Quote:
Originally Posted by Cadillac Kid
I got my license in 1975 but it has expired.
Call sign license plates identify the vehicle during an emergency.
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How? Most people outside ham radio don't know the difference between amateur radio and CB, let alone what they are looking at when they see "WB8XYZ" (for example) on an automobile license plate. They probably do think it's some kind of vanity plate, made up by someone on the spur of the moment. The fact that these plates have the words "amateur radio" at the top, above the call sign, doesn't matter either, if people don't know what amateur radio is. This is one very serious problem ham radio has faced for decades, especially in the '70s when CB was so popular. I've been an amateur radio operator well over 30 years, and still people think I'm actually a CB operator when I tell them I am a ham radio operator. I heard this from someone here in my town a couple of months ago; I had to tell the person that I am in fact an amateur radio operator.
It is too bad that the two services get mixed up. If only people realized how much more organized ham radio is compared to CB, and that amateur operators must be licensed by the FCC ("government" to most people outside radio), whereas the FCC ceased issuing CB licenses in the early 1980s, not to mention the services amateur radio operators provide in times of disaster such as the California wildfires, hurricanes and the like. Citizens Band radio, on the other hand, has become a ridiculous mishmash of nonsense, noise, conversations about nearly everything imaginable, and so forth. The irony of this is that the frequencies now occupied by the Citizens Band (and have been since 1958) were formerly the amateur radio 11-meter band. The FCC, IMHO, should return this band to amateur radio, the sooner the better.
73,