Fred Atkinson responded to What Happened To Channel 1 on 18 Mar 2005 15:11:26 GMT>
Another fellow I knew (Jim) was in Florence, SC. Jim was parked in
> front of a beauty salon waiting for his wife to come out. He was
> having a good, long conversation with another ham who was in
> Fayetteville, NC on his two meter set while he waited. A CBer pulled
> up behind him and parked. He saw Jim talking on his radio and he
> dialed through all the CB channels trying to pick him up. After a
> while, he got out of his car and walked up to Jim telling him 'Good
> buddy, your CB isn't modulating'. Jim responded by telling the ham in
> Fayetteville to about this CBer and asking him to tell the guy where
> he was located. He responded that he was in Fayetteville, NC. The
> CBer's eyes almost popped out when he heard that come over Jim's
> radio. He went back to his car, pulled his CB out, set it on the
> sidewalk, and took it apart to work on it. When Jim's wife returned
> to the car, Jim got out and spoke to the guy explaining that that CB
> would never pick up his signals. The guy insisted that his radio
> would pick up any CB. Jim informed him that his radio was not a CB
> then got in his car and drove off leaving the poor guy sitting on the
> sidewalk with his CB completely disassembled. While funny, I think it
> was also a little mean.
This may have been another reason the FCC dropped Channel 1: too much interference. Back in the 50s, during the sunspot peak, there were a LOT of instances of some Channel 2 in Texas wiping out Channel 2 in NY. It happened, IIRC, mostly on Channel 2, and rarely on Channel 4. Channel 1 would have been worse.
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And that was the main conflict with
> television 'channel one' I think. A conflict with other services in
> the 50-54 megs area.
The very high power of TV stations, however well filtered, would have caused problems. Nearbly broadcast towers can cause serious problems far outside their band, even for good receivers.