11m conditions

John123 wrote:

Lol, Martin. They must sound terrible on ssb. They were bad enough on fm. I bet they do sound like the train announcer.

It's even worse when they are in another language and you struggle to understand it without echo!

@John ,Echo boxes are ok if used properly but most just turn everything full up on them thinking they sound the top dog but they dont ,they sound stupid ,my mate has a old echo box made by Astatic and that can really annoy people or it can make his voice sound really mellow with depth like listening to a old valve radio like in the 50s ,but he also has a Magnum S9 and that has a built in echo and that has so many different settings it would send people mad he does it to me cos he knows it's annoying lol but with he can say one word and it can repeat it with  infinity while changing  different effects infact its pretty good TBH but I dont tell him lol

@Ian , i can remember a Italian station on T5 once and spoke really fast in Italian anyway so you can imagine what he sounded like through a echo box I dont even think Italians could understand him lol

I still have my old Sadelta me3 ?.
You need a screwdriver to alter it so it was set once with a nice sound everybody used to comment on and it has never been altered since around 1988/9 when i first bought it new.
To be honest i don't know how i still have it after a divorce and many house moves lol but it has stuck with me through it all.

I remember the old Sadelta ME3 Alan, weird mic that felt like you were holding a pack of fags to your mouth.

No one ever used an echo mic properly, as Martin points out, when used properly they had a good effect on your signal often boosting your SSB transmission with voice power. They never were supposed to be turned up flat out so you could hear the echo but adjusted just enough to give a 'room' effect filling the vocal frequency spaces almost like a speech processor.

You still hear the odd Ham utilise this method as it can give your SSB signal a huge boost. The same vocal effect can be had from a 'clean room'. Most Hams, (myself included), have a station room full of cr*p which deadens you vocal audio like a sound booth but modern Hams have surgically tidy rooms giving that slight room echo and a better modulation.

I think I might still have some old MN series BBDL's, (Bucket Bridge Delay Lines), and PT2322's in my parts bins Alan so I could have a play

The other fad was for RF Speech Processors but don't hear about them much either.

Cor, that was a blast from the past for my poor old brain. Might need a lay down


11m still dead, the other bands were full of 'CQ Competition' 

Had a nice QSO  with my long term mate Doug CT594 (Hillwalker) most of the afternoon,  he maybe only 5 mile from me in Enfield but it was enjoyable nice to actually use my radio in anger lol, joking apart Doug and I go back along way on this forum and radio, strange really we live close but hardly copy each other so much now so it was nice to have a ratchet.

Captain Fantastic wrote:

John123 wrote:

Lol, Martin. They must sound terrible on ssb. They were bad enough on fm. I bet they do sound like the train announcer.

It's even worse when they are in another language and you struggle to understand it without echo!

I can imagine, Ian. I still hear Italian stations on AM using copious amounts of echo. Lol.

NUBSTER wrote:

@John ,Echo boxes are ok if used properly but most just turn everything full up on them thinking they sound the top dog but they dont ,they sound stupid ,my mate has a old echo box made by Astatic and that can really annoy people or it can make his voice sound really mellow with depth like listening to a old valve radio like in the 50s ,but he also has a Magnum S9 and that has a built in echo and that has so many different settings it would send people mad he does it to me cos he knows it's annoying lol but with he can say one word and it can repeat it with  infinity while changing  different effects infact its pretty good TBH but I dont tell him lol

@Ian , i can remember a Italian station on T5 once and spoke really fast in Italian anyway so you can imagine what he sounded like through a echo box I dont even think Italians could understand him lol

I do remember hearing people using echo chambers to good effect.A mate of mine had one, I cannot remember the brand, but I remember it was an es880.

NUBSTER wrote:

Had a nice QSO  with my long term mate Doug CT594 (Hillwalker) most of the afternoon,  he maybe only 5 mile from me in Enfield but it was enjoyable nice to actually use my radio in anger lol, joking apart Doug and I go back along way on this forum and radio, strange really we live close but hardly copy each other so much now so it was nice to have a ratchet.

Aways good to have a catch up, Martin.

Yes John it was nice to talk to Doug ,its not like we ain't seen each other or spoke for years or anything, but back in the mid to late 2000's we use to have our our Friday evening very informal net chin wags on 34UKFM Doug and I and about 5/10 of us waffling till we all got fed upTBH ,they was good times we use get breakers come in from Scotland, and the Scottish Islands plus parts of Northern England,  and Roy in Corsica was regular too then as time went on conditions dropped and we didn't get those good copies a bit like now plus we all ( meaning us locals in our area)just started doing other interest other than radio so our little net faded but we all still keep in contact in other ways ,but it was nice today on the radio like old times
Oh by the way I use to have one of those 880 echo boxes back in the lol

Back in the day, Echo box was used a lot in York, i think there was even a competition to see who could do the best mix, darlic sounds and so on, never had one myself.

Good stuff, Martin.

The one thing I really miss about not having a radio at the house, is just switching on and yakking into the early hours of the morning, when there were lots of stations in the local area. 

I remember the es880 had two dials and the red and green lights on the front. If I remember correctly the echo chamber plugged into the mic socket on the radio and the mic plugged into the front of it.

glenn dog wrote:

Back in the day, Echo box was used a lot in York, i think there was even a competition to see who could do the best mix, darlic sounds and so on, never had one myself.

