How did CB slang originate, and how did it become so that others would soon all speak the same slanguage (sic)? Also, where does the 10-# system come from, good buddy? Lastly, why is HAM radio so much more rigid about licensing, etc? Do you need a license to operate a CB?
After all these years, I’d like to know the history!
HAM puts out a lot mo’ power, and is therefore more regulated. You don’t need a license for CB anymore.
Here’s another question: are HAM violators pursued in any way anymore? Or were they ever? My friend has a small, hand-held HAM radio he bought for about $40 at Radio Shack. He has no license, and occasionally “broadcasts”, although there never seems to be anyone listening. I’m guessing that there isn’t enough HAM traffic these days to devote FCC time to prosecuting violators, but then I could be wrong.
You don’t need a license to operate a CB.
Ham is not necesarily more power,though it sure can be. It’s more an issue of the wavelengths used. 11 meters(cb) is now part of the public domain, so to speak. The ham bands are more regulated to keep the entire RF spectrum from becoming filled with garbage. Some hams see just how far they can broadcast on a minimum of power- sometimes less than a watt.
If you spend enough time broadcasting without a license, you’ll get caught and fined, and your equipment confiscated. A great deal of that depends on you annoying someone enough to report you, and/or try to track you down. You want to get hunted down like a dog, broadcast in the police area of the 2meter/440 bands. Or in the aviation segment-most small airports around Chicago are in the 120 mhz area- the FAA takes a VERY dim view of people pirating airspace.
As it is, 2 meters(where most hams usually start) is just complex enough that you probably have to know enough to get your license just to be able to operate the average radio.
OBTW, the 10-code was used for many years, is still used, by police.
b.
Let me rephrase my statement: Ham can legally use more power. CB can’t (legally) put out over 4 watts.
10 codes were developed because they are short and easy to pick out over staticky air. I don’t know for sure, but I assume it was either military or police agencies originally. They are still used by police agencies and dispatched truck drivers. My experience is with AAA emergency road service in San Francisco and Los Angeles.
There aren’t universal 10 codes however, most agencies use slightly different versions. Police agencies sometimes use up to 10-299, but private agencies generally only go to 10-99 officially.
10-4 = OK
10-20 = location
Those two are always the same, but the rest can be slightly different. It’s been a few years, and I’m a little fuzzy now, but an example would be in San Francisco we had one code for “I’m here” - 10-97, but in Los Angeles that was broken down to:
10-94 = at the location, no member, no vehicle
10-95 = at the location, with vehicle, no member
10-96 = going to knock on the door of a residence
10-97 = with member and vehicle
In both places 10-98 meant the call was over, while in SF 10-99 means in tow, and it isn’t used in LA.
The “unofficial” one that everybody knows is 10-100 - “out of the unit to pee”, and then of course some bonehead will use 10-200, which is just TMI.
There is also a very specific grammar to 10 codes. I wrote a paper on it for a linguistics class in college. My professor thought it was hilarious. For example you can ‘split’ some codes:
“show me 97”
“what’s your 20”
“show me 99 to member’s residence”
but you’d never just say “4” the way you’d say OK in English, or “36” instead of “10-36” (what time is it).
Random anecdote about AAA - they also use a phonetic alphabet - Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta… but they are an ultra conservative organization, so we were not permitted to use the military phonetics for “U” and “W” on the air because unions and whiskey are bad, and members might be offended.
I’ll shut up now. Show me 10-19 for 7. (shutting down and heading home, SF style)
It was most definitely not a military innovation. 10 codes are confusing, nonstandardized, and more difficult to understand than plain English spoken the way the military requires on tactical radio nets. My WAG is that they were a police procedure dreamed up by some idiot who was trying to keep the public from understanding what was going on.
Even the military’s law enforcement agencies don’t use 10 codes. We used the same jargon used by the rest of the military. If a patrol was stopping for lunch, they would report “Out of Service, Chow, at Bravo Kilo”(Burger King). A pit stop would be “Out of service, Papa Romeo (Personal Relief), at barracks.” Anyone who called 10-8 or 10-100 risked the wrath of the desk sergeant.
Sorry to ruin a joke, but the phonetic alphabet for “U” is uniform, not union, so say the U.S. Army and NATO.
Let’s try those links again, shall we?
So says the US Army:
and NATO.
Huh, well never having been in the military, I wouldn’t have known, and it’s not something I ever bothered to research - but I can tell you that both union and whiskey are both specifically forbidden, so I guess somebody somewhere used it and it pissed somebody off.
As far as the military dropping them now, it does make sense, it is a tough language to learn, and it’s even tougher to relearn it after using it one way for 5 years. I was glad to have them though - many of my drivers were recent immigrants for whom English was a 3rd or 4th language. The ones who didn’t use the 10-codes were almost impossible to communicate with if there was any static because it distorted their accents beyond recognition.
I grew up in the era when CB radios still had to be licensed (ours was KARC-8578), and I remember a book called the “CB Slanguage Language Dictionary” enjoying moderately widespread use. I don’t know when they stopped requiring licenses for 'em but it was definitely over by the 1990s - I had a couple friends with handheld sets who listened and talked just for fun when they were bored.
Of course since CB radios were easier to set up and use than ham radios (essentially a “plug and play” kind of operation) they became very popular, especially among the truck-driving set since it helped relieve the boredom of those long interstate hauls.
I don’t know much about the origin of ten-codes, though the police force theory does have some plausibility; but with the sudden explosion of civilian users it was only a matter of time before it got standardized, at least as far as CBs were concerned. Probably the same with slang - since the majority of users had some serious mobility there arose a need to make sure everybody else knew what you were talking about. The aforementiond dictionary had an index detailing the meanings of most of the ten-codes, and I remember seeing little slide-rule type charts of ten-codes for sale in Radio Shack about the same time.
Was that the code used for John Bobbit?