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description= Originally a pair of views on gaming, it s now musings by Redbeard on video games (mainly MMOs), board games, RPGs, and other geeky hobbies.;
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august, 2025, the, my, adventures, over, airwaves, part, mmo, rpg, on, sunday, saturday, friday, monday, podcasts, blogroll, links, in, breaker, this, is, beautiful, was, 31, 30, 29, thursday, 28, wednesday, 27, tuesday, 26, 25, 24, 23, 22, pages, reference, youtube, channels, blog, archive, blogs, mothballs, past, pc, contributors, labels, better, than, concrete, geese, if, you, ask, me, who, knew, one, nine, anybody, got, their, ears, 64, wdcr, broadcasting, from, kennedy, union, blue, danube, london, meme, dad, joke, memes, time, marches, wait, what, considered, 2004, that, annoying,
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een truckers the bandit foxy lady and cledus and fred the basset hound while citizens band radio cb radio for short had a spike in use in the early 70s due to the speed limits created to fight the gas crisis songs such as convoy and movies such as smokey and the bandit and convoy caused cb radio to explode in popularity you know it s big when the president gets on a cb from ridiculous 70s memes even i who wasn t allowed to watch smokey and the bandit something about bad words and women doing unladylike things knew of cb radio i remember as a kid getting a brochure from a shoe store of all places that contained a conversion list of what all the cb ten codes were at some point i also obtained a picture story about a kid who learns about cb radio and gets a base station as a gift and when he hears a family friend a trucker call for help on the cb he gets his parents to call for help from the fire department while both the book and brochure are long gone they obviously left a lasting impression i like many kids of that era had a pair of walkie talkies that were basically crap the concept of having true portable communication was simply out of reach unless you owned a cb and no we never owned a cb radio from the 1978 radio shack catalog page 160 from radioshackcatalogs com although they were all over the place from the amazon of 1978 the sears catalog from the fall winter 1978 sears catalog page 1174 yes that was page 1174 from christmas musetechnical com even at kmart this was back when kmart had a good reputation this is a 1976 kmart at for cb radios from 42444189 n04 on flickr for starters my parents weren t well off and they considered items such as a cb radio an extravagance i mean we didn t get a color television until 1980 or a nice stereo system of any sort until 1978 our christmas budget was 20 so my brother and i would comb through the sears catalogs trying to find enough bang for the buck to stretch that 20 as far as it could go even then my parents would nix certain presents such as some of those battlestar galactica toys because they shot small projectiles later when i had a job and a car and i was told i could buy a car stereo once i saved up enough money my dad flat out refused to let me get the stereo i d saved for because it was a waste of money so you can imagine that my parents didn t want to buy a cb radio however some family friends did have cb radios and one year when we went on an extended weekend s vacation with them they offered to loan us one of their cbs as well as an antenna with a magnet mount and a felt bottom so as to not scratch the paint job on the car the idea was that we would be able to coordinate on things such as stopping for lunch well there was also just chatting while driving as well the sort of thing that cb radio is really good at the family friends talked up how great it was to chat like that and make the multi hour drive that much easier still my parents refused to borrow a cb radio for the trip i suspect that my dad didn t want to risk scratching the paint on his then new station wagon but he probably also thought that using a cb radio was beneath him for some reason or maybe he was concerned that i might hear some profanity but given that i heard plenty of profanity all over the place especially from my fellow catholic students i thought that possibility rather silly but my parents kind of lived in an alternate universe where pg films were considered risqué as time went on my interest in cb radio waned as my teen years went on and i gained access to a car and more importantly a car stereo well there was also that thing about girls i suppose but to a geeky teen that was more hypothetical until i went to college when i worked at radio shack after college i was less concerned about cb radio than shortwave radio and the burgeoning pc market but we did sell our share of cb equipment i used to get copies of popular communications magazine from bookstores and i d occasionally skim the cb radio column but it didn t have that much interest for me ironically enough i found out much later that the cb radio craze of the 70s and 80s led to quite a few cb dedicated magazines across the globe yes even with cb radio sex sells from cb action magazine out of australia and in the uk too from cb world magazine out of the uk somebody alert the french that sex sells cb magazines from france cb magazine