VERY interesting, Darren. Steven is so easy to listen to - he's a real professional radio guy.

I never had a ham license but did venture into the 10 meter bands back in the 80's. certain CB base radio's could be modified to go into 10 meters. the President Washington was the best. they had a PLL circuit (phase locked loop) that could be jumped giving hundreds of 10 meter freqs.

I had a VFO that could venture outside of 11 meters but not far and can't recall the frequencies reached. also had a Black Cat linear amplifier (2,000 watts) with a Maverick 250 to kick start the Black Cat. these were old school tube type. nothing could bet the quality of a tube amp. had a D-104 Golden Eagle desktop mic and a three element beam antenna. the fear of the FCC coming after you was starting to fade in the 80's. the only problems I had was bleeding over onto televisions in the area. made a lot of friends over the years through radio's. some continue to this day. then, much like the internet you had agitators. we built a direction finder and would locate them and "pin there coax" . when they keyed up the SWR's would be off the chart and fry the finals in the radio. these were guys who keyed up trying to "walk over you" or shut the channel down by keying the mic for hours. radio version of a troll.

Enjoyed your account of “freebanding” Shutter. We used modified President Grants with external PLL frequency controllers on commercial fishing boats for close range SSB and AM comms. When bored during voyages to or from the fishing grounds we’d shoot skip and talk to fellow radio outlaws. We didn’t use linear amps. The salt water ground and resonant vertical dipole antenna usually did the job on the 5-10 watts from the transceiver finals. Agree with you on tube amps. They can take a beating that will blow out their temperamental solid state relatives.

Most hams despise CBers and freebanders. I don’t mind them at all. Their conversations are usually far more entertaining than your typical ham QSO. Some of them are technically sharp too. Of course there are the bucket mouth dummies but they provide some entertainment as well.

73,
AF6IM
aka 377
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To answer Shutter’s questions.

Yes, essentially a VFO but it was not a free running drifty oscillator. It used the rig’s PLL synthesizer chip and just expanded the frequency range beyond CB limits.

Yeah, worked skip without external amps. The advantage provided by a steel hull ground immersed in ocean water is substantial.

On the 20M ham band I’ve worked East Coast statins from CA using
2-4 watts SSB. Did it once under a parachute canopy. Listen to
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377

If Cooper had an accomplice on the ground he could have easily established contact during canopy descent using then available CB walkie talkies. Do you concur Shutter?

Other than the LD Cooper story, I recall no other claimed use of skyjacker radio comms has been made.

377

The cheap walkie talkies had I believe a quarter watt. I had several as a kid and could barely reach the truckers behind us when we were on vacation traveling. I held up a sign asking him to turn to channel 14. that's the only channel they had..

The advantage is the altitude. the higher the better. this would be much better for 11 meter bands (CB radio) surrounding range. 10/20 meters (Ham) would probably work fine on the ground vs a CB radio..once on the ground it might be an issue if it's not a good CB walkie talkie but they would probably be able to communicate while coming down..