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Comment by busterarm | Hacker News Reader

In most large cities, the CB bands are filled with people playing with voice modification and trash talking. All day long, all channels. It's almost useless and has been that way since the 80s. If you aren't very close to a highway, expect not to hear anything.

Serious users are all HAMs, but then it's all "serious business".

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"In most large cities, the CB bands are filled with people playing with voice modification and trash talking. All day long, all channels."

Weirdly, it makes me happy to learn this ...

Just ham, not HAM, not H.A.M.

Where does it come from?

Like a goofy person “hamming it up”

Amateur radio operators can seem undisciplined compared to professional or military operators.

Ham was a term likely coined by professional radiotelegraphers to mean ham-fisted (with 'fist' being a term referring to technique used when sending Morse code)

An early example of elitism in radio that is still very prevalent today - Professionaly trained telegraphy operators talking down amateurs who are involved for the fun of it, for having sloppy technique when sending code.

Ham comes from pigs =)

Put originally it was a pejorative used by professional telegraph operators to make fun of 'ham fisted' amature radio oporators who were bad at morse code.

This is the correct answer.

Source: My father was very active in UK ham radio circles back in the 1980s.

It’s shorthand for amateur radio operator (as opposed to professional, e.g. ship to shore.)

I read something online about it coming from a Harvard callsign. Is that nonsense?

Depends on the area, but IIRC the VHF/UHF HAM bands in some cities are almost as bad as CB radio at times. I remember a couple of decades ago LA had a big problem with jerks and unlicensed idiots spamming the airwaves.

I believe LA still has that problem, but largely confined to a single repeater.

Yes, W6NUT is still going. It's pure anarchy by HAM standards but it's actually kind of entertaining. https://www.broadcastify.com/listen/feed/25419

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