from well you know where despite my history with radio as a hobby i hadn t been that interested in trying out cb radio much over the years i mean i did own one for a while when i was given a cheap model as part of a yard sale purchase of a scanner radio but i believe i gave it away to an electronics recycling event years ago it s just that cb radio does have its share of cranks and misfits and racists on the air and despite that there s the perception that cb is an old technology and nobody uses it anymore uh yeah about that latter part from a loves truck stop in indiana in september 2024 loves is one of the places that i stop at while driving on the highway because i know i can usually find a clean restroom and a decent cup of coffee so when i was inside grabbing a drink i saw some cobra cb radios for sale and i quickly snapped that pic you see above so if loves considered cb radios important enough to truck drivers that they continue to stock them at their numerous stores throughout the country then it s not so obsolete as i thought another thing happened over the past year that caught my attention was hurricane helene in the fall of 2024 when the remnants of helene hit the interior of the us parts of the appalachian mountains centering around western north carolina found themselves without power for well over a couple of weeks in those situations cell phones are useless without an active tower network so it fell to cb radio and amateur radio to provide communications i kept up with how things were progressing over that month and i have to admit i was impressed by the response provided by both groups of radio operators with some overlap between the two to be honest with that knowledge out there i began keeping an eye on youtube for people promoting cb radio as a hobby again there are the cranks and misfits out there but there are plenty of people who keep the hobby alive a lot of them are amateur radio operators colloquially known as hams who originally came from cb radio and still keep up with what s going on in cb i also found a recording of an actual lp made to explain how cb radio worked because that s what you did in the 70s to explain things to people you made a record of it while i m not going to go out of my way to acquire a cb radio at least not at the moment i ll be keeping my eyes open if a used one comes my way there s plenty of old radios around so you never know what might appear at a local yard sale and besides an older radio could be yet another project for me to work on in my retirement years so no i don t have a cb radio at the moment but i think that ll change in the next year or two true story i was assigned in high school to read john steinbeck s of mice and men and the references of cat houses in the novel left me all confused i finally asked in class just what the hell a cat house was and boy did the class laugh at that one it s slang for a house of prostitution if you don t know in my defense i knew i could never ask my parents because they d just get all offended or something and yes i have asked innocent questions about that sort of thing before and had it all blow up out of proportion so i learned to simply not bring it up yes the movie was based on the song and came out a couple of years after the song the shoes i was forced to wear for school were buster browns damn i hated those things sure gym shoes weren t allowed but surely my parents could have chosen something less dorky looking that those things i had to get a sears branded stereo that wasn t very good but at least it did play cassettes for a while i don t think they wanted me to get even a cassette player given that i played a ton of heavy metal in the car that i knew they wouldn t have approved of they probably didn t want that cassette player i wasn t allowed to see r rated movies despite my ability to watch them on cable television all the time until i went and saw platoon with some friends and yes i was 17 at the time so i was legal as a college classmate once said red needs to get out from under his parents thumb i tried hunting for it for this post but no dice so i figured it s long gone if i stumble on it later i ll provide an update blaugust2025 posted by redbeard at 6 00 am 2 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels blaugust2025 adventures over the airwaves cb radio memes radio videos thursday august 28 2025 my adventures over the airwaves part 3 this is 64 wdcr broadcasting from kennedy union one of the goals i had when i went to college was to experience some things that i knew i wasn t going to have a chance to do again that explains why i decided to minor in history and philosophy despite being a physics major and also why i took a class in fencing my senior year i also participated in model un for a few years as part of the delegation that ud sent to new york for the national model un conference it also explains why i became a radio dj for my senior year no this is not me it s the late howard hesseman in his role as dr johnny fever on the late 70s early 80s television show wkrp in cincinnati from the new york times obituary on howard who died in 2022 at the age of 81 although it s long since been replaced by wudr flyer radio 99 5 98 1 fm ud had a student run radio station on am radio when i attended