"N2EY" wrote:

Those movies came out *after* wholesale disregard for
the rules was already very common on 27. (Although
I've never been a cb user, I have listened there since
the mid-'60s and known many cb users).


In the 60's and early 70's, CB was only a minor nuisance, mainly a concern
only for the FCC. Most Americans had never even heard of it. By the end of
the 70's, the number of CB'ers had increased dramatically and problems (and
complaints) were widespread. The only significant thing that happened during
that time, to cause such growth, was the Hollywood movies (and television
shows) featuring CB. And you could clearly see that influence. By the late
70's, the very first channel most people turned to when they got their new
CB home was channel 19 (the truckers' channel). That fact drove truckers
crazy. And the only way most people even knew of that channel was those
Hollywood movies.


But ham radio did not have that "outlaw" mentality.


Really? I thought that was pretty obvious. We were talking about "what
if," not "what is."


And, back then, such activities would have brought down
tremendous peer opposition by the rest of the ham
community. (snip)


You put way too much faith in peer pressure, Jim. Peer pressure would not
control thirty to fifty million people (the estimates of CB'ers by the late
70's) if they had decided to ignore the rules.


Yet in my experience there has been a longstanding problem
with the cb "outlaw" culture trying to migrate to amateur radio.
In this area, at least, we have had serious problems on VHF/
UHF repeaters from newcomers who saw 2 meters as a
noise-free version of cb.


I've traveled to almost a dozen states in the last five years and such
behavior is extremely rare on all of the repeaters I've monitored or used.
Instead, I've mostly heard polite, friendly, people who seemed to be very
serious about their ham radio involvement. Where problems did exist, it was
usually blown out of porportion by guys angry about others using "their"
repeater for things they didn't like. In one situation, I even heard several
guys antagonizing two guys so they could record the results, which they said
was going to be sent to the FCC (minus their part in it, I'm sure). The two
guys were not doing anything wrong before those guys showed up on that
frequency. Because of my experiences, I always wonder about the cause
whenever I hear people talking about a "problem" on a local repeater.


Dwight Stewart (W5NET)

http://www.qsl.net/w5net/