vintage cb radio tube equipment.

[speeddemon]

This area is dedicated to talk about vintage cb radio tube equipment and amplifiers.

[speeddemon]

Hello to all : what did you all use for cb tube radio over there across the pond back in the 60's/70's/80's ? . . Cheers.n 73's

[Auldgeek]

Don't think there was much use of valved radio on 11m in GB in any decade!
The Yaesu FT-101ZD was modified to run on 11m but folk using these were in the minority and it's not a cb radio anyway.

[recoil]

only valve stuff I own and use now n again are a few zetagi bv131s and a bremmi brl210 .id rather have valve amps than some of this solid state junk .used a few valve radios on the ham bands but that's about it .

[36ian]

I think Pimp used to run a Siltronix on 11M

[Adriano9966]

Hello to all : what did you all use for cb tube radio over there across the pond back in the 60's/70's/80's ? . . Cheers.n 73's

Sorry for the long reply but please indulge me .

CB really only took off in the UK around 1980 and was at that point still illegal. Back in the day some transceivers were illegally imported American rigs eg Sears,Cobra etc. Others made their way here from mainland Europe (colt,Ham International etc) where CB was already legal
Practically all transceivers at that point were solid state irrespective of origin.

People operated on AM back then and it was much easier due to the band not being plagued by the noise levels that you experience in these modern times.
People campaigned for legalisation of 27 Mhz CB thinking the authorities would just legalise the American frequencies and that they could then carry on using their existing equipment unfettered . The British government had other Ideas though and in 1981 chose to legalise on FM only and on a different band of frequencies around 27.6 Mhz to 27.99. The possible thinking behind this move was threefold 1) it would render the existing(illegal) rigs unusable 2) it would be easier to detect those who continued to use their existing rigs (illegally) on the FCC band 3) It would bring CB operators into legality as the service was at that point 'licensed ' with compliant transceivers and restricted antennas.
To begin with there were some pretty restrictive regulations on antennas regarding mounting height and length:

Antennas were base loaded (including base installations) and could not exceed 1.5 metres (5') in overall height . If your antenna was mounted above 7 metres (23') you would have to use a 10db attenuator in line or fitted to the transceiver to reduce your 4watts to 400mw

There then followed a 33 year battle with the authorities to legalise AM/SSB on the FCC band .

In the meantime the FCC band was legalised on FM only due to a European deal to have a common standard between countries.
The rules on Antennas were relaxed and then finally dropped
The UK then ended up with two bands of 40 channels on FM only .(One being 26.965- 27.405) . CB then afterwards became licence free

There is an epic thread on this forum regarding the campaign to legalise AM and SSB on CB in the UK and happily UK CB operators won

AM and SSB on citizens band was finally legalised on the 27th of June 2014

Hope that helps to explain

[The Collector]

Never owned a tube radio myself, but I was given a few tall tubes from a WW2 amp or radio that had Nazi Swastikas on them when I was about 15. I gave them away to a guy on the CB that was nuts about war memorabilia.

[stanogs68]

wow thats really strange ,should of took photos

[andymuza]

Would love to have a go on some old Tube CB radio's. Like many the only tubes I used on CB were in amplifiers.

[speeddemon]

Hi andymuza heres some tube cb radio suggestions for you to look for . Cheers n 73's

[speeddemon]

Part 2

[andymuza]

They look great. Bags of character.

[The Collector]

I like the yellow version they do of that green radio