@Kind of Blue The CBer here isn't buried too deep below the surface and indeed many of the radio amateurs I speak to around the world came to the hobby via the same "good buddy" route.
Like yourself I had already formed an impression that amateur radio was full of formality and stuffed shirts more interested in keeping the hobby exclusive rather than the free for all of CB radio.
Fair enough there are a few of these types even to this day but within the hobby you're more likely to run into the professional DXer or worse still weekend warrior contester who believes chatting aimlessly via HF radio to a fellow wind bag the other side of the world is something to be done via telephone and an abuse of RF spectrum.
Going back to my lawless days and we had two fantastic sunspot cycles in 21 and 22 where from the late 1970s through to the early 90s you could talk via the top F2 layer of the ionosphere to pretty well any other similarly equipped CBer in the world.
I say similarly equipped as by the late 80s in my Fiesta work van I had a multi mode radio that covered from 26 to 28 MHz, a 550 watt amplifier and base and centre loaded whip antenna that meant if you could hear them then you could work them, battery power was two time expired sealed aircraft batteries courtesy of a mate who used to work on Lycoming engined helicopters... yep, CBer too.
Friendships made from those days meant at least a half dozen visits to the States to a mate in Michigan and indeed my wife and kids got to fly to Ohio back in 1991 which for us was only the second time after an 80s holiday in Jersey!
Long over there (radio jargon
)but an ideal winter hobby as ironically the propagation is better during the lousy weather time of the year.
