the CB fans called themselves. I was intrigued by the jargon they spoke in calling each other on the radio, based originally on the slang used by the American long distance truckers , but becoming increasingly South Africanised with bits of Afrikaans, Fanagolo and even Yiddish thrown in. It was virtually another language.

To help out the uninitiated I used the column to give a few examples every week, then I took to writing half the column completely in CB jargon. At that stage I was approached by Don Nelson Publishers to write a book on the craze. The outcome was the South African CB Dictionary which included all the communication codes and regulations, in fact everything needed to set yourself up as a Good Buddy including advertisements for CB equipment.

It sold out in days and then went into several reprints before the craze died almost as quickly as it began, but not before I made an indecent amount of money out of it. I spent most of it building a house to replace my beach front cottage on Hout Bay beach, then the only building on the entire beach front.  The house is still standing but now a restaurant/pub called The Dunes.

It all started because illegal CB sets had been flooding into the country from the States. Users, heavily fined when identified (very difficult) began swamping the usual communications channels; shipping, aircraft etc. The Post Office eventually gave in and allocated Channels 19 to 27 or radio bandwidths, the so-called Citizen Bands, for public use with Channel 21 solely for emergency calls.

The country quickly split into calling areas known by their CB names. Sea Point was The Ghetto, Bellville was Disneyland, Joburg was Big Smoke, Hillbrow The Bronx, Hout Bay The Graveyard (surrounded by hills and hence hard to get a signal out), Ladysmith Junction City, Mitchell's Plain Dallas, Windhoek Kudu City etc, etc. 

Everyone had a "handle" (call name) for example Lady Luck, Mastermind, Medic, Tooth Fairy etc. For the column's sake I used Scribe Oh, had a base station at my house and a mobile set with a whip aerial for the car.  Several Good Buddy magazines flourished and at the height of the craze there were more than fifty CB clubs nationwide. There was also a REACT (radio emergency action team) that assisted police, ambulance and fire brigade call outs.

Few outsiders could penetrate jargon such as "breaker 10-4 where's your twenty, pick a box, ears up and good numbers buddy". Breaker is a caller trying to break into a conversation, 10-4 means he has been heard asked his location or l0-20 in the 10 code, told to choose a free channel, listen out and best wishes (good numbers in the eight code).

Speed cops were Smokey or Smokey Bear, petrol was motion lotion, Post Office inspectors looking for illegal rigs were known as Poppa Oscar. A rig was illegal if it had more than 12 watts of power. Many, known as "aerial benders" used a lot more than that but it was expensive to get caught.

Range was limited to about 30 or 40 km but with certain kinds of weather it was possible to "skip" a broadcast as far as the U.S and talk to truckers, very frowned on by Poppa Oscar.

At its height there were more than 100,000 registered Charlie Bravo (CB) users. The craze was at its height in the late 70s and early 80s and then died completely, due largely to overcrowded airspace and undisciplined callers choking the channels.

[Michael Alexander]

Nice one Bob,

Smokey and the Bandit.....

[Charles Scheepers]

Heard that Con Con's neighbours have complains with his system that is screwing with the DSTV broadcast signal .
He rekons what they are barking mad. Me says: where there is smoke, there must be fire...
Wonder how safe it is when you stand close to those antenna's? 
I know that nothing grows under HT transmission lines due to the EMF.

[henniek]

Oranjemund's fundi HAM was Malcolm Scott. Electrical foreman mining power stations . He was a "slight of hand " magician . entertaining children in town as well as on Beauvalon 

[SandyB]

So was  Don Wilson ,  lecturer at the tech in the 70's .. 

[Adriaan Van Rooyen]

there was a Van Eeden that worked at telcom.... also big in the radio ham stuff   ,also had a coin collection from all over the world....