Lol. Sounds like a bit of fun, Glenn.That is what I have always loved about cb, the informal nature of everyone on the band.

TBH John , but first of I better cover myself before get shouted down by certain people  lol IMHO  , as I was going to say John i think CB has lost it imformal nature of how it was its seems to have become the illagitament offspring  of the unlicensed poor relation  of Amateur radio now, TBH it's not even really referred to CB radio hardly anymore it's all 11m now so it's all becoming too restricted sometimes ie: what we use to call having a laugh and and joke on CB and I dont mean the swearing ,music playing threatening style idiots ,I mean just normal having a laugh and talking about normal stuff ie: life,  is now classed as being a idiot on what is now classed the 11m.

Sorry if this upsets anyone but its true I know a few of old original CB breakers from the old days like me from the 70s who think the same ,but I suppose we have to except it, why I dont know .

I like the echo chamber competition even though they can be a pain I bet it was a laugh we use to have the pain the rodger bleep around our way in the old CB days we had a few who could make stupid rodger bleeps so it was like a bit of a competition with those.now this is what I call old school CB fun having a laugh.

Some coming through on 555

Nothing DX today, miserable cold and raining here. I did drive a few km down the road to meet another station I have talked to over the past couple months as he was in the area.

Then one of the radio clubs had organised a round this afternoon which I was able to join. So far there was 15 or more stations, of which I can hear 2/3 pretty clear and the other 1/3 are probably too far away or behind a mountain from here. Further station I reached was 65km away. Only 4W.

Wouldn't know what's happening down my way on the radio ,sorry lads too bloody cold to sit in the shack even with heater on in it.

NUBSTER wrote:

Wouldn't know what's happening down my way on the radio ,sorry lads too bloody cold to sit in the shack even with heater on in it.

SNAP

Seriously Alan my Mrs asked me to take some rubbish out to put in the bins from my front door to the bins about 10ft down my drive and all of two minutes to do it ,I  was frozen mate so stuff sitting in a shack in the back garden lol

I go with Nubuster, i think Cb has lost its laid back dxing, i do not like too much of the ham style code now in use, on 27.555 i only do the basic code, i like the 10 codes best and some cb slang, do not want to be a ham sounding station , if conditions are good, i chat in a laid back manner,  Cb local here in Finland is like the old days, just normal chat and 10 code, no ham style calling, Cb has its place and Ham has its place, mix it up and i personally  do not like it,

In the old times and even  sometimes now there was that old us the CBer and them the Amateur war ,but now it seem there is the Amateur who is licensed and now there seems to be a new breed appearing over the years  the wannabe Amateur the 11m -ist who seems to look down on the CBer or is it a snobbery thing like a post code thing where people live when they make up new posh sounding area names for lower class areas so they dont feel ashamed of saying they live there ,in other words it sounds better to say I monitor 11m than say I use CB radio.
I'm not interested in the 10-4 good buddy stuff and other American CB talk that was something that was all we only heard an knew way back in the 70s of pre legalisation of CB radio as it was a American thing that's all knew until we started to make our own UK style slang but even that got my nerves TBH I mean one you called out 19/14 for a copy and moved to a channel how hard is it to talk plain English, I can understand on SSB we use stuff like Q codes and some Amateur terms but that is worldwide because of difference in language and the codes can help but  I hear people on normal  FMCB waffling on using all the technical terminology and codes I just find it joke.

Please don't take these comments in a bad way it's just a observation by me  and a few others I know not on this forum  may I mention who go way back in from the beginning of CB in the of the early pre legalised days who have seen a big change in the hobby

NUBSTER wrote:

Wouldn't know what's happening down my way on the radio ,sorry lads too bloody cold to sit in the shack even with heater on in it.

It is certainly cold out there, Martin.

John123 wrote:

NUBSTER wrote:

Wouldn't know what's happening down my way on the radio ,sorry lads too bloody cold to sit in the shack even with heater on in it.

It is certainly cold out there, Martin.

I know they say too cold to snow but it is freezing outside you can see frost on the ground and we are getting lite snow fall, that's it I'm hibernating now too cold for me.

I did manage 10.30am till about 12.15pm but well wrapped up lol and the heater on of cores Alexa turns that on for me long before i go out there.

Alan Pilot wrote:

I did manage 10.30am till about 12.15pm but well wrapped up lol and the heater on of cores Alexa turns that on for me long before i go out there.

Ask Alexa if she would come round and switch mine on please Alan mate oh and a mug of tea too please lol

NUBSTER wrote:

John123 wrote:

NUBSTER wrote:

Wouldn't know what's happening down my way on the radio ,sorry lads too bloody cold to sit in the shack even with heater on in it.

It is certainly cold out there, Martin.

I know they say too cold to snow but it is freezing outside you can see frost on the ground and we are getting lite snow fall, that's it I'm hibernating now too cold for me.

I am the same as you, Martin, I hate the cold (God knows why I live in Buxton, lol), there is no such thing as weather that is too hot as far as I am concerned. it must be my southern genes, my Grandfather was Bermondsey born and bred. He hated the winters around here.