In This Issue

What's Happening To CB As discussed in last month's issue, CB is on the up swing as far as numbers go. There seems to be a long parade of new equipment. What makes this so exciting is that most of this equipment is innovative and I haven't seen this amount of interest in new products for a long time. More CBers and new equipment will make our hobby more interesting. But the increase of bad mannered operators will make for a different type of interesting. The kind we can do without. I had a subscriber write a note to me on this subject. He feels that many of these people turn out to be on some type of public assistance, have drug or alcohol problems and generally have no interests in life but to pass the time by trying to make others as miserable as they are. In the past I've found the best way to discourage these individuals is to ignore their rude remarks. Never responding or arguing with them is the best solution most of the time. Arguing always encourages them to be more rude and foul mouthed. After all this has become their sole purpose in life, don't play into their hands. If you're talking to a friend and someone is interfering with your contact, don't let anyone know that your being disturbed. If you have the friends phone number give them a call and talking over the air the same as if you were communicating over the air but use the telephone as your ears. Nobody will suspect that the individual is covering you up, especially the one causing the interference. Every so often they will un-key to see if they're doing some damage. Never let them hear you say "come back again" or even worse, "that so and so is stepping all over you". Once they hear that they know their doing damage and they're in heaven and you'll never be rid of them. It's important for them to hear both parties carrying on a fluid conversation. You'll notice that they will un-key more frequently to check and see if you're just ghost talking. Then finally they will disappear. I've used that phone method before even to conduct a club role call. After having trouble on our club night two weeks in a row with the confusion of 3 or 4 helpful members keying over one another to relay check- ins, I decided there had to be a better way. No one but the party on the other end of the phone new what was going on. I took down the check-ins I could hear and got the rest over the phone. I'll bet there were many members all set to relay calls sitting in front of their radios with their mouths open. In the following days many people asked how I could hear all the check-ins while they, being closer to some. of the station, were unable to hear. I never had an incident like that during role call again. Rule 1, never let them know they're getting to you. Rule 2, never let them get to you! © CBWI

AUGUST VOLUME 1 ISSUE 4