Citizens Band Radio (CB) is a means of personal communication over the radio waves. CB was greatly popularized in the 1970's by such films as `Convoy,' and today there are hundreds of thousands of users worldwide. CB radio users have developed their own jargon or CB talk, for example, `10-10' means good-bye and `10-4' means OK or yes. In addition CB users have their own individual call signs or `handles' so that they can be easily identified, these range from the mundane to the out and out ridiculous.
The CB radio is in actual fact both a transmitter and a receiver. A microphone is used by the operator to activate the transmission circuit, any sound, usually speech, picked up by the microphone is transmitted on the selected channel, usually one of 40, 80 or 120 available. These channels are fixed wavelengths upon which CB users are allowed to operate. Any other CB user receiving on this channel will pick up the transmitted speech provided they are within receiving distance. The received speech is amplified and fed through a loudspeaker built into the CB radio. The communication distance between two CB radios is dependent upon the power of the transmitted signal and the quality and size of the receiving ariel, under normal operating conditions this would be in the range of five to ten miles.
