CB Radio is Going FM! Why is the FCC Doing It?

Anything that Google can’t monitor and record in your name is a good thing.

I'm a truck driver of 20 years and a ham radio operator. There are so few truck drivers utilizing the CB radio anymore. Further, I have never herd any big rig driver on the FM side of channel 19. I've always said that my CB radio is my best tool for the road. It's hard sometimes getting another driver to answer me and nearly impossible to get the specific person to answer me anymore. It's too bad. Thanks for the video!

Hi, Folks. Australian 'truckies' solved this problem around THIRTY years ago. They went to UHF. If my understanding is correct, there is now a string of repeater stations up an down the East coast working on channels 1 thru 8 that can allow users with the necessary equipment to communicate pretty much from Melbourne in the South to Cairns in the North, a distance of over 2,500 miles. There are very few trucks running with the old 27MHZ sets any more. Just my 0.02. You all have a wonderful day. Best wishes. Deas Plant.

Cobra's biggest mistake was not getting into the GMRS/FRS (and even HAM) radio markets when they had the chance back in the 90s. Had they done that, they could have been the Baofeng of today. But their failure to adapt to changing market conditions is why they're practically a footnote in the pages of history today. In fact, I'd say that Cobra is a pretty good study as a "how NOT to run your business" lesson. They got too comfortable with just doing what they've always done since the 1950s, and now they have to resort to these kind of tactics just to desperately stay afloat.

Any corporation petitioning the government (lobbying) is for the benefit of the corporation, not the consumer.

FM was the only legal mode from 1981 to 2014 here in the UK. SSB and AM became in 2014, and SSB has since become the mode of choice for many.

Consumers can thwart this messy free-for-all on 11 meters by simply adopting a strategy of using even channels for FM and odd channels for AM/SSB. This preserves things like channel 9 emergency for old and new gear, and allows a way for old and new equipment to coexist without a lot of clutter on every channel.

I am a Ham guy and I got into radio with my grandfathers CB. They are a great segway into amateur radio. I am happy about the addition of FM. In my opinion it might be about 20 years too late to save CB, but what a blast it would be to have CBs come back to life like in the 70's and 80's.

You hit the nail on the head: Cobra and President want more sales.

I would hope that FM could have it's own channel like 41 -80 and leave 1 - 40 alome for AM.

i used to live up on a mountain in wv no cellphone signal back in the early 2000s and family used a base station to communicate around the area neighbors and family would call in and ask if we was ("WERE"🙄😂) home before they try to run up the hill, fun times haha

I acquired my first Citizen Band radio in 1973. Over the years I had other radios and i also got my own license. In the 80's I discovered "outbanding" and realized first hand how I could talk all over the world using just a few watts on SSB and a 5/8 wave ground plane vertical antenna from Radio Shack. Heady times indeed. Soon I realized i wanted to do this legally and that led me to getting my Amateur Radio operator's license. I became licensed in 1986 as KB4OLX (novice). After a period of time I became N4RGQ (Technician). During much of these years I was inactive but maintained my license. I am now working on my General Class ticket.

It’s my experience that most of the truck drivers out there that still use a CB radio, and it’s not all that many, already have FM on their export radios.

Just be glad they didn't brand it as "HD CB" :-p

Back when cb was a 23 channel radio, users went to channel 16 for sideband. When the channels were increased to 40, some of the upper most channels were selected by people using the radios for sideband. If you want to talk to others who are using sideband, you go to where you know they are. It'll likely be the same for fm. This band isn't crowded any longer, so when you get your fm enabled radio, you'll be turning it to fm and scanning for fm signals. As more people start appearing on certain channels while talking in the fm mode, those channels will likely become popular and they'll begin to be set aside by users as where to go to talk on fm. People have this tendency to figure out how to be cooperative when they want to use new features. You could go anywhere on any of those 40 channels to use sideband, but if you actually want to talk, you'll go where sideband is being used. It'll be the same with the new fm mode.

FM has a characteristic known as "Capture Effect." This causes the receiver to take the sound from only the strongest signal on the channel. Others are not processed.This applies at its best when the multiple sigs are FM. With mixed signals, chaos can occur. Regardless of mode, the strongest signal can over-ride any other even if it cannot be read...SSB or FM

Here in Europe, The Netherlands, exactly the opposite happened. The first legal CB radio's where FM and it took until the late 90's before AM (1W carrier / 4W PEP) and SSB (4W PEP) became legal. I've heard a lot of truckers from the US during the summer of 2003 in AM. Sometimes S9+20 at the peaks of the skip, 8200 kilometers away and interfering with local stations within a 5km range.

I have to admit my first experience with radio was with CB, then scanners, then I got my Amateur Radio License. You make a valid point about 11 meters. KC0KM

Tech 22 years at Radio One did that fm mod thing exp with a few of new cobra radios when they started using those pll chips in the front end. modifying the tx was simple like adding extra channels. However, doing the same with the rx was a bit harder requiring the redesign of that same I F section.

we in Europe have always had the FM, but mainly the AM has always been used which is inexplicable as the FM was prohibited in your country. I add that often the internal card for the FM was removed to make room for the cards for modifications such as roger beep, echo and increased modulator with larger transformer, etc.