How a TV Tube Became the Trucker's Secret Weapon: The 6LQ6 Story

In 1976, America had CB fever. Truckers, housewives, even the First Lady were talking on Citizens Band radio. But under a lot of truck seats sat an illegal gray box that turned a 4-watt radio into a 100-watt monster, and inside it were tubes that had been built to draw the picture on your family's color TV. This is the story of the 6LQ6 and the TV sweep tubes: how General Electric's color-television workhorse became the trucker's secret weapon, why it was so good at a job it was never designed for, and how the television set took its revenge, with truckers' voices booming out of TVs and stereos across America until the FCC stepped in. If you watched our 6EF4 episode, this tube lived in the very same high-voltage cage. Did you have a CB in the '70s? What was your handle? Did a trucker's voice ever come out of your TV? Tell us in the comments. SOURCES & FURTHER READING • Stereophile, "RFI, CB and the FCC" (1977) • TIME, "The Nation: Uncrowding the Air" (August 1976) • Christian Science Monitor, "CB radio: rebel of the '70s" (1983) • American Radio Relay League v. FCC, 617 F.2d 875 (D.C. Cir. 1980) • Svetlana Electron Devices Technote No. 32 (sweep tubes in RF linear amplifiers) • Museum of Broadcast Communications, "Citizens Band Radio" • 6JE6/6LQ6 tube data: r-type.org, tubedatabase This video is for history and education only. Operating a linear amplifier on CB frequencies is illegal in the United States.