The CB Mystery of "GI Joe" in Belize -- and 105F in the Shade

My venerable Cobra 148GTL, a terrific CB/SSB radio -- and it still works. I took this pic in 2011 and was hearing a mess of skip signals on channel 6, just off a small whip attached to the back of the radio. Over a decade earlier, I was able to talk to Texas, Alaska, California and Mexico with this radio.

I hang out at several radio forum websites, under different pseudonyms, and often at these forums the subject of Shortwave radio comes up. 

And CB radio (also known as the 11 Meter Band) often is raised as a SW-related subject, as well. The ham guys on the ham sites seem to decry CB, making fun of CB operators. The MW and SW guys seem to have a more positive view of the 11 meter band.

I'm old enough to remember CB, during the last edge of its heyday, which was during the turn of the decade, just when the 1990's began. The sunspots were up, and the 11 Meter Band was hopping with activity. It wasn't long after 1991-1992 that the sunspots started their dip, and then the internet cut into the Shortwave radio band's popularity, and CB, too.

But as late as 1990, even with a CB radio plugged into a whip antenna stuck into the back of the set, you could hear much of the world. I bought a SSB CB radio (Uniden 122) and then a second, better one (Cobra 148), and even just using the legal channels (my radios were, and are, both 100% stock), I could hear Latin America, Hawaii, Canada, the SE US and Texas, California, and even Australia. And most of this long distance CB skip was on sideband.

During this period, I built an 11 meter quad antenna. With the quad I was able to talk to Northern California fairly often, and also parts of Canada and even Alaska. One of the more interesting convos I had was with a guy driving a truck up the gravel highway that runs from Fairbanks to the North Slope / Prudhoe Bay region of Alaska. I don't know what the name of the road was back in 1989, but now it is called the Dalton Highway:

Dalton Highway - Wikipedia

The Alaskan trucker was driving up into the isolated, desolate looking, and majestic appearing Brooks Ranges when we talked. He said a lot about the highway, and we also talked fishing -- in Alaska they have a lot of big lake trout. That 'QSO' was one of the standouts.

My Realistic Patrolman SW-60, a portable radio that runs on 4 C-Cells for a long time. When I first got it, of course, there was a lot more activity on the SW, VHF, VHF-Low and UHF bands. I heard my only satellite on this radio, just off the whip -- a weather satellite beeping around 136 Mhz. For a non-TRF model this radio does really well on MW at night. It's probably a good emergency and camping radio for those who still have them, as it gets MW and FM well, and also the Weather band.

The quad antenna also came in handy for VHF Low Band 'skip' on my Realistic Patrolman SW60. The radio has provision for an external, balanced antenna (via Motorola style jack) so I plugged the quad into the radio and tuned the VHF Low Band. The 11 meter quad antenna was tuned close enough to the 30-33 MHz portion of the VHF Low Band that I heard Louisiana accented guys talking about oil rigs -- in clear FM, as well as other Texan and Louisiana accented speech.

After building that quad antenna, I built a three element, wire beam, which aimed South-East. I hung it by ropes from the house, the other ropes attached to some poplar trees. With that antenna I was able to talk to Texas, New Mexico, Louisiana, and Coahuila and Chihuahua Mexico. Because I know some Spanish, I made contact with some Mexican sideband CBers on their favorite sideband channel of that time, which (I think) was the upper side of channel 29. The main way to call "CQ" was "Hola Once! Hola Once!" (hello 11, hello 11).

So I have quite a few fond memories of talking on the CB sideband.

THE STRANGE SAGA OF BELIZE'S "GI JOE"

But then there was a CB mystery, which has always puzzled me. It's almost like the CB radio version of an urban legend, but this guy was very real... he was the mysterious guy who was on CB skip every afternoon during the summer and fall of 1989 or so -- a guy who called himself "GI Joe".

I was working at a college radio station at the time, and sometimes I would hook up my CB to a magnet mount antenna atop my Ford sedan car, and switch the CB on to listen to the CB sideband channels while commuting, and sometimes I would listen a while in the parking lot just before going up to work -- and there he'd be, most afternoons: "...this is GI Joe.... Just an old soldier... I'm in Belize..."

He had no call letters or 'unit numbers', like sideband people had back then. Just his 'handle': "GI Joe".

He always had tons of US stations trying to talk to him, and some Canadian stations, too. Some of them didn't know (or hear correctly) where "GI Joe" was located, so sometimes he'd spell out the name of the country ("it's B-E-L-I-Z-E...") -- and sometimes he would even tell them where it was on the map (in Central America, near Guatemala, Mexico's Yucatan Penisula, and Honduras). 

