I stand to be corrected but Radio Hams use short wave to communicate world wide. Citizen's Band was not Short Wave and was mainly used over fairly short distances. The Late King of Jordan was a well known Radio Ham, as I believe is Prince Phillip.
Modern technology, including the mini two way radios you show as well as the mobile telephone, have made CB virtually obsolete.
If I remember correctly when the CB craze started all of the equipment was imported and ran at 127MHz which was illegal in the UK. The government then licensed ?CB? but running on 66MHz which meant that the equipment had to be specially made, was more expensive and basically shite. I think that was the death of it?
Here starteth the lesson.
CB (Citizen's Band) Radio was a RT (Radio Transceiver) set up operating on a internationally agreed frequency band
of 27kHz AM (Amplitude Modified) 26.965 - 27.991kHz in the Short Wave Radio Band.
It was illegal to use any kind of private transmitter equipment in the UK except for the VERY tightly regulated HAM (Amateur) Radio using the 2 Metre Band Short Wave Radio 144 - 146MHz and later other VHF frequencies. 1800 MHz
As Private Radio Transmissions were illegal the concept of Radio telephones (Cell Phones) were not possible and Commercial and Government use was similarly tightly controlled into what was called PMR (Private Mobile Radio) which made use of the redundant 405 line VHF TV channels. With the exception of VHF Radio 88 - 108MHz AM 552- 1602kHz band (Medium Wave) and UHF 625 TV channels all civilian transmissions were prohibited.
The usefulness of CB Radio was long held to be a goal of long-distance lorry drivers who began to use the American standard CB sets for the same reasons as the US drivers did, communicating traffic news and speed trap info amongst themselves and as news spread others saw the advantages to CB use and it spread quickly amongst people that were becoming increasingly mobile and out of touch.
It was easy to obtain radio sets because whilst use of transmitters was forbidden, possession and sale was not and as CB was legal throughout most of Europe and the rest of the world pressure built quickly for the UK to modify their position. Labour famously stated that 'Hell would freeze over before the country got free radio access', the main plank of objection being advance warning of speed traps would collapse civilisation as we knew it (It's not the new horror kids seem to think it is) and as a party did everything in their power to kill it off.
One of Margaret Thatcher's principle points of appeal to ordinary folk was her promise to repeal anti - tranmission laws. But in typical political backstabbing she legalised a alternative FM (Frequency Modulated) which combined with using Off-frequency tuning made the legalised standard quite incomparable with CB even though it was still in the 27 Metre Band. This was as a result of honouring a pledge whilst denying and use to illegally used Standard imported CB sets, Naturally a licence fee was introduced as well.
Idiots of a very young order - the forerunner of todays yoof - took control of the airwaves with silly use and seasoned users kept on using the old - still illegal - international CB sets. The new convenience of radio comms was defeated by stupid use almost as soon as it legally started, but the stage was set and under the pretence of one man taxi cars and other lame excuses people began to move over to the semi-private PMR bands. The usage exploded as more people realised the usefulness of radio and the ball kept rolling. First PMR was overwhelmed by legal and illegal use and as equipment standards improved the radios continued to shrink out of the cars and into the hand and the mobile phone was born.
Meanwhile the government had been taken to court for violating EU radio coms standards which saw peoples legal UK sets being confiscated at the boarder and vice-versa with the EU legal sets being grabbed coming home. This was clearly violating EU rules of free movement and ultimately the international standard AM 27 sets were legalised in the UK in 1988. It was too late though, people had migrated to PMR to get away from the kids and wanted a higher level of privacy so the stage was set for the introduction of cell phones which were themselves AM analogue devices which could be listened to (as Prince Philip famously discovered) and they morphed into Digital FM and we have never looked back.
As the capacity of PMR (446MHz) had been enormously improved to cope with the demand suddenly became idle as the business user needed privacy and the private user wouldn't pay the extortionate licence fees so it rotted until a recent change of the law revised the use regulations and PMR became deregulated 1999 for sub 500mW ERP and has become a far better utilisation of two-way radio. CB is still around and used extensively by people in remote areas and mobile but in town, it's use is ruined.
As an aside, the range of CB sets was restricted by the power output set at 4 watts ERP which effectively made it short range usable but with amplifiers and the favourable sun-spot activity of the early eighties saw around-the-world contact. DX'ing was a popular pastime then - my personal best was a confirmed DXR from the Philippines's - The current generation of CB's PMR's and Cell phones are all subject to strict ERP limits.
If it had not been for a growing band of dedicated rebels that would not take no for an answer regarding personal freedom to communicate then it is highly likely that there would be no cell phones today, or any other form of public radio communication. Quite recently they have dropped the requirement for morse for a HAM exam - long seen as a deliberate physical barrier to gaining a licence to transmit.
The widespread introduction of personal mobile radio has always been the nightmare scenario of government and even today they strive to exert as much control as possible - as you'll have noticed they retain the power to shut the system down to citizen access in the event of an 'emergency' of their designation.
Here endeth the lesson.
