FCC allows Frequency Modulation on CB radio❗️

Radiowave2, I appreciate your input. First, what radio did you purchase? And how is DXing with FM, compared to AM? What kind of distance are you reaching on FM, so far?
I realize that at present, there will be few CB/FM contacts out there, to DX with.
Do you own a GMRS radio, and if so, how would you compare the two?
Thanks.

FM was the only legal type for decades here in the UK with AM and SSB only becoming legal a few years ago although the law has never stopped CB users ha ha.

AM and SSB are only used by us for trying to reach out longer distances, for everything else FM is king, the difference in Audio quality is huge.

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Steve, I think the U.S. SHOULD have followed the UK lead on CB radio. All AM/SSB did was to encourage unlicensed unruly CBers to break the law by bumping up that 5 watt signal to maybe 100 watts or even 1000 watts. Those high powered radio signals caused havoc to American tv viewers.
Thanks for telling us how it should have been done. We Americans tend to have to learn things the hard way😂

We are allowed 4w FM/AM and 12w SSB in the UK but people sticking to legal limits is virtually non existent here lol, im running 100w FM/AM and 200w SSB on both my home and car setups :slight_smile:

Is CB still officially meant to be licenced in the U.S or has that been dropped like it has here?

Till something like 2011 you were still legally obliged to pay a licence fee here but literally nobody ever bought a CB licence, it was a case of mass disobedience making it unenforceable and was dropped when they also allowed the additional modulation types.

The FCC dropped the CB license requirement in the early 1980’s and it is licensed by rule in the US, meaning that no license is required.

Ive just checked and it was 2006 and not 2011 that we became licence exempt in the UK, still way behind you guys in the U.S but it didn’t really change anything as nobody ever bought a CB licence in the UK anyway and it was never enforced.

We can use 4w FM on UK main 40 channels and 4w AM on the 40 CEPT Channels and 12w SSB on CEPT channels officially but nobody takes any notice of power or modulation rules on specific channel sets but typically SSB happens on the unofficial frequency’s like 27.555.

CB is so quiet these days in the UK, when I was a teen in the 90’s in London you struggled to find a channel to talk on across all 80 but now living 60 miles outside of London the only place chatting happens is on 19 UK main band and even then its very quiet.

In the summer when propagation happens we get people in Europe coming on the UK main band to make contacts and its the busiest it ever is.