"GI Joe" never talked about the conflicts going on in Central America at the time (US involvement with the Contras), nor did he say exactly where he was, but at least once he seemed to mention an offshore island (Belize has a couple offshore, barrier islands). He sometimes mentioned the weather, which he always said was warm.

Of course, because F2 skip was on (the peak of the solar cycle), "GI Joe" was usually heard very well. I don't remember him saying what kind of radio he had, but my guess is that his radio was probably a ham rig like a Yaesu or Kenwood, tricked out for the CB band, because he got out so well.

And for a couple months it seemed that every afternoon, I heard him... "This is ol' GI Joe, in Belize, calling CQ..." You can't necessarily tell a person's age from their voice but he sounded like he was close to retired.

Any time he made a call, there was a 'pile-up' of stations trying to reach him -- from the Southern states of the US, from Texas, from Florida, from Ohio, from Ontario Canada... "GI Joe" had quite a draw. I think I remember him talking to a guy in Utah or Colorado or California, but never anyone in the Northwest US. Of course, this was years ago, and I'm going by memory.

 

He didn't say too much about his life, aside from mentioning now and then that he had been a soldier. I don't know if he was married, divorced, widowed, or whatever. He also didn't specifically say where he was, like ham radio operators will do.... aside from him being possibly on an island with a beach, and I think he said he was living in a camper or caravan trailer. I tried to talk to him more than once but never got through.

 

I stopped hearing him some time during the early 90's, and I never heard him after that. Also, internet searches came up completely blank. There apparently is a store by that name that shows up in searches -- but it's not him, obviously. One would think he'd been mentioned somewhere on CB forums because of all the guys (and women) who talked to him, but nothing ever came up. Even searches of radio people in Belize comes up blank.

A lot of Americans apparently retire or move to Belize. I have found that out from internet searches. "GI Joe" obviously was one of them -- probably sold his house and stuff and either drove a camper van to Belize, or somehow got a hold of one when he moved there. But who he was? We will never know.

I rack it up as a mystery. He was just a guy who -- with just a simple CB radio and a decent antenna -- talked to probably hundreds of people every day of every week, and then eventually disappeared, into the ether.

If you're still out there somewhere, "G.I. Joe", this one's for you, and stay safe.

Dry, packed earth -- a pathway just off the bicycle Trail that a lot of people use as a detour. It's what's left of the Milwaukee Road railroad grade. The dirt is drier than I have seen it in a long time. Although this photo was taken a few days ago, I'm certain that our heat wave here made the dirt only drier and even more hard-packed.

HEAT, HEAT, AND MORE HEAT

Here in the Seattle area we're not used to heat. "Hot" to us is 85 degrees F (about 29C), and 90-95 degrees F (35C) is really hot. It usually hits 90F about 4-5 times a year. 100 or greater is rare.

When I was a kid, usually once a year the temperature would break 100. Now, to you folks who use the Centigrade system in the rest of the world, 100 to us is similar to what 40 is to you: a round number that means SUPER HOT. When I was a kid, 100+ temperatures were exciting for some reason. We'd all talk about it, how hot it was. I remember at least 3-4 times the thermometer hit 101 and 102. Never hotter than that.

The clear, sun-sparkling waters of the Cedar River when the sun is high in the sky and warm temperatures and river recreation beckon.

Last week they told us that there was a heat dome building in the Western US, and that we'd have record breaking temperatures over the weekend, and into Monday. They were right. About 200 miles north of us is a small town in British Columbia, Canada called Lytton. It's in a relatively dry area (rain shadow) NE of Vancouver, BC. It was 118F there -- that's 48C. That's HOT.

Here in Seattle on Sunday it was 105 (40C), and on Monday it was 108 (42C) on my front porch. For us, that is REALLY HOT. Especially for rainy, moderate weather Seattle. The hardest part of it was trying to sleep, because the rooms in the house were still hot, and most people here in the Seattle area do NOT have air conditioning. Just fans. And if the power goes out during the heat (which it did for a couple hours), you don't even have the fans. :-(

Thankfully, it's cooling down over the week!

I notice I have a couple new readers from parts of the world... One from Colombia (new country), one from Luxembourg (new country), several from Croatia (new country, I think), one from Belgium (a rare check-in), and Japan, Pakistan, India, Indonesia, Australia, Germany, Canada, Brazil, Argentina, Portugal, Italy, Netherlands, Hungary, Romania, and the Czech Republic all have checked out the blog. Usually, half of my readers are overseas. I hope your temperatures are moderate and you're all well and safe. 

Peace.

C.C. June 29th, 2021.