CB slang and abbreviations

I have put there a very few expressions that are used in CB. There are some pretty complete sites on the Net about CB vocabulary, so I put only those that will help to understand this site.

OM : stand for "Old Man". It is a male cibist.

YL : for "Young Lady". A female cibist.

AM : for "Amplitude Modulation". A radio mode in wich the wave has a constant frequency and a variable amplitude.

FM : for "Frequency Modulation". The wave has constant amplitude and variable frequency.

In FM mode, the sound is better, but the range is lower ; so AM mode is the most used.

SSB : for "Single Specific Band". A special AM mode, in which the central part of the wave isn't taken. There are two SSB : USB (Upper Specific Band) and LSB (Lower...). In this mode, sound may be very bad, it needs to be set very carefully ; but the range can reach 15,000 or even 20,000 Km with a 40 Watts CB set (which is strictly forbidden, of course !) and a good antenna.

• Qxx : The Qcode has been invented by TSF at the beginning of this century. A word that was frequently used was incoded in three letters to gain some time. QSO is a radio contact. QSP is a relay, a person who makes the contact between two posts who can't reach each other, likelike a link in a chain.QRG is the frequency. Etc...
• TOS : in French, "Taux d'Ondes Stationnaire". It is the quality of the CB set's emission. It depends on the antenna resounding. The antenna must be tuned with the wave in order to resound well, and have a minimal TOS (as near from 1 as possible). If the TOS is over 2, the radio is bad and the range is low ; if it is over 3, the CB set may be damaged. It is fixed by changing the antenna length.

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