Captain Potherb and the 100w Chicken Box

It was an autumn day on my local hill, and I had cycled up there to clear my head and to be alone with my thoughts; as the 'black dog' had decided to pay a visit and I needed some much needed distraction.

There was a nice blue sky, while I sat there on a park bench; people were walking their dogs and generally just frolicking around with frisbees, kites, or jogging. However, my attention was turned more towards a late 90s registered Volvo V40 whose engine fans kept firing up when the driver was speaking to someone loudly via some form of radio, followed by the typical 'Skkkrrrrt!' noise caused by the break in squelch after transmission. This continued on for some time, as he was drawing a lot of attention to himself due to the engine fans kicking off and the car left on tick-over.

This became a source of mild annoyance, and my curiousity got the better of me while I walked over to investigate.

I was greeted by a guy who looked like a genetic experiment between Father Jack, Jack Harper and Bruce Forsyth sat in the drivers seat. Perched on the dashboard was a Maycom EM27, that covers UK FM and PR 27 GB (CEPT block) channels. Sat on the top, was a spiky red cooling finned RM linear amplifier, which look like a KL203.

Me: “Afternoon. Sorry to bother you, but is that CB or Amateur Radio?”

Guy: “CB”

Me: “Ah, cool, I'm into Amateur Radio and CB radio but I'm having too fun with amateur radio and got nothing set up for that side of it. Good to see someone else that's into it all, any decent contacts?”

Guy: “I got all the way into the Midlands and had Cornwall stations, I was getting stations down south”

Me: “Nice one. It's good when the skip is running Inter UK and you hear other stations; I lug all my stuff over here and run portable, one night got into New York on 20m. Do you know that you can use AM and SSB on mid block now? I'd be having a go of that if I were you, that's where it all came from in the first place.”

He looked at me a bit blank.

Guy: “Err, no. I just have this rig at the moment. There's a couple of radio amateurs that always come up here as well as me, seen them a few times up to now.”

Me: “Fair enough. I'll let you go back to it then, catch you later”

Guy: “See you, mate” and he sort of sneered as he picked up a cigarette, with teeth that had clearly seen better days.

He continued chatting to his friends on the rig, and I sat there quite amused as the cars fans fired up again as he continued conversing. Not that I'm being a radio snob of any form, as radio snobbery is one of my major pet hates; especially as an British M6 call sign holder who has on a couple of occasions being accused of getting my licence from a cornflakes packet.

The thing that amused me, was the absolute poor research of the set-up the guy was using. While on a hill and with flat conditions with CB radio, you will get around 50 miles versus the usual 15-30 of a base station set up in your average street, taking into account terrain obstacles. Assuming your antenna is at a decent enough height of at least one wavelength from the floor (which on 11m band is around 30ft excluding the base of the antenna on a bit of scaffolding pipe bolted to the house by 2 T and K brackets). Oh, and I almost forgot – using 4 watts AM/FM, and 12 watts of SSB which is legal in the UK from last year between 26.965-27.405mhz as well as the original UK 40 block between 27.601.25 - 27.991.25mhz FM only.

So, he was using needless power for no reason, causing adjacent channel splatter due to a cheap linear with power levels that would be of far better use on the 20m band for contacts outside of Europe, not forgetting using needless petrol keeping his car running on tickover, and slowly murdering his car. I also doubt the reliably and SWR of the antenna; if it was me I'd have checked it was low as possible before using that level of power and kept an SWR/ATU in line to measure power levels, reflected power, and ensured a 50 ohm match. Personally (even though it's still illegal and somewhat dubious), I'd have understood if he was on 'the channels between the channels' on SSB and working DX, rather than using ludicrous amounts of power for local FM chat. In fact, he may have clawed back some credibility if he did – after all the allure of 11m SSB has often brought more radio amateurs into the hobby that wanted more bands to play with, and to learn more about radio. With the CB boom in the early 1980s, you can't ignore that they're closely linked and brought a load of radio amateurs into the hobby – especially the Class B G7's that were originally on VHF/UHF who bought Yaesu FT290R's like hot cakes.

We discussed this character on 2 metres one night with a few radio hams I befriended while on my local hill, two of which were found by happy accident one summer afternoon last year and kept in touch with since. Our CB'er friend earned the name 'Captain Potherb', who turns out to be a frequent visitor along with other CB and ham radio ops that visit my local hill who have been doing so ever since I was a small kid and probably before I was born. In fact, I vividly remember a local 11m group once made a 2 element delta beam and used to 'shoot skip' during 1988-1992 sunspot peaks who were not interested in becoming radio amateurs; as there was the Class A morse requirement to use HF.

Turns out that Captain Potherb isn't very popular with some of the lads over here, due to an amusing altercation that occurred one afternoon.

A couple of the local lads that I know often work DX from the hill, as well as me and another guy; their preferred weapon of choice being a late 1980s Kenwood HF rig, Yaesu ATU, and a modified 10m plus long Prowhip end fed vertical into a 9:1 balun and a couple of radials spread across the grass, all powered by a petrol generator. Captain Potherb was there one day, and were duly noticed by the intrepid DX-ing duo.

Captain Potherb was noticed in the rear view mirror by one of the duo, and he felt it was good practice to warn him and find out if he was a radio amateur or not. As the 10m band was in particularly great shape due to high sunspot activity caused by the recent 11 year sunspot cycle peaks.

He walks over to Captain Potherb, and taps on the window.

Ham: “Hello?”

Capt P: “What?”

Ham: “Is that CB radio, or ham radio?”

Capt P; “CB radio, why?”

* Captain Potherb studiously attempts to ignore him, due to the linear and CB setup knowing that he's obviously in the wrong *

Ham: Do you know of the 10m band?

Capt P: “No, errm....Don't know what you're on about”

Ham: “Well, it's 1 mhz up the dial from CB and we're going to be wiping the front end of your rig out seeing as we're in the same 50 square yards of each other. We're going to be on there, so we're just warning you that it's going to blitz it”

Capt P: * Mumbles under breath, powers window back up*

The ham thought “Oh well, I warned him” and went back to the car. They went to 10m, and found horrendous splatter caused by our CB-ing chum. Curiousity got the better of them, and they decided to tune further down the dial to 27mhz. It didn't take long to find him, as he was on the 'UK Muppet band' where the last 20 or show channels range from 27.801.25mhz to 27.991.25mhz FM. Suddenly, they find him as the signal meter bolts hard to the right hand side, end-stopping.

Over modulated FM audio rattles through the rigs speaker.,

“Yeah, fuckin' radio amateurs here again telling me what to do. Fuckin' snobs, who do they think they are picking on us CB-ers, break break!”

The hams co-pilot is a little less patient than the fellow who gave him fair warning, and had to be stopped from shoving the radio and antenna up Captain Potherb's arse.

“Right then, bollocks to him. We're turning the wick up and going on 10 metres. I was polite enough to warn him, and if he wants to play like that then....”

He tunes up on 10m, and alters his power level to max and calls CQ. Soon enough gets a gaggle of stations answering back to the call.

Captain Potherb starts his car up, and aggressively drives away defeated....