CB Handles

The guys at orientation have taken to calling me Pink Panther for the pink hoodie I wear all time. I kinda dig it!

Mine when I was growing up was captain peach fuzz. I need a better one.

Mine when I was growing up was captain peach fuzz. I need a better one.

I loled thanks

So is it better to pick your own handle, or wait until someone picks one for you? I always thought it cheesy when someone would make up a "nickname" for themselves. The good ones were always made up for you. In high school I was called "stu" because I had a ridiculous dirty blonde mullet and I was short and fat, I looked like Stuart from Bevis and Butthead. What started out as harmless joke, turned in to a nickname that I am still called 20 years later. I was at the grocery store the other day and ran into an old friend and he called me "stu" and I immediately turned around.

You could always go with a ham radio after you get a ham license and work the world and the whole US of A on it. No gutter mouth talk or anything like that. Back in the days before cellaphones, my Dad had a friend whose son was an OTR trucker and he could contact him every day when he'd pull over for a break or park for his rest period.

The 2 meter band is the one primarily used by local folks and just about anywhere you travel there's a repeater or a network of repeaters. Some in the Mid West are all linked together so you could be in Arizona and talk to someone in Oregon to get an accurate weather report. When you're on your mandatory break period, you can switch to other bands once you learn which one is working best that time of the day or year and talk to people all over the world. They'll send you QSL postcards with their call signs, and other things on it, hoping you'll send one back so they can log you as a contact.

There's no more requirement for morse code on any of the bands these days. There's still the Tech class which is pretty much all 2 meter or 70cm stuff, then General which opens you up to HF and Extra which opens you up to all the available bands and frequencies available to the ham radio operator.

No fancy 'handles', your FCC license is what you use to talk with.

The tests are all on the internet. The way I passed them was to read only the correct answers, then take the test and if I saw that answer, I knew it was right no matter what the question was about. You could use the same principle for taking your CDL written part. Why try to memorize 4 different answers for braking distance when only one is correct. Memorize the correct one and move on to the next question in the pool.

There are vhf/hf radio that will cover all the bands, just need a couple of different whip antennas. If you want to work 20 meters, switch your whip to that antenna and off you go.

If you have a few other truckers you know that are ham radio operators, get them all on your own frequency and talk away the miles. There's also 146.52 which is monitors like Channel 9 is that'll get help when you need it or just allow you to make a contact before moving on to another frequency to carry on your chat.

There's a LOT of old folks out there that have ham radio shacks that are always looking for someone to talk to and share stories. They're also pretty good "Elmers" which are guys that will help you with antenna or radio problems, some of them will even get you a decent deal on a VHF/HF rig.

The mobile radio I use is an ICOM 706. Not the mk II version but one of the originals. It has a detachable faceplate so you can mount the main part of the radio in a cabinet in your rig and just mount the faceplace on your dash somewhere.

Hope that helps.

So is it better to pick your own handle, or wait until someone picks one for you? I always thought it cheesy when someone would make up a "nickname" for themselves.

Well with CB handles you make up your own because no one knows you out there. So a handle is a way to give yourself a unique name that applies to you somehow. And if you have a handle that doesn't have an obvious meaning or people can't tell how you got it they're gonna ask where it came from. So come up with something that's unique to you somehow.

They call me yoshi bc of the old nintendo 64 game bc I just dealt with things as they came especially when it came to bouncing around looking for freight bobtail here bobtail there offer to grab an empty in hopes of getting a good load

I'd either go by Frodo due to my missing finger, or Farmerbob, because I've been using that name for practically everything.

The next purchase is a CB, I think. A really cheap one. Just want it for traffic and talking to shippers/receivers.

I already know to expect to be made fun of, since I was a 31F in the Army, meaning I was taught how to use a radio, which will make me sound funny to most people.

I've been the tumbleweed for 40 yrs. Since back in the 70s. I've always found it interesting that you can have a Harvard English major from Massachusetts, give him a cb Mike and in 10 seconds he sounds like a hillbilly with a mouthful of marbles.

Hey Brett . . . Could you set something up on TT just for CB related posts? IE: getting CB handles for us newbies, edicate & how you SHOULD talk on there, maybe how to deal with some of the antenna or radio problems, swap CB stories, etc . . .