Heterodyne: motion lotion...

A generation ago, many of my pilot friends were spread out as much as 50 miles. Local phone service beyond 20 miles was considered long distance and when we talked it was as much as 25 cents per minute.

One friend owned an electronics repair shop and got us into CB radio so we could communicate by car when getting to the flying field. It was also good when we broke for lunch and did a caravan deciding places to eat. Under normal circumstances car to car reception was only good (at best) for a few miles with a standard 5 watt radio. It was easy to tune the amplifier circuit and get more output. Add on an an external power booster of 150 watts and you could be clearly heard 10 miles. Talking on the radio became normal for us.

The guy with the repair shop took his hobby to extreme and in his house he had a 2,000 watt amplifier and specialized directional antennas that were on a tower with a rotating motor so he could point the array and easily talk 50 miles! It didn't take long for me to do the same. We were buying high quality ham radio gear and modified things to talk on CB frequencies and beyond. I always received good reports that my signal and audio was balanced and ultra clear.

My neighborhood was very 'radio active' and you could easily find someone nearby that would talk to in a group setting. If I wanted to go for dinner and asked if someone wanted to meet... a few people would jump into the announcement and join me.

With 40 channels to talk on, we were often separated by different groups. Rednecks stayed near channel 19 that was the call channel for mobile operation. the 'brothers' were on channel 7. Latinos could be found on 23. Teenagers often hung out on channel 1. Most of my friends would go to the higher channels as there was less traffic there.

Heterodyne is a noise made when 2 people try talking on the same channel at the same time. Neither can hear themselves and others listening would hear the strongest signal or when both were nearly equal in power a mixed signal. Sometimes. it a squeal and other times it's a buzzing sound. Often in group chat 2 people will talk and not know their signal is heterodyning with another operator.

When several people are in a fight you get several signals and different sounds of heterodyne. Most of the brothers were using a few hundred watts in their own neighborhoods as 'watts' dictated power. If you had sufficient power your signal could cut through heterodyne and block out the other signals.

The problem with too much power on tweaked CB radios is they 'splatter' sending a distorted wide signal that bleeds across several channels making it impossible for people to talk on adjacent frequencies. That's the reason for the different groups separating themselves across the 40 channels.

One day, I was getting splatter that affected hearing a neighbor. Someone was driving down a main road near my house. I knew he was a 'brother' and from the audio I knew he was running a few hundred watts. I turned on my amplifier and went to the channel the guy was on. He was telling his friends that he needed to get some 'motion lotion'.

Although I was an avid CB'er I usually refrained from CB jargon. I knew motion lotion was CB talk for gasoline. But, I wanted to rattle his cage as he was only a few blocks from me. I asked if the motion lotion was because his girlfriend was 'dry down there' and suggested he visit the local pharmacy.
Yeah, that touched a nerve and he started screaming some obscenities in retaliation. I could hear some heterodyne howling from his friends a few miles away.

Knowing I had considerably more power than him and operating with an antenna on a tower, I keyed the microphone and told his friends to tell him 'he got dusted'
To be dusted means someone with considerably more power comes over the top of your signal with the strength to eliminate heterodyne.