10-4 Rubber Duck! Who remembers CB Radio? :)

More about 10-4 Rubber Duck! Who remembers CB Radio? :)

In the early 1980's (or earlier if you were very naughty, lol) England officially "legalised" Citizens Band Radio (USA had been using it for years) and many a chinwag could be had "on the 14" (Channel 14 was the official calling channel). It was similar to Amateur Radio except you didn't need to pass the RAE (Radio Amateurs Exam) or learn Morse Code. However, in UK it used FM modulation instead of the longer-range AM, and you were limited to 4 Watts. It was fun (ish) while it lasted, but not as good as BBS's (Computer Bulletin Boards) which became popular about the same time (I remember staying up all night playing Richard Bartle's MUD (Multi User Dungeon) on Essex Uni's DEC 10 mainframe, over the phone line). My CB "handle" was "Wally 6502", there was a CB club called the "Wally Club", and we chose a number and talked to each other randomly on various CB chanels about various silly topics. If you got on a channel and heard someone you knew and wanted to join in, you flashed the transmit key on your mike and said "QSK Break Break", hence CB users were sometimes called "Breakers". (QSK is a Ham Radio "Q Code" Morse abbreviation to break into an existing chat. Other codes were 10-4, meaning Acknowledge, and 10-10 meaning Bye For Now. There were many other Q codes and 10 codes, and even some intimate 13 codes.) Anyway in the end most people lost interest in CB, due to the short range of only a couple of miles of FM, and the novelty wore off. Oh, by the way, a "Rubber Duck" was a rubber-coated outdoor antenna (there was a whole range of antenna types, with ground planes, loading coils, PI tank matchers, and so on.) QRT and 10-10 Good Buddy :)