CB Channel 38 LSB

As I study for my Ham Radio Technician exam, I picked up a Galaxy DX 2547 CB base station and set up an I-Max 2000 antenna in the back yard. Being near a highway, I figured I would at least pick up some truck traffic and see if there's anything interesting going on nowadays on the unlicensed CB airwaves before I'm ready to expand into licensed spectrum.

There's no shortage of the expected truck traffic, which is sometimes interesting. And there's something called the 'super bowl' on channel 6 of people who use ridiculous overpowered transmitters to communicate over long distances. CB is very wild west nowadays as far as traffic and enforcement; rules which used to be ironclad like channel 9 being for emergencies are now widely ignored. Whether this is good or bad is another argument, but at least the frequencies are being used.

My first CB radio supporting single side band, I did some research on line which indicated SSB in the CB space is usually used on channels 35-40, and English traffic is usually Lower Side Band. Hanging out in these channels, there is indeed much interesting traffic. Today for example I was picking up long range DX traffic between members of the World Radio Club. I'm regularly hearing traffic here between Texas, Montana, New York, Pennsylvania, etc.; but of particular interest today was traffic from Great Britain and Portugal. I also periodically pick up CW (morse code) traffic, which research indicates is often survivalists communicating with each other, although I won't know more until I learn CW. Of greater interest in the standpoint of what I would actually want to participate in, there is also some local traffic in my area on these bands.