COVER FEATURE: Rocky road between 10 and 11 meters

From the SPRING March | April issue of National Communications Magazine

Mark Haverstock | K8MSH

When you search the history of CB’s 11-meter (27-MHz) band, you’ll read about how it started in 1958. The new service back then was used by small businesses, families and radio hobbyists. They used call signs assigned by the Federal Communications Commission and mostly followed Part 95 rules and regulations – activity was fairly routine and uneventful.

Sirio Antennas’ Sirio GPE27 is a five-eighths-wave 10-meter and CB base station antenna. | Photo courtesy of Sirio

But everybody remembers the cultural explosion in 1973 during the oil crisis. Citizens band was everywhere and became popular with truckers and motorists who shared “smokey” locations, traffic reports, gossip and weather conditions. Movies like “Smokey and the Bandit,” “Convoy” and “Breaker, Breaker” became a part of pop culture.

What you may not have known is that 11-meter stations actually were on the air as early as 1928. 2XBM in Water Mill, New York, and 6XJ in San Diego, California, were transmitting on 27.900 MHz. These were experimental stations, testing what was considered VHF in those days. During World War II, 27-MHz communications gear was used in tanks both by Germans and American armed forces.