If you’re here then you’re probably one of two things, a trucker or a ham. Either way you’re probably at least somewhat familiar with this window licker. “Mud Duck” is the handle of a notorious CB and ham radio operator believed to operate in New Mexico. He primarily operates on channel 19 and is believed to have a transmitter operating somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 watts. For reference, your typical CB is 4. Not 4,000, not 400, just 4 watts. As one might imagine this gives him an effective range of pretty much all of North America, pretty much blocking out any other communications on the band. And worst of all, his broadcasts can last anywhere between 2 and 12 hours a day! And it’s not just CB, Mud Duck Radio has also appeared on pretty much all of the ham bands at some point or another, though we’ll focus on his CB jamming here. So, you might be thinking, why is this even a problem? So what if he has a few too many watts? He’s not hurting anybody, right? And what about his rights? Well, while he has every right to simply talk on the CB, that’s where the legality ends and the fraud begins.
Anyone who’s seen films such as Smoky and the Bandit or Convoy likely has a basic idea of how CB is supposed to work. Basically different channels are used for different purposes. For example channel 9 is often monitored by police and EMS, 16 is typically where the jeeps can be found (because 4x4=16) and 19 (Mud Duck‘s favorite) is the general advisory channel. This channel is used by truckers to warn each other of adverse road conditions such as ice, severe weather, debris and wrecks that may pose a hazard to road safety. One can imagine what it’s like trying to use a 4 watt transmitter to warn others of road hazards when some screwball is blasting 10,000 watts on the same frequency. They get blasted off the air completely. To give you some idea of how powerful his transmitter is, I live in Maryland and Mud Duck is believed to live in New Mexico and I still can’t use my radio with his splatter box on the air. It’s like trying to have a casual conversation while someone is talking on a megaphone in the same room.
Short answer. Everybody on the road. Imagine being stuck in traffic around a blind turn and a truck comes around the turn, unaware of the jam because they couldn’t hear the warning. You better hope that 80,000 lbs truck can stop in time! Ever seen what happens when a semi rear ends a civic at 65 mph? I have, and it’s not pretty!
So we’ve established how Mud Duck’s activities on the radio are highly illegal and dangerous but now let’s talk about his fraudulent business practices. You can’t talk about Mud Duck without talking about the Fine Tune CB Radio Shop. Here we have two layers of fraud. Firstly the Stryker radios he sells. Now, stryker sells some great radios but as anyone who can read will tell you (because they literally have it printed on the radio), these things are 10 meter ham radios not CBs. Meaning Mud Duck is illegally modifying them to work on 11 meter CB using 10 meter power. Now typically this is somewhat forgivable and is actually pretty common seeing as these things cap out at about 60 watts PEP stock, but Mud Duck promised further modifications to the radio that would increase range and audio quality. However the VAST majority of customers simply never received their radios and those who did often reported that their radios were simply stock, unmodified equipment that they had paid a premium for. Some were even still only able to transmit of 10 meters and couldn’t even access the 11 meter CB bands. Secondly, Mud Duck also promised a tuning service for those willing to ship him their CB and ham radio equipment, however upon shipping your equipment and paying, customers would be blocked and their money and radios gone! A formal investigation by the New Mexico State‘s attorney notwithstanding, very few people have received their equipment.
Firstly, you can help by reporting any Mud Duck activity to the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) at this link.
https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/hc/en-us/requests/new?ticket_form_id=38844
It will ask for basic information like your name, contact information and address as will a video or audio file. We STRONGLY recommend you send a video, also be sure to specify that it’s Mud Duck as well as the time, location and, if possible, the S meter reading. If you’d rather call or are located outside of the U.S., the FCC phone number is 1-888-225-5322.
For our Canadian breakers, the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunication Commission (Canadian version of the FCC) can be found here.
https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/contact/question.htm#questions
This pretty much works the same as the FCC page. And of course if you’d rather call, the phone number is 1-877-249-2782. Canadian CBers are also encouraged to contact the FCC.
Info on how those in Mexico can report Mud Duck coming soon… Hopefully.
Secondly, you can sign the petition!
https://www.change.org/p/make-fcc-shut-down-mud-duck-radio
(petition by Christopher Hix)
Third, you can contact your local congressman about the issue. There is a link to a site where you can look up their contact info on the “Who to Contact” page in the pull down menu.
Lastly, you can help by simply not interacting with Mud Duck. Most of his activity on the bands consists on fights and arguments with other CBers and by not interacting with him then you are denying him the one thing he craves most. Attention.
It was initially a bit hard to want to make this site. While I’ve always been a supporter of the constitutional right to broadcast and an avid opposer of censorship, it’s not free speech if it puts lives at risk! Unlike other forms of unlawful, but ultimately harmless, airwave usage like pirate radio broadcasting. Mud Duck represents a bigger issue within America and that is hypocrisy within the federal government. A group of protesters want to storm the capital building? No problem! The Freedom Convoy wants to drive through DC? Call in the national guard! Mud Duck wants to completely destroy the CB bands and potentially endanger peoples lives? Why not? Three people want to run a few pirate FM stations in New York? They get hit with nearly six million dollars in fines.