Hobby Radio Craze
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The CB Radio Craze is making a comeback and spreading to Amateur (ham) Radio, Family Radio Service, General Mobile Radio Service, Multi-Use Radio Service, and Radio Scanning. You can be left in the "SHTF" dark, or you can "gear up" now!........................................................................................
07-06-2025 - 6:30 AM - Good Morning, and welcome to my first journal post! It's Sunday, and there are nets scheduled across the Amateur (ham) Radio bands. That's if you like nets. They aren't for everyone. I listen to various nets from time to time, but I never check in as I have nothing of value to offer. I don't do the "checking in for the count" or "Please secure my station" thing. Whatever works for you. The CB Radio has yet to come alive in North Texas. I hear a few Parks on the Air® stations on the Amateur (ham) Radio 40-meter CW (Morse code) band. I'll listen in for now. I might try to snag a few when 20 meters opens up. On the scanner radio, Air Traffic Control is busy, and Walmart is coming alive. If you're in line at a Starbucks, leave now and go to a local coffee house in your area! You can go to Starbucks tomorrow! My Folgers Black Silk coffee is ready.
07-06-2025 - 6:45 AM - I haven't heard, nor searched for, any emergency Amateur (ham) Radio communications related to the Texas flooding disaster. I'm sure there are groups active and providing radio communications on some level.
07-06-2025 - 7:00 AM - The CB Radio is still dead in terms of long-distance conditions, and I haven't heard any local trucking traffic on Channel 19 yet. It's Sunday, so most truckers are just quietly passing through town on the highway. The skip-shooters (DXers) will be all over the band in another hour or so.
07-06-2025 - 7:05 AM - Surfing X, formerly known as Twitter, I get the sense that people are realizing the need for some form of off-the-grid radio communications. I don't know how many will follow through on those thoughts, but at least they're sharing the idea.
07-06-2025 - 8:00 AM - FEMA Daily Operations Briefing - National Current Ops / Monitoring – July 5–6, 2025
New Significant Incidents / Ongoing Ops:
• Flash Flooding – Texas
Hazard Monitoring:
• Excessive Rainfall / Flash Flooding – Southern Plains; Southeast to Mid-Atlantic
• Severe Weather – Central Plains
• Excessive Heat – Eastern U.S.
• Tropical Activity
Atlantic:
• Tropical Storm Chantal
Eastern Pacific:
• Disturbance 1 (EP96): Med (50%)
• Disturbance 2: Low (20%)
Disaster Declaration Activity:
• FMAG Approval: Nenana Ridge Complex Fire – AK
Event Monitoring:
• No significant events
07-06-2025 - 8:30 AM - The CB Radio band is wide awake with plenty of signals across the band. I hear one station in my city racking up the "DX" contacts. We're at the peak of the current solar cycle and, for the next few years, CB Radio will be the domain of the skip shooters. If that's you, the time to get a CB Radio is now!
07-06-2025 - 8:4 AM - The FCC has been regularly busting pirate radio stations and citing the property owners for allowing them to operate. I don't know what percentage of stations are operated by the property owners. If not, were the property owners given a warning? I do not know. There's no pirating happening on my property, so I'm not going to worry too much about it.
07-06-2025 - 8:45 AM - Last weekend was the annual Amateur (ham) Radio Field Day, a 24-hour "readiness" exercise with stations operating on emergency power out of parks and other remote locations. Now, the current Parks on the Air® program, for all practical purposes, is an ongoing "Field Day" of smaller proportions (solo ops) but scattered all over planet Earth. I've worked 541 of those POTA stations - using CW (Morse code) - over the last 18 months. I have yet to "activate" a park myself. I'm not sure if I ever will.
07-06-2025 - 9:10 AM - I just heard an Amateur (ham) Radio station on two-meter FM simplex - 146.520 MHz, to be exact - announce that they were on their way out of town on an 11-day trip. Ham Radio call signs, with your home address, are "searchable". Don't announce your trips!
07-06-2025 - 11:30 AM - I'm hearing some store "loss prevention" activity on a local Multi-Use Radio Service frequency. Get a scanner radio and join the fun.
07-06-2025 - 12:30 - There are some strong, clear signals on CB Radio Channel 38 this afternoon. When it comes to SSB, I'm much more of a listener than a talker. One reason is that I don't use an amplifier, so my DX contacts are few and far between. And please, stop calling amplifiers "linears". Look up the word linear in the dictionary. You won't find anything close to an amplifier there. Calling an amplifier a linear is like calling a car a blue, or a red. Blue car is cool, and linear amplifier is cool, but linear by itself is almost meaningless.
07-06-2025 - 1:45 PM - Be sure to plug 145.800 and 437.800 MHz into your scanner radio. These are the Amateur (ham) Radio simplex and repeater, respectively, downlink frequencies for the International Space Station.
07-06-2025 - 2:15 PM - Did you see the episode of Better Call Saul where Mike pulls a Galaxy CB Radio from under the car seat and makes a call, on Channel 3, with no coaxial cable connected, to the local police department to check a car tag registration?