the university actually owned a commercial radio station at the time wvud 99 9 fm which broadcast from kennedy union but by the time i attended the university the student run rock format had become a purely commercial enterprise with a soft rock format which very few students actually listened to but there was another radio station nestled in the student union and that was wdcr am 640 it was designed as a completely student run station inheriting wvud s old student run design and although it was on am and was only broadcast via carrier signal on the power lines to the union and the university s dorm buildings you could sign up for a dj slot and spin the lps the only drawback was that by the time i did decide to sign up for a dj shift my senior year the format had changed from you can grab an hour or two and play what you want to we re playing a primarily rock and alternative format just like a professional radio station alas i couldn t imitate this scene from wkrp i did look into my yearbooks to see if there was anything worthy of a scan but nope one yearbook had wdcr as fm 64 not am 64 sigh since i didn t really have any ideas about what to play only that i wanted to be on the radio i was fine with that my freshman year roommate and current housemate and i secured a slot for a couple of hours in the mid morning once or twice a week and away we went two of my other housemates had been djs on the station already so that helped to ease me into the job the knowledge that people mostly heard us when they crossed through the lobby area of kennedy union meant that i didn t really have to worry about putting myself on the spot i did come up with a name mister physics which was actually one of the nicknames given me by my friends at ud but really nobody cared what i was called as long as i worked the playlist and had a bit of banter here and there with my housemate as co host although i knew about 2 3 of the songs on the playlist that other 1 3 were a real eye opener you d think that album oriented rock stations were all alike and maybe they are now in the era of corporate sameness and station centralization but radio stations even within the same format all had their own little quirks for example wtue fm in dayton had a different enough playlist than webn fm in cincinnati that i enjoyed wtue much more than webn when i visited home this was the first song i ever played as a dj i d never heard it until that moment by the time i had a dj shift radio had been changing while albums did exist and i queued up enough records over my dj tenure the music had already been migrating to tape machines i knew cds weren t too far behind given that wvud did have a cd system in place we got vud s hand me downs for equipment and when i was given a tour of the wvud studios i got to see the new systems in action you know having that one shift wasn t a big time commitment but having it that last year of college meant everything to me it was fun it was relaxing and i got to enjoy the illusion of being in control of what people listened to on the radio we did have a cast of characters there at the station there was the conservative commentator who couldn t crack a joke if his life depended on it the one station higher up who absolutely loved duran duran to the point of her following them when they went on tour over the summer the news reader who read the news impeccably and was always dressed to the nines but had such a conceited attitude i still remember her to this day and the fellow dj who if given the chance would queue up only van halen how can i miss you if you won t go away from wkrp in cincinnati being a dj meant i did have to do some work at the station other than just my shift i was supposed to come up with a promo for my spot as well has do a couple of other odds and ends but that never really happened my mind kind of works in weird ways and creative endeavors can take a while to finish a common complaint about my projects over the years is that my projects look really disjointed and have huge gaps until i manage to pull it all together at the last moment yes i know it s crunch to borrow the software development term but it does work for me however i never got to finish up those other things as a dj because i just never got a real deadline to work against as for my promo i had the idea of using monty python esque voices over sousa s the liberty bell march but i never really sat down to work out how it ought to flow the station manager wasn t pleased that i kind of half assed it but i had other priorities at the time and doing a promo wasn t one of them when i graduated i explored working a shift at dayton s local fine arts station wdpr 89 5 fm that was the frequency back then i think it s 89 9 now but i never got a callback that was fine with me since i had moved back to cincinnati that summer and really never left but still i do have the radio bug in me and it hasn t quite gone away in a quirk of fate when my son went away to college he decided to pick up a dj shift at his university s radio station due to simulcasting over the internet i got to hear his shift on tuesday afternoons quite a bit while i worked he kept that up for a couple of years until he spent a semester a...
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