On 10 Mar 2023 at 23:44:24 EST, Monty Solomon wrote:

> Piecing together why so many people are willing to share
> misinformation online is a major focus among behavioral
> scientists. It's easy to think partisanship is driving it all -
> people will simply share things that make their side look good or
> their opponents look bad. But the reality is a bit more
> complicated. Studies have indicated that many people don't seem to
> carefully evaluate links for accuracy and that partisanship may be
> secondary to the rush of getting a lot of likes on social
> media. Given those results, it's not clear what induces users to
> stop sharing things that a small bit of checking would show to be
> untrue.
> <https://arstechnica.com/?p=1923411>

While I was working as a radio technician for Duke Power Company in
North Carolina] it used to amaze me as to the massive amounts of
misinformation that CB users were spreading around. Mostly, it was
about radio theory. I will share three of the many stories I heard.

We had stopped for lunch at a truck stop one day. One of my
colleagues found somebody installing a power mike on his mobile CB
unit. When he asked the fellow why he was doing that, he said that by
putting more audio into the radio, he would get more power out of it.

When my colleague explained to him that this was not true, the guy
replied, "Oh, no. All of the CBers are doing it. And they are
getting a lot more power out.". So, my colleague gave up on trying to
explain it to the guy. He was clearly hopeless.

We ran into one fellow who had actually installed the truckers'
antennas on a Volkswagen Fastback. There was absolutely no way this
was going to work as those two antennas have to be spaced wide enough
apart to work properly. He told me that the truckers antennas
'prevented messing up your SWR (standing wave ratio) when you have a
'huge metallic load' behind you'. Another hopeless radio expert.

There was no point in sharing your expertise with them. They would
always believe other CB users before they would believe experienced
and well trained FCC-licensed radio technicians.

An amateur radio operator I knew told me that he was trying to help a
CB user upgrade to amateur radio. At first, he thought the guy might
be worthy of his effort.

When the guy told him that he was only putting out one and a quarter
watts out of his CB radio because he had a quarter wave antenna (five
watts times one quarter wave), he totally gave up on helping the guy.

And there are many other true stories like these. I just couldn't
believe the massive amounts of misinformation they were spreading.
So many of them appointed themselves radio experts.

It wasn't long after I worked as a radio technician that I totally
gave up on trying to correct their misinformation. It was a lost
cause.

Regards,

Fred Atkinson

On 3/30/2023 11:27 AM, Fred Atkinson wrote:

> While I was working as a radio technician for Duke Power Company in
> North Carolina] it used to amaze me as to the massive amounts of
> misinformation that CB users were spreading around. Mostly, it was
> about radio theory. I will share three of the many stories I heard.
>
> We had stopped for lunch at a truck stop one day. One of my
> colleagues found somebody installing a power mike on his mobile CB
> unit. When he asked the fellow why he was doing that, he said that
> by putting more audio into the radio, he would get more power out of
> it.
>
> When my colleague explained to him that this was not true, the guy
> replied, "Oh, no. All of the CBers are doing it. And they are
> getting a lot more power out.". So, my colleague gave up on trying
> to explain it to the guy. He was clearly hopeless.

Well, it's "sort of" true, at least in theory: the Class=D Citizens
Radio Service, which we know as "Citizens Band," uses Amplitude
Modulation, just like broadcast AM stations in the 550-1700 KHz
Broadcast band.

In order to perform Amplitude Modulation (AM), the transmitter must
add and subtract power from the outgoing carrier signal, and that
change is done by the transmitter's modulator, which takes the
microphone's signal and amplifies it to change the amount of
radio-frequency power going to the antenna.

However, in most CB sets, the amplified signals from the microphones
are run through a low-cost "compression" circuit called a "Clipper,"
which is supposed to maximize power output from the radio, but also
adds a LOT of distortion, and putting more audio power into the
clipper circuit just produces more distortion in the transmitted
signal. The increased power from a power mic, sad to say, is usually
heard as a distorted and hard-to-understand sound when it's received.

.... which means, as a practical matter, that "Power" microphones only
increase the ability of salesmen to brag about their paychecks at
"Power" lunches.

> We ran into one fellow who had actually installed the truckers'
> antennas on a Volkswagen Fastback. There was absolutely no way this
> was going to work as those two antennas have to be spaced wide enough
> apart to work properly. He told me that the truckers antennas
> 'prevented messing up your SWR (standing wave ratio) when you have a
> 'huge metallic load' behind you'. Another hopeless radio expert.

Well, he might not have been aware of it, but that CB'er could have
achieved much better results by spending the time to properly bond a
single antenna's feedline to the roof of his car, which would provide
a proper "Counterpoise," and dramatically increase the "Field Strengh"
of the transmitted signal, and also maximize the strength of signals
received from other CB sets.

> There was no point in sharing your expertise with them. They would
> always believe other CB users before they would believe experienced
> and well trained FCC-licensed radio technicians.

[Snip]
> And there are many other true stories like these. I just couldn't
> believe the massive amounts of misinformation they were spreading.
> So many of them appointed themselves radio experts.
>
> It wasn't long after I worked as a radio technician that I totally
> gave up on trying to correct their misinformation. It was a lost
> cause.

I've commented before on the sad tragedy which is the Citizens Band,
so I won't labor the point, other than to say "You're right."

Bill Horne

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